Society taking games deathly serious (and equivocating it with academic merit, aka serious pursuits) is the problem.
People rioting and murdering if the game didn’t work out for their team is the problem. Putting billion dollar stakes on games is the problem.
Trans people or any people wanting to play games with their friends should be what society fosters and nurtures as the entire fucking point of society’s existence. Something something… planting trees something something knowing they’ll never sit under…
Nope? let’s bring on the climate change induced extinction then. If our values are hyper competitive, dog eat dog bullshit from labor to fucking games, we should go extinct.
Games are supposed to be fair. Unless you’re going to completely desegregate men and women’s sports, there’s a real biological argument to be made here. To pretend otherwise is delusional.
There is zero biological argument because you cannot make two categories based on sex which encompass everyone.
Example 1:
A cis woman with a genetic mutation which incrases her testosterone levels into the range of cis men. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 2:
A cis woman with XY gonadal dysgenesis. She has XY chromosomes but the Y chromosome is mutated and doesn’t function as it should which causes a “female” phenotype. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 3:
A trans woman in the 95th percentile of men with regards to physical strength. She is in the 10th percentile of women after transitioning. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 4:
A trans woman with Klinefelter syndrome and XXY genes. She has naturally very low levels of testosterone and she doesn’t require testosterone blockers after transitioning and taking estrogen. Even before transitioning she had less muscle mass, weaker bones and wider hips than the average man as a result of her low testosterone. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 5:
An African woman who would be in the 1st percentile of man if she were one, both in terms of physical attributes (size, muscle mass, heart size) and competitive results. Some “scientists” argue her race makes her less of a woman and more of a man. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
There is zero risk of these people “replacing” cis women by the way. Yes, their performance may be greater than that of comparable cis women without any genetical mutations beyond a certajn point.
Yet risk is calculated as [severity] * [likelihood]. And due to the low likelihood stemming from their very low prevalence in the general population, there is no reason to ban them.
Women’s sports is about representation of women. Trans women are part of that group, cis women with genetic mutations are part of that group, racial minorities are part of that group. You cannot exclude some women and claim this group is “fair” and representative.
In some sports there are weight classes, because being a certain weight gives you an inherent biological advantage on average over people of a different weight. The weight classes allow anyone to find well-matched competition regardless of their biology.
Women’s sports vs Men’s sports is a similar idea. Separate people by some biological classification that’s often tied on average to an advantage at the sport, so that everybody has the chance to play against someone of a similar baseline.
That division doesn’t have to exclude trans people, but it does mean that a line gets drawn somewhere. And yes, that line might include some cis people with a genetic abnormality getting excluded as well, and some cis men with a genetic abnormality might be included.
If you want to draw the divisions by something like muscle mass or testosterone levels instead of trying to define sex and gender clearly enough for this purpose, that would probably be easier, although “low testosterone sports” doesn’t have the same marketability as “women’s sports” lol.
Maybe that’s the crux of the issue. You guys keep seeing women’s sports as some sort of symbolism or representation or statement. The majority of people see women’s sports as being about sports. No agenda needed. No messaging. Just physical competition purely for the sake of it.
Yes, it is about sports - but only in addition to being about representation. This is the key distinguishing factor between women’s sports and male/open category sports.
If it were purely and solely about sports then women’s sports as a category wouldn’t exist. Female athletes would get similar funding and opportunities as male athletes, both in competitive and casual events.
Just take a look at chess: Why is there a women’s league? Answer: Because there are significant systemic barriers against women in chess. Without their own leagues, there would be no representation in the top level at all due to men dominating the rankings. Having women’s chess tournaments is about representing women in chess.
But trans women are banned from ranked women’s chess events. And to put the cherry on top, trans men are stripped of all their titles after transitioning.
Cruelty is the point of these decisions. Not “supporting women”.
Oh, and one more thing:
No agenda needed
Totally. Zero agenda, zero ideology, zero DEI and zero wokeness. Traditional conservative women’s sports events just like we always had and how God intended. Not even a strand of feminism to be found here, nope.
The only difference between chess and other sports is that one requires more physical prowess, the other more mental prowess.
