[HN Gopher] Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from wom...
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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women's events
https://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/breaking-news/article/tran...
Author : RestlessMind
Score : 213 points
Date : 2026-03-26 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| bwoah wrote:
| https://archive.is/WRmUo
| xvxvx wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has measured the speed in which reality is
| codified into law or regulation. Women have been fighting against
| males in female sports for many, many years. Why did it take so
| long for something so obvious to be acted upon?
| pasquinelli wrote:
| how many actual cases does that amount to, i wonder.
| tensor wrote:
| To educate others reading this, it's far from "obvious" how to
| classify gender in sports. Checking if they have the right
| "parts" physically doesn't do it. Checking for hormone levels
| doesn't do it. Even checking for Y chromosomes doesn't do it.
|
| In my opinion the way forward is to stop trying to find
| arbitrary ways to define gender, and just start making
| competition classes based on whatever factors are relevant to
| the event. E.g. a women with high testosterone? They can
| compete with men or women with the same testosterone bracket.
| This would also let men with low-T compete fairly rather then
| be excluded from the games.
|
| It's also relevant at what point other genetic changes are
| "unfair." There are absolutely genetic traits that give people
| HUGE advantages in various competitions. Just like the gender-
| related properties, these are _natural_ and yet result in
| unfair competitions.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| >checking for Y chromosomes doesn't do it
|
| Lol why does this not do it?
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndro
| m...
|
| Among others
| hervature wrote:
| I am going to try to keep my response apolitical to try
| to avoid fanning a culture war. That Wiki is the exact
| reason we are in this situation because we are bringing
| up points for 1 in 20000 or 0.005% of the population. Any
| system designed around 0.005% edge cases is going to be
| so complex that it is functionally impossible to do in
| practice. That is why one side says the solution is
| "obvious" because we have a simple rule that covers 99.9%
| of cases and the other 0.1% is unfortunately effectively
| barred from high level competition. Note, high level
| competition already bars 99.9% of people. Even though the
| opposing side is correct in pointing out these edge
| cases, it does nothing to advance an actual solution.
| saalweachter wrote:
| There are statistically around 15 women AFAB with XY
| chromosomes in the NCAA by those numbers (assuming no
| correlation between Swyer syndrome and athletic
| performance).
|
| There are currently around 10 openly transgender women in
| the NCAA.
|
| Small numbers either way.
| tensor wrote:
| Except I proposed a solution, which you ignored (I'm
| assuming here that I'm your "opposing side".)
|
| Also, there are a significant number of these sorts of
| arguments in high-level sports, probably _precisely_
| because these "0.1%" cases are exactly the ones that
| result in exceptional ability relative to norms. It's
| also curious that there is such obsession about naturally
| occurring genetic outliers with respect to females or
| gender but absolute silence about naturally occurring
| genetic outliers among men unrelated to gender. And
| surprise surprise the top athletes often have such
| outlier genetics!
|
| If you're drawing a distinction between natural genetic
| difference related to only gender and no other factors
| then sadly it's exactly a culture war, not a war based in
| science or fairness.
| logravia wrote:
| Sure, it covers 99.9% of cases, but top elite athletes
| are the genetic exceptions, they are the genetic freaks.
| They are the top 0.0001%. You don't get to compete at the
| most elite levels without your body being exceptionally
| gifted and almost specifically shaped for the relevant
| sport, which inevitably means funky genetic traits and
| disorders, higher testosterone levels etc.
|
| I mean the word freak in the most loving and caring way
| possible, mind you.
|
| What does fairness mean in that context?
| manwe150 wrote:
| Because in a specific minority of the population it
| disagrees with the gender assigned at birth for obvious
| reasons. There are plenty of resources you could read on
| intersex instead of lol at something you don't understand
| putzdown wrote:
| Why is checking for a Y chromosome not sufficient? This does
| not seem to me like an arbitrary definition. What am I
| missing?
| tensor wrote:
| It's in fact possible to develop a female body with XY
| chromosomes:
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6586948/
|
| Also _warning_ that article has images that may be
| inappropriate in a public setting. I didn 't realize when I
| linked it.
| putzdown wrote:
| Thank you. But the Y test still seems sufficient. Every
| criterion will have false positives and negatives. With
| the Y test the false negative (you present as a woman but
| have a Y chromosome) is rare and the vast majority of
| cases are handled well. If you have this condition you
| must compete against men (given the Y chromosome test
| rule) or not compete. If you're dying to be in the
| Olympics as a woman but have the Y chromosome, you're
| just out of luck. Not everyone can be a concert pianist
| either. No rule makes things wonderful for 100% of
| humans. The Y test gets very close.
| etherus wrote:
| But that's a contradiction, no? We're saving women from
| other women and barring trans people also (ones we
| consider men) because of a perceived risk that I don't
| see evidence for (i.e. people choosing to compete as
| women on a malicious basis or with an 'innate advantage'
| that makes it dangerous - we've had a long time of
| running these sports without this sort of regulation, and
| it seems to be a political choice more than a reaction to
| evidence that women are being outcompeted by trans
| people). This is also assuming that having a y chromosome
| makes it fair for people with a y chromosome to compete
| against one another, but if you compare people's
| physiology these people who present as women often have
| low/no testosterone. Separating on the line of
| testosterone picks up a lot of female athletes
| (especially at the olympic level) that are not trans, and
| overall I just see this hurting women without evidence
| that it's actually a response to harm. In any case, trans
| people and gender non conforming women become the victims
| of this in the public sphere. It just seems very
| misguided.
| shrx wrote:
| There will always be outliers.
| hananova wrote:
| High level sports consists entirely of outliers. That's
| kind of the point of the olympics. This newest rule is
| nothing more than a misogynist rule to turn the women's
| division into the "no more than statistically average"
| division.
| brainwad wrote:
| Almost every gold medal winner in the past games would
| not have been affected by this new rule, so that's a
| biiit hyperbolic. Those athletes are still far outside
| the normal performance of women (or men, for that
| matter).
| nickff wrote:
| The problem with your proposed 'fuzzy divisions' is that
| they're not compatible with the zeitgeist of 'seeing the best
| compete', and 'drug-free' sports, as there's no reason to
| disallow performance-enhancing-drugs if we're already
| splitting into divisions.
| tensor wrote:
| Actually, you bring up an excelling additional argument for
| the sort of bracketing I proposed. It also works for drugs!
|
| There is significant grey area wrt to "doping" too in the
| sense that a performance enhancing drug may express as a
| larger than normal amount of a naturally occurring
| substance. So did the person dope, or is that their natural
| genetics? In my scheme, WHO CARES!
|
| Beyond that, I suppose there is the usual argument against
| more serious and non-natural forms of doping that it is
| physically detrimental to the competitors and by allowing
| it you are encouraging or pressuring people to essentially
| harm themselves.
|
| Still, competition classes could be helpful in some of the
| doping grey areas.
| fn-mote wrote:
| Can you say more details? What are you talking about?
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| > Why did it take so long for something so obvious to be acted
| upon?
|
| A few reasons:
|
| 1. Sex is not as straightforward as most people think, and what
| to do with intersex people is not clear.
|
| 2. Trans athletes are underrepresented at pretty much all
| levels of sport, and aren't actually winning that much, making
| it not actually an urgent problem.
|
| 3. The philosophical underpinnings that advantages due to
| differences in body development should be disqualifying is a
| little broken, since we do not consider Michael Phelps being
| double jointed as being an unfair developmental advantage.
| mandevil wrote:
| The Olympics used to do this. From as early as the 1960's they
| were doing genetic testing on female athletes. They stripped
| Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska of all her medals and records
| in 1967, in spite of the fact that she gave birth to a child a
| year later, which would seem to indicate that she was a woman.
| The Olympics only abandoned this testing regime after the 1996
| Olympic Games when 8 women who were cis and assigned female
| from birth to that moment were wrongly tested as male (7 AIS
| cases, 1 5-alpha-steroid reductase deficiency ). The uproar
| from that caused the Olympics to realize that this was a lot
| more complicated then they thought and abandon the idea of a
| strict genetic test.
|
| Because those 8 women at that one Games were a lot more than
| all transfem Olympic athletes in history combined, the danger
| of ruling people out is much greater than the danger of
| allowing someone in who doesn't deserve it.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| Only logical result is Transgender Olympics
| koolba wrote:
| Already in the works:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Games
| bertylicious wrote:
| Why not Human Olympics?
| cm2187 wrote:
| Already exists, it's what people refer to as "male olympics".
| As far as I know, females aren't banned from competing. It is
| just that they don't stand a chance in most disciplines. The
| whole point of female olympics is to keep males out.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Can trans male who transitioned before puberty compete in
| male olympics while being pumped full of steroids legally?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Maybe they should accept that they simply aren't
| competitive if they can't compete against their own sex.
| There's no shame in it, _most_ people aren 't
| competitive, certainly so at this level.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| 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.
| zahlman wrote:
| Putting aside that you argue entirely by assertion, that
| is one discipline, which therefore does not contradict
| the claim about "most disciplines".
|
| Meanwhile the gap is well known to be massive in typical
| events, e.g.:
|
| * Compare https://worldpowerlifting.com/records/womens-
| world-records/ vs
| https://worldpowerlifting.com/records/mens-world-records/
| (or for that matter, browse through
| https://exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards)
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_100_metres_world_
| recor... plateaued at numbers seen in men's competition
| over a century ago; a "sub-elite" female competitor
| sprints barely ahead of "intermediate recreational" men
| per https://marathonhandbook.com/average-100-meter-time/
| . Griffith-Joyner's record-setting time would not have
| even _qualified_ her to run with men _since at least
| 2000_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_metres_at_the_Olympics
|
| * I often hear it suggested that women show an advantage
| in longer races, but even at standard marathon length
| this is not borne out in results:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Boston_Marathon
|
| * National and international level competitive women's
| sports teams regularly get trounced by teenaged boys in
| exhibition e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDH_r7-GN4o widely
| reported on last year and
| https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-
| under-15-b... from 2017
|
| * The entire history of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat
| tle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis) requires quite a bit of
| creative interpretation to put women's tennis anywhere
| near the level of men's
|
| That's just off the top of my head of anecdotes and
| examples I can recall being casually thrown around in
| these sorts of discussions.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Only because they don't practice those events... If men
| practices those events they would be better at them
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I'm not sure that is true. Beam targets flexibility in
| ways that no men's event does.
| krunck wrote:
| Why not ignore gender labels and go by chromosomal
| configuration? There could be XY and XX [1] olympics. And
| then there should be X, XYY, XXX, XXXY, XXYY, and all the
| other possibilities [2].
|
| There is more complexity than the binary in the expression of
| sex in humans.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation_in_h
| uma...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
| badc0ffee wrote:
| I agree with you in general, but I think it would be fair
| to let XY individuals with CAIS compete on the female side
| - their bodies do not respond to testosterone.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| All biological categories are fuzzy around the edges. Those
| fuzzy edges do not invalidate the category. The existence
| of small #'s of people with actual physical intersex
| conditions (not "I feel like <x>") in no way conflicts with
| humans being sexually dimorphic.
| RansomStark wrote:
| That is what they do. Male, female, man, woman, boy, girl
| are sex categories, not gender categories, that is they
| predate the very idea of gender as distinct from sex.
|
| Sports categories never had anything to do with gender.
|
| The other difference of sexual development are different
| sexes
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Really, there should be separate categories for people with
| more than the regular amount of arm hair. Also separate
| categories for short people, tall people, lazy people,
| people who wear glasses, people with blue trousers, and of
| course, for sketch artists and quantitative traders.
| nslsm wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Done_Quick
| happymellon wrote:
| 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?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure
| the best way to phrase it) athletes?
|
| Regularly. It's the competing women who are complaining,
| though. They feel it is unfair to compete with men.
| happymellon wrote:
| 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 top ten complaints.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I asked because I'm curious, and Googling just gives
| opinion pieces and not data.
|
| Women complaining _are_ voicing an opinion. Is this a good
| enough citation for the claim that women don 't want to
| compete with men?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gndSDgsMnKI
| happymellon wrote:
| Considering I was asking whether there was evidence on
| trans-performance, sure it matters a little.
|
| That's fine if they don't want to compete with men, but
| the statements were because "it's unfair". I was curious
| if there had been any studies on this.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Considering I was asking whether there was evidence on
| trans-performance, sure it matters a little.
|
| Well, (and I hesitate to say this because of HN
| guidelines, but) it was in the article, which I assumed
| you read. It was this assumption that made me think you
| wanted evidence that it is women who are complaining
| about competing against men.
|
| FTFA
|
| > Late last year Dr. Jane Thornton, the I.O.C.'s medical
| and scientific director and a Canadian former Olympic
| rower, presented the initial findings of a review of
| athletes who are transgender or have differences of
| sexual development, known as DSD, and are competing in
| women's sports. That analysis, which has not been made
| public, stated athletes born with male sexual markers
| retained physical advantages, including among those that
| had received treatment to reduce testosterone.
| happymellon wrote:
| I don't see that anywhere in the linked Yahoo article.
|
| Does it have a link to any of the findings?
| lelanthran wrote:
| The linked article is to the nytimes. I dunno which
| article is the yahoo one. This story was on the nytimes,
| it's the one under discussion.
|
| > Does it have a link to any of the findings?
|
| The findings I posted where from the linked article, to
| the nytimes. The findings were exactly as I posted them;
| in brief, athletes born with male markers retain their
| physical advantages.
| generj wrote:
| There's probably a reason the analysis has not been made
| public.
|
| It's not evidence until published because it can't be
| disputed.
| throwawaytea wrote:
| I can't believe you need a study to show that a man
| turned woman has an advantage. It's clear men vs women
| have an advantage in almost every discipline... So are
| you simply unsure if the transition process doesn't
| totally ruin them and degrade their performance to that
| of a woman?
| greygoo222 wrote:
| You can debate what policies are the most fair without
| calling trans women "men."
| LunicLynx wrote:
| This is more about logic.
|
| For this article to be relevant a spot for the Olympics of
| either gender has been taken by a trans athlete.
|
| Which by conclusion means that a trans person outperformed
| the other gender.
|
| Taking part in the Olympics is a difficult endeavor, for
| which you must qualify first.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's a misleading way to talk about "outperforming".
| When the US brings over 200 people to the olympics, then
| if cis and trans athletes have exactly the same
| performance and without other bias you'd expect to see
| 1-2 trans US olympians every year just by chance. And
| you'd expect them to have the same medal rates as anyone
| else from the US. When someone asks if there's evidence
| of trans athletes outperforming cis athletes, that's not
| what they're asking for.
| beachWholesaleS wrote:
| Source?
| LunicLynx wrote:
| A source is not required, taking part in the Olympics
| alone, means outperforming your countries other athletes.
| If that doesn't happen there wouldn't be a reason for the
| article.
