Transgender Athletes

Scarlett Dracarys said:
Who banned them? The other athletes? They were banned by sporting organizations. The other athletes had nothing to do with it and they shouldn't have to suffer the consequences of an organization who can't provide a safe environment for all their athletes to compete...fairly.
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What? Where did I ever blame cis athletes, they're also is a shit position, I recognize that. I'm just pointing out the "I want everyone to be happy" is not possible in this debate.
 
maniak said:
Do you believe those two things are compatible? Is a transgender kid who wants to play sports but is banned living a good and happy life?
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Sure they can do sports, but i don't think they should compete on top level against those born as girls.
Trans people can live a much better and safer life today than 20 or more years ago, it is easier to get the operations they need to transition (sorry i don't know the correct terms), so they have a good chance to live a better life.
They are more accepted in large parts of the world.
I think these are all steps in the right direction for them, and they should be happy.
Participating in female divisions in sports shouldn't be that important for their happiness.

I play and watch a lot of disc golf, there's a big discussion going around in that sport right now because of this.
It's pretty easy to pick side in disc golf atleast, cause the trans person this is mostly about, is also a douche.
She said something along the lines of "If they think it's unfair that i throw farther than them, they should just practice more and get better".

Also in disc golf there are 2 divisions, one called FPO (female pro open) and MPO (mixed pro open) - to me it seems quite obvious which she should play in.
Her defence is "then i'm not going to win money and lose income" - the same as so called cis women could say when she comes in and take their tournament winnings.
 
Grylte said:
Sure they can do sports, but i don't think they should compete on top level against those born as girls.
Trans people can live a much better and safer life today than 20 or more years ago, it is easier to get the operations they need to transition (sorry i don't know the correct terms), so they have a good chance to live a better life.
They are more accepted in large parts of the world.
I think these are all steps in the right direction for them, and they should be happy.
Participating in female divisions in sports shouldn't be that important for their happiness.

I play and watch a lot of disc golf, there's a big discussion going around in that sport right now because of this.
It's pretty easy to pick side in disc golf atleast, cause the trans person this is mostly about, is also a douche.
She said something along the lines of "If they think it's unfair that i throw farther than them, they should just practice more and get better".

Also in disc golf there are 2 divisions, one called FPO (female pro open) and MPO (mixed pro open) - to me it seems quite obvious which she should play in.
Her defence is "then i'm not going to win money and lose income" - the same as so called cis women could say when she comes in and take their tournament winnings.
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Do you make distinction between pro sports and high school sports?

Surely the consequences for an adult who is banned from playing a pro sport are different from the consequences to a 14 year old who is told you can't be a part of this because you're different.

I accept some harsh rules for transgender adults might be needed to maintain the fairness of professional sports, but I simply can't accept those rules when we're talking about kids.
 
maniak said:
Do you make distinction between pro sports and high school sports?

Surely the consequences for an adult who is banned from playing a pro sport are different from the consequences to a 14 year old who is told you can't be a part of this because you're different.

I accept some harsh rules for transgender adults might be needed to maintain the fairness of professional sports, but I simply can't accept those rules when we're talking about kids.
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Is high school sports a thing outside of the US?
Never heard about it in my part of the world, atleast.

What about the people who lose their spot?
14 year olds shouldn't change gender (or sex, not sure what the right term is, i'm afraid).
 
Grylte said:
Is high school sports a thing outside of the US?
Never heard about it in my part of the world, atleast.

What about the people who lose their spot?
14 year olds shouldn't change gender (or sex, not sure what the right term is, i'm afraid).
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The US tend to export these things, so it'll be a matter of time.

What do you mean about spots? Spot in the team? That happens all the time for a number of reasons. I've lost my spot in teams because someone else was better, because I was having bad grades, because I broke a window in a locker room kicking a ball. It happens. But telling a kid "look you did nothing wrong but you're out of the team because you're different from the other kids", I mean that shit is devastating.

As for your last sentence, I couldn't disagree more, plenty of examples who did it and are much happier.
 
dove said:
This. Like how can anyone seriously argue that there is no unfair advantage in transgender women competing with non transgender is beyond me but that's the result of years of radical left brainwashing I suppose. We struggle to define woman nowadays because people are afraid to offend some group and be called whatever-phobic. Madness.
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And funny enough, women had to fight for their rights for centuries, and now comes the next thing. They will fight this hard, once the brainwashing wears off
 
Escobar said:
And funny enough, women had to fight for their rights for centuries, and now comes the next thing. They will fight this hard, once the brainwashing wears off
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More women than men are in favor of transgender rights. Luckily most women realize this is not us vs them. It's a tragic tactic, trying to pit cis women against transgender women.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
I don't necessarily disagree with you because biological advantages of male born people obviously comes into play, regardless of the already utilised limitations on testosterone and other tests carried out to ensure that fairplay is carried out, when it comes to physical activities, in these sports. And maybe those these existing processes need to be advertised more to improve general confidence, somewhat...?

