World Athletics chief say rules will uphold the integrity of women’s sport amid debate over inclusion of trans athletes.
You remember that high-profile win where a trans athlete beat all at-birth people of the same gender? Yeah. Despite the fear-mongering, it just doesn’t happen…
Finding a Y chromosome isn’t that helpful where performance is concerned as it isn’t just XY and XX out there and some chromosomal abnormalities can mean you are less susceptible to testosterone which can impact development.
There are people with genetically high red blood cell counts or lung capacity. Usain Bolt has a much higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibres (top sprinters tend to be 80-90% compared to the average of 50%). Are we going to test for those too?
Human biology is complicated and the more we know the less black and white it becomes. A crude genetic test isn’t going to help with this.
The Olympics have nothing to do with the original Olympics anymore, do they? They have skateboarding ffs. But trans is too far.
Actually, now I’m curious how they will handle cases of people with more than 2 chromosomes.
And, who runs these organisations? Are they under US influence?
Actually, now I’m curious how they will handle cases of people with more than 2 chromosomes.
Me too. Actually, this is explicitly called out in the article,
World Athletics’s testing requirements would also affect small numbers of competitors who were born with atypical sex chromosomes.
But they don’t say what would happen. The easy ones: presumably, XYY is treated the same as XY and XO is treated like XX. But how would XXY be handled? Or cases where we have genetic chimerism - e.g. some cells are XY and some are XO or XX. (One way this happens is if fraternal twins of different sex are in the womb, and then one absorbs the other.)
Intersexed folks at best seem to be an afterthought in this proposal.
If the tests are sensitive enough, someone with XY gonadal dysgenesis might be counted as XX as well, though I’m skeptical on this point. Actually, this is exactly why such tests are bad - someone who presents as female in virtually every public way, and would be seen as female in terms of sex under even many forms of medical examinations, could be treated as male under these rules and forced to compete against men.
It’s the exact opposite of what the anti-trans folks say that they want to accomplish - protecting women from male athletes.
Which original Olympics? In nude? With OG disciplines?
To be honest, the classic disciplines are boring.
I liked skateboarding, breaking (breakdance).Maybe we should be more unisex, add more shooting, chess, card games, e-sport, Formula E, etc.
Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, said on Wednesday that track and field’s governing body had agreed to introduce the testing to keep the “absolute focus on the integrity of competition”.
That’s the point I was addressing. The Olympics have change a lot. If they want to talk about integrity, they’ve already lost.
Maybe we should be more unisex, add more shooting, chess, card games, e-sport, Formula E, etc.
This is why I don’t watch the Olympics anymore. They are a parody of the original.
This isn’t about not wanting trans people in the sports and you know it. It’s about the unfair advantage they have over biological women.
Spoken like somebody who hasn’t read a single line of research on the subject. Maybe educate yourself first before believing the “unfair advantage” hoax.
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Again, read research on the subject. You do not have any idea what you’re talking about. You’re comparing pretransition people to transitioned people. It’s completely different.
What you’re spouting is the lowbrow kind of stuff a person at a bar would utter “I could run the country better than that imbecile” or “if scientists knew anything about anything, they’d have asked me how to fix the economy”.
I’m telling you again: read the damn research. You have no friggin’ idea what you’re talking about.
P.S look up Denning-Kruger
“You’re wrong. I’m not telling you why but go read up on it. Also you’re stupid”
And not a single mind was changed that day.
“I won’t change my mind by reading scientific research because I know my bar talk is strong”
based. stay ignorant friendo
Men have a significant advantage over women when it comes to strenght and speed and in most (but not all) cases this applies to trans women as well.
Nothing about your comments indicates a willingness to change your mind. However, your statement above is the first concrete statement of the thread, so it seems like the onus would fall on you to support the claim, rather than /u/astro_city@fedio.io to refute it. If you make factual claims without evidence, nobody’s especially obligated to provide evidence to tell you that your made-up facts are wrong.
Hand-grip strength of young men, women and highly trained female athletes
The results of female national elite athletes even indicate that the strength level attainable by extremely high training will rarely surpass the 50th percentile of untrained or not specifically trained men.
What’s a biological woman and why do they matter more than ““non-biological”” women?
There are certainly female athletes with chromosomal abnormalities competing at any level. Women, who are completely unaware they’re in any way different because they have lived their entire life like any other woman. Women, who on average have a small boost in performance compared to women without chromosomal abnormalities.
Why should they be banned? Please elaborate and please also answer why this shouldn’t also apply to women of certain ethnicities with boosted competitive performance.
I haven’t said they should be banned.
