Transpeople in athletics

[aurelius]

the two examples that come to mind are the college swimmer and the New Zealand weightlifter, both of whom still get beat by cis women.

I take issue with this argument. We are discussing competition at the division 1 and Olympic level. Elite athletics. In both instances the transitioning individuals are beating most of the competition they face. While competing as XY individuals, they did not. The college swimmer won the women's conference championship and finished on the podium for the NCAA women's championships. She was a middling swimmer in the men's competition. The Oly lifter went from just competing in regional tournaments to competing internationally and the Olympics. The argument that "well these individuals can't beat the top 1% of elite XX competitors so what is the big deal" is just bad IMO.

Let's look at it another way. To my knowledge, no one is stating XY transitioning individuals can't participate in sports. There are proposals to prevent XY individuals from competing in XX sports. If participation in sports is maintained, why is it important for XY transitioning individuals to compete in XX sports?

If the issue is one of terminology: men and women's sports, we can rename them. Let's have an Open division that all individuals can compete in while maintaining XX segregated sports. To be clear, this already happens in sports like wrestling where there are not enough participants for women's divisions. The weight class nature of the sport helps mitigate some of the phyisiological division. The XX individuals compete against the XY individuals.

[dw]

@ChasingCurls69

The lack of relevant examples cuts both ways though, in that there some to be very few cases of this period and the ones publicly known all involved an MTF athlete doing very well in the sport. How did Marie Kroc do incidentally?

[ChasingCurls69]

the two examples that come to mind are the college swimmer and the New Zealand weightlifter, both of whom still get beat by cis women.

I take issue with this argument. We are discussing competition at the division 1 and Olympic level. Elite athletics. In both instances the transitioning individuals are beating most of the competition they face. While competing as XY individuals, they did not. The college swimmer won the women's conference championship and finished on the podium for the NCAA women's championships. She was a middling swimmer in the men's competition. The Oly lifter went from just competing in regional tournaments to competing internationally and the Olympics. The argument that "well these individuals can't beat the top 1% of elite XX competitors so what is the big deal" is just bad IMO.

Let's look at it another way. To my knowledge, no one is stating XY transitioning individuals can't participate in sports. There are proposals to prevent XY individuals from competing in XX sports. If participation in sports is maintained, why is it important for XY transitioning individuals to compete in XX sports?

If the issue is one of terminology: men and women's sports, we can rename them. Let's have an Open division that all individuals can compete in while maintaining XX segregated sports. To be clear, this already happens in sports like wrestling where there are not enough participants for women's divisions. The weight class nature of the sport helps mitigate some of the phyisiological division. The XX individuals compete against the XY individuals.

I think the terminology issue is important, because they're not called XX/XY sports; they are named after social categories that have almost, but not quite, 100% overlap with commonly understood biological categories. And we run into issues over the XX/XY even with cis women who are beating other cis women, such as that sprinter who has to go through a bunch of shit to "prove" she was a woman.

As far as weighing participation vs competitiveness, I think the fact that there are cis women beating these trans women is just proof of concept that whatever advantages offered are not completely dominant to the point cis women can no longer compete. So I'm partial to the argument that participation in the desired social category is more important than the rankings of a few cis women who otherwise would not have won regardless, or the vastly less competitive women who are participating for fun anyway. If we get to a point where the top rankings of certain types of sports, or just a large portion of women's sports in general become consistently dominated by trans women, then I would shift more towards your stance and say we should look at limiting participation.

I'm also partial to the argument of creating Open and Not Opem as categories, or completely limiting the use of specific drugs that precludes TRT men and trans men/trans women, but allowing them to participate in the open category.

[ChasingCurls69]

@ChasingCurls69

The lack of relevant examples cuts both ways though, in that there some to be very few cases of this period and the ones publicly known all involved an MTF athlete doing very well in the sport. How did Marie Kroc do incidentally?

Marie Kroc hasn't competed as "Marie", but did say she wouldn't and alluded to the whole 20 years of elite powerlifting as a man on drugs. I think that's a pretty clear cut case where we could say that's not fair to other women, but isn't necessarily broadly applicable yet. I also think reported cases of trans participation are going to bias the higher achievers, because no one is really going to care for the trans athletes that are average or below average since it doesn't create the problems we're arguing over. They just kind of blend in.

[convergentsum]

This is my position (don't care about sports). It's a branch of entertainment, whatever brings the most audience is what they should do. I don't think there's any higher principle at play. I know people use sport for scholarships and whatnot,

Strong disagreement here (I think). The higher principle at play is that sports = civilization.

