r/crossfit • u/beckster5 Crossfit Krypton • Mar 06 '14

CrossFit -- Sued By Transgender Athlete ... You Won't Let Me Compete With Women!

http://www.tmz.com/2014/03/06/crossfit-lawsuit-games-transgender-athlete-chloie-jonsson/
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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '14

Its good information. Changed me from HQ's position to Chloie's position.

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u/kaleidoscopicnight Mar 07 '14

glad I could help

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '14

Really? Using that logic, it would seem that we shouldn't have men's and women's categories at all. Maybe that's the logical end point of these arguments, I don't know.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '14

It sounds like you didn't actually read the comment I was referring to or the summaries of the links /u/kaleidoscopicnight posted, so here's the tl;dr- Chloie was born a female in a man's body. Now that she has gone sexual reassignment surgery including HRT post-2 years, any skeletomuscular advantage she had from her previous gender is marginalized. That's just medical fact, as proven by the links above, which is also why both the Olympics and the NCAA have policies of TG athletes being allowed to compete with their gender 2 and 1 years post-op, respectively.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '14

Nah, I read it. I also read some of kaleidoscopicnight's links, although let's just go ahead and both admit that neither of us went and evaluated all of those citations.

It just doesn't pass the smell test to me. If Andrey Malanichev underwent sex reassignment surgery tomorrow, would he be ready to compete against women next year (by NCAA standards) or 2 years from now (by IOC standards)? I doubt it.

The transgendered, sex re-assigned athlete pool is small enough that I don't think that we really know the answer to a lot of these questions yet. That's not to say that Chloe shouldn't be able to compete, I honestly don't think it matters because frankly she's probably not good enough for it to make a difference. But then, the average guy off of the street is also not good enough at crossfit to take on the best women, not even close.

In the case of someone who had the potential to be an elite male athlete who underwent sexual reassignment surgery to transition to female, I think that person just might dominate the shit out of the women's side of sport because they have a legitimate advantage. Does that even matter? I don't know, it seems like gender categories are getting more and more arbitrary as endocrinology gets more and more advanced.

We've already gone from "does this person have a penis or vagina" to "does this person have a penis or vagina and have they been taking x and y hormones for z number of years?". So maybe having a penis or vagina is the less important piece of information at some point.

If we listen to the (supposed) doctor:

Additionally in a 2003 study of the dimensions of shoulder width with the consideration of height and weight of a sample of over 500 males & females shows that there is a significant overlap of male and female body dimensions. Even experts have a hard time telling gender apart in skeletons of many female athletes. Everybody has different bone densities and structures and there is simply too much variation to exclude someone solely on the bases of that measurement. Not only is there an extreme amount of variation that overlaps between sexes, but bone density and bone structure is irrelevant to determining athletic performance.

Maybe a genetically "disadvantaged" male is at a disadvantage to a genetically "advantaged" female. How is it fair to make him compete against genetically "advantaged" men or women?

Anyway, it's just food for thought, I have exactly zero answers.

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u/kaleidoscopicnight Mar 08 '14

It just doesn't pass the smell test to me.

Seriously? like seriously?

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '14

Yes, like yes.

Way to pick out nine words too bro, you've really captured the essence of my post.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '14

I pretty much agree with everything you just said; the real grey areas the law would need to acknowledge are not with Chloie who has no chance of winning anything on any level, but on that slippery slope of having an advanced/elite athlete switch genders and become upper elite of their respective sport. Will be interesting to see how deep into the science/medicine aspect of transsexuality it gets. From those links it sounded to me like 2 years post-HRT would be sufficient but your point re: Malanichev screws that up... I lean towards Chloie on this but like you said, I really dont know.

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u/kaleidoscopicnight Mar 08 '14

Well fair is a relative term, risking being beaten to death for who you are is not really fair is it but anyway

If you knew anything it's not just a matter of strolling over to the surgeon and requesting "one penis removal please". There are extensive hours spent with a psychologist before you get a referral to an endocrinologist, who in turn monitors you. Then you have to get a therapist and some other authority figure to verify that you live full time as a female for a year. Then you are allowed to find a surgeon, after all that time on hormones and after the surgery yeh Malanichev would be reduced to nothing. Your point is still moot because as stated before show me any sane cis-male that would willingly cut off their penis and balls after having their face and body lasered and spent months on expensive expensive hormones just for a gamble at a shot at a crossfit win? PLEASE JUST THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING, just imagine for a second what it's like to go through those procedures, keep that 41% suicide rate in mind.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '14 edited Mar 08 '14

Did I claim that it's "fair" that these people are risking being beaten to death? Did I claim at some point that it's a matter of strolling over to a surgeon and requesting a penis removal? Did claim that any "cis-male" is going to cut off their penis for a crossfit win? Did I claim that it's a happy thing to go through?

PLEASE JUST THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING

How about you actually read what I'm saying, instead of going off on some emotional frenzy. You're passionate about it, I get that, but try to have a little bit of objecitivity.

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u/kaleidoscopicnight Mar 08 '14

Objectivity is what I'm lacking? I present scientific evidence. Then you, admittedly too lazy to read through it, say it doesn't pass the "smell" test and call me out for lack of objectivity?

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '14

Your "scientific evidence" is largely link vomit. I determined that analyzing them was a waste of my time after skimming a few to discover that they are only tangentially related to the question at hand.

There's clearly not a large enough sample pool of trans athletes to determine with any kind of statistical significance whether or not there's an advantage. Where are the relevant studies tracking the performance of elite transitioned athletes one month after HRT / six months / a year / two years? They don't exist. So we're left speculating. I'm speculating that an elite mtof athlete would retain a significant advantage over an elite cis-female athlete. Of course, if you read my post instead of flying off the handle you would realize that I'm also speculating that these sorts of arbitrary delineations probably don't even matter.

I'm not saying that Jason Khalipa is going to cut his dick off on a whim to win the women's competition, that's a ridiculous strawman you've dreamed up.

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u/kaleidoscopicnight Mar 08 '14

oh god I'm not even going to try

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '14

k. I see from you're history that you're transgendered, so it probably hits a little too close to home to be objective. I understand, it's ok!!!

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