| lelanthran wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Late last year Dr. Jane Thornton, the I.O.C.'s medical
| and scientific director and a Canadian former Olympic
| rower, presented the initial findings of a review of
| athletes who are transgender or have differences of sexual
| development, known as DSD, and are competing in women's
| sports. That analysis, which has not been made public,
| stated athletes born with male sexual markers retained
| physical advantages, including among those that had
| received treatment to reduce testosterone.
|
| Let's be a little science-focused, okay?
| generj wrote:
| > That analysis, which has not been made public
|
| So much for science.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| I would be interested to see that analysis, and it's
| unfortunate that it is not publicly available in some
| fashion. I'm mainly curious about the number of DSD-
| expressing vs transgender athletes they reviewed. Trans
| athletes in the Olympics or even competing at an Olympic
| level are vanishingly rare.
| ethin wrote:
| That very quoted section indicates the analysis has not
| been made public. IMO that's very fishy and makes me
| question the authenticity of the source. What is Dr.
| Thornton hiding, exactly? Why conceal the review,
| methodology and data? Even if preliminary it should be
| released.
| atmavatar wrote:
| The problem is that someone who's transitioned is no longer a
| man. After undergoing surgery and hormone treatment for a
| long period of time, a trans athlete falls somewhere between
| men and women in terms of capability. They'd have no more
| success competing against men than naturally born women
| would, yet they still have advantages when competing against
| naturally born women.
|
| Unfortunately, while the most equitable solution might be to
| create a separate category unique to trans individuals, there
| aren't enough trans athletes to make it feasible (yet?). It's
| rather sad that transitioning means a person can no longer
| compete in sports, but I'm not sure there's a better
| alternative.
| altruios wrote:
| Is there actually an advantage? that's toted. but no one
| can ever point to real data about it... and all the data
| suggests the exact opposite... that for most cases: cis-
| women out-compete trans-women.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > but no one can ever point to real data about it...
|
| It's in the article. You may not _agree_ with their
| findings, but it 's there.
| generj wrote:
| It's not in the article.
|
| They list their findings but no data. They effectively
| are just issuing an opinion. The opinion may be more
| considered than the rest of ours, but it's not data.
| asdff wrote:
| You still have your larger bone structure. Larger
| musculature structure and different muscle insertions.
| different ligament structure. different skin structure.
| different grip strength. Broader shoulders, narrower
| pelvis, different angled limbs. all of that isn't going
| away even if it atrophies. And you aren't going to let it
| atrophy because you are an athlete in training managing
| your dietary macros. Maybe recovery isn't as efficient
| lacking so much excess testosterone but you still have
| some.
| newfriend wrote:
| >The problem is that someone who's transitioned is no
| longer a man.
|
| Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
| somat wrote:
| No idea on the hard data. but... We classify competitions for a
| reason. The competition is more interesting when the
| competitors are categorized into similar ability.
|
| You can't bring your formula1 to a touring car race just
| because you feel like it is a touring car.
|
| Personally I think at the top level there should be an
| unlimited class. within the rules of the sport anyone can
| enter, then at various lower prestige levels participation is
| limited according to some parameter.
| dmbche wrote:
| > No idea on the hard data
|
| Great thanks!
| mbajkowski wrote:
| One interesting example of this is the UTR system for tennis.
| It is agnostic in gender as wells as age, and tournaments can
| be held purely based on the UTR range
| altruios wrote:
| bad comparison - here is one better, not a perfect one...
|
| You can't enter a car into a boating competition. The
| question here is: if you take basic precautions to make it
| the same class of boat - a modified car turned into a boat
| should be a valid entry - provided the engine speed roughly
| matches.
|
| People worry about cars on water here, not knowing that
| doesn't exist by definition: any car in water has been
| modified from a car to be a boat. you may recognize that it
| was once a car - but that's vestigial shell stuff. the inter-
| workings are a propeller - not a wheel.
| boringg wrote:
| I see your argument and has some merit but isn't persuasive
| enough. I would posit that its a bit too loose and that it
| breaks down on biological people have many more complicated
| systems that aren't simply re-categorized similar to your
| car and boat comparison.
|
| For better or worse nor is our medical science
| sophisticated enough to swap out the systems to be true
| comparables (and I don't mean to offend anyone).
| egypturnash wrote:
| _" 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 work you have put into changing it) then you are
| "transgender".
| happymellon wrote:
| Now you say it like that, I did know that. Thank you.
| egypturnash wrote:
| You're welcome! <3
| JK-Swizzle wrote:
| Adding to this: If you do not want to reference the current
| gender, you can also use "Assigned Female at Birth" (AFAB),
| or "Assigned Male at Birth" (AMAB).
|
| This is useful when clarifying terms, when you do not know
| the persons identity, or when discussing groups based on the
| factory default settings.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Yep. :)
| fourseventy wrote:
| A female or male is not 'assigned' anything. Just because
| you are confused about biological reality doesn't mean it
| doesn't exist.
| fourseventy wrote:
| The correct terminology for someone born as a male is 'male'
| and born as woman is 'female'. Anything other than that is
| utter nonsense.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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 people of the same gender identity.
|
| I mean, if you had a sport that isolated grip strength alone,
| trans women would have an advantage over cis women, but aside
| from rather contrived cases like that, they don't.
|
| There's a reason the poster woman for the political movement
| around this in the US is a cisgender woman whose story of
| "unfair competition" is _tying with a trans woman for fifth
| place_ behind four other cisgender women (and having to hold a
| sixth place trophy in photos, since there were not duplicates
| on hand for the same rank) in an intercollegiate swimming
| competition.
| cvwright wrote:
| You're conveniently ignoring the Olympic boxing champion from
| 2024 who beat the absolute shit out of the female
| competitors.
| jkbbwr wrote:
| Are you talking about Imane Khelif? The woman who was born
| a woman, competed her whole life as a woman and is still
| last time I checked, a woman?
| AnEro wrote:
| Many studies show with in ~10% female ranges of ability , but,
| having more fast twitch muscle fiber and bone mass from male
| puberty if they went through it. Bone mass does eventually drop
| to female levels but over decades not years so athletes would
| likely be out of athletic prime before that happens. Studies
| showing more dramatic results that stand out in my memory that
| lean toward transwomen outperforming transwomen are studies
| done on military veterans comparing to general population
| metrics of muscle mass for athletic activity levels also done
| with a very low population count I believe they only looked at
| under 300 trans women. Regardless we need more research, but
| there are a comically small amount of trans athletes seeking
| professional level sports, like I think <20 for all college
| level for instance.
|
| Anecdotally, I found as a deskjob, pilates and casual weight
| lifting trans woman, I lost dramatic amount of strength and
| muscle mass. 20 pounds now feels like 50 pounds did for myself
| pre-transition. I usually participate with women and the
| instructor/personal helps with modifications usually aimed at
| women just getting into fitness. Running joke amongst friends
| is how easily I am outperformed by my female friends at the
| gym/pilates/etc. However, that's since my body is low
| testosterone even for females, its checked twice a year because
| of it, normally It's once a year for most trans people. Other
| friends retained a lot of their strength, but are mechanics, so
| its really situational in my opinion, and its a super hard and
| interesting topic of research because of it
| everdrive wrote:
| Certainly some of the high profile cases have been fairly
| absurd. A mid-tier male athletic transitions, and then blows
| the female record out of the water and gets gold. What I don't
| know is whether there are wider stats rather than some really
| big notable cases. It wouldn't surprise me, I just don't have
| the facts at the moment.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| > A mid-tier male athletic transitions, and then blows the
| female record out of the water and gets gold.
|
| Do you have an example of this happening?
| mvdtnz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Hubbard
|
| This power lifter set regional junior records as a young
| man then quit the sport and didn't compete for 16 years.
| After transitioning she went on to win gold medals in
| numerous international competitions as a woman.
| lelanthran wrote:
| Lia Thomas.
|
| Why are all these innocent questioners asking for more
| evidence not familiar with the existence of the evidence
| they are asking for?
|
| Considering they feel so strongly about it, they should
| already have seen all this.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| Pre-transition Lia Thomas wasn't mid-tier, but I suspect
| you already knew that
| braingravy wrote:
| 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 554th to 5th in another.
|
| It is fair to say there was a significant increase in
| rank post-transition.
| fwip wrote:
| 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.
| nxor2 wrote:
| 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 up. Former swimmers there
| have done interviews.
| fwip wrote:
| Every single person in that meet "pushed someone" else
| out of that meet. That's how competition works.
| fourseventy wrote:
| So your position is that men can freely play in women's
| sports?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If I'm reading this wikipedia page right, she got first
| place in one race at a national championship but was 9
| seconds behind the 4:24 record.
| zahlman wrote:
| I literally copied and pasted that sentence into DDG and
| got https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2966308/oregon-
| high-... as the first result.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Are you serious?
| bluescrn wrote:
| There is no standard 'trans athlete'. Every case is different.
|
| Transition is a process. Potentially a long one without a clear
| point of completion. Which makes things more complicated.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure
| the best way to phrase it) athletes?
|
| The closest controlled study we have on this topic is not in
| athletes but in U.S. military servicemembers and their standard
| fitness test: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36271916/
|
| This isn't a good study for professional athletes training for
| competition because the fitness test is not analogous to
| professional competition. They only need to pass with a
| reasonable score but most are not competing for the top
| position like in the Olympics
|
| The study found that
|
| > transgender females' performance showed statistically
| significantly better performance than cisgender females until 2
| years of GAHT in run times and 4 years in sit-up scores and
| remained superior in push-ups at the study's 4-year endpoint.
|
| So of the 3 simple activities they tested their performance
| remained higher in one test (run times) until 2 years, another
| test (sit-ups) until 4 years, and remained higher at the end of
| the limited 4-year study period in the last test (push-ups).
|
| This study was widely circulated as "proof" that hormone
| therapy erases sex-based gains after only 2 years, but that's
| not even an accurate read of the study. It's also not measuring
| athletes who are training or trying to compete.
|
| Depending on the sport, hormone therapy cannot be expected to
| compensate for sex some important sex differences like physical
| structure. Male anatomy is simply different in ways that
| provide different types of leverage or angles (like Q Angle,
| which runners will talk about, or reach, which is important to
| boxers)
|
| This is a very taboo topic to discuss and honestly I'm a little
| nervous to even comment about it here pseudonymously. The
| popular culture discussion of the topic is very different than
| the sports science discussion of the topic, where sex
| differences have long been accepted to be innate and
| irreversible, regardless of hormone therapy.
| ravenical wrote:
| IOC's previous review suggests no:
| https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/60/3/198
| dmitrygr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif
| fourseventy wrote:
| A quick Google search will will your screen with examples of
| men competing in women's sports and winning.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| I thought this article does a good job explaining why some people
| care a lot about this topic https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/how-
| youth-sports-supercharg...
| lelanthran wrote:
| That article does seem very one-sided:
|
| > of youth sports have created clear incentives for them to
| prioritize competitive fairness over principles like inclusion,
| well-being, and fun.
|
| In an event that is _primarily_ focused on competitive
| fairness, what does inclusion have to do with it?
|
| If playing sport is about fun, well-being, etc, then don't play
| in competitive events. You can't very well want to play in
| competitive events while complaining about competitive
| fairness.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| It feels one sided because the author is an outsider - as the
| author readily admits - "It has been brought to my attention,
| however, that my blase attitude toward sports makes me an
| outlier".
|
| Turning to some actual numbers - this 2024 survey tells us
| that only ~15% of respondents said that their children
| participate in club sports or independent training (note that
| the categories are not exclusive). The same survey also says
| that ~10% of respondants think that their child can compete
| in professional sports, or be a national level team member.
| Finally, a similar 10% say that the "only the best players
| should receive time in games" is a fair policy at your
| child's age and level.
|
| https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/06/Na...
|
| I think the point of the article is to maybe highlight how
| large the gulf might be between an typical outsider (and
| looking at the numbers above... and reminding ourselves that
| only ~50% of American youth are involved in organized sports
| at all), someone who is somewhat "in the game", and those who
| are really playing it (that 10% from above).
| happytoexplain wrote:
| On this topic, I feel like "why do some people care a lot about
| this" is probably the question least in search of an answer.
| reillyse wrote:
| The problem for this argument is that there is no actual data
| that trans kids and specifically trans girls are any better at
| sport than other girls.
|
| Literally no trans athletes winning anything. I think hacker
| news skews scientific so we can do the math, if say 1% of the
| athletes are trans we would expect them to win 1% of the medals
| in a fair contest. As it is, they don't even come anywhere
| close. There has not been a single olympic medal won by a trans
| athlete, so clearly they do not have some kind of magical
| advantage, in fact (and common sense would make this pretty
| obvious) they seem to have quite a statistical disadvantage.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The problem for this argument is that there is no actual
| data that trans kids and specifically trans girls are any
| better at sport than other girls.
|
| There is considerable evidence that they aren't. But that's
| not really relevant, because you have to remember segregation
| in sport _has never been about competitive fairness_ , it has
| always been about allowing those who are socially superior to
| avoid the embarrassment of having to compete in an
| environment where they might be defeated by their social
| inferiors.
|
| It is why women were long banned from competitions, and then
| shortly after exclusion seemed to harsh for evolving
| attitudes, they were segregated from men. And it is why trans
| people are being excluded from competition now. It's why
| _racial_ segregation in sport was a thing. When competitive
| fairness is raised as an argument for segregation, it is
| pretextual, not the real reason, so counterevidence is
| irrelevant.
| mech998877 wrote:
| There is considerable evidence that trans girls and women
| have a competitive advantage over women in many sports.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Please present some.
| mech998877 wrote:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10641525/
|
| The moralizing parts of the conclusion of this article
| rejects it's own evidence. There are multiple studies
| cited by the article where the population average of the
| trans women group statistically significantly exceeds
| that of the cis women group. The article concludes:
|
| "The exclusion of trans individuals also insults the
| skill and athleticism of both cis and trans athletes.
| While sex differences do develop following puberty, many
| of the sex differences are reduced, if not erased, over
| time by gender affirming hormone therapy. Finally, if it
| is found that trans individuals have advantages in
| certain athletic events or sports; in those cases, there
| will still be a question of whether this should be
| considered unfair, or accepted as another instance of
| naturally occurring variability seen in athletes already
| participating in these events."
|
| Does it really insult the skill and athleticism of cis
| and trans athletes to exclude trans women from women's
| sports? I don't think it does, but the article could not
| help but claim that it does. Often in debates such as
| this one, there are multiple levels of sophistry that
| annoy me. Such as the sequence 1. there is no evidence
| that trans women have an advantage over cis women in
| sports (false. there is evidence) 2. if you believe that
| there is any evidence, you must be a bigot (well,
| obviously untrue, there is evidence).
|
| Women's sports leagues often emerge due to the easy
| bifurcation of the population into two groups- the
| easiest fault line to judge this as is 1 group with the
| athletic benefits of natural testosterone, and 1 group
| without the athletic benefits of natural testosterone.
