It’s almost time to delete my account so I am sticking my neck out to potentially getting blasted.
I will preface by stating that gender identity is not an issue for me. Be who you want, use whatever bathroom you want. Just wash your hands/paws/tentacles.
My ignorant question is: for transgender athletes in competitive sports, should records be categorized differently or asterisked? Isn’t it kind of like using performance-enhancing drugs?
I don’t mind about actually competing, however if someone had 5-10 years of hormonal growth advantage during puberty, even if they no longer have that advantage, it seems like a big gray area. Yes, someone could naturally have that chemical makeup. Similarly, some exceptionally elite athletes have genetic variations that give them natural physical advantage.
When I was in school I was decent at swimming, in the top 5% of men. If I competed against women I would be like top 0.01% and making a career out of it. Though, if I started setting records I don’t know how I’d feel about it, given my advantage.
Honestly, writing these thoughts down is giving me some existential dread. What does it mean to be human, and why? Does anything even really matter?
I hope everyone has a nice day and is kind to each other.
Because womens sport divisions and leagues were specifically created because women physically cannot compete at the same level as men. Biologically they’re built differently - they’re not as strong, as fast, as tall, etc.
What you’re saying is “why even have womens divisions at all?”. If that’s what you want then fair enough, but just know that it basically eliminates female athletes altogether apart from a few select sports like gymnastics.
No one is calling to BAN trans people from sport - just to have them compete with others of their SEX, not their self identified “gender identity”. That’s not a “hate crime”, that’s just fairness in sport.
After 2 years HRT, any advantages a trans woman may have had are statistically gone. Most sports require 2 years of HRT to compete in the women’s category.
Does HRT shrink your height? Reduce your lung capacity? Shrink your arms? Change your bone structure? Muscle density?
Nope! Does none of that, and those are only 4 of the obvious differences between men and women that give men physical advantages.
You guys don’t seem to understand that the effects of testosterone and other things don’t just disappear when you no longer produce testosterone. If you give a 25 year old man testosterone blockers, does he shrink and revert back to a 10 year old boys size and physical stature? No.
The question is, what really is different between a woman or a short man in basketball? Both can not compete because of their genetics.
But many, many short men have competed in the NBA and other basketball competitions to great success.
Did you know that there is no rule saying that the NBA is male-only? Women can play in the NBA. Why do you think there has never been a single female NBA player?
Women actually aren’t as inferior to men as you seem to think.
You pick any female athlete. I’ll challenge her at her preferred sport, and I’ll bet against myself 99/100 times.
Anyone who’s going through transition would have far less testosterone than I, and what I have isn’t going to help me beat a female athlete.
What it’s really doing is dehumanizing people. How would you feel if you tried out for a team and they said YOU had to play on the other genders team? No matter what you said, you could not convince them that you were what you know you are. Would you still play? No, you’d do exactly what they want you to do, just go away. Stay out of our sight because you’re strange and you don’t belong here.
Physically yes, they are. This isn’t new or controversial. It is the entire reason why we have womens categories in sports in the first place. There are countless videos and stories of things like the USA womens olympic soccer team playing against boys high school soccer teams and getting thrashed. Not just losing, oh no - getting annihilated…by high school boys. Any average boys high school basketball team would win the WNBA championship without losing a single match. The worst college male college basketball player would win the MVP of the WNBA unanimously (if the judges were fair of course, which we know they’re not since someone voted for Angel Reese as the rookie of the year lol).
That says more about you than anything else. I would absolutely beat many olympic womens athletes at their sports with the minimal training I’ve done, because well we can see how fast they are, how much they can lift, etc - and their records and performances are way behind the mens, and I would bet my life savings on me beating them.
For example, in the USA in 2024 alone, the 10 fastest high school boys 100m sprinters ran faster than the Womens Olympic gold medalist from 2024 (https://trackandfieldnews.com/2024-high-school-boys-absolute-top-10-lists/, https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/paris-2024/results/athletics/women-100m ). Not by a tiny amount either - the 10th fastest male high school athlete was half a second faster than the womens gold medal winner lol. I don’t know if you know much about athletics, but half a second in the 100m sprint is an eternity. It’s bigger than the gap between 1st and last almost all of the time.
There are just so many examples. Back in their prime, Serena and Venus Williams both played a set of tennis against the 206th (iirc, he was just over 200) ranked male tennis player. He smoked in between points. He played them back to back. He beat them both without raising a sweat, I think it was 6-0 against one and 6-1 against the other. Each set only took like 15 minutes because they could barely even get to his serve to return it. At the time the Williams sisters both said something along the lines of womens and mens tennis basically being completely different sports because of the performance gulf between them.
No it’s not. Accepting that there are differences between sexes is just accepting reality.
Sports aren’t based on gender, they’re based on sex due to all of the reasons listed above. Gender is irrelevant since it’s just an “identity”, a feeling.