Connecticut parents angry over trans athlete

In My Humble Opinion
1

I wasn’t sure whether to post this in Great Debates or here. Since I don’t frequent GD much, I decided here.

I just read an article that has me self debating on what I know is a touchy subject. Transgender athletes in competitions. Now, fwiw I have no issues with transgender people. Hell, I have a huge crush on one but sadly it’s one sided but that’s a whole other can of worms lol. But when it comes to athletic competition I feel torn. And please, if I say something in an offensive way, it’s not at all intentional and I would very much appreciate being told it was so I can avoid doing so in the future. I know as far as the topic goes I am coming from an outside viewpoint so I might make some unintentional faux pas.

Basically, in the article, there is some contention in a high school over a transgender teen competing in the women’s track competition. Parents are angry that a ‘boy’ is competing in a girl’s competition and is basically domineering it. Now here is where I have some internal debate. I have no issue at all with transgender individuals competing in athletics but I feel that there should be some rules around hormone therapy. Because, (and this is the point where I’m worrying about crossing over a line and becoming offensive) in my mind, someone can be transgender in mind and soul but their physical body doesn’t always reflect that.

A transgender woman who has not undergone any sort of HRT is, physically (musculature, hormones, etc) still male. And thus, that could very well give her a strong advantage in a female competition. The opposite is true with a transgender man without HRT. He’s going to be sorely at a disadvantage in a male competition. Or, in the case where a trans wrestler who HAD undergone HRT but was forced to compete in a female competition because he was female on his birth certificate, basically bulldozed through it.

In the article I read that the NCAA does apparently require transgender athletes be on HRT for a year before competing. Personally, I think that’s a good rule and one that makes it fair for everyone. But, in the article noted in the beginning, the athlete and her family feel that HRT shouldn’t even come into the mix. And I…disagree. And that makes me conflicted because I want to be supportive of transgender rights but I just can’t logically justify her point of view in my mind. It just doesn’t seem fair to everyone else competing.

I’m curious what other people feel about this. Am I being prejudiced by thinking there should be some requirements around HRT for transgendered athletes? If so, how can we make sure that they’re able to be included in athletics while also making sure there’s no physical advantages over other competitors?

2

The Olympics currently require a year on hormone therapy and is expected to lower (as of April 2018, date of the article) allowable testosterone levels.

3

While there are currently rules in place that state that transgender athletes have to fit certain criteria to compete, it is possible that that will change down the road. Before long, we could shift into an era/phase where all someone needs to do to identify as something is to…identify as that thing. We could end up with cisgender male athletes saying, “I declare myself female for the next few weeks” before the registration deadline and winning the hundred-meter sprint in the women’s event before reverting back to male once the medal is draped around the neck.

Sure, there would be considerable shame and criticism in doing so, and not much glory to feel about, but many athletes have done knavish things for the sake of even less glory. Or maybe it would all be MRAs or conservative male athletes who are deliberately “trying to prove a political point”, who would do this.

4

California Interscholastic Federation guidelines (PDF)
It would definitely eliminate the opportunistic. However, California does not require surgical or hormonal intervention(?).

5

Combat sports are where it worries me. The consequences of a born-male competing in a woman’s race and winning are pretty mild. She gets a medal and the second place competitor is forced to compete at a biological disadvantage. Maybe not fair, but whatever. 99 born women in a field of 100 are going to lose the race anyway, so now it’s 100, c’est la vie. Combat sports can have much more dire consequences. If say Brock Lesnar discovered that he was transgendered and even took hormones for a year, there’s a real non-zero chance that he could end up paralyzing or even killing a woman during a fight. I don’t think I would want to be the official to say that it’s OK in the name of inclusiveness.

6

Why don’t you wait until that happens before you complain about it? Maybe because if you did that, you’d never get a chance to complain?

Turning to the actual issue at hand, I have no problem with transgender athletes having to satisfy certain criteria like testosterone levels before they are able to compete as a particular gender, as the Olympics does now. Given the relatively short time that this has been an active concern at all levels of competition, I’m sure the current criteria aren’t exactly correct and will be revised over time. I wish this could happen based on mutual goals of fairness and inclusion, without transphobic arguments having such weight.

7

Aren’t these the same scare tactics used in arguments against letting transgenders use the same gendered bathrooms they identify with? “What’s gonna happen is that perverts will be putting on women’s clothes and following your little girls into public bathrooms!!”

8

Just about every regulation I can think of to eliminate “trans advantage” would also potentially screw a cis female that is outside two standard deviations of “normal” for whatever metric you are looking at.

If you say that their testosterone levels need to be less than X, then someone like Caster Semenya gets screwed.

If you say their bone density or percent muscle mass must be no greater than X, then someone like Serena Williams gets screwed.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

9

Has there ever been a FtM transgender person who competed against cis-men in sports with any degree of success? All the cases I have ever heard about are MtF who competed against cis-women.

On a possibly related note, a transgender woman recently competed in the Miss Universe contest, but finished out of the top 20. Miss Spain, IIRC. Not an athletic competition, I realize.

I don’t know that you can. Puberty has effects, and short of requiring MtF transgender people to be on puberty blockers, biologically male people are going to have an inherent advantage. Not necessarily an overwhelming one, but one nonetheless. I read in Sports Illustrated about a woman (cis-) who was training for women’s wrestling in the Olympics by competing against high school boys, and her record at the time was something like 4-8. So qualifying for the elite level for women, but less than mediocre against men.