Chess is an example of trans people being banned in sports for no reason other than them being trans.
Another example:
Trans women are now banned from US college gymnastics where they have zero competitive advantage as focus lies on artistic performance over strength.
Or another one:
UK Athletics bans trans women that have gone through male puberty at all levels of competition - be it local, regional or national. The NHS doesn’t allow doctors to prescribe puberty blockers to children though.
Trans people or any people wanting to play games with their friends should be what society fosters and nurtures as the entire fucking point of society’s existence. Something something… planting trees something something knowing they’ll never sit under…
Coed teams exist. They’re finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn’t go through puberty as a male.
That’s clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
Maybe the solution is non-gendered weight classes for sports, or just more coed teams. Idk
What about trans women who transitioned before puberty? What about cis or intersex women with elevated levels of testosterone? What about sports where it has been shown that after a long enough period of medical transition trans people have no significant advantage over their cis counterparts?
You appeal to science yet fail to cite a single source, so let me do it for you:
The science says 2-3 years of hormone therapy levels the playing field and there’s no more advantage.
Would you be opposed to a requirement that trans women wanting to compete in women’s leagues undergo 3 years of hormone therapy before being allowed to play?
I think most trans people would agree that’s reasonable, but at that point, you also have to talk about the bans on transition for minors, which would affect a minors ability to have that time frame met, and then their ability to play.
Puberty blockers exist and have been studied and used for literal decades for other reasons.
In the case of a trans woman having not went through puberty as a male then yeah true enough as far as I know.
The science says 2-3 years of hormone therapy levels the playing field and there’s no more advantage.
Are you sure about that? Because I looked it up and (after a few instances of “we have no idea but maybe not”) I found this. I’ll also admit that I only read the conclusion so I can’t make any guarantees for the quality of the paper.
In fact, women who haven’t transitioned often have an advantage because their testosterone levels can be higher than women who have transitioned.
Yeah that’s the thing: Testosterone is only one part of athletic ability. The paper lists some parameters that are either not affected or affected but not reduced to within the average range of cis women, but the obvious example would be height.
The paper does what all transphobes, and coincidentally most sexists, do when this subject comes up:
Pretends that the average woman has a shot at high level athletics even at just the college level.
If there’s scholarships on the line, the people getting them are going to have certain natural advantages on top of busting their asses for years at the sport.
To quote an old Utah Jazz coach:
You can’t coach height
So when you compare the average 22 year old woman to an elite college athlete, you’re gonna a very large gap. Just like comparing an average 22 year old guy to whoever just won the Heisman trophy.
The difference is larger in women. Because the average guy is more likely to have played sports growing up, and those gains in coordination when you g last for life.
And that’s not even it.
There are just soooooooooo many reasons why this who thing is overblown fearmongering designed to get idiots mad at a very small very vulnerable group.
Of all the things to be mad about right now, your mad at tops, absolutely tops, double digit young non-paid athletes.
Just fucking why?
If it’s not transphobia, what other reason do you care to still be going thru this thread desperately trying to have the same argument?
If it’s not transphobia, what other reason do you care to still be going thru this thread desperately trying to have the same argument?
Well I care about the truth for its own sake, but you can also call it pedantry. I recognize that this is culture war bullshit by conservatives meant to demonize trans people for what’s mostly a non-issue, but setting aside conservatives being conservatives it is a debate worth having. And I have nothing better to do, that helps too.
They’re finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn’t go through puberty as a male.
That’s clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
That would be an argument worth discussing if the Nazis weren’t also trying to ban puberty blockers. But no, right now, that’s a garbage bad faith argument.
Athletes have always leveraged unfair advantages in sports. There’s a reason there’s super tall players in basketball and short ones in gymnastics. May be they should enforce that average height of teams must match global averages. Countries with fewer resources just can’t support athletes in many sports so why not make that more fair?
There’s research showing that some women athletes (i.e., born with female reproductive organs) have higher testosterone levels than many men, and even some male athletes. So why are they allowed to compete in women sports instead of men?
