If a 5ft trans woman who started transitioning when she was a teen faces off against a 6ft cis volleyball player, should the cis woman be not allowed to compete?
What about cis olympians? They all have natural advantages that make their ability to compete at high levels possible, why are you not calling for them to be banned? Britney Griner is a giant at nearly 7ft, surely she shouldn’t be allowed to compete when she has such a innate advantage over your average cis woman, right?
Didn’t you read what they wrote? The men would always win. I’m a 5’9" 180-pound cishet man and if I play basketball against Britney Griner, I will definitely win. For sure.
Oh, they meant professional sports? Well I guarantee you that there’s literally no possibility that Britney Griner could beat the worst player out of the ~550 men in the NBA. No possibility. Britney Griner is definitely worse than all of those 550 men. Because she has a vagina.
Edit: The blatant sarcasm in my post was undermined by a mod deleting the post I was replying to. Oh well.
It kind of borders on delusion if I’m being honest.
Remember when everyone was completely losing their shit about Laurel Hubbard, the trans powerlifter who had qualified for the olympics? Remember how everyone was claiming she was going to smash records and take the gold etc.?
Now, what did we see in reality? Laurel Hubbard didn’t even place. She got beat out by her cis competitors, she broke no records, she fell within the same range of ability as cis women.
Where does this fact leave people’s theory about “the men will always win”?
Edit: I see now you were being sarcastic. In any case I’ll leave the response as is, since people do think like that. Changed it to be a less pointy, lol.
What the fuck is this sexist bullshit?
Girls beat boys at basketball all the time. Boys are too fucking fragile to accept it: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/07/1161727783/a-girls-basketball-team-had-to-play-boys-then-werent-allowed-trophies-after-winn
Griner would wipe the floor with you.
Britney Griner is definitely worse than all of those 550 men.
You understand the WNBA all stars would be beat handily by an 8th grade all star team right? It wouldn’t be close.
Okay? So what are the rules then? Only trans people that started transitioning before a certain age? Or has been transitioning for a certain number of years? Or should we measure bone density, muscle density, estrogen, testosterone, other various hormones, etc? What if they were a competitive athlete before transitioning? Is it transphobic to ask a person to prove they meet these requirements? Because apparently, based on the mods here, it’s transphobic to even consider that a person who was born a man might have a physical advantage over someone born a woman.
It’s not like all athletes taking PEDs are better than all of their natural counterparts. But it does afford them an unfair advantage. So we ban their use. A trans person could have an advantage that is the result of them being born a man. This is real and has happened. The existence of that possibility is no different than the possibility an athlete would be superior as a result of PEDs.
Yes, the rules that have been in place about transition time have served fine since even before right-wingers politicized trans people’s existence.
The irrational part is to try and create blanket bans based solely on the fact that an athlete is trans.
It completely ignores the fact that trans biology falls on a very wide spectrum and is dependent on numerous factors. It doesn’t make sense to treat trans athletes as their assigned at birth sex because their biology is literally no longer that of their birth gender. It varies by degrees, but it is no more fair to ban a cis woman for being tall than it is to ban a trans woman for being the same height.
So no, it is not transphobic to have rules and regulations specific to trans athletes when it comes to competitive level sports (whatever experts and committees decide is fair based on actual data) it is transphobic to just outright ban trans people based solely on that status and ignore the biological reality of the individual and whether or not they fall within the range of cis competitors (spoiler, most do).
It’s really stupid for people to get this outraged about a tiny percentage of the population, an even smaller percentage of which actually compete at high levels.
Cis women and trans women have been found to have comparable performance in sports. Generally, cis women have an advantage over trans women.
I’m sure that you’ll be objective and apply the same reasoning against cis women now that you know they have a physical advantage over other women.
What the hell are you on about?
You know what, go ahead and list these record settings. I want to see them.
Omit “school record” or any regional / divisional / age related records. Those get set and broke constantly. Show me ACTUAL records. World records. Professional league records.
Of the dozen or so times when a top ranked female tennis player played either a much lower ranked or handicapped male player, I think the male lost only once (1973 King vs Riggs, through there are claims that Riggs threw the match).
There exist sports where having XX chromosome is not a disadvantage. Male and female equestrians have been competing against each other in the Olympics since the modern Olympics began.
The issue of gender and ‘what makes a woman a woman’ in sports is not new. There are plenty of cases of men pretending to be women and claiming top prizes. I don’t envy the officials who have to do gender tests , as there are many people who are neither XX or XY.
EDIT: now that I’ve had some time to go though my sources a little better, I should correct a couple things. According to the Wikipedia article, females have won more than a couple matches against males, though all of those matches involved either a handicap or a much lower ranked male. The Williams sisters themselves only claimed they could beat any male outside the top 200 (but they both lost by a wide margin in friendly sets to #203).
Male and Female equestrians have only been competing against each other since 1952, and not since the beginning of the modem Olympics.
“The entire reason for women’s sports is…”
…is actually because they were banned from playing sports until 1974, and then when allowed starting beating some men’s teams and the men bellyached about it.
Personally, I have competed in powerlifting, one sport that has gotten attention in the press for not letting trans women compete with cis women, particularly after a trans woman beat out other cis women by huge margin in competition.
I will let the ladies know that the only reason they’re in their own division is actually because of oppression and they should have no issue competing against men.
