Do you believe that men who have successfully transitioned should be allowed to compete in women’s sports? Let’s not attack each other and just give our opinion and give educated, civil answers
Do you believe that men who have successfully transitioned should be allowed to compete in women’s sports? Let’s not attack each other and just give our opinion and give educated, civil answers
Respectfully, this is the wrong question to be asking. Are there potential issues with competitiveness and fairness in sports? Probably. But by discussing this in the first place, it changes the focus of the larger debate, which is: should trans people be afforded the same human rights as everyone else? I believe that the sports issue has been specifically brought up as a wedge issue, leading to a lot of transphobia that has nothing do specifically do with sports.
But we can agree that both men and women deserve the same human rights, yet we still create separate categories for mens and womens sport.
Yes the issue may be used as a scapegoat argument, but that doesn’t invalidate the question.
Fact is, womens categories in sports were created (and are kept) for a specific reason, and it’s not an -ism or -phobia.
This is all true - it’s a real problem, but it’s a trivial problem. It affects so few people in the big picture, while trans people are literally getting other legal and human rights taken away. Maybe the sports issue is a facet of the human rights issue, ok I can agree to that. but at the end of the day it’s such a minuscule slice of all the challenges trans people are facing that I don’t like how it’s become a foci of the discussion surrounding trans rights.
It’s not a trivial problem and it doesn’t affect a tiny number of people. It affects all women in sports.
Let’s put the trans thing aside for a moment and look at female sports.
Think sports, especially top level: FIFA, NBA, NHL, Formula 1, all the top leagues are basically 100% male.
Make a poll among kids what they want to do when they grow up. How many boys vs. how many girls will tell you they want to do professional sports? Boys are much more likely to do so, partly because we all watch the big boys play with their toys, be famous and maybe also earn big cash.
Ask random strangers what sports person pops up in their head, and I guarantee it will be all men, unless you bump into some knowledgable female fan.
I don’t follow much sports besides motorsport, where there’s no spedidic women categories, and in the top leagues the situation is pretty dire. A woman may pop up occasionally in IndyCar, or F2, but there hasn’t been one in F1 for something like 40 years. At least there’s the all-girls GT racings team Iron Dames that competes in endurance is quite a phenomenon lately, but even that is a lower class.
F1 has been so under pressure to bring in more women into the sport, there’s now an all-female F4 class series, after the previous attempt for an F3 class series went bankrupt.
My point is, women (let’s just take cis now, for a moment) already have low motivation to enter sports, or dream of becoming a top athlete. Think of the implication that has on the entire society, as we as species become ever more sedimentary and unhealthy. Demotivating an already marginalized group people from doing sports isn’t the smartest thing to do.
Thing is, in this debate you can either marginalize trans women, or cis women. It seems like you can’t have the cake and eat it too. Putting trans rights ahead just because they’re trans and marginalized in other areas of life doesn’t solve this question, only pushes it further and halts the debate.
Ed:
Well I said “let’s put trans aside” twice and never addressed that portion I guess.
In theory, I think the simplest solution would be to have a 3rd category for everyone who doesn’t cleanly fall into the other two. Now this may seem like ostracizing, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be. We have paralympic sports, and the point of that isn’t to exclude someone, quite the opposite, give everyone a fair chance.
Another reference would be weight categories in martial arts. Again, different classes to give everyone a fair chance.
Funnily enough, this might actually work out for the better for them. Who knows if trans category in some sports wouldn’t eclipse the other classes in popularity or achievements?
I imagine this would still be unpopular regardless, so another option is to evaluate everyone on a case by case basis. That honestly sounds even worse to me, but there’s a precedent for it - some people with specific genetics or conditions are barred from certain classes, or are required to take specific supplements. This affects non-binary people the most, so it’s also in the same ballpark of lgbtq…+ issues that have a known solution already.
And the third option is to abolish the whole competition aspect and only have sports for fun. Fine with me, but probably not with everyone.
I’m being downvoted here so clearly I’m in the minority view. But I ask you this: how many actual cases of a trans woman athlete affecting the outcome of some sporting event can you cite off the top of your head? For me (and I’d like to think generally that I follow the news pretty closely) the answer is almost none, although to be fair I’ve heard of a few. Now, how many cases of state legislators pushing anti-trans legislation have you heard of? Again for me, it’s a lot more - by a mile. This is what I mean by it’s a “trivial” problem. It’s not that it’s not a real problem, and it’s not that it’s not a problem that ought to be addressed. But in the grand scheme of things, where comparing literally losing civil rights to losing a sports match, and imho the sports discussion is crowding out the much more critical discussion.
