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I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
41–50 of 68 posts
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#42I don't disagree with their plight but it does raise the question of where transgender athletes should compete. Male-to-female athletes likely have an advantage over female athletes but a disadvantage over similarly aged males that aren't undergoing hormone treatments. Female-to-male athletes are probably different again, probably less severe than the former case though but still creating an advantage over natural fe…
Exactly, we need three categories: M, W, ?. In ?, anything goes: Hormones, steroids, doping, etc. We can't let nature hold back sport.
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now give that male puberty blockers for several years and test testosterone levels before allowing them to compete and see the times they get.
You do realise it's not just the hormones at the point of competition that affect your performance? Males have a totally different skeletal structure to females. Especially around the hips. The difference in bone configuration gives male runners a massive advantage.
It's probably worth mentioning that this extends to the arms as well, whereby female arms are more "twisted" meaning they do not straighten as much as males'. This affects throwing, swinging, punching, etc. You know, the types of things you do in sports :)
I believe this is an evolutionary trait to aid in carrying babies...but please someone correct me on this if this is wrong (much like the hips have evolved for child-birth)
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#44why transphobia is so normalized?
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I won that race, and I'm grateful. But time after time, I have lost. I’ve lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-New England awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to male runners. I was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two male runners." I'm honestly not familiar with the literature on this issue at all, but the way you misrepresented the current article does not insp…
> I'm honestly not familiar with the literature on this issue at all But you've accepted at face values the claims this woman is making? https://www.outsports.com/2018/6/14/17458696/trans-athlete-c... > When you look at the results, it might be easy to understand why some people, like Soule, are upset. On the face of the results, it looks like two trans athletes have suddenly come along and raced into state titles an…
It's very odd that the author chose to lead with an event which she won. If there were other events that she lost, why not tell about one of those?
Unlike bathroom panics, women's sports feels like a thing where there could actually be a "there" there. There has always been controversy of who exactly qualifies as a "woman". (The Wikipedia article is pretty horrifying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports.)
With bathroom panics, it was a trivial refutation to say "Show me the incidents where men are using the new understanding to harm women". Here, there are enough instances of trans women being over-represented at the higher ranks to raise the questions of what it is we wish to accomplish with women's sports as a separate institution. If we reach a state where increasing trans representation diminishes the ability of cis women to play, that would be a genuine problem.
Instead, we get somebody saying, "Well, I should have won... and then I did." I can't figure out if this is a genuine (but poorly-expressed) gripe, or an athlete understandably grumpy about losing something some time, or anti-trans prejudice trying to masquerade as one of the other two.
I feel like there could be a real issue some day, but this isn't it. And while it's understandable that somebody might try to solve a problem before it actually becomes one, it's going to be really hard to do that sincerely if it takes the same form as prejudice.
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't know, but I don't see how we're going to find out if we don't let trans girls compete as girls. My first thought is that they could be allowed to participate in programs right up to (but not yet including) actual major competitions where things like eligibility for college scholarships are determined. You shouldn't be allowed to "win State" - and receive all the potentially career altering benefits of that…
To your point then the real discussion here is money and how we fund higher education here in the United States. Now we see the domino effect of bad social policy.
Very, very true. The more intense feelings of 'betrayal by the system' in the original article ultimately do come down to money, and could have been avoided if our system was more fair in the first place. I can't help but agree this is probably the bigger issue.
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#47This points out the absurdity of exactly two separate sports competitions for males and females. That's old fashioned binary thinking. Get rid of separate sports for males and females.
Instead, set up a lot more levels of each sports, and let each person compete at a level that makes sense for them, varsity, JV A, JV B, JV Z, club, intramural, etc.
I'm a male, and when I entered high school, I weighed 100 pounds. There was no way I could actually play on the football team. I could try, and sit on the bench, but that's all. I picked something else I could be good at. If they had a level with kids about my size, I still wouldn't have been that good, but I could have participated, got some exercise, improved, and had fun. And that's what sports should be about. All this focus on college scholarships twists the focus of sports around the wrong way.
Get rid of all college scholarships for sports for all men and women. Throw the whole college sports complex with million dollar TV deals and ticket sales out. Bulldoze the huge college stadiums and arenas. Turn them back into simple fields.
If you're really, really good at basketball, join the Overtime league, and make your way to the pros that way. But for the 99% of high school athletes who will never make it to the pros, add more levels, so anyone can participate, and bring back fun.
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#48This points out the absurdity of exactly two separate sports competitions for males and females. That's old fashioned binary thinking. Get rid of separate sports for males and females. Instead, set up a lot more levels of each sports, and let each person compete at a level that makes sense for them, varsity, JV A, JV B, JV Z, club, intramural, etc. I'm a male, and when I entered high school, I weighed 100 pounds. The…
I don't know about bulldozing stadiums, but I agree about moving on from old-fashioned binary thinking. People are just people and the labels and categories that we assign to them are changing. Sports should reflect this too.
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
How hard would it be to base the categories on basic biology, like a chromosome test? It seems the current rules are crafted specially to be bend. It also raises the question of sport’s universality. Telling appart men and wen isn’t even controversial in most of the world. Will there be a split at the international level between countries that use sex and those that use gender for making the two categories?
1) chromosome tests are useless. They set the original blueprint of what your body is, but if that original blueprint is ignored then they mean nothing. 2) As the original comment mentioned this completely fails for trans men. They are often physically stronger due to the higher presences of testosterone in the body. 3) For trans women this often fails because once sufficient time is spent on oestrogen testosterone l…
When a fetus is exposed to testosterone ( as males are ) their physiology is fundamentally and unalterably changed.
Re: I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it unfair
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) chromosome tests are useless. They set the original blueprint of what your body is, but if that original blueprint is ignored then they mean nothing. 2) As the original comment mentioned this completely fails for trans men. They are often physically stronger due to the higher presences of testosterone in the body. 3) For trans women this often fails because once sufficient time is spent on oestrogen testosterone l…
When a fetus is exposed to testosterone ( as males are ) their physiology is fundamentally and unalterably changed.
All things lie on a spectrum: there's no binary "was exposed to testosterone in the womb", nor is there a binary "their physiology is changed or not". See, for example, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190318151730.h..., a paper which purports to show that females who shared a womb with males tend to have some of their life outcomes pushed towards the testosterone end of the scale.