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[Great Order]

My personal hope is that trans rights are at the point LGB rights were a couple decades ago where reactionaries were getting uppity because they were becoming far more visible, with the end result of acceptance to the point that, in general, homophobia's incredibly looked down upon.

[Vector]

How about this: someone can make a separate thread for arguing about whether the transgendereds can ever be truly integrated into society, and in this thread, the problem people can give each other some support while we deal with the emotional aftereffects of politicians running on the "kill 'em all" platform.

[Rolan7]

I can understand why less-online people are concerned about it, which makes it an effective PR campaign for transphobes.  The issue is presented as if these women athletes have undergone no, or days of, HRT... which isn't the reality.  Like Doomblade pointed out, there are requirements after which point these trans women do not have a significant advantage.  The muscles atrophy, this has been studied.

But sure there is bone density which like, okay.  In a sport where it's beneficial to have femme muscles on a male-heavy frame, the meta will be disrupted.  I hope we can keep that sport alive.

I could get further into it but I really, REALLY didn't want to do that.  I was mostly just impressed by the "She's me fr but I'm still cis" memories the parody reminded me of.

Like yeah, "transitioning to win at women sports" is a strawman.  It's a strawman my dad interrogated me over while we watched over his mom in the hospital.  It's a strawman that's heavily broadcasted and liberals fall for it.

I'm not going to jump on the much more reasonable version shared here, even though I disagree with it.  Feminizing HRT makes people less stronk- that's why taking a bunch of testosterone is considered performance enhancing.

[Vector]

I think one of the reasons why I'm so angry about this is that I had to write an essay for a college biology class about intersex athletes, about ten years ago. I wasn't interested in gender at all back then, it wasn't a topic I have, nor had, any interest in, and after ten years of quietly not caring about what I had learned after earning my A-, it's suddenly the hottest shit on the block.

Here's the upshot: the standards by which we judge transgender athletes after hormonal intervention, were developed in the first place for intersex athletes. It turned out that you couldn't predict a person's athletic performance that readily just based on how things looked in their pants so just a secondary sex characteristic check wasn't enough. They decided on lines based on hormonal levels to define what it meant to compete as "male" or "female." And these days, with these guidelines updated for transgender athletes, the line of separation is decided sport by sport.

(This whole business about dickering over hormone levels reminds me of nothing so much as the stereotype of parents looking at their active male infants and proudly saying that the boy is surging with testosterone. He is not. That is a baby and yes, he probably has an "outie," but hormonally it's more or less indistinguishable from a girl. You are looking at literally exactly the same behavior between male and female infants and saying that it's because of "hormonal manliness" in the one but not the other.

But I digressed...)

It also turned out that Olympic athletes overwhelmingly were blessed with modifications of specific genes, male AND female, one of which improved muscle definition and tone from a very young age (visible on photographs of toddlers) and another of which improved blood oxygenation.

But not all gold medalists had these two biological markers, which was also curious. The IOC considered banning athletes with those genetic markers and other "supergenes" but haven't so far.

I get angry about this topic because every single last rule which is intended to remove transgender athletes from competition ALSO removes "legitimate" female athletes from competition, whether it's about height, hormones, suspicious secondary sex characteristics, musculature, facial and body hair, or what have you. Recently the primary attacks have been on African women, but before, there were plenty of prominent cases with white cisgender women.

If you want to ban transgender athletes, fine. How do you find them? No, just not the obvious ones. How do you know you have found ALL of them? How do you make sure that you remove ONLY transgender athletes and zero athletes who have, as far as the paperwork has always shown, been cisgender females?

There are only two options on the average birth certificate: Male, and Female. Lots of intersex people have been lumped into the umbrellas of Male, and Female. They have what you might call "visibly mixed" characteristics from the day of their birth, but their socialization has historically only been one of two options: Male, or Female. And they have historically had the right to participate with their assigned sex, despite having blended physical qualities of Male and Female from day zero--including hormone makeups that don't suit their gendered socialization, in many cases.

