The largest college sports governing body in the country made the change following President Trump’s executive order banning trans girls from girls’ school sports.
I’ve been deeply frustrated by the progressive stance on trans people in professional sports.
Anyone who began medical transitioning after puberty will have reasonably notable physical differences from cisgender people in their appropriately gendered sport. It’s similar to doping, but something their body was doing naturally with incorrect hormones that didn’t reflect their gender.
I certainly don’t feel good about it, but I do think there is a very viable argument to disqualify those kinds of trans people (who medically transitioned after puberty) from competition. The debate becomes much more nuanced as you consider different sports where physical differences between gender matter less. Rugby, weightlifting; trans folks are out. Target shooting, chess, darts; no problem. It’s a debate to be had sport by sport, league by league. The whole issue should have been messaged that way from the beginning.
Queer advocacy groups taking a broad “all or nothing” civil rights stance on this was a HUGE mistake. It’s an argument they were destined to lose, only affected a minuscule number of athletes, and wasted so much time and effort that could have been spent on other battles for trans rights. US Democrats take their cues on queer issues from those queer advocacy groups, so they rolled with it and got trampled.
I really want to have a conversation with queer strategists and Democrat policy leaders to understand why this was the hill they decided to make trans rights die on.
Completely agree.
The whole point of women’s sport leagues is because it’s unfair to have them compete against men. Trying to impose fairness with something designed to be unfair is folly.
“The whole point of having negro sports leagues is because it’s unfair to have them compete against whites. Trying to impose fairness with something designed to be unfair is folly.”
Followed by:
“There’s no rule saying that negroes can’t play in the National League.”
That’s not even close to similar since race has no significant bearing on physical capabilities as is easily proven by the Olympics results even when black people were still being excluded in North America.
The top female athletes get absolutely wrecked at strength based sports by even mediocre male athletes. Just go look up the Williams sisters vs Braasch (tennis)
Anyone who keeps claiming that trans athletes have zero benefit are lying to themselves. There are some who have no benefit, especially if they transitioned pre-puberty, but it’s clear as day biologically that they were literally doping for a decade of their development if they transitioned later.
Just want to preface this whole argument with a “This issue is pretty complex, and there are valid reasons to be concerned on both sides.”
I always see the “physical differences” argument, and my response is where do you draw the line? There are outliers of both cis men and women, so if we’re going purely off natural physical ability, is it okay to bump the lowest performance cis men into the women’s league, or the highest performance women into the men’s leagues?
It’s funny you mention rugby, because I have a cis female friend who plays. She’s 5’11 and ~180lbs, and an absolute tank on the field. I’m trans, and we’re basically the exact same size/weight. Her 1RM on basically anything other than bench has always been higher than mine, even as a guy. If the concern is purely about physical differences, then at what point do you start singling out non-trans people for being outliers, even if it’s 100% natural?
While I absolutely understand the issues with allowing those who’ve gone through testosterone puberty into sports with those who haven’t (painting with as broad a brush as possible), I think the main reason I struggle to agree with bans of trans athletes in any capacity is simply because it’s 100% going to be abused by shitty people, and is an overly simplistic solution.
My overly simplistic solution? Stop grouping people by gender, and just break it up into tiered leagues/divisions/weight classes like football/soccer, baseball, or wrestling? Will there be a natural segmentation based off sex? For a lot of sports, almost definitely. But I think it’s the most equitable solution, and also helps break down the idea that women can’t possibly compete against men in any way, or that men are inherently better than women. You now also get the added benefit that people who might normally be cut from a team for low performance now have the opportunity to play in a lower division, and have a reason for the players in the low/mid divisions who might obliterate the competition to have a reason to keep improving for a shot at a higher division.
Now, feel free to tear apart my idea, because I’m sure there are many aspects of it I didn’t clearly think through, but it’s just a thought.