But at the same time the human factor also needs to be accepted and recognised. And as the parent of a transitioning child I know, at least from a personal level listening to my kid and how they feel; it's frightening how often these examples in sport are used as a reason to attack their existence. And then politicians, more than happy to feck around and steal, suddenly decide that gender is going to be to focus of their political campaigns - which aren't in any way divisive purely because hate brings them votes. And now the media report it because, if it isn't clearly already the talking point which it already is after public figures have been piggybacking off of it, it certainly brings the clicks to their website... But ultimately we all collectively begin to forget the most important factor. The Human factor...

Too often we all look through these situations through a lense that forgets that we're not just discussing "person A" or "person B". These are real people who are affected by often arbitrary decisions made by sporting - and political - committees that prefer to follow the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality without a single thought about how their actions affect the people they're challenging.

Until you've had to comfort and reassure a young kid at 4am because they don't want to live anymore, because all they see online is hate about people like them, it's difficult to appreciate that this is more than just about empty, unassociated names, on a news report.

If we're talking about souls then let's get the morality and humanity parts sorted out first.
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Very powerful post, and such a necessary counterpoint to all those "why aren't there any trans men playing for the Denver Nuggets I wonder lol".
 
Escobar said:
And funny enough, women had to fight for their rights for centuries, and now comes the next thing. They will fight this hard, once the brainwashing wears off
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yeah this is why fascist groups turn up to support gender critical rallies

transphobia, like homophobia before it, benefits the patriarchy. men are more likely to be transphobic than women.
 
giorno said:
What that says is you don't genuinely consider trans-women, women. Usain Bolt had massive genetic, physical advantages over every other person he competed against. Should we have excluded him from competing?

I get the desire to protect cis women athletes, there is no easy or simple solution here, but not at the cost of denying an entire group of people their identity
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Sport is never entirely fair because some of us have better biological conditions to compete at the very top and the more physical a sport is, the truer this statement becomes. So you're right, you probably could never have beaten Bolt in a foot race regardless of how much you trained. In a way, he's just more "biologically talented" than you.The division of sports competitions into tournaments for women and men is an attempt to match an athlete with athletes who have roughly the same biological preconditions. But let's be real, your biological sex is by far the most decisive factor in terms of "biological talent" for a sport. Muscle mass, tissue, hormones, etc. all "correlate" heavily with your biological sex. I mean, in martial arts competitions you often have weight classes or something similar and maybe something like that (only more refined with regards to the aforementioned muscle mass, tissue, etc.) could be a way of providing a non-gender related measuring criterion to create a fairer playing field but let's not kid ourselves, this would only lead to a) transwomen and transmen having their own respective competitions, however named and/or b) transwomen competing with cis men and transmen competing with cis women.

On a more general note, I think it will be important for the future that we don't confuse biology with discrimination. I know women who find it discriminating if somebody argues that women have lower performance ceilings in certain sports than men. Even if your biological sex is male and you identify as a woman, your biology will be different from a cis woman. That may not be fair but it is the reality. Humanity can (and absolutely should) only do its best to make society as fair as possible for everyone but IMO we shouldn't ignore scientific facts because of it.
 
fergieisold said:
Thankfully common sense is filtering through and trans women are being widely banned across sport in the female category. So we won’t get a biological man dominating women’s sport.
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It's cool how transphobia is just A-OK on this here forum. Just fecking splendid.
 
I am not going to judge anyone's intentions in this thread, but surely you're all aware that keep referring to transgender women and biological males is something transphobes do all the time, right?
 
maniak said:
I am not going to judge anyone's intentions in this thread, but surely you're all aware that keep referring to transgender women and biological males is something transphobes do all the time, right?
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Apparently referring to biological women as biological women is considered by some as transphobic, too.
 
Carolina Red said:
I did. Yesterday. In this thread.
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OK, that sucks, it doesn't invalidate what I said, though.