| People are free to make whatever sports leagues they
| want, and with freedom of association they can make
| whatever rules they want. I will just find it completely
| unsurprising that the women's divisions will be
| relatively "closed" and the men's (or more acurately the
| "open") divisions will include any person that has
| produced testosterone naturally or become a trans man (or
| most things in between). It's the easiest bifurcation
| that reduces questions of fairness. Weight classes in
| wrestling fall into a similar manner of thinking for me;
| even if it could be argued that the guy that barely
| couldn't make it into a lower weight class should be
| fighting within that class, you have to draw the line
| somewhere.
| opo wrote:
| >...it has always been about allowing those who are
| socially superior to avoid the embarrassment of having to
| compete in an environment where they might be defeated by
| their social inferiors.
|
| Is your argument actually that women don't generally
| compete with men in sports because the sports don't want to
| embarrass the male athletes if they lose? If so, I suspect
| this is a bad faith argument, but if not, you can simply do
| a little searching to find that there is often quite a bit
| of difference between the performance of top tier male
| athletes and top tier female athletes. For example, no
| woman has ever run a 4 minute mile in competition and more
| than 2,000 men have and even about 30 high school boys
| have. I am sure you can find other examples.
| orangecat wrote:
| _There is considerable evidence that they aren 't._
|
| Why did Lia Thomas go from being nowhere near winning in
| the male division to getting fifth in the women's?
|
| _When competitive fairness is raised as an argument for
| segregation, it is pretextual_
|
| If sports were not sex-segregated, most events would never
| be won by a woman. How is that a pretext?
| hananova wrote:
| Fifth is still nowhere near winning. So she went from
| nowhere near winning to nowhere near winning.
| b3ing wrote:
| This always should of been left to sports committees than our
| government, what a waste of our representatives times, but I
| guess they got the culture war points
| IlikeMadison wrote:
| >should of
|
| why
| messe wrote:
| Because they're probably a native speaker.
|
| EDIT: this is exactly the kind of mistake that native
| speakers make, that ESL speakers don't.
| bdangubic wrote:
| unless you live in the olympics the olympic committee is not
| your representative
| SirFatty wrote:
| Try reading the comment again.
| bdangubic wrote:
| ohhhh :)
| jasonlotito wrote:
| It's gonna get buried, but petesergeant had a good comment
| sharing this article.
|
| They are also banning females from female sports as well with
| this ruling.
|
| https://www.olympics.com/en/news/semenya-niyonsaba-wambui-wh...
| weezing wrote:
| Intersex category would be perfect fit but this is very rare
| condition so there wouldn't be enough competition.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Caster Semenya is XY with a DSD (5-ARD), and absolutely should
| not compete with females. The same goes for Imane Khelif who
| was the same DSD.
|
| People with this condition have internal testes, a male level
| of testosterone, and a male level of muscle development. That a
| doctor assigned them female at birth and put a F on the birth
| certificate does not change this.
| thunderfork wrote:
| The upshot of this is that women with a genetic advantage are
| banned, but men with a genetic advantage aren't; is this not
| straightforwardly sex discrimination?
| zahlman wrote:
| No. Nobody is banned from the "men's" category, including
| unambiguously cisgender women of completely unambiguous
| sexual characteristics. They just wouldn't stand a chance,
| practically speaking (for example, in the 100 metre sprint,
| the all-time women's world record time would not meet the
| qualification standard). There was already "sex
| discrimination" in the fact of the women's category
| existing in the first place; this was done as a pragmatic
| matter so that the world has the opportunity to celebrate
| peak female physical achievements.
|
| The debate is really around how the handling of intersex
| and transgender athletes intersects with the original
| purpose of creating a separate category for women.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| 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".
| mothballed wrote:
| The Olympics are looked up to by a large range of people and
| organization that don't actually participate in the Olympics.
|
| This goes beyond just affecting the Olympics, but setting an
| example for the world to follow and gives other organizations
| the cover and courage to follow while being able to deflect to
| simply setting the same standards of the Olympics.
| lewdev wrote:
| Is it fair to say that they can just compete in the men's
| division?
| harveychess wrote:
| 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.
| trickyager wrote:
| I think you're falling for Sticker Swap Fallacy. The goal
| is to have fair match-ups in sports. Gender and sex are two
| possible labels to use to assist with this, but they're
| imperfect enough that we probably ought to not use them as
| the primary differentiator.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/C7LcpRtrHiKJRoAEp/sticker-
| sh...
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The solution is simple: class every sport like boxing.
|
| Pick a sports-relevant metric and split into divisions.
| Some sports will naturally fall into gendered divisions,
| while others will have varying degrees of co-ed
| competition among competitors of similar ability.
|
| The way out of this is not to pick a better scissor of
| sex or gender, it's to pick a better scissor of ability.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Doesn't Boxing use weight classes?
| lbreakjai wrote:
| Weight classes within gender classes. Women would have no
| chance to compete against men of identical weight, all
| else equal. Men have more lean mass.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Sounds like lean mass would be the right way to structure
| divisions then.
| fourseventy wrote:
| 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?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Then create those divisions. Please be rational.
| baumy wrote:
| This "solution" can really only be proposed by someone
| who has not played sports. This would simply result in
| women being unable to compete in sports professionally,
| outside of a couple small niches like ultra long distance
| swimming and a couple sub-disciplines of gymnastics.
|
| I do not consider that to be a good thing.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It really depends on the way classes are divided.
| Dismissing the general concept demonstrates a fear of
| change rather than a legitimate openness to fair play.
| baumy wrote:
| No it doesn't, and no it doesn't. Proposing this concept
| demonstrates a profound ignorance of what competition at
| the top level of sports actually looks like.
|
| The concept is just bad, unless your goal is to prevent
| women from being able to make a living playing
| professional sports.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The thing is, we're already using a scissor for ability,
| just a poor one with the exact problem you describe - it
| renders trans women unable to make a living playing
| professional sports. Throwing one group under the bus for
| another cannot be avoided so long as sex or gender are
| part of sports divisions.
|
| Please let go of the need for this.
| baumy wrote:
| You are clearly out of your depth. Have you ever competed
| in high level sports? Please don't speak on things you
| know nothing about. It takes a lot of gall to tell
| someone 'please let go of the need for this' when they
| are pointing this out. I will do no such thing, but I
| likely will give up trying to educate you.
|
| I won't respond further unless you pick an example sport,
| and propose how your "scissor for ability" would work, in
| concrete detail. If you do this, I will be happy to
| explain why this would result in neither women _nor trans
| women_ having any chance to make a living as professional
| athletes.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Let's use the present scissor and the current state of
| affairs, which at present excludes some women for the
| sake of others. Which, I'll remind you, comes with all of
| the problems we currently experience.
| machomaster wrote:
| And solves a lot more of the problems, including the ones
| we are discussing.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You do get how it doesn't, right?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I have competed in reasonably high level sports, and my
| wife was US Masters duathlete of the year a few years ago
| (with me as her coach). I think you're wrong, though it's
| easy to see why.
|
| Currently, with sex-based categories, a woman can be
| declared "the best in the world" and most people won't
| waste much time on the question "yeah, but could she beat
| the best men?" (granted, some will). They will accept
| that, e.g. she has the fastest time over 26.2 miles in
| the world right now, even though a few hundred or a few
| thousand men worldwide are faster.
|
| If you use performance based metrics to create the
| categories (the way that road cycling does, for example,
| though still within gender divisions), that "title" would
| go away, and likely a woman would only be "the best in
| the world in division X", other than in (as you noted)
| some endurance, climbing and gymnastics sports where an
| elite subset of women could potentially be the best of
| "top" category.
|
| It isn't completely obvious that this is a negative - how
| much of a change it would be would depend on a lot of
| other changes (or lack thereof) in how sport was
| organized. Certainly if it continued to focus on only the
| top division, then women would be shut out of most
| opportunities to be professional. But that's not inherent
| in the design. I do concede, however, that it is quite a
| likely outcome of such a category structure.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Trans women can compete in the men's division where they
| belong.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Haha funny, but please, I'm only taking serious
| proposals.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Dude, men are better than women at virtually every single
| sport. What are you talking about.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > 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.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Maybe we just make 100% of Olympic Athletes take E to
| balance things out.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| 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.
| yostrovs wrote:
| I'm barred from the Olympics, due to my too short legs and
| flat-footedness, for the high jump event.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| To be fair, that could be said of many other medical
| conditions as well, especially chromosomal abnormalities
| such as Down Syndrome. Many humans, from the moment they
| are born and through no fault of their own, have virtually
| no hope of ever competing in the Olympics let alone
| winning, just because at such competitive extremes, any
| significant genetic disadvantage takes you out of the
| running.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| For most of the sports there is no men's division - it's open
| for everyone.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Almost every single person on Earth is not built of the right
| genetic stuff to compete with male Olympic athletes, me and you
| included. Why do we need a carve out for one particular group
| because of their genetic bad luck?
| canucker2016 wrote:
| The guidelines for trans female athletes for the 2024 Paris
| Olympics involved transitioning before the age of 12/puberty to
| be eligible.
|
| There's more info at
| https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/paris-2024-olym...
| kg wrote:
| Incidentally, many countries/states are working hard to make
| it impossible to transition that early.
| andsoitis wrote:
| At 12 you simply do not have sufficient capacity to make a
| good decision on the matter.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Yup. Absolutely insane that university "educated" people
| have been telling us that kids who believe in Santa Claus
| are capable of making decisions like this.
| Ralfp wrote:
| Have you considered that due to their education and
| research those people may know more on the subject than
| you do?
|
| Regret rates for transition remain notoriously low
| (within 2%) with main reasons for regret stated to be
| transitioning too late or environmental lack of
| acceptance or support.
|
| Besides, despite some orgs claiming there is a
| "transgender trend", we are just not seeing this in the
| data.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| That sounds like appeal to authority, it is classified as
| a fallacy.
| Ralfp wrote:
| Why is it okay for OP to question authority in the
| subject matter while me pointing out they research it
| more isn't?
|
| I have also pointed out that regret rates for transition
| are within 2%.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It's hard to impossible to go back. But the suicide rate
| is high.
| Ralfp wrote:
| It is high because primarily a minority stress of being a
| transgender person in unaccepting environment:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656
| 032...
| ipaddr wrote:
| After reading the above I don't believe they concluded
| stress of living in a non-accepting world is the primary
| reason.
|
| 30% think about killing themselves and 4%+ try each year
| is shocking. I think whatever side of the debate you are
| on we can agree things aren't working out for too many
| people who go through this process. If this was a drug or
| vaccine or hair shampoo it would have been pulled off the
| market.
| dpark wrote:
| > people who go through this process
|
| Through what process? This was a study about trans and
| nonbinary people, not specifically about people who have
| "transitioned"
|
| I would imagine the rate of depression and similar
| disorders in trans people is _extremely_ high. To be so
| unsatisfied with one's own body that you consider (or go
| through) major treatment and surgery to change something
| so fundamental.
| salemh wrote:
| Demonstrably false. Transgenderism is a cult ideology
| intentionally inducing trauma to recreate multiple
| personality disorder in children. They are easier to
| abuse, and commit suicide.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200523211027/https://www.ac
| ped...
|
| In 1979 Johns Hopkins Hospital had banned all sex-change
| operations permanently at their facilities due to rates
| of suicide having skyrocketed amongst transgender post
| reassignment surgery. Suicide is twenty times greater
| among adults who used cross-sex hormones and underwent
| gender reassignment surgery.
|
| According to Johns Hopkins Distinguished Service
| Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Paul R. McHugh, "Hopkins
| stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, producing a
| 'satisfied' but still troubled patient seemed an
| inadequate reason for amputating normal organs."
|
| John Hopkins concluded...
|
| _Transgenderism is a mental disorder
|
| _ Sex change is biologically impossible
|
| _People who promote sexual reassignment surgery are
| collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder
|
| _ The suicide rate among transgendered people who had the
| surgery is 20 times higher
|
| *70%-80% of children who expressed transgender feelings,
| overtime, lost those feelings.
| Ralfp wrote:
| In 2017 Johns Hopkins Hospital has reopened its
| transgender care clinic as the Johns Hopkins Center for
| Transgender and Gender Expansive Health.
|
| 2022 research into Hospital's archives found the decision
| to cease operation in 1979 was political, not evidence
| based:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36191317/
|
| > *70%-80% of children who expressed transgender
| feelings, overtime, lost those feelings.
|
| This number most likely comes from a study that
| classified girls as transgender based on behaviors like
| preference to wear their hair short of wear pants instead
| of dresses or skirt:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21216800/
|
| Those children did not self-identify as transgender and
| further more, research could not contact 41% of them for
| the follow up:
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-end-of-the-
| desistance_b_8...
| mvc wrote:
| How old are kids when they get their foreskin lopped off?
| zahlman wrote:
| They do not make that decision, and it is entirely
| irrelevant to the discussion.
| nomdep wrote:
| Indeed, that's a barbaric custom, akin to genital
| mutilation, that should be reserved for a real medical
| necessity, never for religious reasons
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| It is literally a form of genital mutilation. The
| foreskin is homologous to the hood of the clitoris.
| erxam wrote:
| Hey, you aren't supposed to question our glorious
| metzitzah b'peh!
| skyyler wrote:
| Which is why puberty blockers are prescribed to
| transgender children, delaying puberty until later in
| life when a "good decision" can be made, usually closer
| to the mid to late teens.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Sadly, it's not possible to "delay puberty" until later
| in life without permanent consequences. Puberty cannot
| simply be resumed later. Puberty blockers alter hormones
| dramatically during critical growth phases. The changes
| can't be reversed later as if hormones were not altered
| during critical phases if the person changes their mind.
| delecti wrote:
| It is absolutely possible, and it has been done in
| cisgender children with precocious puberty for decades.
|
| > Puberty blockers alter hormones dramatically during
| critical growth phases.
|
| Which is generally the goal. It is of course not possible
| to retroactively have allowed puberty to progress as
| though the blockers had never been taken, but it is
| possible to cease the blockers and allow it to resume,
| again, as is done for cisgender children who take them.
|
| It almost feels like you're arguing definitions.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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 different than the
| body's eventual genetic set point, just to delay them
| until typical puberty ages.
|
| Delaying puberty until it aligns with the body's expected
| pubertal ages is completely different. You cannot
| extrapolate and claim this as evidence that we can safely
| delay puberty until adulthood, well beyond pubertal age.
|
| > but it is possible to cease the blockers and allow it
| to resume, again
|
| I don't understand what you're trying to claim, but
| ceasing the medications does not reverse the changes they
| made during critical teenage growth windows.
| delecti wrote:
| It's unclear what age puberty is "supposed to" happen.
| The age of onset of puberty has gotten substantially
| younger, even just over the past couple hundred years. If
| the "correct" age is what we see today, then there's
| thousands of generations of humans who had puberty
| naturally occur "too late" yet we're all still here to
| talk about it. If the "correct" age instead is when it
| used to occur, then _everyone_ should go on puberty
| blockers for a few years to avoid this unnatural surge of
| precocious puberty.
