The most we can say is that for some states an unknown number of trans people of unknown status are having an unknown level of success in high school sports and that no issues have been reported.
Which may or may not be significant. On one hand there is the desire to seize on anything and blow it out of proportion, on the other hand a desire to supress any issues or not even collect data in the first place. I don’t know which, or that any may have a significant effect.
We do know that unmodified trans women who have gone through puberty are highly likely to have massive athletic advantage. If the numbers of such people become large enough you would expect to see pockets of it here and there in individual schools with eventually a funneling effect occuring in area/county/state competitions.
If we don’t see that the most likely reason will be that the numbers are too small, those involved are not interested in sport or that there is no media interest in reporting it.
Of course without knowing numbers, trends, protocols and methodologies we can’t really draw too many firm conclusions.
I don’t agree with this premise stated as an absolute, the way you’ve done here. We’d expect some transgirls to do so, and others not.
The range of potential transgirl athleticism is not entirely exceeding that of cisgirls. There are overweight transgirls, short transgirls, nearsighted transgirls, transgirls who just don’t have the fast twitch muscles of their cisgirl cohorts…
It might be that many of the ones who do compete are not the ones who can easily outperform cisgirls, by virtue of just being humdrum athletes (while nevertheless having the inclination and drive to perform at average cisgirl level).
It might be that the few news stories we’ve seen maps to the ratio of exceeding vs average transgirl performance.
As for 4a? We’ve already spoken about the low probability of transgirl dominance being kept quiet.
So, nothing has manifested. As in made “evident to the senses, especially to the sight; apparent; distinctly perceived; easily apprehensible; plain; not obscure or hidden.”, to forestall any definitional quibbles.
We know no such thing. We know they have a theoretical potential for advantage. Whether that actually happens to any degree is what’s in question - and what the 19 states with transgirl athletes on girls’ teams is currently refuting just by being there.
Tucker Carlson and other right wing media personalities would be all over any story of a cisgirl not making a team, losing a scholarship, losing a competition because of a transgirl. And, parents of the cisgirl would be more than happy to go to the right wing media circus to make their case directly. The idea that this is being suppressed is laughable.
If a transgirl looks like a boy and performs athletically like a boy, there’s really no way to suppress that. Every other athlete in the school knows. Many of them will mention it to their parents. If it’s a problem, the “desire to seize on anything and blow it out of proportion” would easily win out.
This is true, nothing major has come to light, I even said “no issues had been reported” but absent any real knowledge of what the situation is regarding record-keeping and data-collection in those states there aren’t any conclusions to be drawn from that.
I disagree, I think “highly likely” is a fair assessment.
What I should have clarified is that this would be a “like for like”. Which should be obvious but perhaps is not. Clearly taking a trans woman in the bottom 10% of male athletic performance will see them outperformed by a biological female in the top 10% of their range. But choosing each from the same point in the range would mean it was highly likely that the unmodified transwoman who has gone through male puberty would have a massive advantage.
What we don’t know (again, lack of data) is whether transwomen are more likely to come from the lower part of the male athletic ability curve in the first place. That is certainly a possibility and would explain any lack of observed athletic success and would point towards it being an unlikely problem in the future.
I’m not aware of any solid data on the biological status, nor any other factors of any trans students in those states, it therefore doesn’t stand solidly as a refutation of what I said.
If it turns out that all of the trans athletes in those states have undergone medical treatment then it definitely does not stand as a refutation of my point. But we don’t even know that so any conclusions drawn must be very tentative and provisional.
Except the one we’ve raised before - there’s been crickets from the RW transphobes. That is something that can drive the conclusion that there’s no “there” there.
So, basically: what I addressed with the rest of my post.
And yet even those “massively advantaged” transgirls are nowhere to be seen.
And the ones that have been erroneously seen (Miller and Yearwood from the Connecticut case) were a) not so massively advantaged as all that; and
b) not “unmodified”, as they were both on HRT for years:
It is not known when, or at which stage of puberty, Miller and Yearwood began hormone replacement therapy – that is private medical information – but in the ACLU’s motion to intervene in the ADF’s lawsuit against the CIAC, it was disclosed that both athletes had begun HRT years earlier.
None of those things are necessary to refute what you said, unless you’re making the claim that those states (which include some of the most populous ones) have no transgirl athletes of any marked ability. That’s the only way in which the claimed "massive athletic advantage"doesn’t happen at least once. Because of close scrutiny.
Yes, the close scrutiny is not scientifically rigorous. But it’s quite clearly very enthusiastic. If there were going to be any problems, they would have manifested by now.
I am not and have never made any claims that such transwomen are involved in sports in those 19 states.
ETA - let me be even clearer. It may well be that one reason why no issues have been reported in those 19 states is because there are no such transwomen involved. I have already said that (but not clearly enough perhaps)
So you’re not saying that unmodified postpubescent transgirls have a massive athletic advantage and yet none of them have manifested this advantage in the 19 states that allow unmodified transgirls to compete against cisgirls, then?
So, like I said - magic. 19 states, some with years of openness, some very populous, and none of these massively advantaged transgirls appearing. They must be shyer than a Yeti riding Nessie…
Because they have retained their full male biology and physiology they will have a massive athletic advantage over biological females (again, when comparing like for like on the relative sex-based distribution of athletic prowess).
Do you accept that? because if not then nothing else I say will make sense to you.
Sure, I certainly didn’t intend to claim that every transgirls is faster/stronger than every cisgirl.
Sure, it’s possible. But then why aren’t genuinely athletic transgirls competing?
If there are transgirls who are a) naturally athletic and b) were interested in sports pre-transition but who just aren’t engaging with sports post-transition that’s a real problem. It might be that they just don’t wanna for whatever reason, but it’s more likely that there’s some form of subtle or not-so-subtle discrimination (like, for example, the fear of featuring on a Tucker Carlson segment) that is keeping them out.
In short, rather than the absence of stories about transgirls winning a lot being evidence that everything’s fine, I’m beginning to worry that it’s evidence of exactly the opposite.
Personally? I think they likely are competing, but their competitive advantage has been greatly exaggerated.
Agreed
You can make that argument for a lot of them, but I think it can’t possibly hold up for all transgirl athletes. It’s a numbers game - out of the hundreds or possibly thousands of transgirl athletes in those 19 states, it beggars belief that absolutely none of them have that kind of visibility. I mean, we’re talking millions of K-12 students in those 19 states, including some quite liberal, trans-friendly locales.
I’m less worried. I’m imagining the more liberal parts of the USA are not much different than the liberal parts of here in this regard, and to my kids and friends, gender is way less of a thing than it is for adults. That gives me hope that maybe it’s just not a problem for the people that it matters to most.
No. I don’t accept that it’s “massive”, because we’re not seeing any evidence of that.
I’m asking you to imagine someone who is biologically male, who occupies a position, for example, in the top 5-10% of sporting ability of males and compare that person to a female in the top 5-10% of sporting ability of females.
If you don’t think that the difference is highly likely to be massive then there is no possibility of productive debate.