The development comes after a presentation to the International Olympic Committee by its medical chief, which highlighted the potential physical advantages of competing in women’s sport after being born male.
Do trans women keep placing number 1 during competition?
No, but there was that fuss last year at the Olympics because some of the boxers looked manly. They weren’t even trans, incidentally, not that that little fact ever made the headlines or the Facebook groups.
You’re right, thats a very important factor to consider. We shouldnt worry about it until they start consistently placing in first place. Thats when flags will/should be raised.
They should also ban tall people from playing basketball. They have a potential physical advantage over short people.
No, they should get rid of men/women split and divide people into tiers. Each athlete would be assigned to tier based on his performance and we would have gold, silver and bronze medals in each tier. We would then say “Phelps won a Tier A gold medal in the Olympics” or “Williams won Tier D gold medal”. This way it would be 100% fair and non-discriminatory.
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Tall people were born tall.
The tallest baby ever born was 28 inches tall. That’s 2’4”.
I’m not tall, but I’m taller than that.
I put it to you that babies are born short and grow over time.
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That’s a pedantic argument.
if they got surgery to reduce their size would you be okay with it?
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So the effort trans women put in to compete doesn’t count for anything, people just decide to transition to win sporting events, and trans women are men with a different body. Wow, you really hit the trifecta of shit takes.
Wow, those are quite the arguments I put forward in your head. I notice that you didn’t adress any of my questions about fairnes.
If you want to have a conversation please answer my questions. If you just want to hiss and spit I’ll take a pass.
There are no legitimate questions about the fairness of it:
https://www.genderjustice.us/commentary/trans-athletes-are-not-the-real-threat/
“In fact, after hormone therapy, trans women’s performance aligns with cisgender women’s performance.”
The key bit there being “hormone therapy”.
Your notion that men choose to compete as women so they can dominate is absolute, complete, 100% transphobic bullshit.
That’s not the way ANY of this works.
The real question to ask is why Republicans want to ban hormone therapy.
Sorry, it’s not worth having baby’s first “what is a trans person” conversation with you, which would be clearly needed before delving into the nitty gritty. Take that pass! Go somewhere else.
I’ve probably had trans friends since before you were born. Don’t lecture me.
You don’t want to have the discussion of fairness because it’s hard and chanting slogans, organizing boycots, and labelling anyone who doesn’t agree with the group thought a transphobe is easy.
If you want to have a converation, I’m here. If you just want to hiss and spit, I’ll pass.
Dont try and speak logically about this
… its not the same at all. And no I won’t explain all the reasons why.
Well, I personally consider that great news that I can agree with… sorry if you dont feel the same.
The Olympic committee has had well established rules on transgender athletes for decades. This change is ridiculous. They might as well go back to chromosomal testing for athletes. It makes as much sense as this nonsense
The Olympic committee has had well established rules on transgender athletes for decades
What are they? The article says “leaving it for each sport to decide themselves.” which doesn’t sound consistent.
I’m not sure but I will comment anyway.
I believe each sport’s federation has rules they decide themselves and those are normally used but sometimes the Olympic Committee will ban a federation because of corruption or some mismanagement and take over organization of those specific events. They did it with boxing in the previous Olympics for example. When they do it they have to decide which rules will apply and looks like now they decided the default rules for all sports that fall under their jurisdiction. Last time with boxing they decided to use the same rules that were used 4 years earlier which meant some previously banned athletes where allowed to compete and a lot of participants complained.
Hmm. “Established” is factually correct but I’m not sure “well established” is a good description.
Watch them ban transgender women and clowns like JK Rowling STILL accuse cis women in the Olympics of being trans
Just make the mens competition an “open” competition so that anybody can qualify if they can. A trans-woman competing in the “open” category would be no problem.
Other categories can then stay protected.
'cause I know I feel welcome, and not completely othered and invalidated when I’m forced to play on a team that is otherwise entirely men, whom have athletic advantage over me
Who said it would be entirely men? Chess had this format forever and any woman that had the ability to compete in the top level open tournaments was competing in them.
Same chess where men creep on women and female grandmasters report being harassed whenever they try to compete alongside men?
I don’t think women feel welcome when you can accost them and if they say anything they’re just a bitch lying to cause problems.
So instead of addressing the misogyny, let’s sweep it under the rug by not allowing women to compete in the top tournaments? By your logic, shouldn’t we just make a third transgender category to solve the transphobia?