|
| > I don't understand what you're trying to claim, but
| ceasing the medications does not reverse the changes they
| made during critical teenage growth windows.
|
| Puberty blockers do not themselves induce changes. They
| block hormones whose job is to trigger release of sex
| hormones which _would_ induce changes. For young trans
| people, access to blockers can save them from a lifetime
| of dealing with the consequences of a puberty they did
| not want. Likewise, blockers can save a cisgender child
| from unwanted consequences of a puberty happening too
| early.
|
| That doesn't mean "until adulthood", it could just be a
| few years. But even then, I think blockers are a
| compromise to appease people who doubt the ability of
| trans kids to make their own decisions about their bodily
| autonomy. I think trans people should be able to go on
| cross-sex hormones basically at will, but certainly after
| no more than a cursory chat with a therapist.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It's unclear what age puberty is "supposed to" happen.
| The age of onset of puberty has gotten substantially
| younger, even just over the past couple hundred years.
|
| The change over the past couple hundred years is measured
| on the order of a couple years at most.
|
| This has nothing at all to do with hormonal intervention
| until adult ages. Once someone reaches adulthood the
| window for a lot of changes has closed.
|
| > Puberty blockers do not themselves induce changes. They
| block hormones whose job is to trigger release of sex
| hormones which would induce changes.
|
| You're either not understanding, or trying to avoid an
| inconvenient point: Once blocked during critical periods,
| many of those changes simply cannot happen at a later
| date.
|
| Puberty cannot be delayed until adulthood and then
| resumed as if nothing happened.
| delecti wrote:
| I feel like you ignored my entire last paragraph. I don't
| know how to respond to this without just pasting it
| again.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I read it, but you keep moving the goalposts around so
| much and introducing irrelevant detours that I can't
| respond to everything you write, sorry.
|
| I've been consistent about my point, but you've
| introduced so many other topics including the "maybe it's
| only for a year or two" point that this is just one big
| gish gallop
|
| Your point about puberty happening earlier and earlier
| also contradicts your arguments about how it might only
| be for a year or two
| space_fountain wrote:
| 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 attributed to
| delaying puberty until 16. If you do know of some reports
| please let me know.
|
| I asked Claude to see if it could find anything and the
| only reports it could find was some long term bone
| density issues, but only in trans women and it seemed
| potentially related to estrogen dosing
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
| simondotau wrote:
| But surely puberty, not just maturity, is necessary to
| fully understand the sexual experience and whether your
| feelings about yourself crystalise differently in the
| presence of sexual drive. Not to mention, the idea of
| delaying puberty seems like an invitation for unrelated
| and/or unforeseen downstream consequences on biological
| health.
| erxam wrote:
| It is not. Precocious sexual drive is possibly amongst
| the worst things there is for gaining sexual maturity.
| Also known as 'thinking with your dick'. CSA aside, you
| can do a ton of damage to your life by just going along
| with your sexual drive.
|
| I am a virgin at 27 years old. What am I missing about
| the sexual experience? Is it somehow locked out to me?
| Or... can I access it intellectually, and reason about it
| with its ups and downs?
|
| There's a reason the consent age does not start at
| puberty.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| I'm really scratching my head at the response to this
| one. Do people around here really believe consent
| _should_ start at puberty?
|
| I'm aware that's kind of a meme in certain highly
| religious and/or conservative communities but it'd be
| shocking if it were a mainstream position.
| Retric wrote:
| 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
| risks and consequences. Separating conjoined twins for
| example.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > At 12 you simply do not have sufficient capacity to
| make a good decision on the matter.
|
| At 12 kids do not have sufficient capacity to handle any
| major decision, including any medical procedure.
|
| That does not take away their right to see their best
| interests represented and defended.
| locopati wrote:
| and yet trans children exist and deserve medical care and
| social acceptance just like anyone else
| undersuit wrote:
| Then we should prescribe puberty blockers to everyone
| until they can make such a decision.
| esterna wrote:
| And yet we cannot stop time, and a decision has to be
| made. It seems natural to involve the child in this
| decision.
|
| Of course, the next best thing (if a decision can't be
| made now) after stopping time are puberty blockers. Which
| are not completely without risks, but this applies to the
| other two options just as well (if not more so).
|
| You can't _not_ make decisions, and to claim so is to
| frame choosing one particular option as not-a-decision.
| themgt wrote:
| 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
| Philadelphia wrote:
| The page you link to doesn't say that. "As of February 2026,
| Khelif had not described herself as intersex or as having a
| DSD."
| decimalenough wrote:
| There is a leaked medical report showing that Khelif has
| internal testes:
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/algeria-condemns-baseless-imane-
| khelif...
|
| The Talk page has extensive debates on whether this can be
| mentioned, and the current "consensus" is that it can't be.
| space_fountain wrote:
| The article is saying that there are fairly credible
| denials no?
| decimalenough wrote:
| Just the Algerian government harrumphing. As GP says,
| Khelif herself has basically admitted to having the SRY
| gene in interviews, and has been notably tight-lipped
| about what medical tests caused her to be disqualified
| from women's boxing in the IBA.
| blks wrote:
| It's incorrect to call this a "leaked medical report".
| This is a document of unknown origin, widely shared by
| online grifters.
| mmooss wrote:
| Has Khelif published it? Otherwise, I don't think
| anyone's very personal information about their body
| should be on HN (or anywhere). If it doesn't violate a
| guideline, it should.
| Aurornis wrote:
| That page is at the center of a massive debate on Wikipedia
| for that specific topic.
|
| Khelif responded to a question about having the SRY gene
| like this:
|
| > In a February 2026 interview with L'Equipe, Khelif was
| asked: "To be clear, you have a female phenotype but
| possess the SRY gene, an indicator of masculinity", to
| which she responded: "Yes, and it's natural. I have female
| hormones."
|
| So she was asked if she had the SRY gene and she responded
| "Yes". That's also consistent with the previous issues with
| governing bodies excluding her under their rules, but they
| are not allowed to share test results for obvious reasons.
|
| The debate now is down to technicalities. Technically the
| Wikipedia quote is correct in that Khelif has not described
| herself as intersex or having a DSD _in those words_ but
| she has now admitted to having an SRY gene, which is the
| important part in the context of these competition rules.
| rideontime wrote:
| So it's the headline that's inaccurate. It should read "bars
| women with the SRY gene" rather than "transgender."
| Aurornis wrote:
| The ruling itself is much more nuanced and covers a lot of
| situations, including extremely rare disorders of sexual
| development (DSD) and their variations. The most recent
| controversies on this topic did not involve transgender
| athletes, but that's largely unknown or misunderstood by
| people who only know this topic by headlines and sound
| bites.
|
| The headline writers are relating it back to the topic
| which brings the most clicks, which is transgender
| athletes.
|
| The IOC didn't go on a crusade against transgender athletes
| specifically. They were refining the rules on sex-based
| divisions and included a lot of considerations and nuance.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| 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.
| generj wrote:
| Not only trans athletes, but any biologically born women the IOC
| thinks are insufficiently feminine.
|
| It's an unfair advantage apparently. You know, like being born
| tall for basketball players. Curious how no other biological
| advantages are being policed.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| That doesn't seem to be the case, given the first paragraph of
| the article:
|
| > The International Olympic Committee has barred transgender
| athletes from competing in the women's category of the Olympics
| and said that all participants in those events must undergo
| genetic testing.
|
| Genetic testing doesn't leave a lot of room for accidentally or
| intentionally targeting women for being "insufficiently
| feminine."
| altruios wrote:
| just going to leave this here for you to read...
|
| https://www.olympics.com/en/news/semenya-niyonsaba-wambui-
| wh...
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Oh thank you, but I'm not uninformed, and genetic testing
| wouldn't have missed Castor Semenya either.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| wouldn't a woman with a y chromosome be disqualified then?
| poizan42 wrote:
| Is the "genetic testing" for the presence of a Y chromosome
| or the presence of the SRY gene? And what about people with
| AIS?
|
| If it's just karyotype, are men with XX male syndrome (SRY
| gene without an Y chromosome) then allowed to participate in
| women's sports?
| functional_dev wrote:
| It's very confusing topic. I rendered this visual map to
| show how SRY gene is the 'trigger' for development, not
| just having the Y chromosome. It helps see the signaling
| steps where things like AIS or XX syndrome happen:
| https://vectree.io/c/y-chromosome-genomic-signaling
| belorn wrote:
| The question comes down if the presence of the SRY gene
| impact athletic ability. From my reading, it seems very
| much like an ongoing research topic.
|
| I recall a study looking at genetics in general and how
| much of professional sport abilities that can be attributed
| to it, and the number were fairly high for most sports,
| especially those involving strength and endurance. Genetic
| disorders like AIS could however also be a hindrance.
|
| I do recall that in some endurance sports, certain genetic
| disorders involving oxygen delivery were much more common
| in top elites than in the average population, meaning that
| people without that disorder is at severe disadvantage
| compared to general population. It is an ongoing discussion
| if people with those kind of disorders should be allowed to
| compete in for example long distance skiing, as the
| disorder becomes natural doping and would be cheating if a
| person without the disorder was competing with that kind of
| blood in their system.
|
| Genetic testing, outside of the culture war about what
| defines a man or a woman, really comes down to what is fair
| competition. Personally I can't really say. Does knowing
| that maybe half of the top skiers has a rare blood disorder
| make it less fun for people?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Genetic testing for what?
|
| I'm just going to leave the headline of this article for you
| to consider while you answer:
|
| "Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY
| Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual
| Development"
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2190741/
| mothballed wrote:
| Before you hold genetic testing down to this standard of
| perfection (catching a single event of something so notable
| it merited its own article in JCEM), it would do well to
| compare it to the alternatives from which you are moving,
| and whether those alternatives met this standard of
| perfection.
|
| Otherwise it might turn out you are proposing a standard
| that _no_ system that bifurcates men and women can achieve,
| and on the basis of that, rejecting genetic testing.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| This might be true if the Olympics were exclusively
| classifying the 23rd chromosomes, and nothing but.
|
| Leave aside the fact that very few of us here have actually
| tested our 23rd chromosome. Historically, the Olympics have
| not been (and are not) strictly chromosomal. The 2023
| testosterone suppression decision requirements has
| exclusively impacted cis women, for one example.
|
| Humans are biologically dimorphic in the same way winters are
| usually cold and summers are usually hot.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I would say that humans are sexually dimorphic in the same
| way that humans are bipeds. if you attempted to make a
| serious argument that limb agenesis implies that we're a
| variable-limbed species it would be obfuscating rather than
| illuminating.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| 99.8% of all matter by count is either hydrogen or
| helium, are atoms dimorphic?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| That's a very fun way to think about it, but it's far
| more effective in a semantic debate than a serious one. I
| also don't for a minute believe that the goal here is
| some broader reform of how the world talks about
| statistical distributions.
|
| I'd rather not have discussions in bad faith.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| It was intended in good faith, to make the point that
| rarity alone is not a good metric for salience. In my
| experience, most trans people have no problem with the
| statement "humans are sexually dimorphic" in a biology
| context. They (and I) have issue with it when its used in
| a debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and
| therefore trans and intersex people are
| irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)". In
| the context of sports, it is definitely relevant that
| there are many edge cases and substantial overlap in the
| distribution of phenotypes between AFAB and AMAB people.
|
| Coming back around to the olympics: I agree that humans
| are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the
| Olympic committee should take great care to create rules
| and categories for paralympic athletes. I think there's a
| lot of room for reasonable people to disagree without
| dismissing the complexity that comes from organizing
| across 8 billion people.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Speaking for myself I believe that trans people and non-
| binary people should be accommodated, but there's a
| contextual limit. When it comes to equal protection,
| employment, healthcare, medical access, bathrooms and a
| dozen other issues it's a no-brainer in favor of
| accommodating people.
|
| Ironically the sports divide is probably the single area
| where having some physical advantages isn't a bonus. It's
| also near and dear to the hearts of billions, and such a
| terrible hill to die on. Ideally the solution would be a
| league like the Paralympic competitions, but high level
| athletes are rare, trans people are relatively rare, and
| two overlapping are incredibly rare. To make such a
| league would be a farce that couldn't hope to succeed.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| In the Olympics, it appears trans athletes are still a
| minority among the group of athletes who are excluded
| because of sex characteristics. Most of the athletes
| impacted by the ever-stricter testosterone limits in the
| Olympics are cis women. Such a league would include
| cisgender former Olympic athletes who had to undergo
| forms of HRT in order to qualify.
|
| When discussing trans people in sports, the most salient
| contexts aren't elite sports championships like the
| Olympics. "Sports" is also done recreationally and is
| often considered a normal part of ones childhood
| upbringing. On the topic of trans people, the question
| "can my child play this sport with their friends"?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Is anyone worth listening to seriously suggesting that
| informal childhood sports are somehow equivalent to
| programs that can define academic or professional
| careers?
|
| Edit I'd add that T screening in sports exists primarily
| to find dopers, not people trying to pass.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I don't see how your question follows from the rest of
| the discussion, or in what specific ways you are
| suggesting people argue to be equivalent. Both K-12
| sports and Olympic sports are understood to be sports.
|
| To restate myself, sports during childhood are much more
| important than elite world championships. Almost everyone
| I know did a sport with peers during our formative years,
| myself included. Meanwhile, nobody I know was ever close
| to qualifying to be an Olympic athlete, and I feel
| certain the same is true for most of the people in this
| thread.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| To add to this, I want to stress on the point of rarity.
| Variations within sex metrics are not the uncommon fringe
| case people make it out to be, they're actually common
| and expected.
|
| Within biology, we'd see a number of metrics (like
| height) which would usually appear bimodal (like two bell
| curves added together). We might identify at least two
| latent variables here: A real-number 'age' (which can be
| observed) and a binary 'sex' (not directly observed). But
| it's worth stressing that these implied underlying curves
| overlap, and any given metric is not strictly correlated
| with the others. (Commonly, one might be on the lower end
| of some distributions and the higher ends of others.
| Someone can be 5'3" tall, have red hair, and a high body-
| fat percentage while also having testicles, XY
| chromosomes, and dying at the age of 62.) (We should also
| note that the 23rd chromosome just another observed
| variable, starting after ~1900.)
|
| Some causes of variation that we know about are fraternal
| birth order, or endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS,
| conditions like PCOS, etc.
|
| Case in point are all the cis women who are impacted by
| the ever-stricter testosterone guidelines in the
| Olympics. Further is the effect of fraternal birth order,
| or the endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, or the
| intentional introduction of hormones and hormone
| blockers. (If certain industries are to be believed, soy
| milk has a similar effect.) These are all variations and
| things which impact what we understand as "biological
| sex".
|
| Folk gender theorists tend to consider sexuality,
| identity, biology, and expression as orthogonal axes. But
| these are clearly also correlated among people.
| (Stretching the definition of "correlated" to include
| qualitative metrics like 'expression' using the usual
| methods.)
|
| An information-theoretic framework would inform well an
| "optimal" way to talk about this, using a one-bit string
| for most people and increasingly more bits when more
| information is needed. This is roughly how people already
| talk.
