If it’s not a problem why are we talking about it?
Exactly.
The competitions were open to women. All women. What is the problem if women win?
None that I can see.
What is the problem if trans women take all the records?
This would kinda imply that maybe it makes sense to start talking about new categories. Kinda like how we already have different weight classes in wrestling. But I doubt it would happen, if you look at the studies from the NPR article by the OC,
After 2 years of taking feminising hormones, the push-up and sit-up differences disappeared
transwomen still had a 9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression
9% isn’t that much of an advantage, and it could go down further as time goes on (as the raw data sorta hints at), just maybe the study wasn’t running for long enough.
And this doesn’t apply to all trans folks. Do remember,
Dr. Bradley Anawalt, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said there appears to be no competitive advantage between boys and girls before they undergo puberty around the ages of 11 or 12.
So a trans woman who transitioned before puberty has no competitive advantage worth talking about, and a trans woman who transitions after puberty just needs time to lose the extra muscle before the competitive advantage disappears.
Finally, keep in mind that even for those that are recent post-puberty transitions, they still don’t perform as well as cis men, so it definitely does not make sense to include them in there.
Meanwhile, transmen on average outperform cis men,
After 1 year of taking masculinising hormones, there was no longer a difference in push-ups or run times, and the number of sit-ups performed in 1 min by transmen exceeded the average performance of their male counterparts.
Everything suggests to me that there’s no problem and we’ve split up the categories in the right ways, at worst it’s perhaps just a matter of tweaking this statement, “1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events” to a slightly longer time period.
The point of my questions is that there is a philosophical assumption underpinning all the hullabaloo around trans women in sports.
Even if trans women were winning every competition they competed in, (they aren’t, but even if they were.) this only matters if you don’t actually consider trans women to be women
This is why there is so much acrimony on our side. It appears that even for our allies, it’s fine for us to compete, so long as we don’t win.
So my comment about new categories should be understood to be within the context of “trans women are women, full stop.” We have different weight classes for men in wrestling, but no one would question that the featherweight champion is a man, or that the heavyweight champion is a man, even though a heavyweight would clearly defeat a featherweight every time if they were to compete against each other.
This is why there is so much acrimony on our side. It appears that even for our allies, it’s fine for us to compete, so long as we don’t win.
That definitely seems unfair and I don’t ascribe to this. There’s generally nothing wrong with a trans women winning a sports competition when competing against other women (who may also be cis or trans).
The whole argument from the other side centers on the assumption that men obviously are better than women at sports just because, and thus it’s obviously unfair that …
Exactly.
None that I can see.
This would kinda imply that maybe it makes sense to start talking about new categories. Kinda like how we already have different weight classes in wrestling. But I doubt it would happen, if you look at the studies from the NPR article by the OC,
9% isn’t that much of an advantage, and it could go down further as time goes on (as the raw data sorta hints at), just maybe the study wasn’t running for long enough.
And this doesn’t apply to all trans folks. Do remember,
So a trans woman who transitioned before puberty has no competitive advantage worth talking about, and a trans woman who transitions after puberty just needs time to lose the extra muscle before the competitive advantage disappears.
Finally, keep in mind that even for those that are recent post-puberty transitions, they still don’t perform as well as cis men, so it definitely does not make sense to include them in there.
Meanwhile, transmen on average outperform cis men,
Everything suggests to me that there’s no problem and we’ve split up the categories in the right ways, at worst it’s perhaps just a matter of tweaking this statement, “1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events” to a slightly longer time period.
The point of my questions is that there is a philosophical assumption underpinning all the hullabaloo around trans women in sports.
Even if trans women were winning every competition they competed in, (they aren’t, but even if they were.) this only matters if you don’t actually consider trans women to be women
This is why there is so much acrimony on our side. It appears that even for our allies, it’s fine for us to compete, so long as we don’t win.
So my comment about new categories should be understood to be within the context of “trans women are women, full stop.” We have different weight classes for men in wrestling, but no one would question that the featherweight champion is a man, or that the heavyweight champion is a man, even though a heavyweight would clearly defeat a featherweight every time if they were to compete against each other.
That definitely seems unfair and I don’t ascribe to this. There’s generally nothing wrong with a trans women winning a sports competition when competing against other women (who may also be cis or trans).
The whole argument from the other side centers on the assumption that men obviously are better than women at sports just because, and thus it’s obviously unfair that …
Except that cis women have beaten cis men in sports before, see https://www.elle.com/culture/g30119/female-athletes-who-won-against-men/
In some sports women generally do better than men, see https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men
So the central premise that the other side tries to bring is faulty to begin with.