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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

791–800 of 960 posts

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

#791

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From a biological perspective, the women being banned here are not just men and as far as I'm aware cannot realistically compete in the men's division any more than any other woman. Practically these changes bar women athletes with certain medical differences from competing in the Olympics. I'm not an expert so idk whether that's fair or not but that's what this decision is doing.

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We can fix this, we have the technology. A pair of spring boots should do the trick.

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

#792

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Insightful indeed. It really frames the issue with trans athletes as a competition problem. We search for outliers yet arbitrarily limit the range of players available. Gender segregation, weight classes, these are antithetical to the underlying aim of competitive sports. Perhaps we should completely do away with them, everyone competes in the same sport, separated only by leagues to reduce one-sided competition.

> We search for outliers yet arbitrarily limit the range of players available. > Gender segregation, weight classes, these are antithetical to the underlying aim of competitive sports. That's a naive, reductive view. Competition isn't just about benchmarking and finding the global #1, nor perfect objective ranking. If it was, we would not bother with geographically-based competitions, nor tournament brackets and cham…

Agreed, and I think people adopt this reductive view because it can be quite difficult to reason about objectively. In terms of a framework to channel one's thinking on this, I found this paper useful in understanding the rationale behind defining distinct categories of competitors in sports: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jim-Parry/publication/3...

The key takeaway in my view is that the authors make a distinction between "category advantage", which is a systematic, structural, group-based difference that exists before competition even begins, and "competition advantage", which we see play out in competitive events and is based on a mix of factors including skill, preparation, and both innate and trained talent.

Where exactly to draw the line can be somewhat subjective (e.g. in weight classes) but it helps to explain why we have a separate female category: male physiology confers such a significant category advantage that, in open competition, it would limit the ability of female athletes to compete meaningfully and demonstrate their abilities. Having a separate category fulfils this desirable outcome of showcasing and celebrating female athletic excellence.

Often we see calls to add various classes of males, particularly ones who have chosen to identify as women, framed as "inclusion" but from the perspective of who this category is actually intended for it's the opposite. Drawing a clear eligibility boundary around the female category maximises inclusion of female athletes who would otherwise be disadvantaged and excluded.

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

#793

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Men are stronger, faster, have more dense bones, have bigger lungs, bigger hands, etc, etc, etc. Men and women are different in hundreds of ways it's not just 'lean body mass'. Men are better at sports than women. Do you even live in reality? Have you ever completed in anything in your life?

Then create those divisions. Please be rational.

For what conceivable reason would you want to recreate the male and female division using a dozen or more proxies for sex instead of just using sex, to wind up with people being placed into the same buckets they would have been if you just went by sex in the first place? This seems ideologically motivated.

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

#794

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first of all, you need a source for 400. 2nd of all 400/11000 athletes is 3%. that's roughly inline with population statistics in the 15-25 demographic

> 2nd of all 400/11000 athletes is 3%. that's roughly inline with population statistics in the 15-25 demographic No its not 3% for the world, for USA maybe but most countries barely have any trans people at all.

barely any openly trans people, maybe, because it's highly illegal

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

#795
post #739

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And Michael Phelps should be banned for having freakishly long arms - his genetic advantage is basically doping as well, obviously!

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That makes no sense. A decent percentage of women would have higher testosterone levels than some men, due to various hormonal conditions like PCOS.

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

#796
post #786

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Citation? I asked because I'm curious, and Googling just gives opinion pieces and not data. [Edit] Currently -3 but no study referenced. Do people just not like the idea of providing evidence for their position? The women I've spoken to about this article cite men being the problem, whether its sexual harassment, or other sexist attitudes. Not one felt that trans participation in their sport of choice was in their to…

Here is a meta-analysis that says trans women don't exhibit significant differences in performance: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/60/3/198

Here's an in-depth critique of the claims made in that paper: https://www.voidifremoved.co.uk/p/beef-trifle

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

#797

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?

> Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) athletes? No, both because there are very few trans athletes in competition, and because trans athletes (except trans women who have not started or are less than a year into hormone therapy) have net athletic disadvantages , when considering all factors relevant to performance in almost any real sport, compared to cisgender peopl…

900 medals won by transgender athletes in women's sports.

https://thenationaldesk.com/news/americas-news-now/un-study-...

Consider that wins in any professional competition sport carries with it sponsorships, advertising stints, apparal lines or similar. For many women athletes this is a considerable part of their lively hood - include prize money etc. in terms of notoriety that gets displaced by the current regulation.

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

#798
post #733

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Have we forgotten about Caster Semenya already? Women with DSD on averave have a higher testosterone level. Testosterone generally makes you better at sports. The Olympics select for the very best athletes. In other words: the Olympics are selecting for women with DSD, so once you start doing 100% testing you'll find an incidence far above that of the general population.

If Semenya had been categorized according to his sex, he wouldn't be considered amongst the very best athletes. He is basically a middling standard 800m male runner who has been able to make a career on the back of what is essentially an administrative error. Talent scouts specifically sought out males like Semenya who were erroneously registered as female at birth, knowing that their male physical advantage would gi…

Caster Semenya is a woman, not sure why you're referring to her as him. The fact that she has a potentially unfair advantage due to her unusual genetics in women's competitions doesn't in any way make it fair to refer to her in this way.

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

#799

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…

> There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, There might also be a similar advantage for AFAB women who have unusually higher testosterone. I don't get why they don't just do hormone brackets like they do with weight in boxing, and do away with gender based divisions entirely.

Endocrinology wouldn't be an entire specialism of medicine if things were that simple.

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

#800

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If Semenya had been categorized according to his sex, he wouldn't be considered amongst the very best athletes. He is basically a middling standard 800m male runner who has been able to make a career on the back of what is essentially an administrative error. Talent scouts specifically sought out males like Semenya who were erroneously registered as female at birth, knowing that their male physical advantage would gi…

Caster Semenya is a woman, not sure why you're referring to her as him. The fact that she has a potentially unfair advantage due to her unusual genetics in women's competitions doesn't in any way make it fair to refer to her in this way.

If you look at accounts from Semenya's early life there is evidence against his account of growing up as a girl. For example, there have been school photos published showing him wearing a boy's uniform near to a group of girls who were all wearing girl's uniforms. His former school headmaster, when interviewed years later, said he thought that Semenya was a boy and was very surprised to hear that he was now competing in women's athletics.

And of course he would have gone through male puberty, not female puberty. This would have been obvious then, and the result of this is obvious now if you see him in interviews. Male-typical build, male-typical vocal tone. Even his now-wife assumed (correctly) that he is male when she first met him.

Semenya has to double down on this narrative that he is a woman otherwise he will have to admit that his successful sporting career as a woman will have been a lie.

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