| zahlman wrote:
| > They (and I) have issue with it when its used in a
| debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and
| therefore trans and intersex people are
| irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)".
|
| But that is not being said here, just as in every other
| time the discussion of sex segregation in sports comes
| up; and just as in every other time, people simply
| pretend in bad faith that such things are being asserted.
|
| > I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no
| bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should
| take great care to create rules and categories for
| paralympic athletes.
|
| Sure. _Which is why they do, and nobody has a problem
| with it._
|
| Go take a survey of the people opposed to transgender
| women competing in women's Olympic sports, and see what
| they think of having a separate category for transgender
| athletes. Or even separate categories for transgender men
| and transgender women. I'd wager the large majority have
| no problem with that. (They might at most be concerned
| about disproportionate airtime being given to sport
| events that relatively few people qualify for and
| relatively few people are especially interested in.)
| brainwad wrote:
| If you're a cosmologist ;) usually they talk of 3
| elements though - H, He and "metal".
| zahlman wrote:
| If it were possible for us to exist (and thus consider
| the question) in the absence of the other atoms, and if
| those other atoms overwhelmingly (somehow) had a number
| of nucleons between 1 and 2, then the analogy might
| plausibly make sense.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| No, that is not a good analogy at all. It's so poor an
| analogy that it's challenging to interpret this comment
| generously. I think you might be arguing facetiously to
| make a different rhetoric point than the literal content
| of your post, bot I will respond to your text literally.
|
| Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in
| metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex" and
| those metrics are accessibly mutable. Even within the
| Olympics, the natural variation of these metrics within
| cis women is a famous topic of debate (Imane Khelif,
| Caster Semenya, etc.)
|
| Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is
| especially not accessibly mutable.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| > Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is
| especially not accessibly mutable.
|
| This would apply to sex chromosomes as well
| lynndotpy wrote:
| So? It would apply to sex chromosomes and only sex
| chromosomes, which is just one observed sex
| characteristic.
|
| We are talking about sexual dimorphism and secondary sex
| characteristics.
|
| Humans were understood to be sexually dimorphic before we
| discovered sex chromosomes in 1905, and we usually label
| our babies with a biological sex without the aid of
| consumer genetic testing.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in
| metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex"
|
| What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically
| recognized as intersex?
|
| > and those metrics are accessibly mutable.
|
| What is that even supposed to mean?
| zahlman wrote:
| > Leave aside the fact that very few of us here have
| actually tested our 23rd chromosome.
|
| When people _do_ submit to such testing, how commonly are
| the results other than they expected?
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| 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 because their chromosomes and hormones aren't within
| so called "normal levels"
| GaggiX wrote:
| >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?
|
| I believe the logic is based on the fact that male athletes are
| stronger than female athletes.
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| Also there has only been one (1) trans woman, Laurel Hubbard,
| who has competed in a women's event (weightlifting) and she not
| place.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| She didn't place at the Olympics but it's worth noting she
| was the oldest competitor by far, and this after she had
| cleaned up gold medals in numerous international competitions
| despite having a relatively thin background in the sport. She
| was expected to podium at the Olympics and it's not really
| clear why she performed so poorly (the only athlete in the
| division to DNF).
|
| Mrs Hubbard's background, if you read it honestly, is great
| evidence for why this decision was the correct one.
| fretboard wrote:
| Indeed. Hubbard's trajectory in female weightlifting is
| entirely unprecedented: re-entering the sport after a
| fifteen year break, with a stronger performance than those
| of elite female weightlifters with decades of competitive
| careers behind them and who had won Olympic medals.
|
| The only reason why this was possible is because Hubbard is
| male.
| briandw wrote:
| Men are stronger and faster and not just a little bit. If you
| allow men in women's sports, (basketball, soccer, boxing etc)
| then women will not be competitive in those sports.
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| Yes but trans women on hormone replacement therapy are not as
| strong as cis men across the board.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Comparing them to cis men is a red herring, they aren't
| competing again cis men
|
| Are they stronger than cis women?
| hananova wrote:
| No, they're not. Not after about a year of HRT.
| briandw wrote:
| Male puberty changes body composition in non-reversible
| ways. Muscle distribution, composition, quantity and bone
| density, all favor men that have gone through puberty.
| exolymph wrote:
| Trans men have no advantage against cis men.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Trans women who have been on hormone therapy for at least a
| year have no overall advantage over cis women in most real,
| existing competitive sports. They have disadvantages in some
| of the most widely-sports-relevant capacities--compared to
| cis women--and small advantages in a couple of isolated
| abilities (grip strength).
|
| They also have advantages in traits that across the
| population correlate positively with some broadly-sports-
| relevant capacities (e.g., lean body mass, both absolutely
| and as a share of total body mass, lung volume), but the
| actual sports-relevant capacities these correlate with on a
| population level (strength, endurance, etc.) they don't have
| an advantage on. There are studies that have detailed some of
| the low-level reasons for this with regard to oxygen use and
| other factors.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm not sure that is the case in all sports. For example in
| golf, the top women golfers on LPGA tour in distance are only
| about as long as the shortest men on PGA tour off the tee,
| about 290 yards average. However, the women are generally
| vastly more accurate than the men in pretty much every
| distance tee to green. Their swing is just a different style
| of swing afforded by female anatomy. It is more hip driven,
| "textbook," in fact they have higher hip speed than men who
| rely more on hand speed.
|
| Now imagine a pro golfer who was born female with those
| anatomical advantages for golf flexibility, and is now taking
| testosterone for power, ostensibly to identify as male. Not
| only do they have the anatomy advantage, they now have the
| power. They would probably dominate pro golf overall, both
| sides of the game I expect, whichever one they choose to
| compete in.
| helterskelter wrote:
| Trans men don't compete because women are essentially non
| competitive against men in top level athletics. Which is why
| trans women are controversial in women's sports. Every year
| there are hundreds of males highschoolers who outcompete
| females Olympic gold medalists. By allowing men to compete in
| women's sports you prioritize the notions of identity of what's
| usually a single individual over an entire class. It's plainly
| sexist.
|
| As for intersex individuals, put them in their own competitive
| class.
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| Trans women are such a minority in women's sports it's really
| a non-issue that's been blown out of proportion. There was
| one trans woman who competed in the 2020 Olympics and she
| didn't even place. Riley Gaines has made a big deal in MAGA
| world about tying for 5th with a trans woman in a swimming
| competition. That means 4 cis women placed ahead of her, and
| if Lia Thomas hadn't competed, she still would've been in
| 5th. Hormone replacement therapy for trans women often
| results in muscle and strength loss, so the idea that trans
| women have some uniquely superhuman strength because they
| used to be men is just untrue.
| helterskelter wrote:
| HRT still leaves you with longer limbs and larger lungs
| which give a serious competitive edge. The numbers of trans
| individuals in sports doesn't matter, it's wrong on
| principle. Why segregate by sex at all? Let's get rid of
| it, you won't see any women, or any trans women, for that
| matter, anywhere on any serious athletic playing field.
| It'll all just be men.
|
| What's the point of allowing trans women in women's sports
| anyway, especially at a top level? To affirm their
| identity? That throws an entire class of people, women,
| under the bus. Top performing males have an indisputable
| competitive advantage against top performing females in
| athletics.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > Trans women are such a minority in women's sports it's
| really a non-issue that's been blown out of proportion.
|
| Indeed, but this is only a good argument for barring trans
| women from competing against females. You see, if trans
| athletes are so rare, only a very small number of people
| would be adversely affected by such a restriction, they can
| live with it.
|
| On the other hand, the ban would calm down a large number
| of female athletes who are seriously disturbed _by the mere
| possibility_ of competing against men, especially in
| contact sports, but not only.
|
| Women are women, not only physically but also emotionally
| and mentally. Setting out on a crusade to change the
| thinking of millions of women is seriously dumb when a
| simple restriction, affecting 3 people total, can avoid it.
|
| Now, think about making such a dumb idea a cornerstone of
| some party's political messaging... that can happen only if
| said party wants the other side to win.
| briandw wrote:
| The fact that it's only one way (banning men from competition
| in women's sports) is evidence against your point, not for it.
| If it was strictly anti-trans, then it would be an applied to
| both. The fact that no one cares that if a woman wants to
| participate in a men's event is pretty telling.
| snackbroken wrote:
| > 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?
|
| In most sports, the "mens" division is actually an open
| division that accepts all participants regardless of sex. Women
| just don't compete in it because they have no shot at getting a
| decent placement. The fact that males and females can't fairly
| compete with each other is the raison d'etre of the women's
| league. This, and not culture war propaganda reasons is why
| only the most deranged bigots have an issue with trans men
| competing in "mens" sports.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Fun fact: "open divisions" only last as long as men are
| winning them. Women often outshoot men, and after Shan
| Zhang's win they were siloed into their own division.
| coppsilgold wrote:
| > Fun fact: "open divisions" only last as long as men are
| winning them. Women often outshoot men, and after Shan
| Zhang's win they were siloed into their own division.
|
| That decision was made before her win.
|
| > the International Shooting Union, at a meeting in April
| of 1992, and therefore ahead of the Games, elected to bar
| women from shooting against men in future events.
|
| <https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/2753773/2021/08/05/in-
| tokyo...>
| dismalaf wrote:
| Because trans men have no advantage in men's sport, whereas
| trans females do. It's not even about trans people at all, it's
| about preserving fairness in women's sports.
|
| Before trans issues were widespread in culture, intersex
| athletes were also scrutinized. Hell, I remember when people
| were questioning whether having a testicle removed gave Lance
| Armstrong an advantage...
| fweimer wrote:
| Maybe the trans men issue gets less attention because they have
| already been excluded from both women's and men's events?
|
| I assume trans men are administered testosterone as part of
| their medical care, and that's already universally banned from
| competitive sports.
| belorn wrote:
| I was wondering about trans men and there is actually quite a
| bit amount of regulations for it, as taking testosterone is
| generally considered to be doping. Trans men are only allowed
| to compete if they are under heavy supervision by a medical
| professional and they follow a very strict set of rules
| dictating how, when and what kind of treatment they do. Too
| high amount of testosterone or too uneven levels of
| testosterone will disqualify a trans man from competing.
| zahlman wrote:
| > 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".
| whatever1 wrote:
| Men who weigh 100kg are also banned from participating in the
| 63kg weightlifting category. So what? There are physical traits
| that offer advantages in sports. We bucketize so that we see more
| interesting competitions (aka a 120kg weightlifter would
| completely dominate all of the smaller folks, every single time,
| so what's the point of competing ).
| zahlman wrote:
| Sure. Meanwhile, men in the 63kg powerlifting class have a
| higher record total than even superheavyweight women:
| https://worldpowerlifting.com/records/womens-world-records/
| https://worldpowerlifting.com/records/mens-world-records/
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Generally.. I think people takes sports far too seriously.
| LunicLynx wrote:
| So if I take your house. And you complain, I just say: ,,some
| people take ownership far too seriously!"
|
| For some people sports is their life and livelihood for that
| matter, this should be acknowledged.
| jpkw wrote:
| I think a more fair and accurate comparison would be
| religion.
| ck2 wrote:
| The easiest way to explain this nonsense
|
| is that in 100+ years of Olympics, there are ZERO elite athletes
| who were transgender
|
| none
|
| it's brought to you by the some of the very same people who want
| you to prove you are a citizen every time you vote
|
| because there have been no previous cases of that either
|
| However there are women who have given birth who will fail that
| SRY test
|
| Because biology is messy, not black and white, never "on" or
| "off", there is always overlap
|
| They tried this before in 1996 and quickly ended it by 2000
| because the result was a disaster
| gpm wrote:
| There's also cis-male people who will "pass" that SRY test if
| they take it for some reason...
|
| This is a dumb ass way to try and define the woman's
| category... which is about the expected result of bigots trying
| to work backwards from the result they want headlines about.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| > it's brought to you by the some of the very same people who
| want you to prove you are a citizen every time you vote
|
| I'm staying out of the other issue as best I can, but as a non-
| American the resistance to this is just baffling, especially
| given the fact your recent elections have not exactly been
| widely trusted internally. Not that I'm saying there was much
| merit to the distrust, but it still makes sense to take steps
| to demonstrate it. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.
| zb3 wrote:
| Sports already exclude most people as they're not performant
| enough. So I don't see a problem with excluding biological males
| from female sports.
|
| But, we should compare actual body parts that are relevant, for
| example I'm male but I'd not belong in male sports as my body is
| more feminine..
|
| Still, it's not who you think you are that should decide, it's
| the body type so the competition can be more interesting as that
| is the point of sports anyway..
| puppycodes wrote:
| The differences between cisgender bodies are already so varied
| that the logic falls apart almost immediately.
|
| For that matter why not restrict rich athletes who have access to
| training and equipment that poor athletes do not?
|
| The point at where the line is drawn is entirely arbitrary.
| Gattaca vibes.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Don't we already sub-categorize within a gender? E.g. boxing. I
| don't actually know how common that is or why some sports get
| this treatment and not others.
| puppycodes wrote:
| Boxing is often the example given because its someone getting
| hurt, but when you actually break it down it also falls apart
| for boxing.
|
| If we measured everyones strength, bone density, etc... in
| order to stop people from risking injury that would be one
| thing But basing it on your Chromosomes is lazy and
| inaccurate.
|
| The point is that "fairness" being tied to whether your Cis
| or Trans is a hilarious hill to die on when we have advanced
| medical technology to actually test what we deem "fair".
| happytoexplain wrote:
| To be clear, I used that example because it was the only
| one I could think of, not for some rhetorical reason (which
| serves your point anyway, really).
|
| I agree if we could just distill "here's your objective
| good-at-tennis score" for everybody and draw lines using
| those numbers, that makes sense. It feels unrealistic? I.e.
| we _already_ don 't do that - it doesn't necessarily feel
| like 100% an anti-trans thing (orthogonal obviously to the
| large amount of anti-trans sentiment that generally
| exists). Maybe Elo for everything?
| puppycodes wrote:
| Yeah for sure.
|
| My point is just that fairness in the Olympics is fake
| and always has been.
|
| Someones Chromosomes are such a poor way to measure their
| physical abilities especially when the bar is so high for
| top athletes in the field.
| pureagave wrote:
| What would happen if we didn't allow a female category for
| power lifting? Just have human power lifting. Does the NFL have
| a ban on women in NFL? I don't know but the teams look as I
| expect they would even without a ban.
| wrs wrote:
| I follow sport climbing, which has always seemed like a great
| example of this.
|
| Climbing ability isn't just a matter of strength or any other
| single dimension. E.g., the women's routes are set on the
| assumption they're more flexible than the men, not just less
| strong. Climbers come in many different shapes and sizes. Some
| climbers look like string beans, others look like they grew up
| lifting cows.