There’s a lot of ways to make sports more fair. Banning transgender people without fair science based facts is not one of them and is plain bigotry. It’s like saying an athlete on anti-depressants should be banned because they are happier and more motivated so have an unfair advantage.
Please tell me what these “issues” are, with peer reviewed scientific sources. There are no significant advantages to a “male puberty” that are not countered by HRT. Furthermore, the same people touting trans kids for their supposed “advantages” are the same people forcing them to develop those “advantages” by restricting their access to healthcare before puberty begins.
There are no significant advantages to a “male puberty” that are not countered by HRT.
Uh… Palm size? Heart and lung size? Height? Don’t get me wrong I recognize this for the culture war bullshit it is, but there is some truth to this that needs to be addressed.
Edit: I only read the conclusion (and wouldn’t be able to tell if the methodology is flawed anyway) but I found this.
So shouldn’t we eliminate all players who may have physical advantages? What about a woman from birth who grows to 6’5"? Seems like that’d be an unfair advantage when playing against other women who may be only 5’10".
That’s not my logic, that’s your logic. Some people are born with genetic traits that make them good at certain sports, and that’s always been the case. Your argument is that it’s unfair if people have advantages and should be banned, so why not take it all the way instead of nitpicking here and there?
Ah, yes, let’s make laws specifically banning 2-5 children from ever having fun.
Like… what the fuck is wrong with you that you think a law targeting under 10 people in the entirety of the US is justified and not literally just bullying those kids on a national level to hope they fucking commit suicide? A law to tell 5 kids, specifically, that fuck them and they’re not allowed to have fun is god damn crazy.
Having fun is one thing and winning competitions against people you have a biological advantage against is another. It only takes one person to win a championship.
The women’s section is separate from the open section specifically so that women can get their place to compete without being dominated by men’s biological advantages over them. Micheal Phelps is competing in the open section, which is… Well… Open. Also please leave strawmanning to the conservatives.
If the argument is that unfair competition due to “biological advantages” should be reduced then I agree. Sports should be segregated by performance classes and open to all genders.
But if the point of segregating sports is to make space for women in sports, then excluding trans women is nothing more than discrimination on par with excluding black or disabled women. Trans women deserve not to have to play with the boys too.
If the argument is that unfair competition due to “biological advantages” should be reduced then I agree. Sports should be segregated by performance classes and open to all genders.
That’s probably the ideal solution, but the problem is that nobody’s gonna watch anything except the top leagues. I mean watching the kinda good but not really amazing people’s football league just isn’t an appealing prospect, unless I misunderstood what you meant by performance classes. The whole point of this debate (other than conservatives shitting on trans women anyway) is that you need a framework where:
1-trans people can compete,
2-cis women aren’t unfairly disadvantaged and
3-that people would actually watch.
If we can only have 2/3 then ditching the commerciality of it all would be my preference. Sports are actually worth watching when they aren’t just an excuse to extract profit from professional and collegiate athletes.
Realistically, we can’t have 3 in any case. Women’s sports gets a tiny fraction of the viewership as it is.
If the point is to give everyone a chance to compete fairly then breaking the sport into tiers based on ability makes sense and gender segregation would be unnecessary.
If the point is to make space for women to participate in sports, then excluding certain kinds of women because of some personal characteristic outside of their control would defeat the purpose. Trans women deserve not to have to play with the boys too.
This is a really stupid argument. The thing that makes athletes special is their biology.
There’s a reason that DK Metcalf towers over all of the cornerbacks in the NFL. He’s a biological specimen that has incredible agility, height, muscle mass, and speed.
The women’s section is separate from the open section specifically so that women can get their place to compete without being dominated by men’s biological advantages over them. Micheal Phelps is competing in the open section, which is… Well… Open.
Sports are games.
Games are supposed to be inclusive and fun.
Society taking games deathly serious (and equivocating it with academic merit, aka serious pursuits) is the problem.
People rioting and murdering if the game didn’t work out for their team is the problem. Putting billion dollar stakes on games is the problem.