Do you want me to start a list?
https://notthebee.com/article/transgender-cyclist-dominates-womens-long-distance-bike-race-2nd-place-finisher-says-the-power-is-just-not-comparable
OK - this is a legit example. But to my point, it’s a regional bike race in North Carolina. Meanwhile, anti-trans legislation has it’s own wikipedia page. There are hundreds of anti-trans bills on the legislative docket, and some have passed and been signed into law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_the_United_States
If you want to start a list I would be interested to see it, just to see exactly how pervasive a problem it actually is.
I get that sports are important to people. But in the big picture of things, my personal opinion (this is still a discussion, right? we’re still allowed to have opinions, right?) is that, here and now in the USA is not the appropriate time to discuss how to allow trans-women to participate in sports. Imagine if the discussion about Jackie Robinson integrating MLB went a different way. “He’s too dominant, we shouldn’t allow black people to play MLB.” Now of course it didn’t go that way (thankfully). But it could have.
We could make a list. I’m gonna make a broad statement that there is no anti trans legislation. There is only protect children legislation and that wiki page is maintained by groomers. Maybe you can find a small piece of legislation that effects a small percentage of adult transitioners but for the most part these laws are here to stop parents from castrating their children
do you need me to cite ALL the cases of non-trans people that are ACTUAL pedophiles and groomers? And then while we’re at it why don’t we also list all the actual trans individuals that have been convicted of pedophila? I will give you a heads up that the former is FAR greater (orders of magnitude greater) than the latter.
I can’t follow your logic. Trans people may be marginalized in some areas where it doesn’t make sense, therefore we’ll be ignoring an area where there’s room (and need) for a completely reasonable debate, and as a result we’ll just completely ignore the issues of another marginalized group?
Make it make sense.
If the debate here would be whether trans people should have access to sports at all, then yes you could easily point out who’s the asshole denying those rights. But this is not the case. The debate isn’t about access to sports in general, but to female sports specifically.
If you refuse to even engage in the debate, or think about the consequences, then you don’t understand the issue of women in sports in general. I’ve given you some pointers to think about already, so you could stop with this falacy.
Simply put it, sports have very different rules then society as a whole. Lots of things that make sense in one don’t make sense in the other. Or do you think you can rewrite rules of baseball because of some legislation about road traffic?
This is something the sports bodies need to decide on, specifically sports bodies that oversee women sports. Pushing either agenda based on politics outside the sports (like the legislation you mention) is just damaging the entire concept of sports.
“Make it make sense.”
Let’s look at the actual data - how many trans-women athletes are engaged in competitive sports in women’s divisions where they’ve shown a dominating advantage due to their physique/physiology? I concede that n>1. But I also believe that n is relatively small (based on my personal experience following the news, which I also concede is not the best way to do it). I believe that the NCAA has done a study on this and found that this situation is rare. Another commenter seemed interested in starting a list, and I would be interested to see it.
Thing is, you really only need one, or a small rare handful, to dominate their field in a way that’s not achievable by cis women. I mean, only one person can have the gold medal, or a world record, or be a champion.
If you don’t get it, you either a) are missing the entire point of sports, b) are invalidating the needs and specifics of women sports.
How are you so adamant about rights of one group yet completely dismissing the rights and needs of another? I’ve already explained to you the situation in women sports.
The only question at hand is whether trans women have an advantage. If the sporting bodies conclude that yes, then the only reasonable answer is to not allow them to compete, regardless of whatever political situation is outside of the sport. If the answer is no, then sure let them, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.
Or maybe it’s individual. It’s not the first time people in sports would be forced into some restrictions. There’s been similar debates about para athletes with prostheses, whether they may have advantages over fleshy human bits.
Regardless, I’m exiting this debate. I’m not interested in this matter that much, at least not to run in circles. I’ll just leave it to the sporting bodies.
undefined> But I ask you this: how many actual cases of a trans woman athlete affecting the outcome of some sporting event can you cite off the top of your head?
Utterly irrelevant. Most things don’t affect many people. This is destroying women’s careers for no benefit and it needs to stop. Trans athletes can compete in Mens/Open leagues right now. They don’t want equal rights, they want special rights.
I agree ppl deserve human rights, however, I feel the sports issue is a valid issue, but I’m just going to moderate this discussion as more people post on it but if no one does, I guess we could have this debate as time goes on
What do human rights have to do with anything? You don’t have any right to be on any team. You have to earn that privilege. Women’s leagues are restricted leagues, based on biology. Biological males do not have the privilege to compete in these leagues: trans or not.