My point is not "it is unfair that intersex people have better treatment than transgender people." Coercively assigning intersex people into particular roles, often through the intervention of surgery, is not really helpful, and can cause both gender dysphoria and a lot of physical pain.

(For those who want to complain about surgeons cutting into healthy organs in late adolescents or adults: first let them stop cutting infants. I'll wait.)

My point IS, however, that the more people circle the wagons on "protecting girls' sports," the more you are going to find cisgender people with intersex characteristics who are negatively affected by this, and the more you are going to find that the ones who the rules claim to protect are a scrutinized and over-scrutinized class. The paragons of cisgender womanhood often have their own embarrassing little secrets. They don't actually need to be revealed just to make sure you weed out every transgender person. Create a line at which transgender people can participate and if transgender people start to win everything, then you can change the rules ... IF that happens.

And finally, I'm angry about all of this because it sounds like the bar for success is that an exceptional transgender woman must never appear, and perhaps worse, that an exceptional cisgender woman must never appear. Anyone who ever approaches a male level of excellence and breaks all barriers must have been cheating, and when she appears, the rules of the game must change to eliminate her from the field.

[Egan_BW]

History repeats itself, but in the tiring and tedious way.

[Doomblade187]

I would just like to say that i agree with vector.

[nenjin]

For the record, I hate the idea of testing people's hormones to decide whether they can participate in the gendered sport they identify with. I think it's invasive and does lead to the hair splitting you're talking about.

I support testing people's hormones for drug abuse. Unfortunately, there's the intersection of PEDs and HRT and it muddies the waters. Guys pump themselves full of extra testosterone to try and further their competitive advantage, and so do some cis women. For men, testosterone replacement therapy isn't currently considered "cheating." But for women, it can be.

And finally, I'm angry about all of this because it sounds like the bar for success is that an exceptional transgender woman must never appear, and perhaps worse, that an exceptional cisgender woman must never appear. Anyone who ever approaches a male level of excellence and breaks all barriers must have been cheating, and when she appears, the rules of the game must change to eliminate her from the field.

I just don't know how to fairly square "wasn't exceptional identifying as male but is exceptional identifying as female" so that cis women don't end up having their performance metrics skewed.

Because even though it is a strawman, what do we do when someone arbitrarily says they now identify as female? Who gets to make that decision on whether it's valid or not? What if a really swole dude who grinded out years in the gym really does one day decide they identify as female and they won't do HRT? Is their transition less valid? Is it still fair to the gender they now identify as? Does every sporting organization and body get to have their own standard of reasonableness? ("Must "live" as the gender they identify with.")

Also I feel like the counter evidence, of a trans man doing HRT out performing cis men in sports, only reinforces the idea that hormones really do matter in the short and long term. Vector, in your studies, have you found many if any examples of trans men performing well in sports?

[Vector]

Trans men usually get a pretty low dose of testosterone because steroid level doses aren't actually good for people and may slow transition. The corresponding "story" for men's sports is of people who start AFAB and are exceptional, but then start taking T, are allowed on the corresponding male sports team for social reasons, and are the worst of the worst.

So politically speaking, the story is: "Those fake men get handed spots on sports teams by woke coaches, taking positions that could be given to people who actually qualify. They won't help us win, so why are they there?"

That's the narrative. Are trans men actually that bad at sports? Or as the Republicans like to say, "weak" people who wouldn't have won the war? Unclear to me, but before we had this trans female sports panic, there was a little itty-bitty one about transgender men which seems to have resolved for now.

(I counter with Deborah Sampson, Joan of Arc, and Catalina de Erauso.)

I just don't know how to fairly square "wasn't exceptional identifying as male but is exceptional identifying as female" so that cis women don't end up having their performance metrics skewed.

The same way you square "sucked as an ice skater but turned out to be really good at long jump" or any other such change of sporting targets. We wouldn't be having this conversation about trans women in gymnastics and ice skating, by the way.

