An unusual story here [Meet the Texas wrestler who won a girls’ state title in the 110 lb class. His name is Mack.](Meet the Texas wrestler who won a girls’ state title. His name is Mack.) Obviously it’s not just about hormone injections but I imagine they do help him gain more muscle. He appears to be just overpowering girls in his weight class
In the video here he’s in the red outfit
Would he be competitive if allowed (as he wishes) to wrestle boys?
Not really, and that’s the problem with transgender athletes. There really is no way for them to compete fairly against anyone, except other transgender athletes, which is of course too small a pool in most cases to be viable for competitions.
Isn’t this, physically strength-wise, not much different than if a cisgender female athlete used testosterone as a PED?
Also, wouldn’t the Obama regulations have actually created situations with even greater mismatch? The athlete in the story is a woman who had become a man for only a few years and had testosterone treatment, whereas someone who had always been a man from birth, but identified as female, would have even more of a head start in muscle growth, etc.
If the Obama regulations allowed students and athletes to compete as the gender of their choice, rather than birth certificate gender, then you could have lifelong cisgender boys competing as “girls” against girls without ever undergoing medical treatment of any sort, which would be an even bigger mismatch.
She should be treated as any other woman. If she’s using hormones that would be banned for other women, she should not be allowed to compete.
It only took five posts before someone deliberately misgendered the young man. Keep it classy. :rolleyes:
“I just witnessed my sport change,” says the coach. Yeah, no shit. If you let people openly cheat - by being transgender (or claiming it) so they can legally take steroids - and then not disqualify the athlete for cheating! - it’s going to be a whole different ball game.
As for being competitive vs boys - in his/her weight class, maybe. Keep in mind that women have slightly different joint and bone structure and this might prove to be an advantage or not. Also depends on precisely how much testosterone he/she takes every day - enough to match Ronnie Coleman, and he/she will probably be able to win.
Seems like a very clear disqualification to me.
There’s no way all those drugs would be allowed in any other athlete’s body.
Transgender doesn’t give anyone the right to flaunt the strict rules of athletic doping.
Flout.
Yes flout. My auto correct helpfully inserted the n.
Allowing a special group of athletes to use performance enhancing drugs will make it extremely difficult for women to compete in spots.
I don’t think he should be allowed to compete at all. The current rule is giving him a massive and unfair advantage. The opposite rule would give boys transitioning to girls an equally unfair advantage. You can’t be unfair with 200 people (who worked hard to have a shot at the title) just to be nice to 1 person.
So trans people should be prohibited from any level of competitive athletics, then? Good luck getting that to pass Constitutional muster.
There should be weight divisions, gender should be irrelevant. Even in pro sports.
In fact there are lots of sports separated into men’s and women’s divisions unnecessarily, just for tradition’s sake. That ought to stop, at the least.
Except that he’s a man.
I fail to see the problem with him competing against other men. He’s being given the same hormones the other guys have had in their bodies for years.
Not for being trans, but for taking substances that’d be illegal for any other member of that class/division. I know that those substances are part of what trans/transitioning is, but, that how it is.
The blurring of sex lines is going to kill professional female sports for biological women not taking male hormones. Whatever rules exist now about surgery/hormones/self-identification are going to be deemed transphobic in five years, I guarantee it.
So it’s either biological sex as determined at birth of no sex/gender categories.
Wrestling has weight divisions.
Even at the same weight, men will have more muscle mass than women.
Women tend to have a lower VO2 max.
A 50 percentile woman(or any percentile) will always be at a disadvantage to a man.
If she’s a man, why is he in the women’s tournament?
Regards,
Shodan
You didn’t read any of the thread, did you?
He was born female. He’s transitioning to male and has been taking testosterone as part of the process.
He wanted to wrestle boys.
He was told no.
ETA:From the OP’s link.
Sound familiar?
Wrestling does have weight divisions and gender is relevant.
In my part of the country there are not enough female wrestlers to support female teams; they compete on generic wrestling teams. But the simple fact that females including athletes have higher body fat percent (and thus less muscle mass in each weight class) puts them at a disadvantage. A male wrestler getting down to 5 to 8% body fat is not uncommon; a female athlete getting below 10% is rare. Females win sometimes.
