@Flats which man exactly was winning women's swimming

go on

This is not bait my suspend finger is not itchy

:D

Tbh I don't think having concerns about trans athletes is problematic.

So long as it's not intrinsically transphobic in nature.

I'll be asleep by then so really all I've done is create a problem for me at the airport tomorrow

But screw that guy

Who?

Me at the airport in 12 hours or whatever

oh lol

I know that feel.

@forest I'm just more annoyed by like, oh women in sports is good and then pivoting in order to make that in service of excluding a woman from sports

The idea is that it's unfair to biological women.

For the same reason letting a woman who is doping in would be unfair to those who aren't.

Whether the steroids come from a needle or a gland doesn't really matter when the result is the same.

I think that's why that swimming organization only allows mtf if the transition occurred before age 12, since that gets around the issue of masculine musculature (a biological man who transitioned to a woman before age 12 has capabilities sufficiently similar to that of a biological woman that there's no reason to exclude them).

That's not the same actually but incidentally it does already pull cis athletes iirc which is also dumb

Which to me is fair, as long as it follows the scientific evidence and is based only on actual advantages and not assumptions.

@forest however what is "transitioned" because i would argue that most trans related surgery (which is impossible for those under 12 to get) is irrelevant to performance even though some people will lump it in with Hormone Replacement and Puberty Blockers

like even in swimming guys aren't letting their penis's hang out to use as rudders

@Memor-X Imagine the drag that it would cause

I think @forest has the right idea, And I'm certainly not trying to be transphobic in my position (but I guess its not really up to me to decide whether or not I've been successful in that). It's difficult to come to an agreement, unless it can be recognized that there are in-fact biological advantages of a person born to a male body, that are insurmountable by someone who was born into a female body.

@Unionhawk Vice versa as well, but in the case of most sport and athletic competition, it is the men (sex) that have the advantage. I dont mean for my last comment there to be a pivot in an attempt to exclude women from competiton, but rather as a way to allow an even greater number of women a fair shot. Like I mentioned, I think the best solution would have to be perhaps a separate division, but I don't think that accomplishes anything socially

@Flats The Williams sisters have inherent advantages over other professional tennis players (or at least did when they were top of their game) and they are cis women. Should they have been barred from playing other women?

otherwise I would imagine there would be lots of "well yeah I got 4th place, but second place was {Trans Athlete}, so I really should have been on that podium too. And that's obviously not a good thing to say, nor is it socially productive

@MBraedley afaik, their only real inherent advantage is the fact that theyre siblings and have a much better mental connection in their games together. But I might be wrong and they have some wildly rare physical trait that almost no other females possess?

that sounded rude, but i didn't mean it to be

@Flats They are much more muscular (Serena, I think, in particular) than the average woman and even the average professional female tennis player.

true, but there are many women who are as large as her, just perhaps not playing tennis. There are always outliers, but there could be many more outliers if people who grew up with the male features were to compete against those who grew up with femail ones.

I hate that stupid "oh serena might be number 1 in womens, but she's like 700 in mens" argument, but regardless of the stupid people that use the argument in their attempt to bash on her ability because shes a woman, it holds water in the sense that it does give cresit to the fact that there are simply more men who are able to compete at such a high level in tennis than there are women

(and i say men and women there in reference to sex)

(tangent: but that argument always felt so dumb to me, like, so what she is ranked 700 against the male division. She doesn't play in that division so who cares? like oh im the best shot in the world with a bow at 20 meters, but someone else is better than me at 50 meters, even though I don't ever and will never shoot at 50 meters. like...duh? idk thats just my thought process on it, but I can see the analogy isn't perfect obvi)

This is I think officially dumb

You can't simultaneously refuse to take the bait and at the same time not acknowledge that you think some women don't deserve to compete

Just admit it it's fine

Why are we here saying a lot of words about intrinsic advantage and also how a case of cis women is different when you can just say what you mean in one sentence

@Unionhawk I'm sorry, but what's officially dumb is a refusal to acknowledge that the advantages of the most elite cis women over other cis women are absolutely nothing in comparison to the advantages of cis men over cis women, and by extension the advantages of trans women over cis women (perhaps not as pronounced, depending on the amount of hormone treatments/stages of puberty gone through)

@Unionhawk I am absolutely NOT saying that certain women don't "deserve" to be able to compete just because they aren't cis women, and to insinuate that is what I meant is entirely incorrect

@Flats do trans women deserve to compete in their respective division?

