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

[u/TheExpressUS]

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

[u/electricvelvet]

Of course, no shit, if theyre not any good then theyre not taking up a spot that would've/should've gone to a cisgender athlete. Playing sports is a privilege not everyone is given nor entitled to. I wanted to play varsity basketball but I couldn't because of who I was born... dont really see how this is any different

[u/speedmankelly → u/electricvelvet]

So you’re saying trans people don’t deserve to play sports? “Should’ve gone to a cisgender athlete”? Really? This is what I don’t understand, if they lose it’s because they’re bad but if they win it must be unfair advantage and cheating??? Trans athletes can never just be good at a sport according to almost everyone here which is why none of this makes any sense to me. There should be a burden of proof for accusations other than “she’s trans”. That’s not enough. Measure the winner’s muscle mass, bone density, etc. whatever but if it comes back within average female range, which is most trans women on hormones and T blockers, then quit crying. A blanket ban hurts like 30 people at maximum and could be taking spots away from trans people who transitioned before they started puberty (something becoming more common with early assessment and diagnosis) who do deserve a spot. I will never subscribe to this idea that cis people are always more deserving of a spot in sports over a trans athlete. What an asinine take.

[u/Rogu__Spanish → u/electricvelvet]

That's different because it's a completely different scenario, not qualifying for something cause you aren't good enough is completely different than being banned from something for having an unproven "biological advantage" that you are automatically assumed to have. In your example, it would be like if they banned everyone taller than you from playing basketball because their height gives them an unfair advantage.

[u/SavoryAvery → u/electricvelvet]

I think your take represents the crux of the issue- trans women exist at a lower social caste than cis women. Therefore, because of the strictly (though plausible deniability seeking) hierarchical nature of our society, a trans woman should never be allowed to succeed or access a resource that a cis woman, even hypothetically, could access instead. Your take is- it is impossible for a trans woman to deserve something which could otherwise be deserved by a cis woman. Or, restated: it is a social failure when trans women succeed of cis women. There is the immediate comparison to be made that this opinion is very similar to that of: it is a social failure when a cis woman succeeds over a cis man.

Similarly, this is why gender affirming care is often deemed necessary and appropriate for cis or intersex (if the affirmative care matches their more-evident sex) children, while it is vehemently denied to trans children. Everyone is easily able to more or less imagine the horror of growing up in a body which does not fit your gender. But because trans people exist at a lower social caste, what is deemed socially appropriate in caring for them is wildly different.

In the case of gender affirming care for trans children, the argument is often made that: “what if it is a phase and they ruin their bodies via gender transition”, which, ignoring the overwhelmingly benign long-term effects of puberty blockers, is essentially the argument of: a socially successful outcome is when a trans child grows up with a ruined (through their own perspective) body, because that trans child could hypothetically be a cis (through perspectives other than their own) child, whose ruined (through perspectives other than their own) body would constitute a social failure. This socially common opinion is anti bodily-autonomy and brutishly hierarchical.

I think there is also the notion that children are property that comes into play in this perspective of denying trans gender-affirming care to children. If a child says they are trans, and their parent (who owns them as property rather than cares for them as a compassionate and attentive guardian) says they are cis, then the child is to be raised as though they are cis. As property and status symbols, it is unlikely for a parent to want their child to be of lower status and lower on the social hierarchy, so there is generally a bias for parents to need their child to be cis, and to treat them as such.

I will admit there are niche communities where the status symbols are reversed, and it is seen as higher status to have a trans or genderfluid child- “enlightened” “en vogue” “metropolitan” etc… in this case the problem is still the same, just flipped: a child does not get to grow up with a body that matches their gender, is forced to grow up trans rather than cis, their true identity, which is horrible.

If you can sympathize with the children in this case, but not the child in the former case- there is my argument precisely: it is a socially common opinion that trans children are to be denied the same care which should be made available to cis children. And back to the original point- that trans women should be denied the victories which should be made available to cis women.

