I’m trans and I actually agree with you. I don’t know the solution to make things fair, but I wouldn’t want to use a strong biological advantage over someone else.
I see it like if I’d been born with some identifiable and categorised physical advantage then I shouldn’t be competing against people without that advantage.
It’s debatable how big the difference is, however, and whether it’s a gap easily closed or not. My thoughts are that there could be an open category where anyone could compete on the understanding that there may be severe biological differences. There’s no easy solution :(
Edit: thinking about it, sporting competitions are more sex-catagorised than gender-categorised. I don’t think someone identifying as female with no physical/medical alterations from a biological male form should compete with biological females and I don’t think that should be controversial since the gender isn’t what people care about there. It’s the physical characteristics.
In some sports that might provide an advantage, in some a disadvantage, but I do this it’s important to discuss!
At that point, however, you’d be better ignoring gender and sex entirely and only categorising sports like ‘feather weight’ or ‘strong muscular development’ or something
Given a long enough time on the right hormones, and most (not all) of that advantage disappears.
“While absolute lean mass remains higher in trans women, relative percentage lean mass and fat mass (and muscle strength corrected for lean mass), hemoglobin, and VO2 peak corrected for weight was no different to cisgender women. After 2 years of GAHT, no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time or in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women.”
There’s also a large band of ability within people. Michael Phelps has a genetic advantage, but his accomplishments are still celebrated.
It’s wrong to ban trans women from women’s sports, because trans women are women.
But they have the muscles of a male and usually beat all women-since-birth in competitions.
Yeah, Ik I’m gonna get downvoted to oblivion and I’m gonna get called TERF but that’s the reason it’s controversial in the first place
I’m trans and I actually agree with you. I don’t know the solution to make things fair, but I wouldn’t want to use a strong biological advantage over someone else.
I see it like if I’d been born with some identifiable and categorised physical advantage then I shouldn’t be competing against people without that advantage.
It’s debatable how big the difference is, however, and whether it’s a gap easily closed or not. My thoughts are that there could be an open category where anyone could compete on the understanding that there may be severe biological differences. There’s no easy solution :(
Edit: thinking about it, sporting competitions are more sex-catagorised than gender-categorised. I don’t think someone identifying as female with no physical/medical alterations from a biological male form should compete with biological females and I don’t think that should be controversial since the gender isn’t what people care about there. It’s the physical characteristics. In some sports that might provide an advantage, in some a disadvantage, but I do this it’s important to discuss! At that point, however, you’d be better ignoring gender and sex entirely and only categorising sports like ‘feather weight’ or ‘strong muscular development’ or something
Just make it body mass based
Given a long enough time on the right hormones, and most (not all) of that advantage disappears. “While absolute lean mass remains higher in trans women, relative percentage lean mass and fat mass (and muscle strength corrected for lean mass), hemoglobin, and VO2 peak corrected for weight was no different to cisgender women. After 2 years of GAHT, no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time or in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women.”
There’s also a large band of ability within people. Michael Phelps has a genetic advantage, but his accomplishments are still celebrated.
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgad414/7223439?login=false