this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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79
Out transgender woman athlete will make history as she competes in Paralympic Games (www.advocate.com)
submitted 2 months ago by jeffw to c/news
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[–] tyrant 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

Someone sway my feelings... On one hand I'm happy about inclusion but on the other I'm worried non trans women aren't getting a fair shake.

Edit: or just down vote. I'm genuinely torn and hoping someone can provide some insight

Edit 2: After some snarky comments I decided to go digging... here's what I found initially. Feel free to post your own studies/links.

*"For the first two years after starting hormones, the trans women in their review were able to do 10 percent more pushups and 6 percent more situps than their cisgender female counterparts. After two years, Roberts told NBC News, “they were fairly equivalent to the cisgender women.”

Their running times declined as well, but two years on, trans women were still 12 percent faster on the 1.5 mile-run than their cisgender peers."*

2021 https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trans-women-retain-athletic-edge-after-year-hormone-therapy-study-n1252764

and...

Testosterone drives anatomical and physiological sex differences in the human body (Figure 1). These sex differences can be architectural and therefore permanent, or can be influenced by adult-level, circulating testosterone concentrations, and therefore modifiable. Permanent sex differences that affect athletic performance involve the (i) brain, (ii) skeletal structure, and (iii) cardiorespiratory system. Modifiable sex differences include testosterone effects on (i) muscle mass and strength and (ii) aerobic capacity. 2022 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/

and...

"Here, we report that current evidence shows the biological advantage, most notably in terms of muscle mass and strength, conferred by male puberty and thus enjoyed by most transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed as per current sporting guidelines for transgender athletes." 2022 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7846503/

and...

"A study of transgender women found their race times slowed after transitioning, but their age grades, which compare people to the best runners of the same sex and age, hardly changed, suggesting they have no advantage over non-transgender women." 2018 https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-racing-discover-how-gender-transitions-alter-athletic-performance-including

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

I get what you mean. I am 100% behind any humans right to be whoever they want to identify as. I am also not naive to the fact that hormones do alter muscle density and development.

I am not an expert, but I do have critical thinking skills.

That being said, I feel like if a trans person wants to participate in sports with cis gender of the same sex, maybe they need to have their hormones monitored to be in line with the average of that gender for a decent period of time so they don’t have hormone based advantages?

If anyone has a better suggestion, please by all means, let me know. That idea is the best one I could personally come up with while defending the trans community from a co-worker that leans very far right and brings up pedos claiming being trans to go to opposite gender bathrooms and trans people having unfair advantage in sports after some body builder claimed to be trans and got world records even tho it was obvious that person was doing it specifically to get the unfair advantage…

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm with you, all other areas other than athletics are cool but it's taking it too far when a biological male competes alongside biological females.

[–] PlantJam 3 points 2 months ago

Hot take here, but I generally trust the governing bodies of the sporting events to figure that stuff out since I'm not an expert.

[–] Famko 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I heard a study before which said that trans women on average had lower testosterone than cis women, so the advantages that a trans woman has over them is rather slim, maybe even nonexistant.

[–] tyrant 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Do you have a link?

[–] Famko 2 points 2 months ago

Sorry for replying late, didn't see this message.

I sadly do not have the link to this study as I heard this info a while ago.

Though I came across a whole lot more studies saying that trans women athletes have higher testosterone levels. Makes sense if they experienced male puberty before and didn't prevent it using puberty blockers (since the majority of testosterone is created during puberty). Assuming they DID use puberty blockers, they should not have a significant competitive advantage.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's info out there if you search for it, but people are really tired of "genuine" questions. See sealioning

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If trans women are so dominating in sports, then why haven't they dominated women's sports for the past 50 years?

[–] tyrant 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I haven't seen anyone say that they are dominating but trans people only make up 1% of the population so the pool of potential athletes is quite a bit smaller than cis gendered individuals.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago

Then why is it a problem that needs a solution?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago

Hormonal replacement therapy makes trans women lose their advantage regarding muscle growth so the only real ‘advantage’ they have to being trans is being taller on average, but cis women can be tall as well and that was never considered unfair. Also trans women have disadvantages because they often have to deal with surgeries meaning they can’t train for months and they face a lot of discrimination which can impact performance, training possibilities and income (which also affects training possibilities and time). Trans women have never been a threat towards women’s sports, the percentage of trans women with medals is less than that of cis women. Even if you remove the factor of discrimination then the advantage trans women have is no more than a cis woman who is born with very slow muscle acidification. Talking about actual unfair advantages, in many olympic sports you have to have rich parents to be able to get on an olympic level because training facilities are expensive and you (and your parents) need to have a lot of free time.