Trans "women" athletes have advantages over cis women

[Wild_Kraken]

I don't think it's taking over or anything. But from what I can tell, from the quote of the woman athlete above, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of any male in the NBA and deciding to walk over to the WNBA. I'm not really trying to argue bad faith here, but when you have two divisions that there's a considerably large physical discrepancy, crossing over based on an authentication that's more centered on social/psychological constructs? I don't see how that's practically different than steroids.

I just can't see what the point would be to fake being trans to get into a women's league. The ICC, for example, requires two years of hormone replacement therapy before competing, and that's long enough to seriously fuck with your body. But assuming someone went through with it, what's their end game? Detransitioning after they'd won seems like a great way to immediately have their title stripped by whatever authority governs the sport. Not to mention the backlash they'd receive from the public or fans.

Also, it's important to remember that just because men are on average stronger/faster/whatever than women, that's no guarantee that in any given competition the man will automatically win. So any athlete who takes the "fake trans" route to victory would be permanently changing their body and sacrificing their reputation to maybe win a title that they could not keep.

And sure, steroid users do something similar, but with steroids they try to keep it a secret. There's a possibility they won't ever be found out. But transition is a very public thing. There's no way an athlete acting in bad faith could hide their scam.

[Karha of Honor]

The notion that trans women will somehow come to dominate women's sports simply isn't born out by empirical observation. Trans women didn't just suddenly pop into existence within the last five years. They've existed since forever, and have been playing in women's sports since at least the 1970s with Renée Richards, who did not go on to dominate women's tennis. Her career high ranking was #20. So much for the magical elixir testosterone. Likewise, Fallon Fox did not dominate women's MMA. But her bone density!!!!

This is a case of confirmation bias. It only ever seems to be news worthy when a trans woman wins a sport, so you're not being made aware of all the other women's competitions being won by cis women. This creates the illusion that trans women are some unstoppable force taking over every competition blah blah blah.

I don't think it's taking over or anything. But from what I can tell, from the quote of the woman athlete above, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of any male in the NBA and deciding to walk over to the WNBA. I'm not really trying to argue bad faith here, but when you have two divisions that there's a considerably large physical discrepancy, crossing over based on an authentication that's more centered on social/psychological constructs? I don't see how that's practically different than steroids.

Basketball is about feel, practice and containning the other guy on defernse even if blocks are nice. You still have to have some athleticismin in a lot of cases. Steroids don't really help much.

[LittleRaven]

I just can't see what the point would be to fake being trans to get into a women's league.

I don't think anyone is saying that Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood are 'faking' being trans. I'm certainly not. But despite the fact that the trans population of Connecticut is less than one half of one percent, the 100 meter dash was not only won (handily) by a transgender athlete, but another transgender athlete came in second.

Terry and Andraya came in first and second place, respectively, in the 100-meter race at the State Open Finals on June 4. Terry also won the top prize for the 200-meter dash.

They're not barely winning these races. They're smashing through the non-transgender girls like they aren't there. And that's to be expected, really. Florence Griffith Joyner is probably the fastest woman to ever run the 100M. Her time of 10.49 seconds has never been touched in the last 30 years...heck, not very many women have even come close - in fact, her time was SO AMAZING that many people still think she cheated. But for a guy, that time is...not very impressive. There are HUNDREDS of men in the world that beat that time handily every year.

I have no reason to doubt that both Terry and Andraya are 100% sincere in their identification as trans. But what message does their victory send to female racers who were unlucky enough to be born with female hormones, or to their parents? You can't exactly tell your daughter to just try harder next time. She's not going to compete with someone like Terry, any more than she's going to compete with the boys. And there's more on the line than just bragging rights...there are scholarships, hopes of professional careers, and of course, girls' self esteem and self image. One of the reasons we originally segregated sports was because we wanted girls to see someone who looked like them on the podium.

Maybe we've moved past the point where that's necessary in our society. But I suspect a lot of women would not agree.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't think it's taking over or anything. But from what I can tell, from the quote of the woman athlete above, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of any male in the NBA and deciding to walk over to the WNBA. I'm not really trying to argue bad faith here, but when you have two divisions that there's a considerably large physical discrepancy, crossing over based on an authentication that's more centered on social/psychological constructs? I don't see how that's practically different than steroids.