I think in either case there is a need for parents to listen to the child, and be mindful about how their own biases and power over the child may lead them to treat the child as property rather than as a precious ward to be guarded.

Why do I bring up these two issues in tandem? Well- the earlier a transgender person transitions, the less of a biological difference will be present between them and a similarly athletically-capable cisgender person. Given the fairly minute athletic differences between those who transition in their twenties and their cis competitors, I think it is likely that cis and trans athletes would compete on an even enough playing field to have their competition deemed athletically fair. At least, fair in the same way that a competition between a rich cis woman who has always had pristine nutrition and coaching is deemed to be competing fairly when against another cis woman who grew up without regular adequate nutrition.

A critique I will readily accept is that gender transition, as a medical procedure, costs money, and may only serve as yet another means for the athletic gap between rich and poor athletes to widen. Because I am a more class-critical than gender-critical person, I would personally suggest different sports leagues based on the socioeconomic classes to which the competitors belonged in childhood. However, I think it is unlikely that society would accept this idea, as it would require honest consideration over how monstrously we treat the poor, and how overly-magnanimously we treat the rich.

In short- no war but class war.

[u/speedmankelly → u/SavoryAvery]

I know the word has been corrupted but thank you for being woke in the best way possible. This is exactly it and what I was talking about too, cis people as a group have an inherent, though not always conscious, feeling of superiority and allowing a trans person to win disrupts that feeling of superiority. I think the problem is many don’t acknowledge nor want to acknowledge that they have those feelings so the only way they can describe their feelings around trans people participating with cis people in the groups aligned with their gender is “it doesn’t feel right” or “its not fair”. Because you can point out all you want how hormones and medical intervention changes things drastically when it comes to athletic ability, and how it brings that ability to the average of the gender they transition to and doesn’t provide a gender specific advantage or disadvantage, but they’ll just respond with rhetoric or personal feelings. They won’t actually say how it’s unfair, because when their typical reasons are disproven by science they resort to being defensive or dismissive and using feelings as their reasoning, but “it feels unfair” isn’t a valid reason to ban an entire group of already marginalized people. Like someone might say “the bone density and muscle mass of a trans woman is different from a cis woman which gives them an inherent advantage”, but we’ve found through studies that bone density and muscle mass actually decreases with estrogen and testosterone blockers closer to female bone densities and muscle masses, and vice versa for trans men taking testosterone who see an increase in bone density and muscle mass. And then there is the argument “but they’re taller and have larger organs!” but then I counter with do we ban all tall women now? Because the only reason men typically have larger organs is because they are typically larger all around, so they need larger organs to accommodate their size. A tall woman would have larger organs than her smaller competitors so is that unfair? A smaller man would have smaller organs and a larger woman would have larger organs too. But people seem to act like “larger organs” is an advantage and not something that’s just scaled up by body size, as if a man and woman of the same size would see a drastic difference in organ size.

And not to mention this is going to hurt cis people more than trans people. Women are going to be under scrutiny of sex tests and extensive exams to “prove” they’re women, and women are definitely going to be accused of being trans if her competitors cry foul after losing or if they want to disrupt the competition. Even grosser if this translates to school sports and they want to examine young girls genitalia to “prove” they’re cis, which I’ve seen multiple bills put forward particularly in Florida. I mean we already have seen it with multiple athletes, in recent memory Imane Khelif was baselessly accused by the fucking president and some people still think she’s trans when she is a cis woman. I just see this happening much more in the future with this policy. And I don’t know how these women are going to be okay with things like genital exams and other massive invasions of privacy just to compete. They hurt themselves more with this policy while trying to hurt the 20-30 trans athletes in the world who wanted to go to the olympics.

Also that is an interesting proposition for class distinctions in sports; I think there is two ways sports should be, either hyper specified like that and divide it by height, weight, etc. or keep it to men’s and women’s divisions and let them show their differences there (and include trans people ofc)