|
| And BTW, there are women (Janja Garnbret, and Akiyo Noguchi
| before her) who dominate the women's competition for years, to
| the degree that everyone else is almost playing for second
| place. It's routinely speculated that Janja could regularly
| reach the men's semi-finals.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Rock climbing is one sport known for small differences in
| performance between men and women. This is unlike about any
| other sport out there where a difference is huge (the worst
| male aspiring semi-pro is often better than a top woman).
| eirini1 wrote:
| what always strikes me as weird is how often the conversation is
| framed around "men competing in women's sports" when trans women
| cant really be said to be biologically male anymore. Taking
| Estrogen and blocking testosterone has a huge effect on how
| fast/strong/athletic someone is. I feel like that should be _the_
| key point of discussion, but somehow always gets burried under
| other, kind of less relevant subjects (for example I dont think
| it matters that up until now no trans woman has really won
| anything significant, as that could always change in the future).
| mizuki_akiyama wrote:
| i agree
| lelanthran wrote:
| > what always strikes me as weird is how often the conversation
| is framed around "men competing in women's sports" when trans
| women cant really be said to be biologically male anymore.
|
| Just because they are not male, does not mean that they are
| female.
| kcmastrpc wrote:
| except they still have the biological markers of a male body.
|
| dna never lies.
| nradov wrote:
| That isn't the key point. Taking hormone therapy as an adult
| doesn't erase the huge athletic advantage conferred by going
| through male puberty.
| cgh wrote:
| Testosterone and estrogen are not magic substances that
| eliminate bone density, preponderance of type II muscle fibres,
| favourable tendon insertions and all of the other athletic
| advantages conferred upon males in the womb. I have experience
| with women who take steroids for strength sports and I am not
| exaggerating when I say they could be out-competed by 17 year
| old male high school students with proper coaching.
| nxor2 wrote:
| You also forgot to mention height. I am lgbt and I was a
| college athlete. In my sport it's common for middle school
| age boys to be better than some of the best women. It's not
| hateful to speak the truth.
| harveychess wrote:
| There is no way a man would ever compete in women's sports.
|
| Let's imagine a con-man wanted to compete in women's sports. He
| would have to decide this early in life. Most trans people
| realize before they are 10. He would then have to spend the
| rest of his life pretending to be trans to not get his medal
| revoked.
|
| Trans women are women. They don't have to pretend to be women.
| However, some trans women have to hide their identity and
| present as men, for their safety. Presenting as a gender you're
| not is incredibly taxing. There are high rates of depression
| and increased risk of suicide for people who have to hide their
| gender.
|
| Besides the incredible psychological toll, our imaginary con-
| man would face bullying, harassment, physical assault, sexual
| violence, employment discrimination, housing discrimination,
| exclusion from healthcare, and increased risks of poverty and
| homelessness, which in turn correspond to greater risks of
| fatal violence.
|
| The rights and legal status of transgender people vary by
| country. Our imaginary con-man might have restricted access to
| education, to sports, to bathrooms, and to marriage and
| military positions. As well as much, much worse.
|
| On top of all that, our imaginary con-man would still have to
| train to be an Olympic athlete. Most men are not as fast or
| strong as the world's fastest and strongest women. Sex
| differences in athletic performance also depend on more than
| just biological differences. Living as a woman means only
| having access to the resources available to female athletes.
|
| No man would go through all that for a women's medal.
| yomismoaqui wrote:
| Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URz-RYEOaig
| harveychess wrote:
| Trans women are women.
|
| If you want to see men dressed as women, watch "This is the Army"
| (1943), an American wartime musical comedy film that features
| actor Ronald Regan, and a lot of musical numbers performed by men
| in drag.
| rolymath wrote:
| If they were you wouldn't need to call them "trans"
| hananova wrote:
| We don't have to, it's outsiders who insist on it.
| fwip wrote:
| "Tall women aren't women."
| metalman wrote:
| I think that alt gender athletes can compete as there own group,
| or we do away with gender (ha), and everybody can compete in
| everything "fairly", and by fairly I mean nobody gets to have any
| feelings about this! since when does an ancient universal reality
| get to be re-decided behind closed doors by anonimous interest
| groups? and then become taboo to question, hmmmmm?
| cmiles8 wrote:
| This is common sense. The only reason it didn't happen sooner was
| folks being bullied to do things out of false claims of
| "inclusion" that resulted in deep discrimination against, mostly
| female, athletes.
|
| The segregation of sports was always about sex and not gender.
| There are simply physical differences between across sexes that
| makes mixed-sex competition grossly inequitable in most sports.
| "Gender expression" doesn't change that and mixing up "gender"
| and "sex" in sports was a trainwreck that is thankfully now being
| undone.
|
| This is the right decision.
| nradov wrote:
| Exactly. It's impossible to have both inclusion and fair play.
| We have to pick one, and as a parent of daughters who compete
| at fairly high levels it's more important to preserve the
| integrity of women's sports.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Is there not an option to have inclusion at grassroots level
| and fair play as the level of competition gets higher?
| Aurornis wrote:
| In my experience competing in different things, that's
| typical: Local organizations are free to set their own
| local rules, but once you cross over into events that make
| you eligible for higher level competition they have to
| strictly abide by the national level rules. I couldn't use
| my results from grassroots competitions to qualify for
| national level events, generally.
| nradov wrote:
| Sure, I guess that's an option for youth sports in the
| prepubescent age groups. As a practical matter most youth
| sports leagues and schools aren't going to hassle with sex
| screening tests for little kids.
|
| But once puberty hits everything changes. My teenage
| daughter played travel club volleyball on a pretty good
| team, and during practice they would occasionally run
| drills with the boys team. Even at that age the difference
| in hitting power and vertical was _enormous_ , and those
| differences only grow larger with age. Men and women are
| literally playing different games. Beyond just fairness,
| forcing girls to compete against biological males becomes a
| safety risk due to concussions from taking a ball to the
| head.
| fwip wrote:
| You believe that women are genetically more susceptible
| to concussions than men are?
| waterhouse wrote:
| https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/2024/09/uneven-
| playin...
|
| "Women tend to have thinner skulls than men, along with
| smaller neck muscles, which can predispose female
| athletes to getting a concussion," says Sarah Menacho,
| MD, a neurosurgeon and neurocritical care specialist at
| University of Utah Health. "Data shows that women are
| also more likely than men to report concussion-related
| symptoms, and these symptoms can persist for a longer
| time period prior to recovery than in male athletes."
| fwip wrote:
| Huh, didn't know that.
| jazzpush2 wrote:
| Don't let that prevent you from posting more dismissive
| posts about topics you don't know in the future.
| nradov wrote:
| Yes. It's not a matter of belief, sex differences in
| concussion risk have been extensively studied.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sports-
| concus...
| dbacar wrote:
| males competing against males are also at risk by taking
| a ball to the head :).
|
| I think male female trans etc . can compete if analysed
| by sports branch basis. Male x female in contact sports
| like karate boxing taekwondo is not fair. However i think
| the difference is negligible in shooting, archerty,
| curling etc.
| clord wrote:
| It's not even a level thing[0]. I think the physical
| advantages that come with male puberty are significant even
| at 14-15.
|
| https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-
| under-15-b...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| So, where are the scores and scores of trans athletes
| dominating women's sports? If this is the sort of problem all
| the people crowing about it think it to be, we should have
| women with poorly fitting athletic gear and facial hair all
| over the place taking golds from ciswomen. We don't.
|
| Like this is literally just fucking with transpeople for
| nothing and I am wide open for correction on this if anybody
| can find an actual incident of something of note happening,
| but until then, it's just weird reactionaries screaming into
| the void as far as I'm concerned, and the outcomes will be
| largely the same: more invasive procedures for ciswomen to
| endure, and excluded athletes who did nothing wrong apart
| from be who they are.
| nradov wrote:
| This is a matter of principle, fair play, and safety.
| Whether it's a tiny number or "scores and scores" is
| irrelevant.
|
| If you're looking for specific incidents then start with
| this site. I can't vouch for it being completely accurate
| but you can use it as a starting point for further research
| to educate yourself about the issue.
|
| https://www.shewon.org/
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > This is a matter of principle, fair play, and safety.
| Whether it's a tiny number or "scores and scores" is
| irrelevant.
|
| What if it's 0?
|
| > If you're looking for specific incidents then start
| with this site.
|
| A deeply unbiased source, I'm sure.
|
| Anyway I'd love to but all their archive links are the
| same. Looks like someone wrote a for loop incorrectly.
| But to be blunt, this is the exact same sort of nonsense
| as VAERS and deserves exactly the same dismissal:
| Compiled data assembled from the public with no
| verification, by people with no credentials, with a clear
| axe to grind.
|
| Edit: Also, a SHIT LOAD of these are for
| second/third/whatever place, not even for wins. If
| reality backed the assertions made, transwomen should be
| DESTROYING women in sports.
|
| There actually does have to be a lot of them, frankly,
| because otherwise it is just a nothingburger. Just a
| burger with a whole lot of nothing.
| youarentrightjr wrote:
| Cmon guy, you can't ask for a source and then dismiss the
| one provided without critically examining it.
|
| You're complaining that it's using publicly available
| data? Would you rather private anecdotes?
|
| > Also, a SHIT LOAD of these are for
| second/third/whatever place, not even for wins.
|
| Not sure why this is relevant - is being cheated out of
| second place less of a misdeed than being cheated out of
| first?
| youarentrightjr wrote:
| Sorry part of my reply got cut off.
|
| > What if it's 0?
|
| It's not 0, and anyone engaging honestly knows it.
|
| To make another vaccine analogy: claiming it's a small
| number and therefore it doesn't matter is identical to
| the people who said Covid vaccines weren't important
| because the disease didn't wipe out more than x% of the
| population.
|
| In fact, it's _because_ of the vaccines that this is the
| case.
|
| And it's _because_ of resistance to men in women 's
| sports that the problem is not larger.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Cmon guy, you can't ask for a source and then dismiss
| the one provided without critically examining it.
|
| I did examine it. From the outset it looks like self-
| reported nonsense, hence the comparison to VAERS.
| Examining further, yes, it's self-reported nonsense, and
| also it's broken so I can't even really look into it in
| detail. The one example that is highlighted with sourcing
| is about a transwoman golfer who won ONE event. One.
| Looking through her win/loss record, she seems broadly
| pretty good, but hardly what one would expect if the
| narrative being pushed here is true.
|
| > You're complaining that it's using publicly available
| data? Would you rather private anecdotes?
|
| It's literally private anecdotes! Anyone can submit to
| that thing, the form is one click away from the homepage.
|
| > Not sure why this is relevant - is being cheated out of
| second place less of a misdeed than being cheated out of
| first?
|
| Of course not, but again, the narrative is that men are
| posing as women and competing in an unfair way based on
| genetic advantage. That's not a "win here and there"
| situation the way it's framed, that's a "women have no
| way to fairly compete." So why are so many transwomen
| still being beated by ciswomen competitors?
|
| > It's not 0, and anyone engaging honestly knows it.
|
| Then let's see a source! I asked for one two comments
| ago. Even the one on that shithoused website I can
| actually check the sources FOR is at best, speculative.
| What exactly in the male genome predisposes one in the
| context of GOLF for earth shattering victory?
|
| > To make another vaccine analogy: claiming it's a small
| number and therefore it doesn't matter
|
| I didn't claim it's a small number, I've claimed it's
| made up.
|
| > is identical to the people who said Covid vaccines
| weren't important because the disease didn't wipe out
| more than x% of the population.
|
| > And it's because of resistance to men in women's sports
| that the problem is not larger.
|
| There are no men in women's sports, there are women in
| women's sports, and until you show me the source you're,
| respectfully, talking nonsense.
| youarentrightjr wrote:
| > the narrative is that men are posing as women and
| competing in an unfair way based on genetic advantage.
| That's not a "win here and there" situation the way it's
| framed, that's a "women have no way to fairly compete."
| So why are so many transwomen still being beated by
| ciswomen competitors?
|
| Respectfully, you aren't ready to engage in legitimate
| discussion on this topic. Good faith would be
| steelmanning the other side, not continually referring to
| "the narrative" and then "defeating" it.
|
| > There are no men in women's sports, there are women in
| women's sports, and until you show me the source you're,
| respectfully, talking nonsense.
|
| Your consistent euphemization around this topic is
| another clue that you're really not engaging honestly.
| You should consider what you're looking to get out of
| this discussion.
|
| A simple Google search will find you dozens of examples
| of XY individuals competing in spaces meant for XX
| individuals, at all levels of competition:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Hubbard
|
| I'm not here to spoon feed you this 101 level info.
| Again, my advice would be to consider why you're engaging
| here - is it with an open and curious mind, keen on
| learning; or a zealous propagandist spirit?
| pfych wrote:
| FYI - shewon is entirely self reported and does no
| verification. It includes events such as local town fair
| bean bag throwing competitions.
|
| It also classifies a trans person winning anything as ~3
| losses since "a non-trans person may have shifted the
| entire bracket" moving 2nd -> 1st, 3rd -> 2nd etc... The
| entire site is hypebole and should not be used as a
| serious reference lol.
| r053bud wrote:
| Walk me through how you think this is going to be enforced?
| Athletes will need to start dropping their pants? Disgusting
| invasion of privacy.
| throwawaytea wrote:
| You think the only way to medically test for male vs female
| is to visually id genitals?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well the article says a cheek swab or blood test.
| cmiles8 wrote:
| The article addresses that. Given all the testing already,
| this is a trivial addition:
|
| "Under the new policy eligibility will be determined by a
| one-time gene test, according to the I.O.C. The test, which
| is already being used in track and field, requires screening
| via saliva, a cheek swab or a blood sample."
| Aurornis wrote:
| The article already covered it: It's minimally invasive
| (cheek swab) testing typically for the SRY gene -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-
| determining_region_Y_prote...
|
| This is _less_ invasive than all of the other doping tests
| that athletes already go through, which require blood draws.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Doesn't really work though - and given athletes are on the
| edge of performance there's probably more people that fall
| in between than you might expect
|
| From the Wikipedia article:
|
| While the presence or absence of SRY has generally
| determined whether or not testis development occurs, it has
| been suggested that there are other factors that affect the
| functionality of SRY.[25] Therefore, there are individuals
| who have the SRY gene, but still develop as females, either
| because the gene itself is defective or mutated, or because
| one of the contributing factors is defective.[26] This can
| happen in individuals exhibiting a XY, XXY, or XX SRY-
| positive[27] karyotype[better source needed] Additionally,
| other sex determining systems that rely on SRY beyond XY
| are the processes that come after SRY is present or absent
| in the development of an embryo. In a normal system, if SRY
| is present for XY, SRY will activate the medulla to develop
| gonads into testes. Testosterone will then be produced and
| initiate the development of other male sexual
| characteristics. Comparably, if SRY is not present for XX,
| there will be a lack of the SRY based on no Y chromosome.