Who said it would be entirely men?
First hand experience
We’re only a matter of time from a sporting regime where it’s just broadly “open” to a level bordering on chaos, and it’s the only thing that is going to keep people watching.
The “should trans people compete” debate is going to be overshadowed by the “should people with extra hearts and enhanced organs be allowed to compete” debate.
The idea of “preserving fairness” in sports is wild when you think about it. Nothing about sports is “fair” you only succeed by getting an unfair advantage over your opponents, we just like to delude ourselves into thinking that because we set some kind of parameters around this capability to gain an advantage, that it’s “fair.”
I get the giggles watching Anatoly prank videos. He plays a nerdy, Eastern European janitor, pushing a mop around the gym. He regularly astounds the much larger guys by effortlessly lifting their weights.
One of his gags is casually handing the monster weightlifters his 32kg mop. They instantly drop it, “Is there problem? See! Is normal mop.” Picks it up one handed, zero strain.
This one is great! Girls are trying not to straight make fun of him talking about ab training. “Show us yours.” Aight. (Can’t find the better version where you can see his abs, but he’s a monster.)
Whatever his training regime, it’s obvious he has muscle density bordering on superhuman. Talk about advantage!
Or look at Michael Phelps. Dude smokes and is basically Aquaman. I forget what’s unusual about his body, but he’s a rare one.
Webbed fingers and toes, and disproportionately long arms for more power.
Isn’t there something about Phelp’s weirdly long torso?
I think that’s part of it, more torso than legs helps in core power and super long arms for power generation.
In many sports it already is
Couldn’t there just be an open category in addition to men’s and women’s?
I don’t think men need a protected category for most sports, so having both would just be duplication.
If nothing else, it’s just options for someone to pick from. Why allow one person more choices and not another? Everyone should have the same ability to choose.
We already have that. Men can join the men’s sport, which is usually open, like the NHL, but a restricted group can join the women’s sport. So women already have two choices - join a group where they are statistically unlikely to win, or compete against a group which is a better representation of her peers.
If you want more restricted groups, sure, why not? But the more groups there are, the more most sports will be diluted.
Thank you for the insight. I don’t watch or care about the Olympics or sports in general, so this whole conversation is moot. But to clarify, I was thinking more broadly about events at the Olympics, not just traditional sports. I’d think something like archery or fencing or something that’s not purely strength related would be more even.
There are some interesting cases. It took a long time for men to break into synchronized swimming, where women typically have the advantage. Archery still has some strength elements that could be relevant, but shooting should be pretty egalitarian and is still split, as far as I know.
I have never been particularly into sports, and stopped watching the Olympics very much when the amateur requirements were relaxed (when hockey was dominated by NHL stars). There may be some nuances I’m missing, and there is also the aspect of making a sport/competition more welcoming to women, such as women’s chess. While those are interesting social/cultural aspects, they have much less bearing on capabilities of a given sex/gender.
Men’s IS the open category
Thank you for clarifying.
To reiterate my reply to another user, I don’t really watch or care about the Olympics or sports in general. I just out of my ass about things I know nothing about.
Still seems weird to me, though.
boycott the olympics then
Another reason to
What about the potential physical advantages of competing in women’s sport after being born strong?
There are none. That doesn’t stop bigots from pretending trans women on estrogen have any advantage.
They don’t give a fuck about fair competition so that’s irrelevant. This is just bigotry.
You didn’t answer the question. And it’s a valid question to my mind. See my reply to the above.
Let me ask you a question in turn. How many trans women are placing well in sports? Numbers, percentages, whatever you’ve got. How many cis women have had their rightful first place stolen by someone who’s just naturally better by merit of how they were born?
In answer to your question, transition does a lot, more than you would expect. It’s pretty statistically clear that the residual effects of going through the wrong puberty haven’t caused a physical ability imbalance that renders competition unfair. We haven’t seen any such thing play out, unless you consider any trans woman placing ever as inherently unfair and stealing results from cis women.
I want to know where this outrage was for Michael Phelps. We didn’t see legislation passed to deperson Andre the Giant. There are huge biological differences between people, and some people have an advantage in sport by merit of how their body works. There’s never outrage against gifted men.