Trans people or any people wanting to play games with their friends should be what society fosters and nurtures as the entire fucking point of society’s existence. Something something… planting trees something something knowing they’ll never sit under…
Nope? let’s bring on the climate change induced extinction then. If our values are hyper competitive, dog eat dog bullshit from labor to fucking games, we should go extinct.
Games are supposed to be fair. Unless you’re going to completely desegregate men and women’s sports, there’s a real biological argument to be made here. To pretend otherwise is delusional.
There is zero biological argument because you cannot make two categories based on sex which encompass everyone.
Example 1:
A cis woman with a genetic mutation which incrases her testosterone levels into the range of cis men. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 2:
A cis woman with XY gonadal dysgenesis. She has XY chromosomes but the Y chromosome is mutated and doesn’t function as it should which causes a “female” phenotype. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 3:
A trans woman in the 95th percentile of men with regards to physical strength. She is in the 10th percentile of women after transitioning. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 4:
A trans woman with Klinefelter syndrome and XXY genes. She has naturally very low levels of testosterone and she doesn’t require testosterone blockers after transitioning and taking estrogen. Even before transitioning she had less muscle mass, weaker bones and wider hips than the average man as a result of her low testosterone. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 5:
An African woman who would be in the 1st percentile of man if she were one, both in terms of physical attributes (size, muscle mass, heart size) and competitive results. Some “scientists” argue her race makes her less of a woman and more of a man. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
There is zero risk of these people “replacing” cis women by the way. Yes, their performance may be greater than that of comparable cis women without any genetical mutations beyond a certajn point.
Yet risk is calculated as [severity] * [likelihood]. And due to the low likelihood stemming from their very low prevalence in the general population, there is no reason to ban them.
Women’s sports is about representation of women. Trans women are part of that group, cis women with genetic mutations are part of that group, racial minorities are part of that group. You cannot exclude some women and claim this group is “fair” and representative.
In some sports there are weight classes, because being a certain weight gives you an inherent biological advantage on average over people of a different weight. The weight classes allow anyone to find well-matched competition regardless of their biology.
Women’s sports vs Men’s sports is a similar idea. Separate people by some biological classification that’s often tied on average to an advantage at the sport, so that everybody has the chance to play against someone of a similar baseline.
That division doesn’t have to exclude trans people, but it does mean that a line gets drawn somewhere. And yes, that line might include some cis people with a genetic abnormality getting excluded as well, and some cis men with a genetic abnormality might be included.
If you want to draw the divisions by something like muscle mass or testosterone levels instead of trying to define sex and gender clearly enough for this purpose, that would probably be easier, although “low testosterone sports” doesn’t have the same marketability as “women’s sports” lol.
Maybe that’s the crux of the issue. You guys keep seeing women’s sports as some sort of symbolism or representation or statement. The majority of people see women’s sports as being about sports. No agenda needed. No messaging. Just physical competition purely for the sake of it.
Yes, it is about sports - but only in addition to being about representation. This is the key distinguishing factor between women’s sports and male/open category sports.
If it were purely and solely about sports then women’s sports as a category wouldn’t exist. Female athletes would get similar funding and opportunities as male athletes, both in competitive and casual events.
Just take a look at chess: Why is there a women’s league? Answer: Because there are significant systemic barriers against women in chess. Without their own leagues, there would be no representation in the top level at all due to men dominating the rankings. Having women’s chess tournaments is about representing women in chess.
But trans women are banned from ranked women’s chess events. And to put the cherry on top, trans men are stripped of all their titles after transitioning.
Cruelty is the point of these decisions. Not “supporting women”.
Oh, and one more thing:
Totally. Zero agenda, zero ideology, zero DEI and zero wokeness. Traditional conservative women’s sports events just like we always had and how God intended. Not even a strand of feminism to be found here, nope.
Calling chess a “sport” in the context of this discussion is such a reach I’m suspecting you might actually be Reed Richards in disguise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
The only difference between chess and other sports is that one requires more physical prowess, the other more mental prowess.
Chess is an example of trans people being banned in sports for no reason other than them being trans.
Another example:
Trans women are now banned from US college gymnastics where they have zero competitive advantage as focus lies on artistic performance over strength.