Because even though it is a strawman, what do we do when someone arbitrarily says they now identify as female? Who gets to make that decision on whether it's valid or not? What if a really swole dude who grinded out years in the gym really does one day decide they identify as female and they won't do HRT? Is their transition less valid? Is it still fair to the gender they now identify as? Does every sporting organization and body get to have their own standard of reasonableness? ("Must "live" as the gender they identify with.")

Well, because the standard for "women's" and "men's" Olympics is not actually based on the gender identity of the participants, it doesn't matter. If you are a cisgender woman who doesn't make the hormonal/etc. standards, you don't get to play as a woman, and that's it. There is no olympics for nonbinary-identified athletes and that doesn't mean that they don't participate. They participate based on hormone makeup.

Is it arbitrary? Yeah. There is no way to do this and have "male" and "female" sports that isn't arbitrary. There simply isn't.

There are cisgender women who produce too much testosterone by IOC standards, without intervention, all by themselves.

[nenjin]

The same way you square "sucked as an ice skater but turned out to be really good at long jump" or any other such change of sporting targets. We wouldn't be having this conversation about trans women in gymnastics and ice skating, by the way.

Not sure I agree 100%. Ice skating is more about balance and muscle control, where raw strength potential doesn't matter as much. Heavier, stronger, less flexible people probably perform worse at ice skating due to the power/weight ratio, stamina and a few other factors.

Gymnastics though...it kind of uses everything. Power/weight ratio, muscle coordination and balance all matter but raw strength potential matters too for various applications in gymnastics. I'd point to the fact that male gymnasts are fuckin' ripped by and large. So how high you can fling yourself off the bars is part strength, and part power/weight ratio. I guess I can see a trans woman in gymnastics skewing things depending on what we're talking about.

There are cisgender women who produce too much testosterone by IOC standards, without intervention, all by themselves.

Fair point and well taken. I think it's unfair that someone AFAB who identifies as female but genetically produces more testosterone on average are excluded. That's literally the genetic lottery they won as far as sports go and they're being deprived of their chance to utilize it.

[Starver]

((while trying to step through the minefield, in the writing below, three new messages ((now a fourth!)) crept in... skikming them, I'm not going to change anything of what I said, though, as if I've made any mis-steps then I probably would still do so after a complete start from scratch, even... But FYI, in case you wonder. And I wasn't really touching FtM, either, but only because (as per Vector's saying) it generally doesn't cause performance over-step, in most sports, even if 'ignoring' the understepping has potential knock-on consequences for selection issues beyond the actual moment of competition, etc..))

Though I've been reading here, I'm at best a fringe consumer of of the thread (in the "LGBT+", I'm more in the "+", specifically one or other of the "A"s), so not wanted to wade in beyond my remit, but it is indeed much that to be a superiorTrans athlete you generally have to start by being a superior athlete, and that's before you put the positives and negatives of carrying through the process of the transition. (Someone with general motivation, dedication and perserverence would be more representative of those making the journey than not, on top of innate aptitude.)

I can also report of a transitioned person, of my acquaintance, who was not a top competitor before (far from it!) and remained not a top competitor afterwards (not better, by any measure!), but of course she'd never be in the Olympic-level spotlight in the first place - this is amateur-level competition (as indeed should be the Olympics, but you know what I mean...) that I'm talking about.

But it's in issue with probably far more side-issues than reliable datapoints.

And I'd err towards the view that trans individuals are proportionately more disdadvantaged (in all kinds of ways) by being forced to remain in birth-gender circumstancss, than non-trans ones are from being forced to accept transitioned(ing) ones. But with heavy caveats, and doubtless still heavier controversy, I know. And I don't think the answer is para-sport-like  subclass labels to reduce competition to like-vs-like (or a reweighted result for near-vs-near), for both practical and social reasons. ("And in lane three, we have the recently incumbant MtF4 champion who is now in the MtF5 category, making this the first time she's had to directly compete on a par with the long-standing superstar of this class, in lane four, who is...")