Women have to suffer the brunt of this line of attack. Many cis women, for some reason especially women of color, get attacked as men if they have elevated testosterone, chromosomal abnormalities, or many other random biological quirks that someone doesn’t think is fair. Imane Khalif, a cis woman, gets attacked for not being a woman. Lin Yu Ting gets attacked for not being a woman. Caster Semenya gets attacked for not being a woman.
This trans panic in sports is not about fairness. Nobody making these decisions are doing so to create a balanced competition. This is sexism and transphobia being used to police women to ensure they’re feminine enough to appear on the world stage.
Imane Khelif, Lin Yu Ting, and Caster Semenya are all biologically male (not trans, DSD males incorrectly assigned female at birth). No cis women won a medal in the 2016 Rio 800m, all of the medal winners were DSD male. That would likely continue to be the case except they are no longer eligible for the women’s category.
Michael Phelps’ records have already been surpassed. DSD males competing in women’s sports set records that cis woman will never surpass. It is not surprising that the vast majority of people find this unfair. The IOC is doing the right thing.
So, none of the people mentioned are trans women? Why exactly are you making these comments?
I focused on those athletes because they’re the motivating factors behind this decision. DSD males and trans women both have the innate advantage of male puberty, which is why the IOC is making this move. To focus specifically on trans women, here’s one example out of many on why we have separate competitions for men and women (not a sympathetic article, but factual):
In 2016, a Portuguese-American athlete named Hannah Caldas participated in the female category of the “Monstar Games,” a large fitness competition held in Rio de Janeiro. The Games included a weightlifting challenge run by Brazil’s Fortify Equipamentos sporting-goods retail chain, whereby contestants were scored on how many times they could lift heavy balls over their heads in the space of a minute.
An event official asked Caldas to choose between one of two balls—weighing thirty and seventy pounds, respectively.
“How about the 120?” Caldas replied, pointing to a third, much larger ball.
According to Caldas’s subsequent recollection, the official explained that this wasn’t a realistic option for contestants registered in the female category, since “no girls had been able to pick it up.”
“Challenge accepted!” Caldas later wrote on Instagram. While a fellow athlete named Joyce Rodrigues filmed, Caldas proceeded to heave the 120-pound weight into the air no fewer than sixteen times.
The idea that biological males don’t have an athletic advantage over females is plainly, obviously wrong
USMS records indicate that it was 23 January 2009 when a new swimming sensation identified as “Hannah Caldas” suddenly appeared on the women’s USMS racing scene. Despite being a complete unknown, Caldas immediately began dominating the competition in the 30–34-year-old age group—including winning five out of six events at Caldas’s inaugural tournament in Charlotte, NC. The performances were so astounding that Caldas reportedly almost hit a benchmark time for Portugal’s women’s Olympic swimming team (missing the cut by a mere 0.3 seconds).
This would be a shockingly impressive athletic run for anyone—let alone a (nominal) rookie such as Caldas, who was able to blast past former NCAA swimming stars with ease despite having no collegiate training as a female athlete; and who was, by this point in life, a full decade past the prime age for Olympic-calibre swimmers.
That’s why the argument that trans women are only 0.X% of competitors doesn’t hold any water. They can still dominate a sport and deny medals to any cis women competing. This is now becoming an issue at the Olympic level which is why the IOC is addressing it, but people have tracked many more cases at sites like https://hecheated.org/. Whether or not you like the people behind that or similar sites, it’s more about the facts.
Exactly my point. Thanks for illustrating it.
Of theres one thinf I know about babies, it’s that about half of them are born strong
you clearly dont know what youre talking about
I question that as well. The strength advantage seems to be a factor of how early one transitions. If we figure that in, now we have another controversy, another fat can of worms.
They’re probably thinking along these lines and just saying, “Fuck it, total ban, zero tolerance.”
You may have misunderstood the point of my rhetorical question. I will elaborate.
What about people who are born with XX chromosomes, and all the associated lady bits, who happen to be especially strong? Or tall? Or flexible? Or any other kind of physical difference that would give them an advantage in their chosen sport?
Wouldn’t those people have exactly the same kind of “unfair advantage”?
“Oh, wait, that’s not what we mean,” the Olympics organizers might say. “We are only concerned with one kind of innate physical difference, and not any others.”
I think a lot of people are going to boycott these Olympics. The trump regime doesn’t deserve to host.
Trans men are okay then? Sick, as long as the freaks don’t see them they’re safe
You should want to abolish the premise of womens sports that’s progressive, otherwise you are admitting women should be in leagues of their own.