That's a yes or no question.

There's a reason that sports start being split up by sex around the same time that kids reach puberty, give or take. Its because after that point, more and more of the male children will begin to outperform their female peers by a wide margin. That trend continues into adulthood and is the reason that there are separate divisions at all. Not because of some elitist misogynistic ploy to exclude women from being able to compete at a level they deserve entirely

@Unionhawk yes they deserve it, no it is not fair

That's the entire controversy in my head.

Fascinating

The challenge is not deciding whether they deserve to play because obviously they do, it is solving the issue of a clear biological advantage that trans women have (by no fault of their own) over cis women in most sports

Why

why what? the first part or the second part of that statement?

It's obvious that sport has always been about people with extraordinary physical ability, most often via genetic luck

Why is it suddenly different or a problem to solve now

Other than "obviously"

If there is really no biological advantage to be had, then why bother with any hormone level requirements at all? It's because it is absolutely impossible for a cis woman to have the same levels as a cis man

That's true, why bother

Twitter board recommends shareholders vote in support of Musk acquisition - CNN edition.cnn.com/2022/06/21/tech/…

Finally we're making sense

even the most ELITE genetic outlier females have testosterone levels that are about 1/10 that of even that of an average male

there are clear differences and not recognizing that hormone levels directly effect performance levels is ignoring the facts

its the same reason that PED usage is banned, because it artificially raises your hormone levels and/or ability to the point that it is no longer biologically feasible for it to be achievable naturally

Ok?

No see that's not the same reason

Since check it out: the key word is artificially

@Flats It is also banned because it's dangerous to use

@Nzall True, but that's not the only reason it is banned

And because allowing it would create a financial gap between those that can afford it and those who can't

Just like why in many sports there are restrictions on the equipment you may use and on how money may be spent on that equipment

@Nzall The primary reason is the reason that they are called Performance Enhancing Drugs not because they are expensive drugs or because they are dangerous drugs

if you are competing at the elite level, it would not be difficult to afford PEDs. Plenty of people use them, and they are not wildly out of people price range, even in the US where they are illegal. In many countries they are perfectly legal, and are much cheaper and easier to obtain

@Flats So why are they banned then? Because they're unnatural?

@Unionhawk yes, and naturally biologically male testosterone levels absolutely blow the female levels out of the water

Like, performance enhancing drugs are banned for a reason, but it's not because they're called "performance enhancing", I think. A lot of things that enhance performance are banned, like red blood cell transplants or certain high tech equipment

@Nzall no, because they make you better that you could have gotten naturally

@Nzall yeah exactly, because they give an unfair advantage

in this case, through their performance enhancing effects

@Flats Yeah, but everyone can get that advantage with the right amount of money.

So is this just about fair play? Making sure everyone competes at the same level?

@Nzall not necessarily at the same level, but at a level that is at least remotely comparable to the average among the elite of the human race

@Flats so what you're saying is it's different

And not the same as performance enhancing drugs

:)

@Unionhawk right, but in order for a cis woman to have the same hormone levels as a cis man, or a trans woman (even after hormone treatment, often) they would absolutely need to take PEDs to achieve that

another reason that the issue never really arises in mens sports, the hormone treatments for trans men explicitly disqualify them from competition

since it is literally the same as some PED cycles

and so will be tested for and they will be banned

not to mention if those hormones had been allowed to have their effect on the body throughout puberty for a trans woman? It is simply not fair

@Flats Okay, so we've talked about trans women now, so women who were born male but identify and represent as female. How about intersex women? Women who were born female, identify and represent as female, but have one or more medical conditions that mean they naturally produce more testosterone?