Every time I've listened to transgender women talking about this I always hear the terms cis women and transgender women. Since gender is being talked in a different way than biology, I think that's fair, so those are the terms I use.
 
maniak said:
I am not going to judge anyone's intentions in this thread, but surely you're all aware that keep referring to transgender women and biological males is something transphobes do all the time, right?
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and?
 
maniak said:
OK, that sucks, it doesn't invalidate what I said, though.

Every time I've listened to transgender women talking about this I always hear the terms cis women and transgender women. Since gender is being talked in a different way than biology, I think that's fair, so those are the terms I use.
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I use the same terminology when discussing trans issues in general society.

But this is about sports, where, to me, biology is what matters.
 
Halftrack said:
It's cool how transphobia is just A-OK on this here forum. Just fecking splendid.
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Your allowed to disagree with an opinion and not be transphobic. For instance I disagree with pretty much all religions, cultures, sacred cows, doesn't make me phobic of any of them. If it fits in the eyes of others, I don't care.
 
Carolina Red said:
I use the same terminology when discussing trans issues in general society.

But this is about sports, where, to me, biology is what matters.
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So when you discuss this with a transgender women and she tells you she doesn't like to be referred to as a biological male, you keep doing it?
 
maniak said:
So when you discuss this with a transgender women and she tells you she doesn't like to be referred to as a biological male, you keep doing it?
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I would politely tell them that I’m aware they don’t like it, but because of the rules of sport in my state, they have to be formally classified as such.
 
maniak said:
So when you discuss this with a transgender women and she tells you she doesn't like to be referred to as a biological male, you keep doing it?
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When discussing with someone, one usually use their name. This seems to be a forgotten system by many in these discussions...
 
maniak said:
I am not going to judge anyone's intentions in this thread, but surely you're all aware that keep referring to transgender women and biological males is something transphobes do all the time, right?
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Okay.
 
Grylte said:
When discussing with someone, one usually use their name. This seems to be a forgotten system by many in these discussions...
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Right?

The only time I could honestly imagine such a convo happening is if it was between me and a prospective athlete and it would be me having to have that convo to explain the rules governing sport in my state.
 
This shouldn’t even be a debate for me. I suspect the debating will stop when this issue gets confronted in professional boxing, as opposed to swimming.
 
Rozay said:
This shouldn’t even be a debate for me. I suspect the debating will stop when this issue gets confronted in professional boxing, as opposed to swimming.
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It's already a thing in powerlifting, and i'm pretty sure there's been mma incidents.
 
Rozay said:
This shouldn’t even be a debate for me. I suspect the debating will stop when this issue gets confronted in professional boxing, as opposed to swimming.
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Fallon Fox in MMA caused a lot of controversy surrounding this back in 2013-2014.

Fox fractured Tamikka Brents’ skull.
 
maniak said:
I am not going to judge anyone's intentions in this thread, but surely you're all aware that keep referring to transgender women and biological males is something transphobes do all the time, right?
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Has anyone asked or do they care whether we/I like to be referred to as a ‘cis’ male? Let’s just call people by name.
 
Carolina Red said:
Fallon Fox in MMA caused a lot of controversy surrounding this back in 2013-2014.

Fox fractured Tamikka Brents’ skull.
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If common sense didn’t prevail in the world of MMA then I am not optimistic at all then. The risks of combat sport should have made it an obvious red line.
 
This thread has descended which is a shame, and seems inevitable in any trans related discussions at the moment. There isn't any obvious solution that is both inclusive to all trans female athletes and doesn't restrict opportunities for cis female athletes in any way, which is exactly why it's difficult and why there are different judgements as to which groups rights matter more and how much you should flex entry criteria in order to be inclusive. There's also non-straightforward cases like Casta Semenya, who disprove a lot of the "it's easy, there's no debate" type posts.

My own opinion is that until we find a better solution it's not ok to just expect cis female athletes to essentially just suck it up, and so restrictions have to be in place, but I do accept that will feel crap for individual trans female athletes affected. The eventual solution does feel like an open category or something similar, when hopefully there will be more of a critical mass of trans athletes.
 
Rozay said:
If common sense didn’t prevail in the world of MMA then I am not optimistic at all then. The risks of combat sport should have made it an obvious red line.
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Fox had already been licensed and fought twice before coming out as trans. You should look up the story, it was a mess.
 
Carolina Red said:
Fallon Fox in MMA caused a lot of controversy surrounding this back in 2013-2014.

Fox fractured Tamikka Brents’ skull.
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And enjoyed it too!

"For the record, I knocked two out. One woman’s skull was fractured, the other not. And just so you know, I enjoyed it. See, I love smacking up terfs in the cage who talk transphobic nonsense. It’s bliss!"
 
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