# Do trans girl athletes have an advantage? \[Moderated title for clarity\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 1, 2021, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447 "2021-07-01T17:36:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/264 "2021-07-07T14:09:28Z")
I have another question that I don’t have an answer to. My youngest is non-binary (also not an athlete, but did competitively sing in high school). Where do non-binary high schoolers compete? (They competed with women - their agab, but honestly, with competitive vocal, they would have been better off competing as a man - their range includes tenor). ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/265 "2021-07-07T14:12:23Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > It sounds like you’re arguing that since girls were discriminated against in the past and things were even more unfair back then, they should shut up and stop complaining about unfairness now. My intent is to say that if there’s a problem with not enough sports slots for girls, the solution isn’t to exclude trans girls, it’s to better-fund girl’s sports. But also, I point to the past to show that historically, most people in power didn’t actually give a shit about girls’ sports. I suspect that’s still the case on some important level. I feel that most of the opposition to trans girls in school sports isn’t really about “girls need to be able to compete”, it’s really about “we need to protect our fragile girls from the horrible males pretending to be girls”. That is, I think most of the opposition is driven by transphobia, and not by the actual impact on girls. After all, only one girl in the state will win the state record. Does that mean that every other girl is hurt and can’t compete in her sport? I really don’t think so. And it’s not as if there are some vast number of trans girls out there who are all athletes and are going to take all the slots. US states that have allowed transgirls to play with the other girls haven’t actually had any issues with that. > [@DemonTree](#): > > But even if they do turn out to work fine, many transgender high school kids will not be on hormones at all. And high school age boys routinely break women’s Olympic records. One good trans athlete could potentially set state records that no born female can ever touch. So what? Seriously. Who cares about the state’s high school record? And honestly, everyone will know it was set by a trans girl who wasn’t on hormones, and they will still feel good about beating the number two record. Serious records, that people really care about (high stakes sports in general) do have reason to care about stuff like testosterone levels. My argument is that the enormous majority of school sports from high school down through elementary school aren’t about records or championships or money. They are about teamwork and competition and working hard at something and mastering it. > [@Odesio](#): > > And there are so few trans girl athletes right now I’m not sure anyone can come to any concrete conclusions about what effect if any they’ll have on girl’s athletics. Maybe this is something we could reconsider if there ever ARE enough trans girls athletes to matter. Rather than proactively excluding the tiny number of current transgirl athletes. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/266 "2021-07-07T14:58:50Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > One good trans athlete could potentially set state records that no born female can ever touch. Born female!! Thank you for saying that as I find the “assigned at birth” nomenclature puzzling like it’s multiple choice question with more than one answer. Serious Q: Can a parent decide what to assign their infant, why not assign a male born baby as female if that is how a parent wants to raise them now? They can transition later if they need to? Assigned trans at birth? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/267 "2021-07-07T15:07:11Z")
> [@chela](#): > > Can a parent decide what to assign their infant, why not assign a male born baby as female if that is how a parent wants to raise them now? Because you are liable to stress the child, who is probably a boy. I do know two sets of parents who didn’t “assign” any gender to their child at birth, and just referred to the child with gender-neutral terms until it identified as a boy or a girl. Both now have cis-gendered pre-schoolers who use the usual gender pronouns. The vast majority of children will grow up to identify with the gender that matches their body parts, after all. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/268 "2021-07-07T15:15:28Z")
> [@chela](#): > > Born female!! Thank you for saying that as I find the “assigned at birth” nomenclature puzzling like it’s multiple choice question with more than one answer. > > Serious Q: Can a parent decide what to assign their infant, why not assign a male born baby as female if that is how a parent wants to raise them now? They can transition later if they need to? Assigned trans at birth? This is analogous to the question I was asking @Riemann in another thread; Whether traditional methods of assignment at birth was seen as problematic because a child might end up being trans. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I do know two sets of parents who didn’t “assign” any gender to their child at birth, and just referred to the child with gender-neutral terms until it identified as a boy or a girl. Do you happen to know their rational for doing so? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/269 "2021-07-07T15:24:39Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Do you happen to know their rational for doing so? I didn’t ask, but I assume they didn’t want to traumatize a potentially-trans child by assigning the wrong gender to it? I was just cheap, but in some ways did the same. I did refer to my babies as “she” and “he”, but I bought all unisex yellow and green clothing, and the second wore all hand-me-downs from the first. And there really isn’t any difference in how I treat a male or a female baby, except for slightly more care when diapering a boy to avoid being sprayed in the face. They both want to be held and cuddled and fed and burped and they both enjoy funny faces… My son is not very masculine, and asked questions about the differences between the genders in pre-school, like “why do girls choose flowers and boys choose trucks from the pile of stickers?” I told him that on average, girls and boys like different things. He replied, “I like flowers, but I like trucks more”. I affirmed his right to choose whichever sticker he wanted. My daughter is very feminine, and that was obvious from an extremely young age, probably before she was speaking. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/270 "2021-07-07T15:37:56Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Where do non-binary high schoolers compete? I think it would be good if trans and non-binary students had to declare which gender they would participate as at the beginning of the year. The fact is that any activity with a gender component will be separated by male/female. Not all students will necessarily fall into those two categories, but those two categories are all that there are in school programs. As it’s not really feasible to expect these gender separated activities to become coed or that schools start activities specifically for non-binary students, students should choose which gender they want to participate in. That doesn’t necessarily have to be their personal gender. There should be a new field in the student database called something like “participation gender” which is either male or female. One benefit of declaring the participation gender is that it can help stop tricksters and pranksters from joining the girls teams to create chaos. As trans issues can be highly contentious, I’m absolutely certain that some boys will join girls teams simply to be disruptive and try to derail trans participation in sport. By having to make a gender declaration at the beginning of the year, it can help deter a boy from joining the girls team with the purpose of causing problems. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/271 "2021-07-07T15:40:40Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I didn’t ask, but I assume they didn’t want to traumatize a potentially-trans child by assigning the wrong gender to it? I have two kids, girl and boy, who are young adults now with traditional gender roles. I confess that the number of things that kept me awake at night leading up to their birth and through their various stages of early childhood development, whether they would be trans (statistically 0.6% of population according to current data) did not even make it to the list. So I’m struggling to understand where the basis of concern for such a giant assumption about potential gender identity outcomes originates. In short, of all the events that can occur as a child develops, some tragic and some simply unexpected, what prompts parents to proactively and intentionally behave as if “trans” is the unavoidable eventuality? EDIT: I guess this is getting way off topic. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/272 "2021-07-07T15:54:58Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > I think it would be good if trans and non-binary students had to declare which gender they would participate as at the beginning of the year. So you’d be fine with non-binary kids being forced to compete as a gender with which they do not identify? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/273 "2021-07-07T15:57:07Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > So you’d be fine with non-binary kids being forced to compete as a gender with which they do not identify? Or just separate sports by sex, rather than gender. Which makes far more sense. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/274 "2021-07-07T16:06:33Z")
It’s just the reality of the situation. There are only boy/girl teams to choose from. Making everything co-ed doesn’t solve it either, as there are rules about the ratio of boys and girl players (e.g. at least 50% of the players must be girls). I personally don’t think of the gender designation in sport as being based on gender identification. I think of it as the biological-based separation that came from the terms man/women meaning the adult version of male/female, where male/female was defined related to the reproductive systems. More of a sex-based separation. But within that framework, trans athletes often align significantly with the biological norms of male/female sex, so playing in men/women sports isn’t necessarily any big deal. It can be a big deal because of certain biological differences, but those differences can be minimized so that the trans player performs at a sex-typical level. So I don’t see cross-sex sport participation as inherently problematic or infeasible, but I do think there should be some conformation to sex-typical performance in the cross-sex participation. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/275 "2021-07-07T16:06:53Z")
Surely you don’t want to force trans boys who ARE taking hormones to compete with the girls, though. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/276 "2021-07-07T16:09:27Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > So I’m struggling to understand where the basis of concern for such a giant assumption about potential gender identity outcomes originates. I don’t think it caused the parents any stress to refer to their baby as “they” for a year or two, and to tell friends “we had a baby!” instead of “it’s a girl!”. That’s the only thing they did different from me, and I don’t know if I’d even heard of “trans” when I had babies. It’s not like they were spending a lot of money or really doing anything difficult. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/277 "2021-07-07T16:17:30Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Surely you don’t want to force trans boys who ARE taking hormones to compete with the girls, though. No, probably not. It’s likely better to have categories that are “female” and “open.” That said, it’s likelier to become an issue much later on, and this is a thread about school sports. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/278 "2021-07-07T16:18:47Z")
> [@chela](#): > > Serious Q: Can a parent decide what to assign their infant, why not assign a male born baby as female if that is how a parent wants to raise them now? They can transition later if they need to? Assigned trans at birth? Parents don’t generally get to decide what is on the birth certificate. However, I have heard of two cases of mothers raising their baby boy as a girl for reasons of their own. Both kids were eventually taken away by social services. And there have been cases where a baby was born with malformed genitals and the doctors decided they should be operated on and raised as the opposite sex. This didn’t turn out well; mostly they went back to living as their original sex when they found out the truth. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/279 "2021-07-07T16:20:28Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I don’t think it caused the parents any stress to refer to their baby as “they” for a year or two, and to tell friends “we had a baby!” instead of “it’s a girl!”. That’s the only thing they did different from me, and I don’t know if I’d even heard of “trans” when I had babies. It’s not like they were spending a lot of money or really doing anything difficult. What happens after a year or two? It’s not like gender identity is necessarily revealed after a couple of short years of life. Socializing and interacting with other kids becomes almost unavoidable. Daycare, play dates, adult and peer interactions begin to influence a child’s self identity. What has a parent who took every precaution to avoid mis-gendering their kid accomplished in those first formative years that isn’t completely undone almost immediately? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/280 "2021-07-07T16:22:18Z")
Their kids identified with a gender (the one that matched their genitalia, as far as I know) by the time they were two. I think most kids do. As I mentioned above, it was obvious that my daughter was a traditionally feminine girl before she was speaking. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/281 "2021-07-07T16:25:04Z")
Thank you for responding. I’m going to drop this line of discussion since it’s way of topic of OP. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/282 "2021-07-07T16:33:00Z")
My non-binary kid was a girl until late high school and was a pretty girly girl. They are still sort of girly in their presentation, they have an A makeup game and like wearing skirts and are currently growing their hair out long. But presentation is just a single aspect of gender. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447/283 "2021-07-07T16:33:19Z")
> [@chela](#): > > Born female!! I dislike that intensely. What is the difference in saying tran girls are not ‘born female’ and trans girls are not real females? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-trans-girl-athletes-have-an-advantage-moderated-title-for-clarity/945447.md?page=15)