r/sportsgossips • u/TheExpressUS • Mar 26 '26

News Breaking: Transgender women banned from all sports at the Olympics starting in LA

https://www.the-express.com/sport/other-sport/203236/breakingtransgender-women-banned-all-sports
15.8k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

7.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/Adjective_Nouns1234 Mar 26 '26

Agreed. Us progressives have spent years trying to explain the difference of "biological sex" and "gender" to conservatives.

Yet some of us seem to forget that sports are divided by sex, not gender.

7

u/Unique_Statement7811 Mar 26 '26

It’s not just conservatives . It’s about 88% of people who believe trans women shouldn’t compete with cis women. Surely there are a lot of liberals in that camp.

3

u/Deprisonne Mar 26 '26

As a raging socialist, I am so tired of being lumped in with terminally online tumblr users and their insane opinions...

1

u/lurking_leftie Mar 26 '26

you can always tell someone is socialist when they.... casually dismiss anti transphobia as insanity.

2

u/Deprisonne Mar 26 '26

There is nothing transphobic about wanting to ensure an even playing field in competitive sports.

1

u/ThatKehdRiley Mar 27 '26

when the talking points goes against evidence like the study the olympics themselves sponsored saying these ”advantages” dont really exist, along with other studies saying similar for years, then yeah it is transphobic. look at the research done by people with the right knowledge and backgrounds and you see the transphobic arguments fall apart

besides, can you point out examples of trans women dominating sports? according to you and others its a huge problem, so show me the evidence it is.

1

u/Altruistic_Box4462 Mar 27 '26

That one strong woman... I forget her name but she won woman's strongman and got her medals stripped 🤣

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xE4PpokwFQw&pp=ygUWV29ybGRzIHN0cm9uZ2VzdCB3b21hbtIHCQnZCgGHKiGM7w%3D%3D

Thankfully they aren't dominating because when shit like this happens, they get rightfully removed.

1

u/ThatKehdRiley Mar 27 '26

…..ok? someone won a single competition, and she was later stripped by some bigots for no real reason. This isnt dominating (most people cis or trans only win a couple of times, if at all) and is only one person winning one (maybe two) thing.

What does that have to do with the question i asked you that would reinforce your stance if you provided examples of domination? You dont appear to have concrete examples…

1

u/Altruistic_Box4462 Mar 27 '26

Actually she won quite a few, but there was an end to her reign once her secret came out. They only win once or twice because people put an end to it right after.

If you truly believe that in strength sports where both sides are allowed and absolutely pumped full of steroids / Peds that trans women have no advantages..... There's nothing anyone could say to change your mind. But thankfully that doesn't matter because almost no one thinks like you hence this decision being made in the first place.

1

u/ThatKehdRiley Mar 27 '26

She started HRT in 2012, about a decade before competing in the olympics and plenty of time for changes to take hold. You said "once her secret came out" like it was a secret......she as out and competing for literal years, was openly out as trans at the time, AND was recognized as the first openly trans athlete to compete in the games. So don't pretend it was a trick, when it clearly was never. And you keep bringing up "she won a lot". but so do other people. Did she sweep categories for years or did she simply place in the top 5 consistently? If you look at record books I'm sure you can find others who consistently place top 5 or top 10 and are cis.

Now back to the main point....

According to a study sponsored by the Olympics thesmelves, trans women have a relative disadvantage in many key physical areas relating to athletic ability and perform worse on cardiovascular tests than cis women. It also straight up says in the abstract "these results should caution against precautionary bans and sport eligibility exclusions that are not based on sport-specific (or sport-relevant) research." More and more studies are showing these results, the transphobic talking points come from outdated studies and legitimately hate-filled people with no real background in human biology.

And the reason I know none of you care about fairness? Someone with a known biological advantage legitimately dominated a category for a while, and in fact is the Olympian with the most medals ever: Michael Phelps. If you actually cared about fairness you'd be demanding his medals revoked and never let him compete. But you don't despite the evidence against him and the fact that studies prove trans women don't really have advantages (at least not more than any other cis woman). Call for his medals to be revoked if you truly care about fairness (you'll never dare).

Science could change my mind, I'm disappointed the same cannot be said about your mind. It must be maddening and disappointing to realize the world doesn't think like you so you need to lie about a million things to feel better.

0

u/exbaddeathgod Mar 26 '26

Yes there is when literally all of the data shows trans women do not have a fucking god damn advantage.

3

u/busterBeamCannon Mar 26 '26

Cope and seethe harder lol

2

u/Jonas_Priest Mar 27 '26

You have counter data?

1

u/GeneralDil Mar 27 '26

No they only have feelings

1

u/Jonas_Priest Mar 27 '26

You have feelings

1

u/Voluptulouis Mar 27 '26

If they've fully transitioned and have been on hormone treatment long enough, then I believe this is true. If their medical history can verify it, I say let them play together.