Thanks 5hout. I don't agree with you but I appreciate the clear expression of a point of view I didn't understand before.

What do you think about math competitions?

Another branch of entertainment (more niche, obviously).
Not that there's anything wrong with entertainment. I love music, and I would make a similar "music = civilization" argument if music were under threat.

[dw]

This is my position (don't care about sports). It's a branch of entertainment, whatever brings the most audience is what they should do. I don't think there's any higher principle at play. I know people use sport for scholarships and whatnot,

Strong disagreement here (I think). The higher principle at play is that sports = civilization.

Thanks 5hout. I don't agree with you but I appreciate the clear expression of a point of view I didn't understand before.

What do you think about math competitions?

Another branch of entertainment (more niche, obviously).
Not that there's anything wrong with entertainment. I love music, and I would make a similar "music = civilization" argument if music were under threat.

It seems a bit ascetic to me to dismiss the public display of excellence as mere entertainment. Besides if it is mere entertainment why does it need to be so inclusive?

And of course there are the well known instrumental justifications of sports as civilian preparation for military service.

[mbasic]

To your asterisked point, the specific claim was that we don't have scientific proof that post-hormone therapy MTFs have an advantage in general over natural females. Again most of us would say the evidence of our eyes is sufficient but this is such a historically rare phenomenon and frankly of so little interest that I can believe there's not a lot of formal study of it.

You are equating some kind of double blind type study that compares transitioning individuals' athletic performance to non-transitioning individuals as scientific proof. I do not believe that is required or necessary. We very rarely have that level of 'scientific proof' for anything. I think at this point we can all agree that smoking causes cancer. The medical literature supports this. It has been 'proven' in a court of law. We don't have 'scientific proof' that establishes that relationship. The study would require thousands of individuals through a lifetime forcing one group to smoke. Similarly, a transitioning study would have to clone thousands of individual pairs and force one of the pair to transition. Ethical issues aside (which are significant), both studies are immensely cost prohibitive to give us answers we already know.

Add to that, because of the politically charged nature to the M-t-F-competing-as-F issue ... I doubt any scientific group or org is going to tackle that issue. Its not worth the "defund-the-XYZ" or the cancel culture backlash to said scientists.

You may of course find a group to study the opposite argument .... as the saying goes, torture the data hard enough, you can get it to say anything.

[mbasic]

and then of that small subset a small % are actually competitive enough for it to matter at higher levels. Like even being exposed to a significant stream of culture wars nonsense, the two examples that come to mind are the college swimmer and the New Zealand weightlifter, both of whom still get beat by cis women.

1- I guess are clearly one of those people who don't care about sports and/or hold some kind of "grudge" against sports (as discussed above)

2 -you clearly hate cis-women.

Once you wrap your head around the fact the elite cis women can beat 98% of ALL MEN at their chosen sport .... those two examples don't prove a fucken thing. Its when you equal the playing field, and put the athlete-fishes into the appropriate pond.

The new Zealand weightlifter can now beat 99% of all cis women weightlifters in existence ...Talking at the local, regional, continental, world level, hobby level. Just not beat ALL the cis-females at worlds or the Olympics. (lolz at age 38 or whatever to boot).
Also consider she beat out many cis-female Oceana Olympic regional qualifiers that wouldn't have otherwise gone to the Olympics.
She definitely "disrupted" some shit and shattered some cis-women's dreams of going to the Olympics.

When she was he .... he was a very average (to poor) male weightlifter in the grand scheme of things, maybe good for NZ (I think was, at one time, a NZ record holder .... or one of thier top men). Her numbers may have went down a little bit, but the effect can clearly be seen to where a MtF transitioned athlete bumps up in term of the pond that they now compete in.

[ChasingCurls69]

and then of that small subset a small % are actually competitive enough for it to matter at higher levels. Like even being exposed to a significant stream of culture wars nonsense, the two examples that come to mind are the college swimmer and the New Zealand weightlifter, both of whom still get beat by cis women.

Once you wrap your head around the fact the elite cis women can beat 98% of ALL MEN at their chosen sport .... those two examples don't prove a fucken thing. Its when you equal the playing field, and put the athlete-fishes into the appropriate pond.

Yes, my main point is that elite cis women are going to beat the vast majority of men and trans women at their given sport regardless, and we're weighing broader participation vs potential ability to win in a smaller pond.

