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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

541–550 of 960 posts

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

#541
post #233
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".

The IOC policy is specifically that athletes need to test negative for the SRY gene to be eligible to compete in the female category. Imane Khelif won gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's boxing event, and has since admitted to having the SRY gene. So it isn't a non-issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026

I find the Khelif debacle incredibly damning for anti-trans militants since she apparently was born as a woman and has this weird thing where she has male characteristics. The anti-trans hysteria at that point in time was super off-putting for me since she did nothing wrong but merely existed. Before this I was like... meh, have sex separated sports and be done with it, but this made me re-evaluate my views in sex in that it's much more fluid than I gave it credit for. And this, by "nature", without human intervention.

I don't see anyone ever going "oh, Michael Phelps has unfair advantages because of this crazy gene". Then, it's fair and square, just better genes life's not fair. No, suddenly the care now, eeeeveryone cares now about woman's sports because someone with a rare genetic disorder showed up in the spot light. Utterly bizzare for me.

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

#542
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not be fair, because the point of having divisions is allow women to compete in a competition that is not dominated by men.

> It would not be fair, because the point of having divisions is allow women to compete in a competition that is not dominated by men. Really, what it is is being dominated by Testosterone. Also why we ban steroid use, and many other things along the same lines. I would suggest that most Olympians - both female and male (whatever your definition) likely have a higher than normal amount of that hormone.

Maybe we just make 100% of Olympic Athletes take E to balance things out.

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

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is absolutely possible, and it has been done in cisgender children with precocious puberty for decades Precocious puberty is a condition in which puberty happens earlier than it's supposed to. The goal of puberty blockers in precocious puberty is to delay puberty until the correct age and physiological growth window. Puberty blocker in precocious puberty are also not used to induce hormonal profiles that are dif…

You're making scientific claims, but with the only evidence that I'm aware of contradicting the claim. The usual approach with puberty blockers is prescribing them around the onset of natural puberty and one way or another stopping them around the age of 16. While there are sadly some cases of people who started hormone therapies and later regretted it, I'm aware of no cases of long term health impacts that are attri…

> You're making scientific claims, but with the only evidence that I'm aware of contradicting the claim.

> I asked Claude...

There are no double-blind studies, RCTs, or otherwise on this topic because it's not a situation that lends itself to that type of study. Please don't try to ask AI to summarize the situation because its training set is guaranteed to have far more discussion about it from Reddit and news articles than the limited scientific research

Of the papers out there, many are either case reports or they're studies that look into the case where people go from puberty blocker therapy into gender-affirming care, not the cases where they change their mind and discontinue with hope of returning to their baseline state.

Above I was addressing the implication that puberty blockers are a safe way to press pause on puberty until much later without consequence. That's simply not true.

Those studies you found about bone density also note that they can reduce height, and along with it other growth changes that occur during those ages in conjunction with puberty. Someone who takes puberty blockers until 16-18 will have a different physical anatomy than someone who does not. You cannot resume growth in adulthood after discontinuing the medications.

So the studies you found are consistent with what I'm saying: You cannot delay puberty without also impacting the growth that happens during that phase. That's one of the main reasons why people take the puberty blockers! As someone gets older, the window for that growth does not stay open forever.

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

#544

Has anyone measured trans athletes performance? I see this topic come up repeatedly in different guises, protect women from the evil trans-agenda. But I haven't seen where this is actually a problem. Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) athletes?

A quick Google search will will your screen with examples of men competing in women's sports and winning.

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

#545

It's clear how insane this culture war against trans people is when you consider this only applies to trans women and not trans men? Also, so many of these anti-trans efforts end up hurting cis women too, the ones who happen to look too masculine or have too high of testosterone. Gender is not as straightforward as bigots and transphobes would like to think. I wonder how many cis women will be affected by this ruling…

> It's clear how insane this culture war against trans people is when you consider this only applies to trans women and not trans men?

On the contrary, it would apply to trans men if it were about "culture war against trans people".

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

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. Men’s gymnastics and women’s gymnastics are totally different sets of events and men would get trounced in a women’s event.

Only because they don't practice those events... If men practices those events they would be better at them

I'm not sure that is true. Beam targets flexibility in ways that no men's event does.

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

#547

Has anyone measured trans athletes performance? I see this topic come up repeatedly in different guises, protect women from the evil trans-agenda. But I haven't seen where this is actually a problem. Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) athletes?

"born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) The usual term is "cisgender", or "cis" for short. "Cis" and "Trans" both come from Latin; the former means "the same side of" and the latter means "the other side of". If you are happy to be on the same side of the gender binary as what you were assigned when you were born then you are "cisgender"; if you are unhappy with that state of affairs (regardless of how much wo…

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

#548
post #488

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…

You can tell the IOC does not care about fairness in competition: they focus on this, instead of the rampant cheating (eg doping) which they do nothing about.

Organizations are large and not everyone works on the same things.

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

#549
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That subtilely implies it’s a decision to view oneself as a different gender from what was assigned at birth, but it’s not entirely clear it’s a choice in every case. Edge cases in biology get wild and sex assigned at birth can be a near arbitrary decision. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics) Parents making major medical decisions has a huge precedent in a wide range of procedures with significant ri…

It is entirely clear that it can be the case, as proven by the existence of people "detransitioning". It is also entirely clear that there have been parents (usually mothers) who wanted to have a trans child because it was cool.

There is a logical flaw in suggesting that something that occurs with a small percentage of a population such as “detransitioning” implies anything about every member of a population.

Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.

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

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but why not a specific carve out instead of a loop hole? If it's called "men's" the intention is clear. If it's called "mixed league" the intention is clear

I think they're trying to say that if there was a mixed league it would always end up being 100% men at the highest level. Like, mixed league basketball would almost certainly be just men at the highest level because of how the sport works.

I sometimes play mixed vball rec leagues, the definition of a mixed league in our rec league here, says we "have to have at least 2 women playing at any time"

So maybe I think what they mean by "mixed league" is not a "Maybe Mixed League" but like "Definitely Mixed League" as in mixed participants being a strict requirement somehow?

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