Or another one:
UK Athletics bans trans women that have gone through male puberty at all levels of competition - be it local, regional or national. The NHS doesn’t allow doctors to prescribe puberty blockers to children though.
Coed teams exist. They’re finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn’t go through puberty as a male. That’s clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
Maybe the solution is non-gendered weight classes for sports, or just more coed teams. Idk
What about trans women who transitioned before puberty? What about cis or intersex women with elevated levels of testosterone? What about sports where it has been shown that after a long enough period of medical transition trans people have no significant advantage over their cis counterparts?
You appeal to science yet fail to cite a single source, so let me do it for you:
Good news! Puberty blockers exist and have been studied and used for literal decades for other reasons.
The science says 2-3 years of hormone therapy levels the playing field and there’s no more advantage.
In fact, women who haven’t transitioned often have an advantage because their testosterone levels can be higher than women who have transitioned.
And that’s the crux of the issue: human variation.
Would you be opposed to a requirement that trans women wanting to compete in women’s leagues undergo 3 years of hormone therapy before being allowed to play?
I think most trans people would agree that’s reasonable, but at that point, you also have to talk about the bans on transition for minors, which would affect a minors ability to have that time frame met, and then their ability to play.
True, and that’s a thorny problem but one that has to be addressed eventually.
In the case of a trans woman having not went through puberty as a male then yeah true enough as far as I know.
Are you sure about that? Because I looked it up and (after a few instances of “we have no idea but maybe not”) I found this. I’ll also admit that I only read the conclusion so I can’t make any guarantees for the quality of the paper.
Yeah that’s the thing: Testosterone is only one part of athletic ability. The paper lists some parameters that are either not affected or affected but not reduced to within the average range of cis women, but the obvious example would be height.
The paper does what all transphobes, and coincidentally most sexists, do when this subject comes up:
Pretends that the average woman has a shot at high level athletics even at just the college level.
If there’s scholarships on the line, the people getting them are going to have certain natural advantages on top of busting their asses for years at the sport.
To quote an old Utah Jazz coach:
So when you compare the average 22 year old woman to an elite college athlete, you’re gonna a very large gap. Just like comparing an average 22 year old guy to whoever just won the Heisman trophy.
The difference is larger in women. Because the average guy is more likely to have played sports growing up, and those gains in coordination when you g last for life.
And that’s not even it.
There are just soooooooooo many reasons why this who thing is overblown fearmongering designed to get idiots mad at a very small very vulnerable group.
Of all the things to be mad about right now, your mad at tops, absolutely tops, double digit young non-paid athletes.
Just fucking why?
If it’s not transphobia, what other reason do you care to still be going thru this thread desperately trying to have the same argument?
Well I care about the truth for its own sake, but you can also call it pedantry. I recognize that this is culture war bullshit by conservatives meant to demonize trans people for what’s mostly a non-issue, but setting aside conservatives being conservatives it is a debate worth having. And I have nothing better to do, that helps too.
That would be an argument worth discussing if the Nazis weren’t also trying to ban puberty blockers. But no, right now, that’s a garbage bad faith argument.
Gavin Newsom is not a Nazi.
If he’s capitulating to Nazis, that makes him complicit. Sorry if he had other good qualities, but he’s bending the knee.
Athletes have always leveraged unfair advantages in sports. There’s a reason there’s super tall players in basketball and short ones in gymnastics. May be they should enforce that average height of teams must match global averages. Countries with fewer resources just can’t support athletes in many sports so why not make that more fair?
There’s research showing that some women athletes (i.e., born with female reproductive organs) have higher testosterone levels than many men, and even some male athletes. So why are they allowed to compete in women sports instead of men?
There’s a lot of ways to make sports more fair. Banning transgender people without fair science based facts is not one of them and is plain bigotry. It’s like saying an athlete on anti-depressants should be banned because they are happier and more motivated so have an unfair advantage.
Please tell me what these “issues” are, with peer reviewed scientific sources. There are no significant advantages to a “male puberty” that are not countered by HRT. Furthermore, the same people touting trans kids for their supposed “advantages” are the same people forcing them to develop those “advantages” by restricting their access to healthcare before puberty begins.
