It’s almost time to delete my account so I am sticking my neck out to potentially getting blasted.
I will preface by stating that gender identity is not an issue for me. Be who you want, use whatever bathroom you want. Just wash your hands/paws/tentacles.
My ignorant question is: for transgender athletes in competitive sports, should records be categorized differently or asterisked? Isn’t it kind of like using performance-enhancing drugs?
I don’t mind about actually competing, however if someone had 5-10 years of hormonal growth advantage during puberty, even if they no longer have that advantage, it seems like a big gray area. Yes, someone could naturally have that chemical makeup. Similarly, some exceptionally elite athletes have genetic variations that give them natural physical advantage.
When I was in school I was decent at swimming, in the top 5% of men. If I competed against women I would be like top 0.01% and making a career out of it. Though, if I started setting records I don’t know how I’d feel about it, given my advantage.
Honestly, writing these thoughts down is giving me some existential dread. What does it mean to be human, and why? Does anything even really matter?
I hope everyone has a nice day and is kind to each other.
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Honestly, writing these thoughts down is giving me some existential dread. What does it mean to be human, and why?
Ha. You got to the core of the issue, my friend!
We should remember the stories with the records; each is unique and interesting and tells us one way a person did something incredible. But I don’t see the value of starring specifically the stories involving trans folks. I wouldn’t expect us to put an asterisk next to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisława_Walasiewicz , and indeed we do not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_metres_at_the_Olympics#Women
I imagine you would indeed feel weird if you were to have transitioned into women’s swimming, especially if you are not a woman. It would certainly be a story; in fact, it would probably be the only story about you, crowding out any physical achievements. That’s a big part of why this isn’t really seen. Personally, it makes me think about why we want gender divided sports to begin with.
I personally don’t think sports should be gendered, or bathroom for that matter.
Lol giving a fucking shit about fucking sports records as the world burns around you. Cool priorities. All this shit is stupid smoke and mirrors nonsense distracting you from the many actual problems we are facing. Wasting a single micro second on these concerns is a fucking crime against humanity. A) sports are fucking dumb and B) we are at the precipice of the end of the world stop worrying about something as asinine as world records and maybe worry about something that fucking matters. JFC.
Yet here you are, thinking about it and telling people off.
Believe it or not, human beings can think about and care about lots of different things concurrently.
Its the thin end of the wedge in the regressive plan to exterminate the trans community.
So go fuck yourself, this literally is life or death for a fair number of people.
I think you can despise organized athletics and still support transfolk.
No, we absolutely should not mark the records of known transgender athletes in any way. Because once you start down that road you wind up asterisking cisgender athletes whose development is outside the norm.
We could get into a long discussion of transgender persons who do or do not undergo HRT, or how there are already rules against transgender women competing professionally if they aren’t on HRT, or whether or not such rules or gendered sports at all are justifiable.
But all of that is just a distraction. The elite in any competitive sport are ALREADY several orders of magnitude beyond the norm, to the point where any advantage a trans woman might have for going through male puberty is essentially a wash with “are you just naturally well-formed for this sport”.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that there ISNT broadly an athletic benefit to having gone through wrong-gender puberty before medically transitioning. Plenty of athletes have done exactly that, and as far as I know exactly none of them wound up being relatively better among their true gender peers post-HRT than their standing among birth-gendeR peers pre-HRT.
And there have been more instances of cisgender women being wrongly accused of being trans than there are transgender women athletes at all.
I tend to agree but it’s an interesting angle.
Like, were not about to tell NASCAR fans that Dale Earnheart Jr needs asterisks because, you know, his dad. He had quite the leg up!
Two
indyDaytona 500 wins is no joke. Daddy’s help or not.I’m not trying to shit on Dale Jr by any means, the man is a legend. But he did not win two Indy 500s, he won two Daytona 500s. Indycar racing is a completely different sport, it’s like comparing hockey and fútbol.
Oops! Fixed.
And yeah I’m not a big NASCAR fan (can you tell)? But recognize a feat is a feat.
But it’s not different in that we’re talking about athletes with unfair advantages. Trans athletes have never shown their ‘leg up’ helped the dominate the field. The same cannot be said for Dale. That’s why I tease, do we take that accomplishment (that I got wrong 😳) away with an asterisk?
Of course not. Same goes for a trans athlete.
It’s not even a real issue. The number of trans athletes is extremely small, and none of them are out there setting crazy records.
The fact that the University of Pennsylvania swimmer [Lia Thomas] soared from a mid-500s ranking (554th in the 200 freestyle; all divisions) in men’s competition to one of the top-ranked swimmers in women’s competition tells the story
In the 100 freestyle, Thomas’ best time prior to her transition was 47.15. At the NCAA Championships, she posted a prelims time in the event of 47.37. That time reflects minimal mitigation of her male-puberty advantage.
