If a transgirl isn’t on hormone replacement therapy then it’s likely that they will be competitive against boys who are about the same age.
If a transgirl is on hormone therapy which prevents her from playing competitively against males…even on the JV on team, at that point I think that she should decide to prioritize transitioning or playing high school sports. I don’t think that playing against females is the solution. Playing in sports leagues organized by church groups or other groups not affiliated with high schools would be a good option if they decide to transition and continue playing sports.
What do you think is the purpose of youth sports? Is it physical exercise? A form of education? Or is it fun? Social bonding?
Or is the purpose of youth sports to suss out who is the best? A competition qua competition; a test of human ability.
I think it’s all of the above. Only if we ignore the first set does it become reasonable to say fairness only matters to the extent that it allows us to determine who is the best. And so with that assumption, all that matters so far as fairness goes is whether the rules are adhered to. Whatever is not prohibited, either explicitly or by good sportsmanship, is considered “fair play”.
But I think you may have conflated fair play with fairness. Consider the most extreme case in sports, Southern Airways Flight 932. The team was scheduled to play the next week. I think, and hope you agree, they did nothing to deserve a loss or forfeit. Therefore it would have been profoundly unfair to mark that game as a loss or forfeit (I think it was actually marked as cancelled).
Stepping down a bit, consider the case of Brandon Roy. Do you think it is fair, or unfair, that he had to cut his career short because his knees weren’t up to the task?
And then finally we go back to the average high school track girl running against a transgender girl not taking hormones who was one of the better runners on the boys’ team last year. Is it fair that one girl should lose, not because of a lack of effort or training or anything within her power, because her competitor has a naturally superior physique? Is it fair that the other girl should win, not because of superior effort or training or any other thing within her power, but because of her naturally superior physique?
I maintain that natural advantages and disadvantages, which are not the fault of the individual they affect, are inherently unfair.
The first is an example of an rules-violating advantage. The second is likely to be a genetic advantage.
And this is what I’m getting at: sports are absolutely riddled with genetic advantages. Some folks are really tall. Some folks develop calf muscles really well. Some folks have the combination of low weight and long limbs crucial to rock-climbing. Noting that an advantage is genetic hasn’t traditionally made it “unfair”.
And there are other advantages in sports that have nothing to do with the athletes’ dedication to the sport. Money, money, money; and parents who can and will dedicate huge chunks of their lives to supporting their kids’ sport. We’ve never set up separate gymnastics leagues for rich kids and poor kids, even though the former have undeniable advantages.
You asked Max if he’s a sports fan. I’ll answer for myself: not especially, but I am a fan of kids’ emotional wellbeing. To the extent that our current sports structures are good for kids, I’m indirectly a fan of them. To the extent that they’re bad for kids, I’m a critic of them.
A proposed rule that requires trans students to play alongside the gender they don’t identify with is real bad for kids. Doing it out of a sense of fairness seems a little precious to me, given the absolute ocean of unearned advantages that other athletes have.
If all we had were “open” categories and players segregated according to ability then this would cease to be an issue. Of course any individual may still find themselves surrounded by team-mates of a gender they don’t identify with but if it is driven by performance is that better than being driven by gender?
Mind you, the logical extension of that to top level sport would mean an effective end to top level female categories.
From everything I’ve read on the topic, some trans girls and women will have an inherent advantage, and some will not. Several leagues/organizations have already put in place rules (hormone testing, etc.) that are meant to provide a balance between competitiveness/safety and fairness/accessibility. I’m unaware of any circumstances of “trans girl, untreated, who had been a star on the boy’s team now playing on the girl’s team”.
There are tons of people looking to harm and exclude trans people, with any excuse. Those attitudes need to be opposed. That doesn’t necessarily mean that any and every person who claims to be a trans girl or woman should be allowed into any and every girls/women’s sports league. The athletic interests of cis girls and women can (and should) be protected while also providing accessibility and fairness to trans girls and women.
Is she over 18? She’s probably not legally able to medically transition. And i don’t think we want society to force her to castrate herself at that age.
You said this really well. Speaking as someone who had genetic disadvantages in high school sports (mostly poor vision and mediocre coordination) I never felt sports were “fair” and frequently resented being forced to play them in gym class. I don’t see why “weird hormones” is morally any different that “great coordination”.
At the Olympics, sure, restrict the women’s class to people who fit some hormone profile. Or rename the categories to open and something else. But in high school i think kids’ mental health should be prioritized over trying to engineer which school district wins the game.
Co-ed sports are not inherently bad for kids. We are also moving into an era of increasing gender fluidity, where kids may not even wish to be pigeonholed into a rigidly defined gender.
As noted, sports aren’t “fair”. I competed in sport for 8 years in high school and college (club, not Div 1-3) and never won a damn thing. That’s ok because I still benefited from it, immensely. Trying to make sports fair just blows the concept to pieces, and not in a good way, not in a justified reimagining of the concept kind of way. Just taking a thing that is actually a positive force in many people’s lives and breaking it all to hell.
I don’t think it’s a moral issue, but we created “girl’s / women’s” sports almost entirely because of hormones. The impact of hormones on physical development is substantial and unquestioned, and the roughly 50% of the population with hormone profile X is largely incapable of competing physically against the roughly 50% of the population with hormone profile Y. Granted, the upper end of the bell curve for X is well into the bell curve of Y, but the part of the curve that determines who is winning the game today is further off to the right.
