# Non-political, pure-sports discussion about how women compete against trans athletes

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-political-pure-sports-discussion-about-how-women-compete-against-trans-athletes/1029893>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [May 7, 2026, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-political-pure-sports-discussion-about-how-women-compete-against-trans-athletes/1029893 "2026-05-07T18:34:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 62

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2026, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-political-pure-sports-discussion-about-how-women-compete-against-trans-athletes/1029893/62 "2026-05-08T18:01:51Z")

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> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> First, i disagree that there’s a well defined gender binary and we “know” a child’s gender at birth. I believe that sometimes we are just wrong about that. See also the comments about intersex people.

I don’t really know what part of my post that disagrees with so I’ll just go ahead and say “I agree”. It doesn’t really impact my point at all though.

> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> Second, i think most trans people are basically intersex, just in a way that wasn’t immediately visible when they were babies.

That gets into a whole discussion about transmedicalism that’s _definitely_ political but I don’t really see what that has to do with anything in my post either. I don’t think it contradicts what I said above.

> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> Finally, i note that you’ve moved the goal posts from “assigned male at birth” to “having undergone male puberty”. That’s a really huge difference.

I certainly didn’t move the goalposts. I was about to quote what I thought was my first post in this thread, but I realize it’s actually my first post in the thread this was spun off from, so I’ll quote it here again:

> [@Barney Frank criticism of Democratic Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/barney-frank-criticism-of-democratic-party/1029811/122):
>
> You notice what you did there, right? You said “there should be no controversy and the line should not be male puberty” but then you gave three examples that we should all uncontroversially agree are fair _and all three involve people who indeed did not go through male puberty_. You’ve very strongly made the case for male puberty being the dividing line.

I guess it was confusing because of the move from one thread to another but I always argued male puberty was a good line to draw.

> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> And I’m not opposed to some elite sports making rules around having undergone male puberty, if the people who run that sport decide it’s important. I am opposed to people treating the the original birth certificate as a sacred record of truth.

Then I kinda think you’re shadow boxing because I never made that argument.

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