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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

301–310 of 960 posts

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#301
post #98
post #21

Trans women have competed as women in the Olympics once ever and have 0 medals. By the numbers it's a non issue under previous rules (despite the incredible amount of ink spilled over it). People are talking about trans women here but the vast majority of people affected by this change are women who are not trans who have a "disorder of sexual development".

Is it fair to say that they can just compete in the men's division?

For most of the sports there is no men's division - it's open for everyone.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#302
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Since you trust Wikipedia over us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

For Swyer syndrome, A 2017 study estimated that the incidence of Swyer syndrome is approximately 1 in 100,000 females. Fewer than 100 cases have been reported as of 2018.

For both the genetic disorders, they would have to be beneficial or at least not an disadvantage, for elite sport activity in order to be an issue for misclassification. For a sex-determination system, they could simply add an exception for Swyer syndrome and postpone the decision until such individual presented themselves at an Olympic competition.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A mid-tier male athletic transitions, and then blows the female record out of the water and gets gold. Do you have an example of this happening?

Lia Thomas. Why are all these innocent questioners asking for more evidence not familiar with the existence of the evidence they are asking for? Considering they feel so strongly about it, they should already have seen all this.

If I'm reading this wikipedia page right, she got first place in one race at a national championship but was 9 seconds behind the 4:24 record.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#304
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the way classes are divided. Dismissing the general concept demonstrates a fear of change rather than a legitimate openness to fair play.

No it doesn't, and no it doesn't. Proposing this concept demonstrates a profound ignorance of what competition at the top level of sports actually looks like. The concept is just bad, unless your goal is to prevent women from being able to make a living playing professional sports.

The thing is, we're already using a scissor for ability, just a poor one with the exact problem you describe - it renders trans women unable to make a living playing professional sports. Throwing one group under the bus for another cannot be avoided so long as sex or gender are part of sports divisions.

Please let go of the need for this.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#305
post #227

I wish people would care a lot less about sports.

I actually wish non-sports people would care less about sports, too. Because the decisions should be left to those of us playing the sports. Not bystanders trying to impose their own agendas on to activities they don't even participate in.

Strongly agreed. I think there was ever a good reason for this to be a topic outside those with a direct interest in various sports governing bodies. Those should be making these decisions. It's deeply stupid that this has become a major point of contention up to the federal level of government.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#306
The fair answer is to remove sex, gender, and everything related to that from classification. Dont look at it. Dont consider it. Everyone competes together.

It means that floor gymnastics is fair for *anyone* to compete in. None of this "wrong crotch shape" bullshit. Or intersex. Or trans. If you are good enough, you get in. If not, you dont.

And the whole trans argument would go away.

Means testing and gender means testing is a scourge. Time to be rid of it.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#307

This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball), this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make women’s sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course. Remember, sport is and has always been about statistical outliers competing. Fairness has never been…

The basketball league for short people would probably ban people who tested over 5’5” even if they were 6’10” but identified as short.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#308
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's impossible to have both inclusion and fair play. We have to pick one, and as a parent of daughters who compete at fairly high levels it's more important to preserve the integrity of women's sports.

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This is a matter of principle, fair play, and safety. Whether it's a tiny number or "scores and scores" is irrelevant.

If you're looking for specific incidents then start with this site. I can't vouch for it being completely accurate but you can use it as a starting point for further research to educate yourself about the issue.

https://www.shewon.org/

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#309
post #295

This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball), this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make women’s sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course. Remember, sport is and has always been about statistical outliers competing. Fairness has never been…

> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.) Just in case you're referring to Zhang Shan winning Gold in 1992: the decision to bar women from competing in the 1996 Olympics was made before Zhang had won her medal. [0] > Until men with gen…

I would argue that it's the formerly presumed binary nature of sex/gender that made it a logical split for all sports. While marital arts and weightlifting tend to seperate by weight as well, that is because those particular events are particularly biased toward muscle mass and height/reach by proxy. Most sports are less clearly advantaged by size (soccer, for example). You just can't practically divide entire team sports by gradations of height, because there aren't enough players in a school for more than a few squads.

If you wanted to divide by height or weight in a binary fashion to reduce the number of teams, then obviously you'll just have some sports where everyone in the under-6' team is 5'11.5, which seems not optimal and unfair.

I wish there was a good solution.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#310
post #295

This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball), this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make women’s sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course. Remember, sport is and has always been about statistical outliers competing. Fairness has never been…

> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.) Just in case you're referring to Zhang Shan winning Gold in 1992: the decision to bar women from competing in the 1996 Olympics was made before Zhang had won her medal. [0] > Until men with gen…

> We don't have height categories, we have categories based on sex.

I mean, we do have weight categories in combat sports, right? I don't see why we couldn't come up with similarly neutral categories if we think it's good to segment people out by physical advantages. The parent comment is making a good point, though: it feels like some people care a lot about physical advantages that map onto gender stuff they care about, and not a lot about weird genetic anomalies that provide physical advantages that aren't gendered.

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