During the last season Thomas competed as a member of the Penn men’s team, which was 2018-19, she ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle. As her career at Penn wrapped, she moved to fifth, first and eighth in those respective events on the women’s deck.
It may not be an issue to you, but it’s an issue to every woman whose ranking is lower as a result. I imagine it especially hurts if you’re pushed out of first place in that way.
It may not be an issue to you, but it’s an issue to every woman whose ranking is lower as a result.
Really? “Every”? You asked every single one of them, did you? Or are you just talking out your arse on the behalf of hundreds of people you don’t even know?
The very fact that their ranking is lower than what it should be is an issue in and of itself, your disingenuous mockery notwithstanding.
But they’re placed exactly where they should be? If they should be placed higher, that’s where they’d be… seems like you’re the one getting mad over a skill issue on other people’s behalf tbh. It’s weird.
You’re acting as though Lia Thomas didn’t have every right to compete as she did, despite fulfilling all the eligibility criteria that were in place at the time, so your argument at this stage seems equally applicable to all the cis women who outperformed her, too, but you’re not whining for the benefit of all the poor womanses that were denied the opportunity to place higher than they did by them, are you?
Former competitive swimmer here. I’m fine with it.
Wow, the 200m freestyle, the 500m freestyle, and the 1650m freestyle, huh? Did she ever compete in anything else, or were those numbers perhaps cherry-picked to make the situation look more dramatic than it actually is? Because if you look at her results holistically, she’s a very good swimmer, but she’s clearly not dominating 100% of the time the way she’s been portrayed.
At the NCAA competition where Thomas won one (1) race that conservatives cried and shit their pants over, a cis woman named Kate Douglass set 18 new records. Lia Thomas set zero new records. And crunching the rest of the numbers bears this out: she was a good swimmer before and after transition, but she’s not some unbeatable powerhouse that cis women have no chance at winning against.
were those numbers perhaps cherry-picked to make the situation look more dramatic than it actually is?
If anyone can go from 554th to 5th in any sport/event just by competing among the other sex, nothing else changing, then that obviously indicates something. You can’t handwave that away.
Her personal 100m freestyle time dropping less than a quarter of a second post-transition is honestly a bigger indicator that transition is not making a substantial difference, because that angle completely removes the ‘chance’ element in your opponents being different people.
It should also be noted that a college athlete’s times and rankings would presumably improve every year. Freshmen competing against seniors are just less likely to win (in most sports at least). IIRC I saw an analysis of her rankings that indicated the jump was within normal bounds for year-over-year improvement.
No one goes from 500th to 1st year over year competing against the same people lol.
She swam for the men’s team 2019-2020 while undergoing hormone therapy. Then there was a year break because of COVID. Then she swam for the women’s team 2021-2022. The difference was over two years.
EDIT: Actually, the 500th place stat was from 2018-2019, so it was over three years.
EDIT 2: Also, she went from 554th to 5th. The other two are basically not even worth mentioning since she went from 65th to 1st and 32nd to 8th over three years.
EDIT 3: Also, regarding your “the same people” bit, a large chunk of the people she’d have competed against would have graduated and been replaced by underclassmen. This is how college works.
Incorrect.
Before transitioning, Thomas was nationally ranked #462 in the NCAA men’s official swimming competitions. After transitioning, Thomas jumped to #1 in the NCAA women’s category.
Lia Thomas jumped up from around 500 in mens to 1 in womens while having slower times than when ranked ~500 in the mens. That says all that needs to be said.
The numbers you are using I’ve only seen from that letter made by people complaining about her, frequently posted everywhere by conservative sources. Also, it’s fucking obvious she’d have slower times. That is the entire purpose of requiring trans atheletes to be on hormones for a couple years.
EDIT: I’ve looked into the 462 number more, and I’m further convinced it’s either made up or not an official ranking (i.e. from some practice run). Also, if you’re gonna pull some random quote, give your source. One of the very first results when I search “lia thomas 462” is the Daily Wire, which does not inspire much confidence in your sources. The other results are a Wikipedia quote from the letter I mentioned, and a random comment on the site for a swimming magazine.
I will maybe get destroyed for this comment, as I have in the past, but oh well…
The trans in sports topic shouldn’t be considered this binary issue that defines your political alignment or morals.
It undeniably seems more complicated than some make it out to be. Use silly over exaggerated examples: if a man becomes a steroid popping powerlifter professionally, then decides to transition to being a woman, should he then be allowed to compete in women’s powerlifting competitions? Over exaggeration, but there’s a point isn’t there? I don’t really know, but it seems like in this thought experiment, she would easily beat out all other competitors. Insert any other sport where men dominate over women due to biology. Is this a bad way to think? If so, why? You made the example in swimming.
