this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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I’m all for trans rights. Trans people deserve rights, and support, and respect. BUT, here’s my take on sports:
If I wanted to coach an athlete to make it to the Olympics and win gold, I’d scour my country for a trans woman and train her for literally ANY individual sport.
Pole vault, 100 meter, javelin, swimming, you name it. We’ll kick ass.
That is simply not true. A male puberty does give some benefits in some sports. But any advantages in, e.g. muscle density, vanish once hormone levels are accounted for. And hormone levels have been (over-)* controlled for decades now.
You know what also gives you an advantage? Being taller. Or having higher blood oxygenation. Or certain abnormal body proportions. Once you get to top level sports, you have people that basically won the genetic lottery, mixed with a shitload of training. Just look at Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky in swimming, for example. Both are very exceptional in both body and technique, and dominated their sports.
So why is trans inclusion such a divisive point, but, let's say, height is not? Tall women dominate basketball, should we ban everyone over 1.80m? Or test for hemoglobin before runs?
Trans athletes dominating a sport has not happened in any relevant capacity. I challenge you to find even a single case where it has. This is purely a political talking point, nothing about this is about sports
* Women have (sometimes illegally, and often without consent) been subjected to hormone and chromosome testing for decades, to the detriment of mostly cis- and intersex women. I'm not aware of any trans women caught up in this, at least on an Olympic level.
Source
So someone won at a college competition. About 1% of people are trans, so you'll see some winners. It'd be weirder if you didn't. The records stated there, 25s for the women's 200? The world record has been <22s for decades now. That's not exactly "dominating a sport".
But do you notice how everyone quoted in the article is actively transphobic, misgendering her and another athlete? If this was truly about sports, why go to that length? You could have a nuanced, respectful debate about fairness in sport. Yet whenever the topic is trans people, it's always those that already deny their very existence that are the most 'concerned about fairness'. This has never been about sport.
This is just a convenient front for the right's culture war bullshit. Don't fall for it.
Whether or not records are being broken is not the correct way to determine if a certain population has an advantage over the other. A variation toward the top performers could be interpreted as an unfair advantage. If this particular very small group of athletes is in the top 5% than one could think something is anti-competative about this arrangement.
Once again, the same is true for many other factors. Long legs help to be good at running, I'd presume, but we're not measuring femurs for college sports. And the variation in top performers does not exist, at least not in the way you're impling. Trans people are actually statistically underrepresented in competitive sports.
The singular focus on a handful of trans athletes, while actively misgendering those same athletes, is a hate and harassment campaign spread by people who couldn't care less about fairness in sport.
Equating genetic outcomes (e.g. height) and advantages gained through a male or female puberty is a mathematical malpractice. Any advantages gained through male puberty will be seen across an entire biologically male population. Whereas genetic lottery outcomes are less predictable and more sparse.
There is an argument to be had about how a trans female's advantages gained through a male puberty can be minimized through hormone blockers. However, I would presume advantages already gained through their frame would be retained. I am not opposed allowing these athletes to participate to determine if this hypothesis would hold. However, I doubt the ample data needed to test this is/would be collected across all levels of competition where applicable.
If the handful of trans athletes are mostly top performers, it could indicate that their participation hinders the competitiveness of the competition.
What do you define as "biologically male" here? This is a term often used by bigots, so I just want to make sure we're on the same base. Biology isn't binary, far from it. Intersex people are the ones most often caught up in any sort of gender testing for sports. Most of them don't even know they are intersex, and find out through some competition excluding them. And what about trans women that went on puberty blockers early, that never went through a testosterone-driven puberty? While the advantage for someone who did go through puberty is debatable and varies from discipline to discipline, for someone who didn't it's non-existent. Would you agree that it's only fair that they should be allowed to compete? Where do you draw the line then?
And you are getting this claim from where, exactly? This is pure conjecture on your part
For the purpose of this discussion, "biologically male" refers to someone who experiences or would experience a male puberty. Thus, receiving the physical developments associated with that. Any discussion otherwise Is tangential. If you were to measure the physical performance of a given individual, and said performance is consistent with other males, we can indicate this person as biologically male.
Discussion about intersex persons is harder to delineate than what we are talking about here. it also is not the topic at hand.
The only reason I replied to this thread is because you asked for a single example of a trans person dominating a sport. In the article provided there is a link to that athletes page of performances at several meets. I would say by most definitions applied in the athletic world she is dominating. Whether they have an advantage due to their previously male physiology, I cannot say. I am simply outlining conditions for which one could claim that a trans person has an advantage. I am not concerned enough about this topic to scrounge up data to refine any claims we are making here, and I am doubtful the necessary data exists.
That's a curious definition, as that makes trans men biologically male as well? "Would experience male puberty" is also really, really vague. As I've asked before, what about a trans woman that went on puberty blockers early and never got a testosterone puberty?
Yes, and I've told you that a trans person winning in college sports, while still performing well within the margins of other cis women, is not "dominating a sport", rather, it would be weird if no trans person won every now and again, because there are a lot of trans people and a lot of people playing sports.
