I don’t think he was saying that at all. I think he was…OH! Are those new shoes?!
Thanks for noticing! I have forgotten all about that implied misogyny because my weak mind is easily distracted!.
For the record, I did not say that thinking like a woman meant being weak minded.
In fairness, lesbianism is likely present in female athletes in percentages far above its presence in society overall. Why? Hard to say. Advantage? Don’t know. But it’s not the insuperable advantage a trans woman may have versus the female population.
I did not think you did. Can you explain what you did mean?
Likely meaning it messes with the mind. Much like psyching someone out.
Lacking confidence in oneself is a mind thing.
I have an example of what I meant, with made up assumptions.
Men see tennis as a power game. The purpose is to overpower your opponent.
Women see tennis as a skill game. The purpose is to out-finesse your opponent.
A boy with the strength and mindset of a boy will overpower a girl.
A trans girl with the strength of a boy but the the mindset of a girl will play a finesse game.
The extra strength is less of an advantage when “playing like a girl”.
This is simply wrong. It’s somehow insulting to both women AND men, and is completely inconsistent with even the most cursory examination of tennis. Both the men’s and women’s games will feature players who favor power over finesse, or finesse over power. Men do not play with less finesse than women - as should be absurdly obvious since, if they did, literally the first top ranking man to think of adding finesse to his game would win every tournament. Similarly, women, relative to their body strength, emphasize power just as much as men do - as you would expect since, if they did not, the first highly ranked woman to add power to her game would win every tournament. (It’s also just visibly not true; men play with the same touch, skilly, and subtlety. They’re just way stronger and faster.)
Nobody who has seen Serena Williams, Monica Seles, or Steffi Graf pound opponents into submission with a serve and volley game thinks women don’t play power tennis.
Besides what @RickJay said about players doing what will help them win, a trans girl who only recently transitioned would have been trained to play the men’s game, focusing on power.
But the point is moot no matter how you look at it, since we don’t know whether trans people have ‘mental attributes’ more typical for their birth sex, or for their gender identity, or somewhere in between. It could vary by individual. Having a female gender identity does not imply having a female brain.
I’m not aware of any agreed scientific position on the existence of something that could be labelled a “male” or “female” brain for any practical purpose. The jury is very much out.
interesting reading but my point is that you can find other studies that are in opposition to that
here and here are a couple of quick examples.
Being a geeky reader of science journals I’ve seen this argument bounce back and forth over decades and I’ve yet to see a consensus emerge. I don’t know where the truth lies or even if there is a meaningful answer possible.
IMO a lot of the disagreement is about semantics. The studies mentioned in the New Scientist article found the same differences on average, and I can’t access the other link. But it’s pretty far outside the scope of this thread, and either way @Author_Balk’s argument is incorrect.
Fair enough. It won’t be settled here and I also think @Author_Balk is incorrect.
Women and men will both use as much power and finesse as will be useful to win. It may be that in some sports the difference in strength and power may lead to different tactics being employed but it isn’t obvious to me that a sex-specific “mindset” leads to the tactical differences.
I agree with that. If there is a difference in mindset, the biggest effect is probably interest in sport in the first place.
Which, since we are discussing people who are all already interested in sports, obviously isn’t relevant.
Although this article might skew pro trans. i think it is fairly well balanced and factually based.
I think the trans women in pro sports would be an interesting discussion, but it should probably be separate from this thread. The issues with trans participation in sports at the HS level are going to be very different compared to later levels. At the HS level, there is a big mish-mash of talent and motivations for being in sport. But as the level of sport goes higher, the competition gets tighter and slight differences in ability make a big difference in results. Like in this from the article:
That may be true for hormone levels in trans women in general, but trans women in sports where winning conveys significant rewards will likely aim for a higher hormone level because of the increased competitive gains. That’s not so much a concern at the HS level. I would expect the teen trans athlete to be more focused on gender typical hormone levels rather than tweaking hormones for athletic success.
In a lot of ways I think the issue of trans girls in sports shows up how fundamentally broken youth sports are.
Victory is hugely dependent on wealth. Rich kids whose parents can afford to drive them all over the region for meets, who can afford to buy them the best equipment, who can afford to pay for private coaches–hell, who can afford to live off a single income so the other parent can dedicate their lives to the child’s sport–have an enormous advantage. But we don’t segregate by wealth.
Victory is hugely dependent on body type. Kids with larger frames and who muscle more easily have a tremendous advantage. But we don’t actually segregate by body type.
Instead, we segregate by sex and age. These are at best rough approximations of segregating by body type–and they do nothing to address the wealth advantage.
And these activities that could be recreational instead get turned into massive moneymaking enterprises. Scholarships depending on sports? Christ almighty.
The system is fundamentally broken. We’re fussing over whether trans kids should play according to their chromosomal makeup not because that’ll fix the system, but because it lets us pretend the system is fixable.
This may be true for some sports. I don’t imagine a lot of poor kids are playing water polo or into gymnastics these days. But some of the most popular sports have a very low barrier to entry including basketball, baseball, soccer, and most track & field events allowing even the poorest to be competitive. Now if you want to segregate by wealth how would you do that that without accidentally segregating by race also?