I will forever support and vote politically to protect all minorities, including the LGBT community. I will always reject bigotry. But saying this is not a complicated issue, just doesn’t seem right. And questioning it in this way, doesn’t make me a bigot. Let trans athletes compete in any sport? Categorize them differently? I don’t know, Im not sure it’s that easy.
At the end of the day, this stuff really is a distraction that creates infighting to shift focus away from more important things. The oligarchy likes this distraction because we’re not talking about how they’re exploiting all of us. This is the kind of thing where I say “I honestly don’t know, but why aren’t we taxing the billionaires?”
Thank you so very much. Yes, it’s a tough question. No, the question in and of itself does not imply hate. Yes, it’s been used as a political football.
And the dumbest part? There are so very few trans athletes, and let’s be real, we’re only talking about MTF trans athletes. Nobody gives a flying fuck if FTM trans folks get whipped at a competition.
“Our state has proudly passed a law banning the 3 MTF kids in the entire fucking state!” 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
The only way I see things working out is to get rid of seperations. Its just Bathrooms with floor to ceiling stalls or just multiple single person bathrooms, sports just have multiple leagues based on ability.
Locker rooms aren’t the only issue with trans athletes. Most of the real debate is about having people who lived half their lives as men, having a distinct athletic advantage over women.
thats the multiple leagues. not mens and womens but just leagues and you move up and down like baseball but maybe with more.
What you’re describing would very, very quickly end up with essentially what we have now - mens and womens sports. The men would be in all the top ones, and the women would all be in the bottom ones, with the trans women at the top of the womens ones at the lowest, with many much higher since they have the physical ability to compete with men.
Did you know that there is no rule stating that all NBA players have to be male? Same with the NFL. Same with the NHL. Same with almost every professional sporting competition in the world that is thought to be a “male” competition. When you understand why you’ve never seen a single female compete in any of those competitions, and notice that some of those have their own separate “female only” competitions, maybe you’ll have a lightbulb moment.
Every organized sport has some sort of governing body, and that body is concerned with making sure competition is fair. (And taking bribes, right, FIFA?) The people who organize the sport should be able to determine what is fair for their sport. Often, there will be some scientific basis for allowing some people and not allowing others, based on hormones or something like that.
The decisions should be made by people who know the sport and decide what fair competition might look like, not by asshole politicians looking to push an agenda.
The decisions should be made by people who know the sport and decide what fair competition might look like, not by asshole politicians looking to push an agenda.
So they should be able to do whites-only competitions? Most of the NBA and NFL are black, so that’s not “fair” to white people is it? So they should be able to do whites-only competitions by your logic.
I think you missed the sarcasm in my words, and the point I was making. Your use of that gif however is hilarious, because you unironically thought what I was saying was serious.
categorizing sports between women and men separately always seemed weird to me. Why is it not a global ranking? A global ELO system that makes sure every athlete fights other athletes in the same ELO range, doesn’t matter man woman because it’s based on performance/skill instead.
That’s precisely why we have sports separated by sex now though - because otherwise it’s all men up the top and all the women down the bottom.
Would you be ok with, for example, mixed sex boxing or mma?
Men would still on average out perform women in most categories, making it very difficult for women to get to the top of the chart. High ELOs would almost exclussively be men and thats where the media focus and attention would be on, drowing out some of the top women atheletes in lower ELOs. In a system where the highest ELO wins a medal or something i think it would be less fair than having gendered ELOs. Something like amateur or beer league sports might benefit more from genderless ELO but i think it would be controversial for pro athletes.
also there are lots of sports where tall girls have an unfair advantage over short girls. so tall girls should be marked by a symbol. /s
also tho i personally play videogames as my sports so the whole segregation based on gender generally feels outdated to me so i don’t really care the specifics within it. like when im pwning some noob in wildrift they could be a boy or a girl or something else entirely. i cant even imagine caring strongly about which they are
That has nothing to do with the reality of men being biologically stronger than women.
imagine short girl loves volleyball hears news.
other players yell “hooray now physical male cant play vs girl”
nothing changes for short girl
she still lose
did gender as the basis for grouping sports rlly make things fair in the first place?
is it more fair for short girl to play against short boy or tall girl?
base the balancing of a physical competition on anything other than the attributes that determine who wins, and it is unfair. That’s why the crying about trans athletes being unfair is silly. i agree it’s unfair. but it isn’t like it’s a sudden unfairness on a previously fair system. ‘whether the player has a vag or peen’ didn’t actually allow shortgirl to compete. Balancing on the physical characteristics required to win, not sex, would have. But vagpeen distinction not so much.
Hence my playing videogames with competition not sexdivided while laughing at and not caring about sports. It wasn’t fair in the first place.