Imagine if people talked about any other group of people in sports like it has been become acceptable to talk about trans women. Did you know that white racists protested against black women participating in sports because they were perceived as "too manly"?
Sure a trans man can experience a male puberty, they just take action to incite it rather than it naturally occurring. Perhaps the more accurate term would be testosterone puberty as you said. In both cases they are afforded the physical advantages of increased testosterone levels. However, I am not sure how trans men could come to mind in this discussion as they are far out of scope. They take drugs that would likely be considered performance enhancing by a sporting org. There are further regulation and implementation concerns regarding them.
Regarding your question. All that matters is if the athlete is afforded an advantage via their male physiology. If one renders these advantages negligible if the athlete takes hormone blockers as a pre-pubescent via scientific methods, then so be it let them compete. It does not seem all that unlikely. Pre-pubescent children are generally allowed to compete in the same sporting competitions.
That athletes performance over late 2023 to now appears to be 73% percent of events in the top 3. That's dominating the competition. Also, you appear to be limiting this performance discussion to the athlete performing within the minimum and maximum performance of a female athlete, which is flawed.
If we visualize athlete performance for males and females as two separate normal distributions. The mean performance of females relative to males would likely shift the female distribution lower. However, some overlap would exist (best female athletes could outperform the worst male athletes). I am not sure how much they would overlap, perhaps the best female athletes can perform beyond the average male athlete.
A proper investigation would be to see if any given individual has a net shift along the performance distribution as a result of male physiology. If they do it compromises the competitive integrity of woman's sports. That article I posted also provides an Instagram post by the athlete. In which the difference in size between her and her competition is apparent to the naked eye. Her size affords her much longer strides than the ones she is competing against. If these differences were the result of a testosterone puberty or previously male physiology, then one could hypothesize there is a problem.
My question about trans men was to clarify what you previously called "biologically male", which you seem to mean "experienced testosterone puberty" (strange definition, but sure)
As for your second point, I'm confused, why are you talking about male athletes now? You're aware that having experienced testosterone puberty at some point is not the same as having a testosterone dominated body? Muscle density and mass, fat distribution, some cardiovascular effects, and many more things that are associated with testosterone are impermanent, and disappear/shift towards a estrogen-typical distribution when testosterone is suppressed (over the span of 1-2 years, with some variance)
Height and bone structure are some of the few things that don't change on HRT. Which brings me back to one of my old points: Why should a cis woman that is 1.80m tall be allowed to compete, but a trans woman should not?
We appear to be having a miscommunication. Someone who is born a male will on average see greater increases in physical capability if they do not suppress or alter their development.
As you say, a trans woman can negate these advantages by some amount with HRT. They still however retain advantages through things that are not affected by HRT (bone structure, height, etc.)
To your third point. Because height is an optimal genetic outcome, and is largely uncontrollable. There are some weird people who procreate with the goal of achieving optimal genetic outcomes, but those people are few and far between. Someone can be born a man, reap the benefits of a male puberty(bone structure, height, ect.), then become a trans woman athlete. That is a completely controllable path that circumvents some amount of training and preparation other participants in the sport have to do. This sort of thing fits the description of a 'loophole'.
I never said definitively that trans women shouldn't be able to participate. However, there are some questions that need to be answered in order to do this kind of thing without compromising competition. These questions are: - Is HRT required for trans woman to be eligible to compete? (it appears yes it should be) - Can performance advantages gained through physiology unaffected by HRT be considered negligible? (my intuition tells me no. However, I could be wrong given enough performance data) - Does HRT actually negate their capabilities to the level you are claiming? - Are any potential advantages completely avoided by starting HRT as a prepubescent? (This does not seem far- fetched. Males and females often compete against one another as prepubescents in publicly sanctioned leagues)
HRT is already mandatory to compete at basically every level. The whole "you can just identify as a woman and compete" is scaremongering by transphobes.
You make it sound like being trans is a choice one can make to give themselves an advantage, and let me just say, yikes. Being trans is not a completely controllable path, just as your height or if you're left handed is not.
The median trans woman is likely taller than the median cis woman. This does not justify why she should be excluded. We don't treat other categories like this, either. The median Dutch woman is taller than the median Korean woman. But you don't see politicians making a fuss about the Dutch in sports, now do you?
It can be completely controllable if one so chooses
What are you trying to say? You're either saying being trans is a choice (yikes!)
Or you're saying cis men would go through years of transition, crippling dysphoria from transitioning into the wrong gender, the social ostracization that comes from being transgender in general and a trans athlete in specific, all to... get a potential, marginal advantage? That's a fantasy.
Either way, I don't get your point
The amount of emotions you superimpose over the discussion doesn't change the fact that it is a highly repeatable avenue to gain an advantage. Unlike the genetic markers you have mentioned.
???
who would do this? seriously
There are athletes that forgo companionship, marriage, having children, etc. to improve in their sport. It is not uncommon for people to withstand tremendous sacrifice to reach their goals.
We have entered the subjectivity debate, which I am not interested in having. This was an interesting conversation nonetheless.