I just can't see what the point would be to fake being trans to get into a women's league. The ICC, for example, requires two years of hormone replacement therapy before competing, and that's long enough to seriously fuck with your body. But assuming someone went through with it, what's their end game? Detransitioning after they'd won seems like a great way to immediately have their title stripped by whatever authority governs the sport. Not to mention the backlash they'd receive from the public or fans.

Also, it's important to remember that just because men are on average stronger/faster/whatever than women, that's no guarantee that in any given competition the man will automatically win. So any athlete who takes the "fake trans" route to victory would be permanently changing their body and sacrificing their reputation to maybe win a title that they could not keep.

And sure, steroid users do something similar, but with steroids they try to keep it a secret. There's a possibility they won't ever be found out. But transition is a very public thing. There's no way an athlete acting in bad faith could hide their scam.

I wasn't sure if there were actually any conditions that needed to be met for crossing over, that indeed changes things. And again I wasn't arguing bad faith, but in spite of good faith it would still be kind of mismatched (if there were no transversion requirements).

And I do know there's overlap over general population, as in both leagues dwarf novice athletes. There's just still an absolute advantage when you stack those general populations side by side. And really, if WNBA was just open to anybody, then I technically wouldn't see it as a problem really until it actually did get concentrated by men, though yes that's not where it's at and that are potential transversion requisites.

The notion that trans women will somehow come to dominate women's sports simply isn't born out by empirical observation. Trans women didn't just suddenly pop into existence within the last five years. They've existed since forever, and have been playing in women's sports since at least the 1970s with Renée Richards, who did not go on to dominate women's tennis. Her career high ranking was #20. So much for the magical elixir testosterone. Likewise, Fallon Fox did not dominate women's MMA. But her bone density!!!!

This is a case of confirmation bias. It only ever seems to be news worthy when a trans woman wins a sport, so you're not being made aware of all the other women's competitions being won by cis women. This creates the illusion that trans women are some unstoppable force taking over every competition blah blah blah.

I don't think it's taking over or anything. But from what I can tell, from the quote of the woman athlete above, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of any male in the NBA and deciding to walk over to the WNBA. I'm not really trying to argue bad faith here, but when you have two divisions that there's a considerably large physical discrepancy, crossing over based on an authentication that's more centered on social/psychological constructs? I don't see how that's practically different than steroids.

Basketball is about feel, practice and containning the other guy on defernse even if blocks are nice. You still have to have some athleticismin in a lot of cases. Steroids don't really help much.

That's true, the only speculation I do remember hearing about roids in basketball was when Lebron lost weight, and that person is the more skeptical about muscle retention out of the people I've heard.

Still though, it's not totally impossible. Apparently people are saying steroids is in the NBA, and as far as I can tell they are ultimate performance enhancing and not just getting big.

[Wild_Kraken]

I have no reason to doubt that both Terry and Andraya are 100% sincere in their identification as trans. But what message does their victory send to female racers who were unlucky enough to be born with female hormones, or to their parents? You can't exactly tell your daughter to just try harder next time. She's not going to compete with someone like Terry, any more than she's going to compete with the boys. And there's more on the line than just bragging rights...there are scholarships, hopes of professional careers, and of course, girls' self esteem and self image. One of the reasons we originally segregated sports was because we wanted girls to see someone who looked like them on the podium.

Maybe we've moved past the point where that's necessary in our society. But I suspect a lot of women would not agree.

The ABC article is misleading. It mentions the girls coming first and second in the 100m, but only one of them winning in the 200m. So what's going on there? Why didn't both win? Well, I looked up the results of the specific competition. Terry and Andraya's names will be highlighted:



For the 100m. It's as the report says. First and second place. Let's check out the 200m.



Oh no. Andraya dropped to seventh place. Not exactly dominating, is it? The 100m and 200m weren't the only competition they, or at least Terry, competed in that day.



Fourth place? You mean she somehow didn't get a medal even with her "natural advantage"? Or was it the three ahead of her were all also secretly trans? Now, this wasn't the only track and field competition happening in 2018, so I looked up the 100m rankings.



Terry and Andraya are first and third respectively, but again, why aren't they first and second? Isn't that what we should expect from their testosterone or bone density or whatever? Now let's compare the women's 100m to the men's 100m:



Terry and Andraya's times are comparable to the other women competing, not the men. Now let's check the 200m times across 2018 competitions:



Terry is in second, well behind first place, and Andraya isn't in the top five (you have to register with the website to see full rankings, so I don't know her specific place). It's simply a myth that trans women will out perform cis women to a level where it becomes non competitive. They're roughly equally matched.