@Nzall the first example you give (born male and identify as female) is that not already what we were talking about? the same arguments apply there if not

By the way, it's not just the levels of testosterone in your blood. Here's something interesting to read: science.org/content/article/… It's about a female scientist who'd transgender herself and did groundbreaking research in 2015 on the performance of transfemale athletes

the second one I guess I am not sure on. I don't have a good answer for that, but I also imagine that it is a radically small percentage of women that it would even apply to, and an even smaller percentage of that that would be attempting to compete at high level sport

if it were to happen, perhaps they would be disqualified, precisely for thier hormone levels

i am not sure though, I cant answer that one properly

Would a cis woman with abnormal testosterone levels be allowed

(spoiler alert the answer is no)

(this happens already)

globalsportmatters.com/health/2019/11/15/… case in point

Almost like it's a bad indicator

Whoops

I'm not sure how this is an argument against what I'm saying? If your test levels are too high you are very likely to have an advantage, and are not allowed to compete

this effects a massively small minority of cis women

@Nzall This is a good read for sure, and very interesting. But it seems like the researcher agrees that the testotserone levels are something that need to be monitored and brought down to female levels

though I would like to see more studies on whether the effects of growing up with male levels and then stopping that, if it really does not have any lasting effects

looks like in her research, and it was not a formal study, was only among 8 participants and herself, and they were gleaned from facebook groups and yahoo and such. Not that those are bad practices obviously, but 8 people and one sortof study isn't exactly set in stone proof

more research should be done in that area, and if it really does turn out that hormone replacement really does reverse the benefits of larger blood oxygen carrying capacity, more lean muscle tissue and lower body-fat percentages, then really the only need would be to ensure proper hormone levels and then be done with it I guess

@Flats Are you seriously expecting them to hold a double blind statistically representational study of transgender athletes in sports?

Also, there's the ethical side as well.

@Nzall I don't really care if they do or not, but if you want to convince people that there's scientific evidence for something then you would need to produce scientific evidence for it

@Flats so let me try and understand, elite athletes with naturally high testosterone should be treated as if they are taking performance enhancing drugs

Even though they are not

@Unionhawk I don't know if that's what should be done but that is what is being done I guess

And that's an actual representation of their natural ability

So you don't know now

You seemed pretty sure earlier

@Unionhawk My point is that this is extremely rare among cis women, but it is expected among trans women, and must be managed and adjusted for. A couple of outliers in cis women, and nearly every single trans woman (hence the requirement of HRT)

@Unionhawk Perhaps I was more confident in my position before, but my position is still the same now

Those outliers should not be refused their ability to compete, just because they are outliers. All elite athletes are outliers in a sense. But the solution that was presented in the article that was sent about Caster Semenya to have her be required to take hormone treatments I think is a bit unethical. Just as I think it is a bit unethical to limit the ability of trans women to compete, but for both of these situations I don't see a solution that doesn't result in unfair competition

I don't like the fact that any women are being excluded, but it doesn't make sense to just allow anyone to compete against anyone, in terms of fairness. It's a question of philosophy as well as biology I think. Not so simple as each of the sides makes it seem

I've softened a bit on my stance maybe, but it is still blatantly clear to me that there is an issue that has yet to be resolved in the management of biological advantages

It sounds like your argument is trans women have to use hormone therapies in order to compete, but cis women who have much higher than average levels of testosterone don't have to do the same? You can't have it both ways.

@Flats if it is any consolation, I've struggled with the same conundrum, and I'm unaware of a solution myself beyond dividing ALL athletes not by gender or weight but rather by biological properties

@MBraedley I mentioned in my statement above that I think it is unethical for both of these situations. I don't have a solution, but as far as the science shows and based on the current rules for the divisions, it would seem that both the cis and trans woman would need to be on HRT in order to compete, yes

@Nzall This is probably the only true solution, but it is so drastic that no one (socially) would agree to it. Even if, imo, there wouldn't really be much of a change in who got to compete and where. There would be a few elite women that would be able to compete with men that better match their ability, and there would be men that would stand a fighting chance in a coed division when previously they would not be able to place at all in their old division

doesnt exactly solve the issue of trans women competing in womens sports though, if there arent any womens sports

not no one* in my previous message, thats too harsh, but there would be social pushback against this, even more than there is for the current issue of transgender participation. Warranted or not. It would be easier if everyone jsut didnt care about sports lol