Regards,
Shodan
on preview - I found one FtM transgender athlete, Schuyler Bailar who moved from the women’s to the men’s swimming team at Harvard, but I can find no information on Bailar’s subsequent record.

10

And you can virtually guarantee a MtoF transexual will win a gold Olympic medal by 2024, whilst not being the best athlete in the world, just gaining the male advantages of her basic framework that everybody is trying very hard to pretend doesn’t make a difference.

11

Brock Lesnar in women’s MMA? Well, that’d be a short fight.

12

Well, that’s not just imaginary. See this link:

https://www.thegetrealmom.com/blog/womensrestroom

13

FtM boxer won a pro match.

14

And this is kinda what I’m conflicted about. I mean, HRT only does so much. At least, as far as I know. There might be some data out there I’m not aware of. I wonder if there’s a huge difference between someone who starts (and continues) HRT before puberty or someone who does so after. I imagine there would be. But I can’t imagine there being a requirement of having started HRT before puberty.

But when I’ve brought up this whole topic with my trans friend, they get a bit annoyed and say that it’s not a big enough advantage to even make a difference. They seem to feel that it’s just another attempt to stop transgender people from integrating into society as a whole. So of course, then I feel like maybe I AM blowing things out of proportion and feel bad about even bringing it up.

I just feel like I’m kind of in the middle. On one end, there’s people saying transgender athletes have too much of an advantage to EVER be able to compete, no matter what. While on the other end, there are people saying there’s NO advantages or just that it’s not worth restricting their access to sports to implement any sort of rules.

15

Big burly man dresses up as big burly man and goes into women’s restroom, not following any children in and not harassing people while in there.
Do you even bother to read your own links?

16

I mean, that almost proves the point. The match was won against Hugo Aguilar-a competitor that has made a living getting beaten in local matches in Edmonton. He’s 0-6 in 4 round featherweights and the best scores he has ever gotten were in the match he fought against Patricio.

17

I remain unconvinced by your link that this concern is not entirely imaginary.

18

This is contentious among trans people too, especially once nonbinary people are in the mix.

Generally for lower stakes intramural-type sports, consistent self-identification is enough.

For higher stakes regional/college, national and world class stuff it gets more problematic. Clearly at world-class levels the cream of the crop of men just generally have better performance than the cream of the crop of women, and most late-transitioning trans women (that don’t have other hormonal issues preceding their transition) benefit from biological differences.

HRT definitely makes strength drop off a lot, if you’re not an athlete I’d say it’s fairly comparable (within tolerance) to a cis female as far as things like “moving heavy furniture” goes, but I can’t say I know the research overly well on trans athletes. In fact, I know there’s major disagreement.

We do know that post-HRT and especially post-bottom surgery there’s a lot of strength dropoff. The Olympic commission’s research settled on something like 5 years post-surgery+HRT (or thereabouts), but I’m not sure how substantiated that is from a scientific perspective.

There are decent arguments about bone density not dropping off if HRT was done post-puberty, but it’s very unclear what that actually affects, if anything, in terms of sports performance. In fact, in some combat sports some commentators have noted that this may in truth be a liability for trans women themselves because the extra weight from denser bones may make them weigh into a higher weight class than they actually belong in by muscle mass.

As mentioned by monstro, there are a number of women traditionally counted as “cis” that fly in the face of neat biological classifiers, sports is all about minor technically-allowable biological advantages as much as it is diet and training at world class, record breaking levels. Over all, trans women end up in a bad situation where if they lose nobody cares, but if they win, it’s a scandal.

It’s hard to find decent solutions that make people happy. Women’s sports exist for a very good reason: to display the athletic prowess of half of the population that would be mostly be excluded if only men could compete. I don’t think it’s a good idea to just throw out brackets women dominate just because of the difficulties of gender issues, but I have heard some alternate proposals.

One proposal is a sort of “strength bracket” system, this allows what was traditionally “women’s leagues” to be reframed as a lower strength bracket, but also include AFAB nonbinary people, and perhaps some trans women or early-transition trans men. With the further inclusion of more brackets than just the two that exist now, for people with differing hormonal situations (e.g. AFAB NB people on low-dose T) who may be at peak physical strength and blanket outclass what’s traditionally “women” now but still far below world-class “men’s” levels. It’s certainly different than what we have now, and the idea needs more time in the oven to really work, but is at least something to think about.

I’m not going to act like there aren’t issues with this. The major concern being that reframing “women’s sports” as “lower strength bracket” may make them feel more irrelevant (“well why would I want to watch the worse people?”). Not to mention how to even measure such a thing. Like I said, it’s more a direction I’ve found compelling think about than a fully formed rock solid plan.

19

I see this is much lower now (though I think this number used to be closer to the old rules). I still don’t know about its evidential backing.

20

I’m less worried in combat sports because there’s already a control that would help quite a bit - weight classes. The highest female weight class is currently super heavyweight at 185.1+ pounds. That obviously needs some tweaking when we are talking about Brock Lesnar who’s about 100 pounds over that line. Still a MtF transgender competitor with HRT isn’t probably going to be wildly dangerous to someone assigned female at birth of similar weight.