Bullshit. You don’t and have never cared about sports, this is bigotry plain and simple.
I’m all for trans rights. Trans people deserve rights, and support, and respect. BUT, here’s my take on sports:
If I wanted to coach an athlete to make it to the Olympics and win gold, I’d scour my country for a trans woman and train her for literally ANY individual sport.
Pole vault, 100 meter, javelin, swimming, you name it. We’ll kick ass.
Downvote me all you want. If my trans woman athlete went through male puberty, my Olympian would take the gold metal.
Be real. Have a nuanced discussion about this.
That is simply not true. A male puberty does give some benefits in some sports. But any advantages in, e.g. muscle density, vanish once hormone levels are accounted for. And hormone levels have been (over-)* controlled for decades now.
You know what also gives you an advantage? Being taller. Or having higher blood oxygenation. Or certain abnormal body proportions. Once you get to top level sports, you have people that basically won the genetic lottery, mixed with a shitload of training. Just look at Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky in swimming, for example. Both are very exceptional in both body and technique, and dominated their sports.
So why is trans inclusion such a divisive point, but, let’s say, height is not? Tall women dominate basketball, should we ban everyone over 1.80m? Or test for hemoglobin before runs?
Trans athletes dominating a sport has not happened in any relevant capacity. I challenge you to find even a single case where it has. This is purely a political talking point, nothing about this is about sports
* Women have (sometimes illegally, and often without consent) been subjected to hormone and chromosome testing for decades, to the detriment of mostly cis- and intersex women. I’m not aware of any trans women caught up in this, at least on an Olympic level.
Sadie Schreiner set the 200-meter record and qualified for the Atlantic Region Championship with a time of 25.27 seconds at the RIT January Friday Meet. The runner also broke the 300-meter record with a 40.78-second finish.
So someone won at a college competition. About 1% of people are trans, so you’ll see some winners. It’d be weirder if you didn’t. The records stated there, 25s for the women’s 200? The world record has been <22s for decades now. That’s not exactly “dominating a sport”.
But do you notice how everyone quoted in the article is actively transphobic, misgendering her and another athlete? If this was truly about sports, why go to that length? You could have a nuanced, respectful debate about fairness in sport. Yet whenever the topic is trans people, it’s always those that already deny their very existence that are the most ‘concerned about fairness’. This has never been about sport.
This is just a convenient front for the right’s culture war bullshit. Don’t fall for it.
Whether or not records are being broken is not the correct way to determine if a certain population has an advantage over the other. A variation toward the top performers could be interpreted as an unfair advantage. If this particular very small group of athletes is in the top 5% than one could think something is anti-competative about this arrangement.
Once again, the same is true for many other factors. Long legs help to be good at running, I’d presume, but we’re not measuring femurs for college sports. And the variation in top performers does not exist, at least not in the way you’re impling. Trans people are actually statistically underrepresented in competitive sports.
The singular focus on a handful of trans athletes, while actively misgendering those same athletes, is a hate and harassment campaign spread by people who couldn’t care less about fairness in sport.
Equating genetic outcomes (e.g. height) and advantages gained through a male or female puberty is a mathematical malpractice. Any advantages gained through male puberty will be seen across an entire biologically male population. Whereas genetic lottery outcomes are less predictable and more sparse.
There is an argument to be had about how a trans female’s advantages gained through a male puberty can be minimized through hormone blockers. However, I would presume advantages already gained through their frame would be retained. I am not opposed allowing these athletes to participate to determine if this hypothesis would hold. However, I doubt the ample data needed to test this is/would be collected across all levels of competition where applicable.
If the handful of trans athletes are mostly top performers, it could indicate that their participation hinders the competitiveness of the competition.
Equating genetic outcomes (e.g. height) and advantages gained through a male or female puberty is a mathematical malpractice. Any advantages gained through male puberty will be seen across an entire biologically male population. Whereas genetic lottery outcomes are less predictable and more sparse.
What do you define as “biologically male” here? This is a term often used by bigots, so I just want to make sure we’re on the same base. Biology isn’t binary, far from it. Intersex people are the ones most often caught up in any sort of gender testing for sports. Most of them don’t even know they are intersex, and find out through some competition excluding them. And what about trans women that went on puberty blockers early, that never went through a testosterone-driven puberty? While the advantage for someone who did go through puberty is debatable and varies from discipline to discipline, for someone who didn’t it’s non-existent. Would you agree that it’s only fair that they should be allowed to compete? Where do you draw the line then?
If the handful of trans athletes are mostly top performers, it could indicate that their participation hinders the competitiveness of the competition.
And you are getting this claim from where, exactly? This is pure conjecture on your part