Unrelated to the main points, I think the NZ weightlifter also had a 20 year gap in competing as a man for the last time and as a woman for the first time.

If someone specifically transitions to win in a smaller pond or even the elite gigachad pond, then yeah that would be an issue.

[mbasic]

Unrelated to the main points, I think the NZ weightlifter also had a 20 year gap in competing as a man for the last time and as a woman for the first time.

I guess we are talking past eachother or something if you don't see the problem with this ^.

[ChasingCurls69]

Unrelated to the main points, I think the NZ weightlifter also had a 20 year gap in competing as a man for the last time and as a woman for the first time.

I guess we are talking past eachother or something if you don't see the problem with this ^.

Probably. I was going to mention a caveat that the tran woman has been taking hormones to transition for X amount of time, and longer time periods are probably more preferable. IOC rules are something like 3 years? And IWF was allowed to set their own rules, but I have to look those up

If Laurel Hubbard showed up not taking any hormones, or much closer to when she transitioned, then it would be an issue for me.

[BostonRugger]

The question really isn't whether some elite women can in some cases beat a man from genpop. Based on the above examples of Hubbard and Thomas, it seems to be whether a female athlete is on an *even playing field* with a man who is also an athlete and who has been training/competing in his sport, as a male, since youth.

[mbasic]

Unrelated to the main points, I think the NZ weightlifter also had a 20 year gap in competing as a man for the last time and as a woman for the first time.

I guess we are talking past eachother or something if you don't see the problem with this ^.

Probably. I was going to mention a caveat that the tran woman has been taking hormones to transition for X amount of time, and longer time periods are probably more preferable. IOC rules are something like 3 years? And IWF was allowed to set their own rules, but I have to look those up

If Laurel Hubbard showed up not taking any hormones, or much closer to when she transitioned, then it would be an issue for me.

Evidentially, the hormones aren't doing that much.

According to this ...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... signment%2


... if I am reading this right I only have to have something 288 ng/dL ("10 nmol/L") of total test to compete as a women to satisfy the IOC.
I'm 50. I haven't had those test numbers (288+) since 43 .... as do a lot of men. Last year I was 200.
Not hard to do.

If you read up on the variability in different men's testosterone levels compared to their ability to build muscle mass, and/or be successful at sports. The range is all over the place. A guy could be 900 and be a dud. A guy could be 300 and be a stud. If either of those guys INCREASE their OWN individual test levels respectively with PEDs .... sure they both see a performance increase. I would speculate the 300-guy would "do more with less" additive testosterone because he has better receptor pathways, etc....other things making him anabolic, more male, etc.

So it seems all the IOC worry about, is the trans athlete staying under the "10 nmol/L" (228 ng/dL).
From a quick google search, it seems all they do in the way of "hormone therapy" (HT) is give the dude some estrogen to reduce his test levels ..... if he was say at 300-400 in his late thirties (not uncommon at all) ..... it would literally take some micro dosing of estrogen to get him under 288.
The range for Estrogen (E2) in men is something like 5 to 40. Most at 20? He might only have to bump up 5 points.
Or he might already be a 288 (judging from his phsique before all this) .... could just bullshit your way through that.

Being that he's a heavy weight, the bloating the minimal fat gain from extra E2 wouldn't really matter (I would argue that its not even happening in my scenario of "low-ish test to begin with").

Here's the funny part, he could probably just eat like total shit and intentionally gain more weight. His massive fat surplus, would just aromatize more test. into E2 .... and therefore tank his test below olympic threshold levels. BUUUUT, he has got to turn in a letter to the IOC from his hormone doctor saying he is done some kind of HT to aid in his transitioning. So the doctor only has to give an Rx for the very most minimalistic amount of E2 (or say other test. antagonists) to say he's doing something. Then you only get blood tests on certain days to prove transitioned status..... so easy to manipulate.

Funny too (extra) E2 can be an asset in many ways. E2 increases synovial fluid in joints. So good for a guy training olympic lifts all the time, especially in his late 30's.

Estrogen is only really a negative in terms of fat gain, and it can drive down your testosterone ....
Otherwise estrogen, contrary to popular belief, is anabolic on its own .... but, might be a little "bad" for tendon stiffness in females.
Crazy high estrogen in males (or females)??? .... yeah you don't want that for other reasons (tits, fat gain, etc).
A little "extra" estrogen in male, probably aint going to matter at all in this context.