Anyway, didn't want to perpetuate this(/these) argument(s). As a token "something else to talk about", I saw that the Bishop Of Oxford has been saying conciliatory things that might ultimately help those both in this community and within his ministry.

[nenjin]

This isn't an argument to me. This is a debate. Things that matter can be uncomfortable to talk about, but doesn't mean they shouldn't be talked about. Policy without discussion isn't good.

[Starver]

For my part, it was more that I was addressing the "arguments", i.e. contested bullet-points, that illustrate a position that can be held the component issues in the debate. And that I felt that none of them that I mentioned were even new. I just wanted to set down roughly which or the various principles I'm personally most welded to.

But I can't see much room for furthering a resolution to the debate, either. Absolutists (either way) won't stop being absolutists, and those with wriggle-room are probably going to be as wriggly after listening to pros/cons as before, only with a slightly different subset of nuances. Debate away, I just don't expect us to collectively put the world to rights, in a mutually acceptable manner across all current positions being held..


So I was giving my stance, and offered up a different tangent to 'argue'/discuss. And at least I'm now officially PTWed, whether I have anything else I think anyone wants/needs to hear. 

[Vector]

I'd point to the fact that male gymnasts are fuckin' ripped by and large. So how high you can fling yourself off the bars is part strength, and part power/weight ratio. I guess I can see a trans woman in gymnastics skewing things depending on what we're talking about.

See, what you would know if you follow women's Olympic gymnastics to any degree () is a couple of things.

1. Most female gymnasts are also extremely ripped, but more importantly

2. Female and male gymnasts are scored on different tasks and even have different events using different equipment. Men's gymnastics does not include many moves that women's gymnastics does include and even requires for successful performance, so going from being a high-scoring male gymnast to a high-scoring female gymnast would require a fuckton of work.

The moves and routines which are scorable for "Female" and "Male" gymnastics are partly designed so that women's gymnastics "looks feminine" and male gymnastics "looks masculine." Female gymnastics includes many tasks it is believed that men are simply biologically incapable of, and many of the moves which men could even in theory do with their equipment setups are not on the list of allowed moves for which they could receive points. This is supposedly in part due to a desire to keep "effeminate" moves out of men's gymnastics. But, if you set all of that aside, by far the most important point is that

3. Olympic-level female gymnasts are overwhelmingly around 5 feet tall.


There are age restrictions on female Olympic gymnasts because if you look at who your most successful gymnast is going to be WITHOUT those restrictions, that person is going to have the critical combination of being 1. short with 2. almost no body fat so that 3. they're just a little lean muscle rocket. The people who best fit this description are prepubescent girls with a maximum age of about twelve or thirteen.

In strength-based tasks, an adult woman is going to perform a child almost all the time. But for women's gymnastics, that's not the goal! You don't need strength. You need flexibility, to be small, and to have no extras.

The age limits for women's gymnastics are because gymnastics is dangerous and it's not actually that healthy as a society to have a bunch of prepubescent or barely-pubescent girls risking their literal necks.

Now, the reason why I know all of this is partly because the only Olympic sports I watch are women's figure skating and gymnastics, and the only one I'm really interested in is the latter. I have read a non-zero number of books on these sports.

But it's also because before Simone Biles came through and started sweeping everything, there was a massive scandal one year regarding the Chinese women's gymnastics team. The scandal was not about doping. It was that they won every last medal because their women's team was underage.


So, no. Unless you're literally built like Vegeta from DBZ, i.e. 5'4" with spiky hair included, going through male puberty is going to give you nothing but handicaps when it comes to women's gymnastics--starting with the "puberty of any kind" part.

[nenjin]

I'll take the dunking, you delivered.

[Tiruin]

Aw heck yeah a thread like this! PTW (Ace/Homoromantic and Trans (~'u')~ )
Just skimmed the last page and it's nice seeing a bunch of comfy folks. (Wooo Vector! Always saw the sports 'debate' as a huge distraction given...the current since near a decade ago)