Inb4 this example that was brought up as proof is dismissed as an outlier lol

EDIT: Terry's score isn't even unheard of in the 100m. Scores vary year to year, but here we can see other, presumably cis, women beating or being comparable to Terry's 100m.

[LittleRaven]

Do you actually run track? Or any other sport?

I ask because you seem to be confused about how things like 'overall rankings' are compiled. It's based on your performance across all sanctioned state competitions for the whole year. Someone can place very, VERY high in an overall score while being a very average athlete, if they manage to show up for every single event. (which is super expensive and time consuming) Likewise, someone can come in second at the state championship and not show up in the rankings at all, if they attended very few events over the year.

You also seem to be confused about how to interpret times. You appear to just be looking at the rankings. Look at the actual numbers. Look at the boys scores again. Notice something? They're all within a tenth of a second of each other. Heck, most of them are within hundredths of second. That's...pretty normal at this level of competition. Everyone is pretty good.

Now look at Terry. She's more than HALF A SECOND ahead of Andraya, who is a tenth ahead of the next girl. That's an ETERNITY in track. This is NOT a close race. This is a "wow, you other people aren't even TRYING" kind of race. It's the kind of result that gets parents upset, because they realize there's no way their little girl is ever going to close that gap. That is just not a thing that is going to happen.

And I can't help but notice you have once again conveniently neglected to address my whole "trans people are a very, VERY small percentage of the population" point. Only 1 person in 215 identifies as trans in Connecticut. And yet, out of that tiny, TINY population, we've managed to produce not 1, but 2 champion runners. What are the odds?

Does this spell the end of women's sports? It's a single data point...of course not. We're still operating with very, very small amounts of data - there are not very many transwomen, period, and only a fraction of them are interested in sports. But what data we do have suggests that women are going to have a very hard time competing with transwomen, and quite a lot of women are upset at that idea.

Don't worry - I suspect we'll be getting quite a lot more data on this subject over the next few years.

[Karha of Honor]

That's true, the only speculation I do remember hearing about roids in basketball was when Lebron lost weight, and that person is the more skeptical about muscle retention out of the people I've heard.

Still though, it's not totally impossible. Apparently people are saying steroids is in the NBA, and as far as I can tell they are ultimate performance enhancing and not just getting big.

It helps you on the court with what?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That's true, the only speculation I do remember hearing about roids in basketball was when Lebron lost weight, and that person is the more skeptical about muscle retention out of the people I've heard.

Still though, it's not totally impossible. Apparently people are saying steroids is in the NBA, and as far as I can tell they are ultimate performance enhancing and not just getting big.

It helps you on the court with what?

Training to become faster, with more endurance. They can shorten recovery time from training or performance, allowing for training sessions with faster development, or more exertion during game with less recovery needed for the next game.

[CmdrKing]

There’s a lot that could be said here. About how the IOC has had guidelines for trans women since 2004 but despite none yet qualifying it’s a big deal NOW suddenly. About the hilarious ignorance of the actual effects of feminizing hormone replacement (you get SHORTER usually! It’s wild!) but this is better.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/04/spor ... index.html

But please do get back to how it’s okay to exclude trans people from public life because it ruins women’s competitions. Because that’s what’s doing that.

[LittleRaven]

There’s a lot that could be said here. About how the IOC has had guidelines for trans women since 2004 but despite none yet qualifying it’s a big deal NOW suddenly.

Why would this be surprising? I know I keep saying this, but until recently, there haven't been very many transwomen around. There still aren't very many around, although there are a lot more than there used to be. Breaking into the highest levels of athletics is really, really hard. Frankly, we shouldn't expect a population as tiny as transwomen to produce any qualifying Olympic athletes.

About the hilarious ignorance of the actual effects of feminizing hormone replacement (you get SHORTER usually! It’s wild!) but this is better.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/04/spor ... index.html

You DO realize why this happened right? (hint: It has nothing to do with men keeping women down.)

At WORST you could say that the race officials should have planned better, but honestly, the fact that Hanselmann ended up finishing 74th indicates that she was not using her energy wisely. This was a combination of a VERY slow men's race and a woman who did a VERY ill-timed sprint.

But please do get back to how it’s okay to exclude trans people from public life because it ruins women’s competitions. Because that’s what’s doing that.

Wait, what? Can you show me where anyone in this thread has called for excluding transwomen? I honestly missed that post.