Why didn’t you compete with women? Why didn’t you make a colareer out of it?
One reason would be that he would have been barred from entering the contests.
In all honestly I don’t think amateur sports records matter and the people who say it does are only pretending to care about it to push their worldview.
I’ll buy “Sanctity of Sport” arguments when pro ports stops being a blatant gambling, alcohol, and exploitation ring. Nevermind the fact that PED use is prolific at the top levels of sport.
I agree, and the ways in which it could materially matter (in the US, admission to and/or scholarships for better universities, for example) should be mitigated by making things like education available to all.
I don’t speak for trans people or make any decisions but here’s my thoughts:
No, because the people who hold records are already freaks of nature. The common example is Phelps who is biologically built different.
Or cyclists with a VO2 max that is literally unattainable by normies.
Or quarterbacks with vision better than everyone else.
Or, or, orWe’re already allowing people with unfair advantages to win everything, why would allowing trans people to compete suddenly change things—especially when they aren’t even winning everything?
You know what I’m fine with? A playerbase that is regulated to only accept those who are biologically average.
Them’s some sports i might actually watch, tell yew whutI’ll add, as a trans person with the athleticism of a rock, about 75% of the sports debate is coming from transphobes. I’d be more ok with discussing the nuance if most discussions weren’t laden with a dump truck full of transphobia. The proof of this is that they’re fighting to get trans people banned from darts and chess. Also most people who claim that it’s about protecting women spend all their spare time attacking women (both cis and trans)
about 75% of the sports debate is coming from transphobes.
Not everyone you disagree with is a “transphobe”. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single person in the world who has an “intense and overwhelming fear” of trans people. Most just want them to stay out of the opposite sex’s spaces.
The proof of this is that they’re fighting to get trans people banned from darts and chess.
Have you stopped to investigate why this might be? Darts has a very obvious reason - males have, on average, significantly better hand-eye co-ordination than females. That’s pretty much the biggest component of darts.
As for chess, again - have you looked it up? Why do you think there are so many more chess grand masters who are male than female? You know how trans advocates are always saying things like “trans women have the brain makeup and chemistry of a female!”? Well that is essentially saying that males and females have different brains and as such are better and worse at different scenarios that use their brain. Isn’t it possible that what makes people good at chess is “better” in males?
I know you’re not going to read it. But what the hell.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jnr.23953
https://www.webmd.com/brain/features/how-male-female-brains-differ
Many differences in performance have more to do with culture. There are smaller talent pools of women for previously male dominated sports because fewer women are interested/supported/encouraged to get into them.
Not everyone you disagree with is a “transphobe”. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single person in the world who has an “intense and overwhelming fear” of trans people. Most just want them to stay out of the opposite sex’s spaces.
Just a hunch, you’re cis aren’t you?
Wow good one sherlock! Just like 99.9% of the worlds population, yes, my “gender identity” is the same as my sex. Well it would be if I had a “gender identity”.
Yeah you don’t sound like a transphobe at all. Is there any other discrimination that you’re incapable of experiencing for yourself that you also don’t think exists?
Do you actually think people are scared of trans people?
Good question. I just don’t give enough of a shit about sports to have an opinion here. Especially a negative one. Not only that but I’ve literally seen no trans athletes perform in a televised physical sport ever. So they should go for it and if it’s like a clear difference. Idk. Address it then.
I see a lot of people in my town talk mad shit about trans people and immigrants when the extent of their experience outside of media is seeing them one day living life and doing nothing disruptive. This issue always feels the same. Like if a ton of immigrants showed up and started doing… something bad? Fill in the blank here. I think that would be the time to deal with it and have strong opinions that could negatively impact them.
I think having a strong positive opinion that doesn’t negatively impact people is great but when it comes to excluding people or hurting people let’s see the damage they deal first.
So they should go for it and if it’s like a clear difference. Idk. Address it then.
This is what’s happening, and this is why trans women are being banned from competing in womens sports more and more the world over. Watching a alleged man beat up women with ease in the olympic boxing seems to have been the tipping point for most people that were still on the fence.
Yeah I mean, I see what you’re saying, but isolated incidents don’t really make a good basis for decisions. It seems like on some cursory research that there are just a handful of trans athletes across all of college athletics (like less than 10/500000) and they’re not exactly record breakers. I’m no data analyst but that’s a pretty awful sample size if we’re talking about. Your boxing example seems like a good argument to take these on a case-by-case basis in case someone against all odds is trying to game the system until there are enough examples to make it clear that there’s a problem.
It started as isolated incidents, but it is now a huge issue because the current wave of people identifying as trans has all the makings of a social contagion and it’s spreading like wildfire.
With things like these you have to stop them before they become a massive problem. Why wait until it becomes a gigantic issue when it’s clear that it will already?