It’s funny you mention rugby, because I have a cis female friend who plays. She’s 5’11 and ~180lbs, and an absolute tank on the field. I’m trans, and we’re basically the exact same size/weight. Her 1RM on basically anything other than bench has always been higher than mine, even as a guy
Just to add on to this: I was an all state scrum half and played at a division 1 school in college, and I have played with women that can absolutely wreck my ass on a rugby pitch. There’s absolutely no reason a woman couldn’t play with men if they’re at the same skill level.
Please lecture us more about how unequal we should be and how we should “just take it” when the majority disagrees. /s
Democrats spent next to no time or money defending us during this election, so maybe don’t blame trans folks for the bigotry thrust upon them. I could talk about how much muscle mass and other body changes brings most trans folks to (normally) on par with cis competitors, or how being discriminatory this way hurts cis women (because let’s be honest, it seems none of you chucklefucks think about trans men), especially if they have POTS or another endocrine disorder. But why bother at this point?
We’re talking about NCAA sports here, often young teens and adults who very much haven’t finished puberty. There are only something like 10 trans people out of over 500k, and these bigoted shits wrote laws to call them invalid and unable to compete or play with their peers. This shit reeks of not wanting to let black folks compete because “they can run better” or some other racist shit.
As for your “hill to die on” shit, when have I lost enough rights and privileges to be “acceptable”? What’s the next “hill” we shouldn’t supposedly die on? Maybe going to the bathroom in public restrooms? Perhaps we should be banned from social gatherings with cis women (again, y’all don’t care about men)? How about we segregate water fountains to make sure our filthy trans lips don’t touch pristine cis water?
Sorry, I mean, you just “chose this hill to die on”. I hope this doesn’t “make you hate trans people” or “show how unhinged trans people are”. I know I should be thankful to be alive at all, since if I get too uppity we might start talking about whether or not my transness makes me unemployable or if I’m stealing jobs from women because of my unfair puberty advantages or something.
I mostly agree. But at the same time, unmedicated humans are not strictly male or female either. Bodies vary a lot. So there are women out there with an advantage over other women because their bodies are more male than the average. So determining who is fair to compete against who by chromosome isn’t really fair either. What they need is some better measure of advantages earned by genetics vs hard work. Then there should be categories of competition based on that. The middle categories would have overlap between men and women. That would really allow more people to fairly compete.
Cowardly and shameful
Their choice was lose federal funding. which means a lot less under privileged people going to college or banning trans from sports. Also federal funding means not only money for tuition but also helps to fund university research and development labs. Also for contracts, where the government purchases goods or services from universities for government use
So does it suck. Hell yes. Which do they give up though, all of the above or trans in sports?
You lose federal funding and colleges have to make harsh cuts.
Boycott NCAA
Someone in another thread said there should be a separate league for trans athletes. I asked which specific sport the league would be in since there are not enough trans athletes in any one sport to make a league.
They said they didn’t care. And that’s part of the problem.
While I personally believe trans athletes should be allowed to compete in any league of their choice or at least the league most closely matching the gender they present as, there is a part of me that would also like open-gendered sports in general. I have a theory that the “women are weaker, and would get crushed in leagues with men” is misogyny seeing only disadvantages and none of the advantages women athletes have (more complete brain development during their prime athletic years, etc.) If you are actually concerned about injury, then go by weight class, which could help save smaller men from severe injury as well.
I do also wonder just how much keeping sports gendered is just done to protect male egos from being styled on by women.
Well the less than 10 trans athletes in the NCAA must be crushed.
For those that say trans people should just have their own league, there aren’t enough trans athletes to do that. A tiny tiny sliver of trans people are athletes and we are already only 1.5 million people. Having our own league guarantees trans people can’t be athletes cause there’s not enough people or funding for a whole league. Women’s leagues already struggle with funding and women are the majority in the country.
Plus does trans people having their own league mean trans men and women play against each other because that doesn’t seem fair since they both have similar level of athletic ability as their cis counterparts. So then do we the separate it further into trans men and trans women leagues? Because that definitely won’t get enough funding for two brand new leagues across all education linked and professional sports.
Either, trans people can participate against their cis counterparts because there’s plenty of evidence to show they fall in line with them when it comes to athletic ability, or you say no trans people can ever ever play sports. That’s it.