TL;DR: fuck that guy

[aurelius]

The question really isn't whether some elite women can in some cases beat a man from genpop. Based on the above examples of Hubbard and Thomas, it seems to be whether a female athlete is on an *even playing field* with a man who is also an athlete and who has been training/competing in his sport, as a male, since youth.

I agree. The fact that the top 1% of the top 10% of XX individuals that participate in competitive athletics can beat a transitioning XY athlete is missing the point.

Let's look at it another way. If there was a magic pill that an average XY individual could take that would allow them to out compete all but the top 1% of the top 10% of XY individuals, we would call it cheating. Anabolic steroids do not have anywhere near that effect and we disallow their use in competitive sports.

[convergentsum]

It seems a bit ascetic to me to dismiss the public display of excellence as mere entertainment. Besides if it is mere entertainment why does it need to be so inclusive?

And of course there are the well known instrumental justifications of sports as civilian preparation for military service.

Just to clarify (I'm not necessarily holding fast to my original opinion), I'm not saying it should necessarily be inclusive, I'm saying let professional sports organize themselves around whatever draws the best crowds.

[Brackish]

Most of the detractors are men or a few TERFs who are not any more competitive than the supporters.

I know you qualified your statement with "most", and I think it's probably true, but I would like to offer a counterexample. My SIL wrestles competitively for Canada's national team. This past summer, while she was visiting, I asked her what she thought about this topic. Her reply, in short, was that if they ever allowed people to wrestle, in her organization/division/whatever, that had once been a male, then she would be done. She gave me a bunch a reasons why, but the big one, which is specific to her sport, is the advantage they would have in upper body strength due to biological differences in muscle mass placements(?) between XX/XY individuals. It quite literally is what wins matches if both competitors are relatively fit from a cardio perspective. In fact, it's all her coach has her focusing on in the gym for the past two years. Doesn't want her messing about with any lower body stuff at all (even though she still does). I'm aware it's an N of 1 and all that, but she's the only female athlete I know personally that competes at a level beyond hobby/for fun, so I thought I would share her thoughts.

[dw]

It seems a bit ascetic to me to dismiss the public display of excellence as mere entertainment. Besides if it is mere entertainment why does it need to be so inclusive?

And of course there are the well known instrumental justifications of sports as civilian preparation for military service.

Just to clarify (I'm not necessarily holding fast to my original opinion), I'm not saying it should necessarily be inclusive, I'm saying let professional sports organize themselves around whatever draws the best crowds.

So the purpose of sports is what...to make $? Should powerlifting orgs become more like the WWE?

[JonA]

it seems to be whether a female athlete is on an *even playing field* with a man who is also an athlete and who has been training/competing in his sport, as a male, since youth.

I don't know about other sports federations, but USS swimming has qualifying standards all the way down to the age of <10, from everything from "Here's a participation ribbon!" meets all the way up to regional and national meets.

Here's a link to their "Motivation Standards" that are set by by the number of swimmers meeting that standard. Eg, if you are in the top 45%, you are a "B" swimmer, if you are the top 5%, your an AAAA swimmer:

https://www.usaswimming.org/docs/defaul ... -times.pdf

There are _very_ few outliers where an equivalent age standard for girls is faster than for boys, regardless of age. 10, 12, 15, 20...doesn't matter.

(I have fraternal twins that swam. Ask me how I learned about the inherent unfairness of this situation by hearing endless arguments in the back seat of the car while driving to swim meets...)

[convergentsum]

It seems a bit ascetic to me to dismiss the public display of excellence as mere entertainment. Besides if it is mere entertainment why does it need to be so inclusive?

And of course there are the well known instrumental justifications of sports as civilian preparation for military service.

Just to clarify (I'm not necessarily holding fast to my original opinion), I'm not saying it should necessarily be inclusive, I'm saying let professional sports organize themselves around whatever draws the best crowds.

So the purpose of sports is what...to make $? Should powerlifting orgs become more like the WWE?

I don't think powerlifting is much of a spectator sport, it's primarily a participatory thing, isn't it? (disclaimer, I have never attended a meet)
As a niche sport, there isn't too much commercial ambition or obligation invovled, so no one expects them to go after big crowds or television contracts etc.; but even at this level, the orgs that survive will be the ones which athletes want to compete in, and if their trans stance attracts or deters enough athletes to promote one org over another, let it.
Again, please don't hold me to my barely-considered opinion. One of the many things I've not considered is how participatory sport is connected to professional sports.

[Wilhelm]

Yes.
For the most part (by far) the powerlifting audience is made up of powerlifters.

And their mums.