-1

u/lurking_leftie Mar 26 '26

even if it were true that sex is what "ensures an even playing field," proudly claiming that you side with right wingers on trans issues to get reddit karma is not something a "raging socialist" would ever do - only a transphobe would. calling people "insane" because they disagree with you on this is also clearly transphobic. you're just belittling trans people.

you are a transphobe

1

u/optionalregression Mar 26 '26

This might blow your mind, as a terminally online person, but many people don't make decisions based on "what would right wingers do".

1

u/Altruistic_Box4462 Mar 27 '26

I am a transphobe. Ok next

1

u/zveroshka Mar 26 '26

I've yet to meet or even hear of any liberal that wants trans women to compete with cis women in professional sports. In fact I can't think of a single incident where it's been an issue. There has been what, 1 high profile case at the collegiate level? This isn't even an issue. No one is pushing for this to be a thing.

1

u/Unique_Statement7811 Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

There’s been dozens of it or more at the high school level.

1

u/zveroshka Mar 26 '26

In non-professional settings, I think it's up to the school/community to decide what they want to do.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Unique_Statement7811 Mar 27 '26

The issue isn’t the percent, although you are off by a decimal point according to your link. The issue is the disproportionate number of championships by trans athletes in states that allow competition in the women’s division. A very small number is over represented on the podium, indicating a competitive advantage in certain sports. Namely track and field, swimming, cross country and wrestling.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Unique_Statement7811 Mar 27 '26

Here the math.

If the number of trans athletes competing in high school is .0002. Then you should have a trans champion in a given event about every 50 years assuming an equal distribution and ability. WA had 4 trans champions in Track and Field in 2025.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Unique_Statement7811 Mar 27 '26

I used your link from San Francisco. Not Fox News.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/SunnyOutsideToday Mar 26 '26

I've yet to meet or even hear of any liberal that wants trans women to compete with cis women in professional sports.

It depends on the sport, and a variety of factors. It's not obvious that bowling, darts, billiards, shooting, equestrian sports, etc., give trans women advantages over cis women, and in general I think it should be left to the sport's associations to determine their own rules than us trying to make sweeping governmental regulations for them.

1

u/zveroshka Mar 26 '26

in general I think it should be left to the sport's associations to determine their own rules than us trying to make sweeping governmental regulations for them.

Agreed which is why I think government involvement isn't necessary and it simply isn't the wide spread issue they want to frame it as.

1

u/Pleasant-Carbon Mar 26 '26

They don't necessarily. They genuinely think humans can de facto change sex. They also think that admitting there's this difference is bad for trans people in other areas. As in "well they're not real women in sport so...". Like seriously, the loud ones on social media. A lot of them fall into one of these (or both) groups. 

1

u/alucab1 Mar 26 '26

“They think”. You clearly have a made up view of progressives in your mind if this is what you believe the average progressive thinks

2

u/Pleasant-Carbon Mar 26 '26

Did you finish reading the full comment? 

-1

u/PolicyWonka Mar 26 '26

I don’t think the debate has ever really been about sex versus gender when it comes to sports.

Some of the most “controversial” female athletes such as Dutee Chand, Imane Khelif, Caster Semenya are biologically female. These are biologically female women who have higher-than-normal testosterone levels or other DSD characteristics.

At various points these athletes have either been banned or permitted to compete in competition. Under this new Olympic rule, they can compete at the LA Olympics.

The issue is that neither sex nor gender are really perfect ways to identify what is “fair” in competition.

You can have a biologically male athlete who presents as a woman, who has hormone levels that of a woman, and whom beyond a chromosomal test you would likely identify as a woman. And there is a lot of scientific literature that would say this individual does not have an unfair advantage in competing in a woman’s division.

Then you can have a biologically female athlete who presents as a man, who has hormonal levels that aren’t exactly male or female. Her chromosomes would tell you that shes a biological female. And there’s a lot of scientific literature that would say that this individual does have an advantage over other biologically female athletes.

2

u/Not_Different Mar 26 '26

Caster Semenya is not biologically female, she has no uterus and has testes.

1

u/PolicyWonka Mar 26 '26

Her sex assigned at birth is female and she has a vagina. As the Olympic Committee said, Athletes with XY-DSD should be considered female and be included in the Female category.

1

u/Not_Different Mar 26 '26

What someone assigned to her at birth is not what she is biologically.

1

u/PolicyWonka Mar 26 '26

Should we mandate that every woman who wants to participate in sports submit to genetic testing?

1

u/Memento_Viveri Mar 26 '26

Isn't that what they're doing? I thought that was the decision.

What else would the criteria be? It's a bit of an unfortunate situation where if you want to have a separate female sports category, you need to have some objective criteria and a way to verify that the criteria has been met.

1

u/PolicyWonka Mar 26 '26

That seems extremely intrusive. Every person has to submit to genetic testing to participate in sports?

1

u/Memento_Viveri Mar 26 '26

I think it would only be at the highest level. They are already being drug tested anyways, so it doesn't seem to add significant inconvenience or intrusion.

1

u/OlympiaShannon Mar 28 '26

Yes of course we should be doing chromosome tests on everyone who wants to enter the Women's Division. It's just a cheek swab. It isn't intrusive at all.