Yeah, I should have been more careful about that blanket statement. But as I mentioned later, having those categories just opens up the question of how one fairly determines which athletes fall into which specific categories. But that just brings us back to the question about whether or not trans women should fall into the same category as cis women for competitive purposes, and how one is going to make that determination.
So, in terms of what to do about it (which isn’t the question here), the answer is that it depends on the sport, and each sport should set its own rules. Just as many sports have weight limits, but most don’t. Because they set rules that work for whatever they are attempting to do.
Same for how to decide which women can compete in which women’s sports. And based on the evidence we have, most elite sports have set the rules “trans women who transitioned more than x months ago and have t levels less than y can compete with the other women”. And that seems to be working for them.
At non elite levels, most sports just say, “open to all women”, or “open to highschool girls younger than z”. And that also seems to be working.
And with those rules, cis women are competing just fine.
If the question is, “Why are we focused on a minor issue instead of a major issue,” saying, “We as a society have decided not to focus on the major issue, but we’re focused on a different major issue only tangentially related to the minor issue” isn’t really responsive. It sounds like that’s what you’re saying: we’re not focused on short-armed players because we’ve decided not to focus on short-armed players, but we’re focused on trans players because we’ve decided to focus on sex differences. That doesn’t address “why” in any meaningful way, IMO.
The number is small, but not zero.
That’s consistent with my claim. We’ll see a few trans women who compete at the highest levels, but women’s sports will continue to be totally dominated by cis women.
And, you know, if that’s some sport where cis women simply can’t compete because of the inherent advantage (that we haven’t yet seen) of trans women, that sport can set rules around it.
Is your argument that we should stop separating sports participation by sex at all? The same way that we don’t separate sports participation by arm length?
That’s not inconsistent with either the scenario where trans women have a significant advantage nor with the one where they don’t, though.
In a world where trans women did have a significant advantage over cis women in sports, we would still expect women’s sports to be dominated by cis women, because there are orders of magnitudes more cis women than trans women. So the fact that most top athletes who are women are cis does not prove nor disprove the assertion that trans women have an advantage.
Yes. And the problem with that situation is?
I agree that if the world was made with equal numbers of trans women and cis women, this would be a different conversation. But it’s not.
An unfair advantage is an unfair advantage whether or not it leads to people with that advantage entirely dominating the field or not. I don’t really understand what’s controversial about that. What part do you disagree with?
Let’s assume we have women’s sports to make sure women have a place to compete. (I don’t believe that’s the whole story, but i also don’t want to get into politics, so I’ll accept this as a given.)
That doesn’t mean every woman will win. Most women don’t have the generic makeup to be elite athletes. (Neither do most men.) But it means that’s a field where women can play and have a chance. And yes, the cis women who naturally produce more androgens will have a huge advantage over the cis women who produce less. That’s just how the genetic lottery works. And in some sports, trans women, especially those who went through male puberty will have an advantage.
So what?
That being a trans woman is an unfair advantage.
Producing more testosterone is an advantage
Having a higher ability to burn oxygen is an advantage
Having long arms and webbed toes is an enormous advantage in swimming.
Being tall is an enormous advantage in basketball.
Why is being a trans woman uniquely unfair, in a way those other differences aren’t?
So, we decided to split the sport up by sex, and a sex-related characteristic is providing an advantage. That’s categorically different from any other characteristic we do not split by providing an advantage.
If we want to say “let’s not split the sport up by sex at all”, then fine, make that argument. I disagree with it, but I find it coherent. What I don’t find coherent is this idea that of course we should have women’s sports but also it doesn’t matter if some women have advantages related to their sex assigned at birth as long as those women don’t totally dominate the field.
An advantage is either fair or unfair, and if it’s unfair, it doesn’t matter whether it causes total domination or only the occasional victory. I don’t see how that could possibly be the determining factor.
And so long as we are splitting the sport by sex, I don’t see how an advantage related to sex assigned at birth could possibly be viewed as fair.
Because we as a society choose to have men’s sports and women’s sports. That is the specific category by which we chose to split sports. That’s why it’s categorically different to have an advantage in this area as opposed to other ones.
Again, if you want to argue that we shouldn’t have men’s and women’s sports at all, I can understand the argument, though I disagree.
My issue is with these seemingly contradictory statements:
A) We should split sports by sex
B) Trans women will have an advantage in some sports*
C) It doesn’t matter if trans women have an advantage unless they completely dominate the field and prevent cis women from competing at all
I don’t understand how you can hold A, B, and C at once.
*Again, of course we are always talking about some sports because some sports don’t even split by sex to begin with.
Well, I’m mostly not in favor of routinely splitting sports by sex, but I’m trying to stay out of politics.
That being said, there are lots of “sex related advantages” that we ignore. The levels of androgens in cis women vary wildly.
Normal testosterone levels for adult premenopausal females range from 10 to 55 ng/dL, while postmenopausal women typically have levels between 7 and 40 ng/dL.
Normal female testosterone levels typically range from 15-70 ng/dL (or 0.5-2.4 nmol/L)
(weirdly, both from the same article. I found super on other places for a low of 15, for a normal high of 70, and for anything above 45 possibly causing health issues such as acne.)
Having higher testosterone is a pretty direct “sex related advantage” for female athletes. But we don’t worry about it. We just accept that women vary.
And the reason we have separate leagues for “women” is so women have a place to excel. Yes, it matters if some minority of women totally dominates women’s sports. No, it doesn’t matter if you can identify some women as potentially having an advantage.
I don’t know that “should we split sports by sex in general” is necessarily a political question, or at least, not more so than every question is a political question. I really think that’s probably the root of the disagreement here and in these threads in general,
And aren’t there cis women who are barred from the highest levels of athletic competition, like the Olympics, because of precisely that reason? I don’t think it’s accurate to say that we “ignore” or “don’t worry about” this.
I agree so far.
That’s true so long as the advantage is not directly related to the parts of being a woman that led to us splitting sports up in the first place.
Here’s the logic chain; I’d honestly be fascinated to see where you disagree.
A) The primary reason to split men’s and women’s sports is so that women have a place to excel.
B) The reason we want a dedicated place for women to excel but we don’t necessarily want a dedicated place for “people whose arm length is between X and Y centimeters” is the fact that being a woman is a category that people deeply identify with, in a way that just doesn’t apply to something like arm length.
C) The reason that women need a separate space in which to excel in most sports is due to the physical differences between men and women, not due to cultural factors. There are absolutely cultural and social norms and pressures that make us treat girls in ways that make them less likely to become athletes, but this isn’t the primary reason for the difference in performance in athletics.
D) These physical differences for the most part stem from the fact that men generally undergo male puberty while women generally do not.
E) Therefore, a physical difference that stems from having undergone male puberty is categorically different from a physical difference that stems from anything else when it comes to determining fairness or unfairness in athletic competition.
At least in my case, I simply don’t believe B) has been demonstrated.
At least for the most famous IAAF regulations there were restrictions that applied to all women, but they were challenged, and now apply only to XY athletes with a variety of medical conditions. Notably, they specifically did not include XX women with similar sexual development disorders and similar testosterone levels.
Also worth noting I think that as much as we focus on cis and trans, we are also harming a lot of intersex people.
I disagree because I don’t give a fig about logic chains.
I’m not going to tell a girl that she can’t play with the other girls because they’re real girls and she isn’t, supported by a logic exercise. Not happening, not ever.
Me neither!
I disagree with several points.
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.
Second, i think most trans people are basically intersex, just in a way that wasn’t immediately visible when they were babies.
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.
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.