| The lack of SRY will allow the cortex of embryonic gonads
| to develop into ovaries, which will then produce estrogen,
| and lead to the development of other female sexual
| characteristics.[28]
| Philadelphia wrote:
| The Yahoo article linked says that exceptions will be
| made for people with conditions like that:
|
| "Athletes diagnosed with Complete Androgen Insensitivity
| Syndrome (CAIS) 'or other rare differences/disorders in
| sex development (DSDs), who do not benefit from the
| anabolic and/or performance-enhancing effects of
| testosterone' may still be allowed to participate in the
| women's category."
| decimalenough wrote:
| In a word: so? Intersex people exist, you have to draw
| the line somewhere, the presence of SRY seems as good as
| any.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The IOC included exceptions for certain DSDs.
|
| Please read the linked articles first before jumping to
| Wikipedia to try to counter them. The decision is more
| nuanced than you assume
| svzn wrote:
| The test is used for initial screening only.
|
| Presence of SRY in an athlete registered as female means
| further tests must be undertaken, with permission of the
| athlete, to determine eligibility.
|
| Absence of SRY means the screening is passed and the
| athlete is eligible to compete.
| hokkos wrote:
| You think Olympic athletes have any expectation of privacy
| around drug testing already? They have to register their
| every move and piss while being visible on demand.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you segregate by sex alone then trans men get a big
| advantage.
| cj wrote:
| Because they're taking testosterone?
|
| Wouldn't they be barred based on using banned substances?
| svzn wrote:
| They're not all taking banned substances. Case in point,
| Hergie Bacyadan and Elis Lundholm competed in the last
| Summer and Winter Olympics respectively.
| belorn wrote:
| Both Hergie Bacyadan and Elis Lundholm has not undergone
| any hormone replacement therapy or surgery, and competes
| in the women's divisions. Their status as trans men has
| nothing to do with their eligibility to participate.
|
| This would be like if two trans women, who has not
| undergone any hormone replacement therapy or surgery,
| would compete in men's divisions.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The rulings do not mean they now segregate by sex alone.
| Someone who was AFAB and does not have an SRY gene would was
| taking HRT would not qualify for the female division due to
| the HRT.
|
| A trans man who was not taking HRT could compete, though.
|
| The key distinction is that gender _identity_ is not what 's
| being tested.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I thought exactly the same thing until I had a politically
| agnostic fencing judge sit down and explain over the course of
| an hour and a half all of the steps national and international
| regulating organizations for that sport had taken to avoid
| issues with unfair competition. Whether similar field-leveling
| safeguards could be baked into the rules for other sports is
| left as an exercise, but this particular instance suggests
| there's more nuance here than your comment suggests.
| greygoo222 wrote:
| Transition changes biology. We don't yet have the technology to
| fully reverse the effects of male puberty, so there can be
| reasonable debate about trans women who transitioned after
| puberty, but early transitioners have no meaningful advantage.
| Their bodies, in an athletic context, are female.
|
| This is also true for many cisgender intersex women with XY
| chromosomes. Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY
| chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth. Drawing the line
| at having a Y chromosome makes no sense.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Their bodies, in an athletic context, are female.
|
| I'm sorry, but this is not true. "Puberty blockers" do not
| complete suppress the effects of male genetics. They only
| attempt to block certain hormonal effects.
|
| It is not possible to completely block the effects of having
| male genes by simple hormone modulation.
|
| > Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY
| chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth
|
| We do not determine eligibility for sports classes based on
| ability to give birth for good reason. It's not a proxy for
| the genetic athletic differences being addressed by these
| classes.
|
| Individuals with androgen insensitivity typically cannot give
| birth. This an extremely rare possibility, not a typical
| feature of the condition.
| svzn wrote:
| There are athletic sex differences even amongst prepubescent
| children, mostly caused by the testosterone surge in utero.
|
| See https://womenssportspolicy.org/pre-puberty-male-female-
| child....
| greygoo222 wrote:
| Quite a biased source, no? This doesn't provide evidence
| that these differences are biological. Boys are much more
| likely to exercise than girls due to social norms:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10478357/.
| slibhb wrote:
| > Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY
| chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth
|
| People with androgen insensitivity syndrom (AIS) have XY
| chromosomes but no uterus. So, no, they cannot give birth.
| nomdep wrote:
| People with a diagnosis for that syndrome are specifically
| allowed by the new rules
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| What would do about someone like this?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhi_Soundarajan
| svzn wrote:
| That athlete was excluded from the women's competition on the
| basis of having male physiological advantage. Exactly what
| the Olympics are now doing.
| peaseagee wrote:
| Androgen insensitivity syndrome means that her cells do not
| react to testosterone. What male advantage is there if her
| cells don't react to testosterone?
| fuge_temb wrote:
| Soundarajan's androgen insensitivity was reported as
| being partial (i.e. PAIS, and not CAIS), which implies
| some degree of testosterone-driven masculinization.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Many people like to focus on the purely physical attributes,
| but there's a clear distinction even in realms like chess.
|
| The highest ranked female chess player is right around #55
| globally, wherein the top 50 all are dominated by men.
|
| Some of this may have to do with men having more
| interest/higher propensity of starting young which is where
| most grandmasters begin their journey, but still an interesting
| thing to consider nonetheless.
| array_key_first wrote:
| It's largely because chess has historically been a boys-club
| type activity. Women were actively discouraged, if not
| barred, from playing on grounds of misogyny. So, even today,
| there's very little women taking it seriously.
|
| Of course, we all know there's no difference in the level of
| intellect or strategy between men and women.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > Of course, we all know there's no difference in the level
| of intellect or strategy between men and women.
|
| Do we?
|
| I thought it was commonly accepted that the average and
| median are the same but that men have more outliers on both
| sides.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| That's the greater variability theory. The male median is
| also higher so when you combine the two the long tail to
| the right will be dominated by males, so will the long
| tail on the left but to a lesser extent.
|
| Many IQ tests have been designed to minimize the
| difference between males and females, primarily by
| reducing g-loading. Males pull ahead after puberty, prior
| to this they have an IQ disadvantage. So you have to take
| these factors into account when trying to make a fair and
| proper assessment.
| billypilgrim wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polgar
| egman_ekki wrote:
| But has she ever passed a test to prove she doesn't have
| the SRY gene?
|
| /s
| mlboss wrote:
| Males have better spatial abilities compared to females. Most
| probably as a evolutionary trait required for hunting.
| croes wrote:
| Depends on the time of the transition. So those who
| transitioned before puberty are disadvantaged
| duped wrote:
| You're assuming that people arguing for bans on trans athletes
| are making good faith arguments about competition in sports.
| You shouldn't.
|
| Here in the US a significant part of antipathy towards trans
| people is the deeply held belief that being trans in public is
| a kind of sex abuse to the public. If you listen to what much
| of the debate has turned into here, it has _little_ to do with
| competition, and far more with the obsession over what genitals
| people have in locker rooms and bathrooms.
|
| At the end of the day the number of trans athletes is so
| vanishingly small it's not worth caring about the impacts on
| competition, when the debate itself is another framing of the
| conservative desire to make being trans illegal.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I know of one person who was born physically a woman, but has
| XY chromosomes. It is only due to modern medicine that we know
| that there is anything "unusual" with her gender. Otherwise,
| she is physically a woman with no observable clues to her
| condition.
|
| (IE, in the past, she would have been infertile, and probably
| died young due to her situation.)
|
| I'm not comfortable with saying that people like her need to
| compete with men.
| waterhouse wrote:
| Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, I imagine? That's
| probably the one category of XY people who have undergone no
| hormonal masculinization throughout their lives, and the one
| case where I'd agree with them competing with women.
| Wikipedia says it's estimated to be "1 in 20,400 to 1 in
| 99,000".
| breakyerself wrote:
| I can't imagine trans women who avoided male puberty are
| statistically any better athletes than cis women. A total ban
| seems discriminatory to me.
| cmiles8 wrote:
| You're getting into a separate issue of blocking puberty in
| children, which may would consider abuse.
|
| Separate from that there are still measurable differences
| between sexes that you can't just magically change with a pill
| or surgery.
| homeonthemtn wrote:
| I always thought the more elegant approach to all of this was to
| add a mixed sex league. Keep the traditions, add a novel new one,
| and let people consent to who they want to compete against and
| watch
| Aurornis wrote:
| In the sports I competed in, the men's class was really an open
| class. (EDIT: Looking at past results, we didn't even have a
| "men's division". There was just a separate women's division)
| Anyone could compete in it. The women's classes were the only
| restricted classes.
|
| There are several sports where female physiology (skeletal
| structure, etc) has inherent advantages over male physiology
| where this may not be true, though.
| DrJokepu wrote:
| That already exists. That's the men's category. There are no
| rules forbidding women from competing in men's categories at
| Olympic events.
| cmiles8 wrote:
| Correct and it's the same in many sports. Theres generally
| not "men's golf" and "women's golf" there's just "golf" and
| "women's golf."
|
| Women are not excluded from golf tournaments, but the
| requirements to compete (primarily how far one hits the ball)
| are vastly different. Thats why both play the same golf
| course, just from different tee boxes.
| homeonthemtn wrote:
| 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
| array_key_first wrote:
| 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.
| hmokiguess wrote:
| 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?
| barrance wrote:
| Headline is inaccurate.
|
| Transgender athletes are not barred from women's events. Female
| athletes who identify as men, or otherwise do not identify as
| women, can still compete in this category, as they have been
| doing already.
|
| What the IOC's new policy actually does is make _male athletes_
| ineligible for competition in the female category, with very few
| exceptions. These exceptions are for athletes who are technically
| male but have a disorder of sex development that confers no male
| advantage, e.g. CAIS.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| Transgender women aren't 'male athletes'
| barrance wrote:
| Why do you believe that?
| asterix_pano wrote:
| Why not? Aren't you mixing gender and sex?
| harveychess wrote:
| If you try to define athletic divisions by sex, you're
| going to have a hard time. The world's best athletes
| probably all have some unusual biology. About 1.7% of
| people are not completely biological male or female. I
| would expect that proportion to be higher for Olympic
| athletes. Excluding 1.7% or 2% or 10% of the world's best
| athletes from competing would not be fair.
| loteck wrote:
| I wish people would care a lot less about sports.
| beej71 wrote:
| So much interest in fairness in the tiny slice of human
| existence that is sports, and so little interest in the rest of
| it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I actually wish non-sports people would care less about sports,
| too.
|
| Because the decisions should be left to those of us playing the
| sports. Not bystanders trying to impose their own agendas on to
| activities they don't even participate in.
| songshu wrote:
| Yes, putting out cones. Bending over, laying down a cone,
| taking five steps, laying another. Hard work. Meanwhile
| Malcolm Gladwell changes his mind about it. Put out some
| cones, Malcolm!
| genthree wrote:
| Strongly agreed. I think there was ever a good reason for
| this to be a topic outside those with a direct interest in
| various sports governing bodies. Those should be making these
| decisions. It's deeply stupid that this has become a major
| point of contention up to the _federal_ level of government.
| LanceH wrote:
| And money from non-sports people should be left with the non-
| sports people.
| zahlman wrote:
| >Because the decisions should be left to those of us playing
| the sports.
|
| You can make the decisions, but you can't make the audience
| (a much larger body of people, who overwhelmingly do not
| participate in the sport, at least not competitively) agree
| with (or care about) your decisions or reasoning.
| skygazer wrote:
| I always sort of speculated that sports existed to channel what
| would otherwise be human tendencies toward violence; an outlet
| enablining more stable civilization. Even though I largely
| ignore sports, I appreciate it over possible alternatives.
| signatoremo wrote:
| 1) You don't care about it, therefore it isn't worth it for
| people to care?
|
| 2) why do you think those who care about this don't care about
| other issues?
|
| 3) this hardly makes the headlines, and wont stay there for
| long. It doesn't get outsized attention
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Imagine this energy put into labor reform, minumum wage,
| universal Healthcare, Imagine this fervor when your
| representatives are actively harboring sex assailants.
|
| But alas. It's easier to spread hate than enact positive
| change.
| amykhar wrote:
| When I was growing up, I remember some drama because East German
| and Soviet male athletes were trying to compete as women. If male
| to female trans athletes were allowed to compete, I imagine it
| would just be a matter of time before a female athlete would HAVE
| to be trans in order to stand a competitive chance.
| postflopclarity wrote:
| your imagination is wrong. obviously.
| amykhar wrote:
| Doubtful. Despite your articulate counter-argument, I am
| unconvinced of your viewpoint.
| hananova wrote:
| This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. Until men with
| genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example,
| being an outlier in height for basketball), this is nothing more
| than a misogynist attempt to make women's sport as unimpressive
| and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course.
|
| Remember, sport is and has always been about statistical outliers
| competing. Fairness has never been, and will never be, a genuine
| consideration.
|
| It's also mighty interesting how it's always the male division
| that's open, until you happen to have a sport where women are
| beating men at it, and then suddenly it's the women's division
| that's the open one! (See shooting.)
|
| Stuff like this is why professional sports is widely seen as a
| cheater's club where everyone tries to cheat as hard as possible
| just shy of getting caught, then acts completely innocent and
| indignant when someone else just barely crosses the line into
| getting caught.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Why should open divisions not work that way? They're meant to
| determine who's the best, regardless of sex or gender.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| >>>> This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. What are
| those? fwiw - I don't think they should be included in the ban.
| Genetic advantage people in their natural gender is how sports
| works. I'm 5'7" - Lebron definitely has a genetic advantage
| over me. Banning him from basketball isn't doing anyone favors.
| kg wrote:
| http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html discusses some
| of the genetic anomalies that are possible and coincidentally
| how they've been handled by the IOC.
| cowpig wrote:
| Interesting piece! I was first exposed to how complicated
| the biology of sex is when I listened to Radiolab's series
| on the subject:
|
| https://radiolab.org/series/radiolab-presents-gonads/
| mandevil wrote:
| Santhi Soundarajan (1) shows exactly how this ends up
| catching cis women who were raised as women from birth. Which
| is why it's a bad idea to draw strict lines.
|
| Edited to add: Based on
| http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html I just
| discovered another case, that of Polish sprinter Ewa
| Klobukowska who was banned from sports in 1967 and stripped
| of her medals for failing a sex test _even though she gave
| birth to a child a year later_. For the 1996 games 8 women
| failed their sex tests, but 7 of them had AIS and one had
| 5-alpha-steroid reductase deficiency. All of them were
| reinstated, and that 's when the Olympics ended their
| previous iteration of genetic testing female athletes.
|
| This idea has a long history, and it's a long history of
| being wrong. I'm not expecting any better out of it this
| time.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhi_Soundarajan The first
| female Tamil athlete to win a medal at the Asia games (in
| 2006), then had her silver medal stripped from her because
| she had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome- so she's a XY who
| never developed male genitals because her body just ignored
| the chemical signals, as happens to something like 1 in every
| 40,000 births. She tried to commit suicide by drinking rat
| poison after she came home in disgrace.
| dwedge wrote:
| Men who supplement testosterone are already banned if caught.
| hananova wrote:
| That if caught is doing very heavy lifting. You can only get
| caught if you dope to an amount that's impossible to see
| naturally, and that's a very high amount.
| j_w wrote:
| Well I think it bans women that thought/think that they are cis
| but actually aren't, which is a bit of a different story. A
| fairly tragic one. Intersex/trans/anything else people just
| don't really have a clean fit into a lot of places, which is
| unfortunate.
|
| > this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make
| women's sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules
| set by mostly old men of course.
|
| Well, not really. 56%[1] of young women think that trans women
| should not be allowed in women's sports.
|
| > It's also mighty interesting how it's always the male
| division that's open, until you happen to have a sport where
| women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it's the women's
| division that's the open one! (See shooting.)
|
| IMO the "better" division should be open. If we are going to do
| two classes, and we find that one class has some sort of
| physical advantage inherently, then that class should be the
| "open" one.
|
| > Stuff like this is why professional sports is widely seen as
| a cheater's club where everyone tries to cheat as hard as
| possible just shy of getting caught, then acts completely
| innocent and indignant when someone else just barely crosses
| the line into getting caught.
|
| A lot of people (the majority?) don't understand the extent of
| PEDs usage in sports. When everyone cheats nobody does. I've
| heard the argument before for going an "anything goes" division
| from friends for some sports, but then people are just going to
| start dying regularly from side effects like in body building.