The cruelty is the point.
Uh… Palm size? Heart and lung size? Height? Don’t get me wrong I recognize this for the culture war bullshit it is, but there is some truth to this that needs to be addressed.
Edit: I only read the conclusion (and wouldn’t be able to tell if the methodology is flawed anyway) but I found this.
So shouldn’t we eliminate all players who may have physical advantages? What about a woman from birth who grows to 6’5"? Seems like that’d be an unfair advantage when playing against other women who may be only 5’10".
I mean by your logic we should just eliminate women’s leagues entirely and make everything coed.
That’s not my logic, that’s your logic. Some people are born with genetic traits that make them good at certain sports, and that’s always been the case. Your argument is that it’s unfair if people have advantages and should be banned, so why not take it all the way instead of nitpicking here and there?
Because that’s stupid? Why SHOULD we “take it all the way”?
Let’s check the science
Ah, yes, let’s make laws specifically banning 2-5 children from ever having fun.
Like… what the fuck is wrong with you that you think a law targeting under 10 people in the entirety of the US is justified and not literally just bullying those kids on a national level to hope they fucking commit suicide? A law to tell 5 kids, specifically, that fuck them and they’re not allowed to have fun is god damn crazy.
https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-transgender-athletes-play-womens-sports-1796006
Having fun is one thing and winning competitions against people you have a biological advantage against is another. It only takes one person to win a championship.
So you’re saying that people like Michael Phelps should be excluded from competing in sports due to the famous athelete’s “biological advantages”?
The women’s section is separate from the open section specifically so that women can get their place to compete without being dominated by men’s biological advantages over them. Micheal Phelps is competing in the open section, which is… Well… Open. Also please leave strawmanning to the conservatives.
You missed my point.
If the argument is that unfair competition due to “biological advantages” should be reduced then I agree. Sports should be segregated by performance classes and open to all genders.
But if the point of segregating sports is to make space for women in sports, then excluding trans women is nothing more than discrimination on par with excluding black or disabled women. Trans women deserve not to have to play with the boys too.
That’s probably the ideal solution, but the problem is that nobody’s gonna watch anything except the top leagues. I mean watching the kinda good but not really amazing people’s football league just isn’t an appealing prospect, unless I misunderstood what you meant by performance classes. The whole point of this debate (other than conservatives shitting on trans women anyway) is that you need a framework where:
1-trans people can compete, 2-cis women aren’t unfairly disadvantaged and 3-that people would actually watch.
I’m frankly not sure such a thing exists.
If we can only have 2/3 then ditching the commerciality of it all would be my preference. Sports are actually worth watching when they aren’t just an excuse to extract profit from professional and collegiate athletes.
Realistically, we can’t have 3 in any case. Women’s sports gets a tiny fraction of the viewership as it is.
Should Michael Phelps be allowed to compete against 13 year olds?
If they’re allowed to team up on him, sure. XD
So segregating competitors to some extent based on physical ability makes sense?
Depends on what the point is.
If the point is to give everyone a chance to compete fairly then breaking the sport into tiers based on ability makes sense and gender segregation would be unnecessary.
If the point is to make space for women to participate in sports, then excluding certain kinds of women because of some personal characteristic outside of their control would defeat the purpose. Trans women deserve not to have to play with the boys too.
This is a really stupid argument. The thing that makes athletes special is their biology.
There’s a reason that DK Metcalf towers over all of the cornerbacks in the NFL. He’s a biological specimen that has incredible agility, height, muscle mass, and speed.
https://www.baltimoreravens.com/news/d-k-metcalf-proves-he-s-an-athletic-freak-at-combine
Michael Phelps also has a biological advantage that very few humans have.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/we-celebrated-michael-phelpss-genetic-differences-why-punish-caster-semenya-for-hers/2019/05/02/93d08c8c-6c2b-11e9-be3a-33217240a539_story.html
None of this excludes them over their competition.
I’ll just copy my reply to the other guy.
Thanks for the gibberish. So many words to say absolutely nothing.