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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

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

#451

Post by scoofy »

qingcharles wrote: post #438
callistocodes wrote: post #334

My two cents as a transfem athlete: The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level. Most of us do sports for fun/friends and don’t care how they rank us, but would be sad to be banned. There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, but by this many years in it feels silly. I registered as a man fo…

This is one of the rare problems where there exists no good solution to the issue. Even without taking transfem athletes into consideration, there still remains a problem for women's sports in that sex (not gender) is not fully black and white, male and female, and some high-performing female athletes show signs of intersex, which has caused this entire hysteria about checking for penises. How do you ever come up wit…

The issue is that “woman’s sports” is itself intentionally discriminatory. That the issue of discrimination comes up is to be expected.

The idea of competitive sports exists in a framework of discrimination means that you will always have unhappy people.

The good news is that sports, for the most part, is mostly symbolic, and rarely affects ones livelihood.

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

#452

Post by fwip »

braingravy wrote: post #362
lux-lux-lux wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-transition Lia Thomas wasn’t mid-tier, but I suspect you already knew that

Mid-tier or not is a judgement call. Regardless, Lia went from not being in the front of the pack, to being in the front of the pack: “By the conclusion of Thomas's swimming career at UPenn in 2022, her rank had moved from 65th on the men's team to 1st on the women's team in the 500-yard freestyle, and 554th on the men's team to fifth on the women's team in the 200-yard freestyle.” 65th to 1st in one category, and 55…

Yeah, generally you get better in your sport in the 4-5 years you're in college. She was already putting up crazy numbers as a freshman on the men's team.

From Wikipedia:

> Thomas began swimming on the men's team at the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. During her freshman year, Thomas recorded a time of eight minutes and 57.55 seconds in the 1,000-yard freestyle that ranked as the sixth-fastest national men's time, and also recorded 500-yard freestyle and 1,650-yard freestyle times that ranked within the national top 100.[4] On the men's swim team in 2018–2019, Thomas finished second in the men's 500, 1,000, and 1,650-yard freestyle at the Ivy League championships as a sophomore in 2019.[4][3][13] During the 2018–2019 season, Thomas recorded the top UPenn men's team times in the 500 free, 1,000 free, and 1,650 free, but was the sixth best among UPenn men's team members in the 200 free.[14]

To focus in on her just-out-of-highschool low ranking, and imply that it's weird that she improved by the time she graduated, is deliberately disingenuous (not on your part, but on the writer's.) She had already won 3 silver medals as a sophomore on the men's team, and was the best on her team in all but one event.

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

#453

Post by etherus »

frumplestlatz wrote: post #428
etherus wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were required to compete with people of a gender you do not identify with, even when event organisers recognise you as more fitting among the other group, that's a ban. There are trans masc people. Requiring them to compete with women is unfair and disrespectful. Requiring trans fem people to do so is the same. The rules around gender identification in regulated sports require proof of medical treatment yada y…

The classification is based on sex, expressly due to the material differences between the sexes. It is not and has never been rooted in any sort of sociological concept of gender as an independent category from one’s sex.

The material difference between people we bar and do not bar is not large enough to constitute a difference against competing with people we assign within the same sex group [1][2][3]. This might feel counterintuitive, but please consider that trans people who have medically transitioned are not as different from cis people of the same gender than you expect. Hormones do a lot. [1] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2026/01/22/bjsports-2025-... [2]https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2024/04/10/bjsports-2023-... [3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10641525/

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

#454

Post by juneyyyyyy »

locknitpicker wrote: post #369
callistocodes wrote: post #334

My two cents as a transfem athlete: The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level. Most of us do sports for fun/friends and don’t care how they rank us, but would be sad to be banned. There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, but by this many years in it feels silly. I registered as a man fo…

> The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level. We all remember state-sponsored doping scandals from the 60s where iron curtain nations invested heavily on medical research and experiments on prospective athletes to try to get medals. It's not hard to understand how badly this would turn out to be if the same sort of unscrupulous regime coul…

If an unscrupulous regime wanted to get medals with that method they'd just give cis women testosterone during puberty. Nothing about the new trans-exclusionary standards would deter that.

No XY chromosome no SRY gene. You're left with validating that someone's entire development was done in the absence of testosterone, which would--if even possible--require incredibly invasive and extensive testing.

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

#455

Post by fwip »

nxor2 wrote: post #385
lux-lux-lux wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-transition Lia Thomas wasn’t mid-tier, but I suspect you already knew that

I was a college athlete. Trust me, this topic has been discussed ad infinitum. People were not even allowed to speak out. In addition, the NCAA meet is very competitive and Thomas pushed someone out of the meet and out of finals. Girls work their entire life for this meet just for it to end this way. It's shockingly sad on so many levels. It's not common, but it's not right that people were not even allowed to speak…

Every single person in that meet "pushed someone" else out of that meet. That's how competition works.

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

#456

Post by TimorousBestie »

scoofy wrote: post #451
qingcharles wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the rare problems where there exists no good solution to the issue. Even without taking transfem athletes into consideration, there still remains a problem for women's sports in that sex (not gender) is not fully black and white, male and female, and some high-performing female athletes show signs of intersex, which has caused this entire hysteria about checking for penises. How do you ever come up wit…

The issue is that “woman’s sports” is itself intentionally discriminatory. That the issue of discrimination comes up is to be expected. The idea of competitive sports exists in a framework of discrimination means that you will always have unhappy people. The good news is that sports, for the most part, is mostly symbolic, and rarely affects ones livelihood.

Unfortunately pointless, mostly symbolic things attract the most hysterical reactions from people.

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

#457

Post by htx80nerd »

raffael_de wrote: post #353

olympics should be entirely unisex. simple as that.

this is very naive. go compare the Olympic men 5k times to the womens 5k times.

i was a very below average cross country runner in high school, if not flat out poor. my times were still fast by female standards.

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

#458

Post by qingnonce »

qingcharles wrote: post #438
callistocodes wrote: post #334

My two cents as a transfem athlete: The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level. Most of us do sports for fun/friends and don’t care how they rank us, but would be sad to be banned. There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, but by this many years in it feels silly. I registered as a man fo…

This is one of the rare problems where there exists no good solution to the issue. Even without taking transfem athletes into consideration, there still remains a problem for women's sports in that sex (not gender) is not fully black and white, male and female, and some high-performing female athletes show signs of intersex, which has caused this entire hysteria about checking for penises. How do you ever come up wit…

[flagged]

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

#459

Post by Aurornis »

qingcharles wrote: post #438
callistocodes wrote: post #334

My two cents as a transfem athlete: The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level. Most of us do sports for fun/friends and don’t care how they rank us, but would be sad to be banned. There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, but by this many years in it feels silly. I registered as a man fo…

This is one of the rare problems where there exists no good solution to the issue. Even without taking transfem athletes into consideration, there still remains a problem for women's sports in that sex (not gender) is not fully black and white, male and female, and some high-performing female athletes show signs of intersex, which has caused this entire hysteria about checking for penises. How do you ever come up wit…

> and some high-performing female athletes show signs of intersex, which has caused this entire hysteria about checking for penises.

This is a gross (literally) misunderstanding of the entire topic

The ruling covers a lot of the nuanced cases, including rare DSDs that may never even apply to Olympic athletes

The tests DO NOT check for genitals, and that is irrelevant to the decisions! It's a cheek swab that checks genetics.

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

#460

Post by erxam »

andsoitis wrote: post #314
kg wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, many countries/states are working hard to make it impossible to transition that early.

At 12 you simply do not have sufficient capacity to make a good decision on the matter.

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