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-
| american...
| hananova wrote:
| Interesting how it's "unfortunate" if it doesn't affect men.
| The blatant hypocrisy is disgusting. There have been women
| banned from women's sports who then later literally gave
| birth, if giving birth doesn't qualify one as female, then
| what are we doing as a society?
|
| Your linked article is also a massive category error. The
| people whose opinion should be polled should be actual
| competing athletes, that's how the rules should be set in a
| sport. The biggest anti-trans athlete is some 5th place loser
| that couldn't handle sharing 5th place with another woman and
| had to instead cry about it, only way to get in the news at
| 5th place, I suppose.
| fxwin wrote:
| > It's also mighty interesting how it's always the male
| division that's open, until you happen to have a sport where
| women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it's the women's
| division that's the open one! (See shooting.)
|
| Just in case you're referring to Zhang Shan winning Gold in
| 1992: the decision to bar women from competing in the 1996
| Olympics was made before Zhang had won her medal. [0]
|
| > Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from
| sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball)
|
| We don't have height categories, we have categories based on
| sex. We have categories based on sex because there are physical
| difference caused by difference in sex that lead to advantages
| in sports competitions. As such, people who have physical
| advantages over others based on their difference in sex (e.g.
| going through male puberty vs. female puberty) shouldn't be
| able to compete in the category created to protect participants
| from precisely those differences.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan#cite_ref-nyt_4-0
| jakeinspace wrote:
| I would argue that it's the formerly presumed binary nature
| of sex/gender that made it a logical split for all sports.
| While marital arts and weightlifting tend to seperate by
| weight as well, that is because those particular events are
| particularly biased toward muscle mass and height/reach by
| proxy. Most sports are less clearly advantaged by size
| (soccer, for example). You just can't practically divide
| entire team sports by gradations of height, because there
| aren't enough players in a school for more than a few squads.
|
| If you wanted to divide by height or weight in a binary
| fashion to reduce the number of teams, then obviously you'll
| just have some sports where everyone in the under-6' team is
| 5'11.5, which seems not optimal and unfair.
|
| I wish there was a good solution.
| kixiQu wrote:
| > We don't have height categories, we have categories based
| on sex.
|
| I mean, we do have weight categories in combat sports, right?
| I don't see why we couldn't come up with similarly neutral
| categories if we think it's good to segment people out by
| physical advantages. The parent comment is making a good
| point, though: it feels like some people care a lot about
| physical advantages that map onto gender stuff they care
| about, and not a lot about weird genetic anomalies that
| provide physical advantages that aren't gendered.
| fxwin wrote:
| We could do that! I'm just trying to say that given
| categories based on (biological) sex, we should find some
| criterion based on biological sex to sort people into said
| categories, which the OC decision seems to do (at least
| better than the alternatives I have encountered). I don't
| have a problem at all with finding different ways of
| defining categories for competitions.
|
| Re: anomalies - I think this is just unavoidable in any
| sort of category system, and I don't have a good solution
| for it except to consider frequency and severity.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| > It's also mighty interesting how it's always the male
| division that's open, until you happen to have a sport where
| women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it's the women's
| division that's the open one!
|
| Hypothetically you could have three divisions: open, men, and
| women. In many contexts it's more practical to have two, where
| one is open. In those cases, if the sex that didn't win more
| was also the open division, then people would complain because
| both divisions would be dominated by players of one sex.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| The basketball league for short people would probably ban
| people who tested over 5'5" even if they were 6'10" but
| _identified as short_.
| hananova wrote:
| Good thing that's nothing like HRT then, is it? Height is
| (well, mostly) immutable. Sex is not, though many people will
| fight tooth and nail to pretend otherwise.
| nekusar wrote:
| The fair answer is to remove sex, gender, and everything related
| to that from classification. Dont look at it. Dont consider it.
| Everyone competes together.
|
| It means that floor gymnastics is fair for *anyone* to compete
| in. None of this "wrong crotch shape" bullshit. Or intersex. Or
| trans. If you are good enough, you get in. If not, you dont.
|
| And the whole trans argument would go away.
|
| Means testing and gender means testing is a scourge. Time to be
| rid of it.
| kakacik wrote:
| Then most vocal folks would scream to no end how its unfair
| first 25 positions in given sport are held by men. You know,
| women want to see other women getting medals and I don't blame
| them, I want to see that too.
|
| Good luck with that at any sport where strength and/or
| endurance matter most, just look at any given sport and check
| top male vs top female records. Running, climbing, hockey,
| football, rowing and so on and on.
|
| Thats not really a fair sport in eyes of most folks. Unless
| thats your goal.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Women would win almost no sports competition. Maybe that is
| fine in your view, but many women want to have a chance at
| winning.
| callistocodes wrote:
| 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 for the last event in case
| anyone might get upset, the staff changed it to say "woman" when
| I got there anyways, and then I lost to a woman twice my age.
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > 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 could just abuse this
| loophole to seek the same benefit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_East_Germany
|
| As far as I see, this issue is only tangentially related to
| transgender rights.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| You don't have to go back that far.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_Russia
| lokar wrote:
| And china:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_China
|
| I don't believe either of them have really stopped.
| juneyyyyyy wrote:
| 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.
| dmbche wrote:
| That's a weird take. How bad do you imagine it going?
| mmooss wrote:
| > As far as I see, this issue is only tangentially related to
| transgender rights.
|
| It affects the rights of transgender people, so it is
| directly related to transgender rights. Also, I don't at all
| think that it's coincidence that people spreading hate about
| transgender people are the same ones so concerned about this
| particular issue?
|
| People spreading hate and prejudice always have <reasons>.
|
| > We all remember state-sponsored doping scandals from the
| 60s
|
| We all do? People born in the 1950s or earlier might
| remember, making them at least 65 years old. I've never heard
| of it from people of any age. In any case, it's hard to
| connect this 60 year old issue with today's decision.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| > but would be sad to be banned.
|
| Enforcing the existing and long-standing sex-based
| classification is not a ban; competition within one's own sex
| category was always and remains permitted.
| etherus wrote:
| 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
| yada to accept that people are 'trans enough', which is
| itself discriminatory. Trans people are a lot less distinct
| and separate from everyone else than you'd be led to think.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| 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.
| etherus wrote:
| 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/bjspor
| ts-2023-... [3]
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10641525/
| peyton wrote:
| I think the eye test is more reliable than the BMJ when
| it comes to international competition at the highest
| level. We've all seen the videos.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| "This might feel counterintuitive" is precisely why the
| religious right has seized on transgender participation
| in athletics as a wedge issue. When they say "well,
| somebody who was born as a man obviously has a natural
| advantage over people born as women," it feels logical,
| right? The fact that it largely isn't supported by data
| rarely comes up, and when it does, it's easy to deflect
| with "maybe there's just not enough data yet" (which, of
| course, could just as easily be an argument _against_
| imposing such bans, but never mind).
|
| It is infuriating how successful the "facts don't care
| about your feelings" crowd has been at pushing
| discriminatory legislation through in the last few years
| based largely on feelings rather than facts.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| Let's reverse this. Why should physical competition be
| classified based on sociological conceptions around
| gender?
| mirekrusin wrote:
| There could be translympics just like there is paralympics.
| dpatterbee wrote:
| We probably don't want to head down the path of creating
| new competitions for people that meet arbitrary criteria.
| White-straight-man only olympics anyone?
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| This kind of argument was not persuasive when Alito deployed
| it for his pedantic dissent in _Bostock v. Clayton County_
| [0, specifically p. 17], and it remains not persuasive now.
|
| [0]
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
| qingcharles wrote:
| 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 with a sane way to deal with this?
| (apart from events that are genderless like shooting)
|
| Then we have sports that needn't be gendered because of
| physical differences, but are anyway, e.g. esports.
| scoofy wrote:
| 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.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Unfortunately pointless, mostly symbolic things attract the
| most hysterical reactions from people.
| peyton wrote:
| Five billion people followed the Paris Olympics. It's
| actually kind of important.
| squigz wrote:
| How do you even measure that at that scale? I'm sure I
| would be counted among that 5 billion, yet my "following"
| was searching medal counts every couple days to see how
| poorly my country was doing, yet I would never describe
| it as "important" to me in any way.
| TurdF3rguson wrote:
| Assuming you have already procured food and shelter,
| everything important in your life is symbolic.
| scoofy wrote:
| Right, which is why civil rights laws tend to be about
| employment and housing.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
| grogg wrote:
| Seems to me like the obvious answer is to categorize these
| events by weight division rather than gender, but this will
| never be considered because the hysteria is the point.
| servo_sausage wrote:
| Doesn't really work, men are stronger than women at the
| same weight...
|
| And that's at the peak of fitness; lower level competitions
| with juniors or not optimallyfit people exaggerate the
| strength difference.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Explain how you'd do basketball? Marathons? Maybe it isn't
| obvious, but weight isn't the main difference between men
| and women, nor is it necessarily an advantage in different
| sports.
| dpark wrote:
| You might want to look at strength standards for women and
| men at the same weight.
|
| https://exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards
|
| Weight classes are a great thing in some sports. They do
| not solve for the discrepancies between women and men,
| though.
| pmontra wrote:
| Fighting sports are divided by weight (boxing, judo, etc)
| but no woman would even be close to winning in the same
| weight category of men, so we will never see a woman in
| those sports at the Olympics or anywhere it matters.
|
| And who would pick a woman to play in a team of volleyball,
| basketball, soccer? I think that historically the only
| sport in which men and women are absolutely equal is
| shooting. Maybe curling but it's usually the man that
| sweeps the ice (a little bit of extra strength.)
| txrx0000 wrote:
| The solution is to develop relative skill rating systems like
| Elo.
| dpd_dpd wrote:
| No, the solution is to exclude male advantage from the
| female competition via evidence-based analysis, as the
| IOC's new policy does.
| ordersofmag wrote:
| Not sure how this helps. Olympic events already have
| relative rating systems that ranks all the participant:
| pretty complicated and sport dependent systems that
| determine qualification for the games and competition
| amongst all the competitors at the games. The problem how
| to have _separate_ competitions for different groups of
| participants when there isn 't a universally shared
| agreement on who should be in which group.
| trhway wrote:
| >This is one of the rare problems where there exists no good
| solution to the issue.
|
| similar problem in boat races - different boats have
| different characteristics, thus PHRF rating. Not perfect, yet
| it works.
|
| The same thing i expect to happen with human sports too -
| analyze DNA, assign handicap score, and let everybody run. Of
| course that wouldn't work for say boxing or judo - though
| even here with time we can come up with exoskeletons (or some
| drugs) equalizing your DNA-based advantages/disadvantages.
|
| Or we can just have competitions in 3 categories - "only
| those assigned male at birth", "only those assigned female at
| birth", "anybody can choose to compete in that category". The
| 3rd category may just naturally become most competitive and
| interesting without any "males in female sports" issues we
| currently have.
| lokar wrote:
| 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.
| ordersofmag wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there are folks involved in doing drug
| testing for many sports so saying are doing nothing seems
| hyperbolic. Are there specific things you think the bodies in
| charge of drug testing should be doing but aren't? Genuinely
| curious.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Organizations are large and not everyone works on the same
| things.
| michaelt wrote:
| Competitive sport is unusual in that the whole thing is, in a
| sense, a search for outliers.
|
| Finding very rightmost person on the histogram of running speed
| or swimming ability or weightlifting strength. The very, very
| rare. The 7ft 6in guys. Then we put them on a podium, hand them
| a medal, and wrap them in a flag.
|
| In most other fields, outliers average out. The new subdivision
| of houses gets framed at the speed of the average carpenter on
| the team, not the fastest. We don't send the fastest carpenter
| to represent the county, then the state, then the country to
| find out if she's really the world number 1.
|
| In sport, though? Finding the people with the unnatural
| biological advantage is what it's all about.
| jazzpush2 wrote:
| Well, in your example, carpentry isn't about winning or being
| the best, it's about creating a house to sell (or flip, where
| you could actually frame a better argument about doing the
| worst possible job the fastest).
| fourseventy wrote:
| The fact that you think you need to put biological advantage in
| scare quotes tells me all I need to know about how delusional
| you are.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| > The attention this topic receives is disproportionate
| considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics
| level.
|
| It's not about the number of males in women's category. When
| one such player takes a spot in classification, then all women
| behind him are treated unfairly, because, were such trans
| player not classified, they would have one place upper. It
| follows that if takes one male player to win in a category[1]
| to treat ALL women unfairly.
|
| Centering this issue around trans people is incredibly tone
| deaf, because it's not about them, it's about all women who
| have right to their own category.
|
| [1] e.g. Imane Khelif, who admittet having SRY gene
| mbesto wrote:
| This is the most objective viewpoint on transgenders in sports:
|
| https://shows.acast.com/realscienceofsport/episodes/whytrans...
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Why?
| raffael_de wrote:
| olympics should be entirely unisex. simple as that.
| htx80nerd wrote:
| 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.
| Gud wrote:
| No thanks
| lbreakjai wrote:
| Which would effectively make it an entirely male event. Which
| is why it got segregated in the first place.
| blks wrote:
| The only reason is topic is even on the table is the sheer amount
| of political grifters riding the trans "panic" for many years,
| trying to rile up a mob. This is a non issue, and online trans
| investigators and people like jk Rowling so far managed to only
| hurt multiple (assigned at birth) women in sports, whos looks
| don't conform with traditional femininity.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Trans panic is doubly popular on the right because it's a wedge
| issue within the left, it divided modern feminism into two
| camps
| tty456 wrote:
| Bingo.
| nikolay wrote:
| There should be Genderlympics, similar to the Paralympics. It's
| only fair!
| frizlab wrote:
| Good thing IMHO
| syngrog66 wrote:
| This story/topic should not be on HN.
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