If we treat hormones like any other physical difference, we are just going back to “pre women’s sport” days, where people with XX chromosomes are not offered a chance to play and win, at least, they won’t win anything that counts.
Therein lies the problem though. There is a very real pushback against even your mild proposal above. What you say here could well be labelled as “harm”, “hate” and “transphobia”.
The moment you open up the possibility of a person, who sincerely considers themselves a woman, being denied access to compete as their chosen gender then you open yourself to that criticism.
You don’t need such an extreme scenario in order to start getting results that raise eyebrows.
At 14 I was a moderately decent sprinter, nowhere near the best in my school year of 150 pupils but my best 100m time would have smashed the national girls record.
A single, untreated male of modest athletic ability competing in the female category could see the records being re-written. How do we ensure that doesn’t happen while addressing fairness and inclusion and avoiding the need to mandate medical intervention?
It hasn’t happened yet but given the rise in people identifying as trans I suspect it is an issue that will come to prominence some time in the next 5-10 years.
And if those females said that such protection and eligibility must take the form of biological classification and mandated medical intervention, would you be supportive?
As long as those kids aren’t cis-girls, right? Because they’re the ones being told that it doesn’t matter whether or not a transgirl has a physical advantage over them. They’re the ones being told, “Suck it up, buttercup.”
I’m pretty convinced that sports are overall good for kids. I’m pretty unconvinced that having “top level sport” be a thing is overall good for kids. Before we figure out how to maintain a chance for cis girls to get those championships, can we figure out if keeping championships for anyone is worth doing?
Elite sport has as much right to exist as a career and a pursuit as any other human endeavour.
You might as well ask why we have fine art galleries, Michelin-starred restaurants or concert halls. People want to be, produce or perform at the highest level. In some cases it is like the mountaineer who gives their rationale as “because it is there” and for others it is for fame and glory and wealth.
And of course for all the above people want to follow, watch and read-about those exploits.
The ones who get to say if it is worth it are those who do it and those who support it.
Agreed, and well said. I would point out that a gender (or chromosome) based advantage has traditionally been considered unfair.
My perspective as a sports fan is that the SDMB as a whole is hostile to sports. Lots and lots of people with traumatic experiences from gym class where they weren’t very good, leading to hostility and the attitude of “screw sports.” It took us sports fans multiple years to convince the powers that be to grant us the Game Room.
Honestly, in my opinion, people who are hostile to sports don’t have valid opinions on this subject. Even if you’re not hostile, if you don’t at least casually watch sports beyond the Olympics every couple years, again, I don’t think you really have a valid opinion. (General you.)
By the same token, sports fans who are hostile to trans in general also don’t have valid opinions on this topic.
There’s a lot of hypotheses, “what ifs”, and slippery slope arguments here. Do you agree or disagree? The fact that some people might disagree is irrelevant to the substance of my post.
A little wordy, but this is my position exactly. 100% agreed. Everyone arguing for a case-by-case basis seems (to me) to be clearly and obviously correct.
One way to mitigate this effect is to only have team sports open to trans athletes and limit the number of trans athletes on the field and on the team in general. Something like there can be 1 trans athlete per 10 team members and that there can only be 1 trans athlete on the field at any time. So a basketball team could have 1 trans athlete, a soccer team could have 2, etc. And with only one playing at any time, any issue of genetic athletic superiority will be muted from the team aspect. It may seem limiting to only have a certain number of slots for trans players, but teams only have a certain number of slots anyway. Lots of kids don’t get to play in a sport because they don’t make the team.
Individual sports could be handled to where the trans athlete competed in an “exhibition” status, which means they don’t compete for points. Their times wouldn’t count as official times. So even if they came in first with a record time, that would just be for their own personal satisfaction rather than the record books.
Not really. I don’t think I presented a “slippery slope”. Merely observing that what you said (taking each case on its own merits) is still fraught with issues.
Well it does matter somewhat if the end point is a desire for maximal agreement. It matters who is disagreeing and for what reason.
And that is pretty much what the UK sports council recommend but with the caveat that it is necessarily ambiguous and cannot easily balance the desire for inclusion, fairness and safety. I think they are correct in their assessment but recognise that it makes nothing any easier to police, nor does it provide a fully equitable solution.
LGBT+ groups seem to be generally opposed, A Stonewall spokesman said-
“It is extremely harmful for this guidance to suggest that there is an inherent conflict between inclusion, fairness and safety, when in reality, the three go hand in hand,”
Which is in complete disagreement with the recommendations.
Huh? How so? Is anyone trying to prevent cis girls from playing high school sports?
This is a bizarre statement.
Edited to add: do you think sports are only healthy if you win? Because of that’s your perspective, we should remove sports from school entirely. I don’t think that’s true at all. I think competing, teamwork, and improving your physical performance are all beneficial to kids. And i think kids can get all those benefits even if they have a lower chance of being the best in the school.
Your suggestions on team sports are perhaps an example of how this issue might be approached but it still fundamentally treats trans people as “different” and apart from their chosen gender. I’m not saying you are wrong or that it is a bad idea per se, just that I see it creating as many problems and challenges as it solves.
I suspect that would be unsatisfying for all involved. I think the mindset of the athlete is one that desires the chance to finish first.