There are sports that this would matter much less, or might even push the other direction (female gymnastics for example where the loss of flexibility might offset the gain in strength).
This young man should be competing against other young men. Given the degree of his domination among the female wrestlers he’d likely be competitive on the male side (many of young women wrestlers he beat could be reasonably competitive in a male tourney I suspect) but odds are he would just be very good, not elite, and that based on skill.
Using a medication allowed for a medical indication for which there is no reasonable substitute is not doping. The athlete must obtain a therapeutic use exemption but is allowed frequently.
Interesting that Texas accepts transgender as a medical indication but does not accept him as male. To me that seems inconsistent.
If allowed to competed as the transitioned gender the potential fairness to others comes in for an individual who has transitioned from male to female and who is competing as a female. How much advantage do they have once the testosterone level has been maintained under a certain level for say a year? Should it be a different guideline if the transition occurred before puberty? Currently the IOC allows individuals who have transitioned from male to female to compete as female based on having documented defined low enough testosterone level for long enough.
FWIW.
This has previously been discussed and debunked on this forum many times. I’ve provided citations and research articles. I’ve done the meta studies. I’ve worked with the athletes. I suggest searching if you honestly want to debate.
Misgendering as you did basically invalidates anything else you’d say as fruit of the poison tree.
And here’s more misgendering. You’re also wrong - it’s not cheating because it’s due to medical reasons. Even the IOC recognizes this. The Stockholm Consensus even mandates hormone therapy be done for transgender athletes, and that’s been in place for more than 12 years! It’s a shame you couldn’t even Google before posting.
The fact you qualify being transgender as “cheating” speaks as to your utter lack of education on what it means to be transgender.
Good thing that’s not what’s happening. And guess what, the kid is following the rules, or else you’d think by now some transphobes would have, you know, brought it up…so cite which rule he is flaunting.
You might also comment on the fact that the kid is being forced into this situation by the transphobes themselves - HE DOESN’T WANT TO COMPETE AGAINST GIRLS IN THE FIRST PLACE. How was that not clear from the article?
And the current rule is put in place by transphobes, who ironically are the ones bitching about the consequences of their own fucking bigotry.
Except…they’re not “illegal”, nor even against the rules. Sports has allowed hormone therapy for intersex and even cisgender persons provided the levels of testosterone are within certain bounds. Testosterone is not some sort of magic potion that gives people super powers, especially if the hormone levels are monitored to be within normal teenage boy levels. But this has already been debunked several times.
Read the goddamn article. It’s the TRANSPHOBES who are forcing him to compete against girls. HE WANTS TO COMPETE AGAINST OTHER BOYS.
And I’m completely unsurprised you joined in the misgendering brigade.
~
Transphobes here and world-wide can’t have it both ways.
They argue that transgender women can’t compete against cisgender women because despite the devastating impacts of hormones and surgery upon the person, they some have SUPER BONES that make them stronger, better, faster, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, regardless of their height and weight! BONES! (despite no one ever posting any evidence that this is the case, other than blog posts by people who think “it jus’ makes common sense, yup.”)
But then when a transgender boy wants to compete against cisgender boys, suddenly it shouldn’t be allowed because…well, reasons. By their own logic, transphobes shouldn’t be worried about him outcompeting the cisgender boys. And the kid KNOWS THAT.
I should think transphobes would be hanging their heads or digging their metaphorical toe into the carpet with shame, saying “gosh, I guess we fucked up,” rather than attacking this boy for trying to compete against the other boys. In fact, why aren’t the transphobes lining up to SUPPORT the transgender boy competing against other boys, as it would be the fairest “solution?”
Oh yeah, I forget, it’s because it’s never about fairness in sports. It’s never about any sense of actual concern about any of the people involved. It’s never about the medicine. It’s because “them thar’ trannies are icky.” Even the ones who hide their bigotry behind Jesus, really, it just comes down to their own hatred of people who are different, who challenge their bias towards gender and gender roles, who suffer from huge inferiority complexes over their own masculinity or femininity, and who suffer from hysterical homophobia.