I Need to Understand the Different Aspects of the Trans Struggle in Modern Competitive Sports.
I Need to Understand the Different Aspects of the Trans Struggle in Modern Competitive Sports.
So, I've had moments in the past where I might have spent 30 seconds thinking about this subject but ultimately I don't give a fuck about competitive sports so my analysis usually ends up being, all competitive sports should be banned because competitive sports are dumb. Which is admittedly a neanderthal take.
But yeah, now the global athletic showdown is going down and seemingly everyone in my immediate vicinity keeps clutching their pearls and I guess I'm sick of not being able to advocate for trans comrades appropriately and articulate a proper response.
So what's a better response besides, "who cares?" Am I missing something? Like, if all things were equitable, what would or should competitions look like?
Help me out. I honestly have no idea.
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the only thing that makes sense in sports leagues is probably weight classes like in boxing. and only in sports where that actually matters. it's not a magic bullet, but it's the bare minimum. continuing to divide competition on the false basis of the western european rendering of gender is as physically dangerous as it is empirically nonsensical. trans women are being used as a wedge solely because the gendered splitting of sports is already ideologically centered in a way that hides from most peoples consciousness, and trans women specifically as opposed to enbies or trans men because of misogynistic objectification.
What sports do you think dividing only on weight-class would 'work'? (And I guess what is your idea of that "working"?)
I agree with trans women in women's sport, but I don't agree with abolishing all gender in sport. Dividing team sports only on weight class would mean there'd be no professional women in sports, cis or trans. Testosterone is a performance enhancing drug for a reason.
In recreational sport it does and doesn't matter, since most recreational co-ed leagues have a minimum amount of women you have to have on the field at once to keep things balanced. Idk if a quota rule would make sense at the pro level, and that would still be using the western european rendering of gender.
In soccer, the testosterone that a cis man makes is a huge advantage that can't really be overcome only on weight class. Professional women's teams play male high-school teams and lose. And that's soccer, a sport where the best player in the world is a small Argentinian man.
Dividing team sports only on weight class would mean there'd be no professional women in sports, cis or trans. Testosterone is a performance enhancing drug for a reason.
what, you think being on testosterone at any weight regardless of training means that all professional sports at every weight would be dominated by men? i disagree with that. i think that's just an echo of the misogyny inherent to the way we currently organize sport.
In recreational sport it does and doesn't matter, since most recreational co-ed leagues have a minimum amount of women you have to have on the field at once to keep things balanced. Idk if a quota rule would make sense at the pro level, and that would still be using the western european rendering of gender.
this is already nonsense as a rule because of enbies and the broad set of possibilities that exist biologically among humans. there are no male and female, those are flattened abstractions. i recently watched an enby friend have to navigate this concept for a rec league; they had to decide whether to misgender themselves as a woman because of a quota rule. i think maybe that's not a good idea.
regardless, there are sports where it would make sense to divide by weight and sports where it wouldn't, as I said. but the important thing is that division by gender and/or sex is nonsense. otherwise, why aren't all women's sports leagues being dominated by AFAB enbies who inject T? by your reasoning, wouldn't that be an obvious and unfair accessible advantage in professional sport?
If you're injecting T I don't think pro sports leagues let you compete in the women's division.
You're also putting words in my mouth and creating ridiculous comparisons, I'm not arguing untrained cis man with testosterone vs trained woman with IOC defined woman levels of testosterone. You also didn't address the soccer example.
I don't think I'd beat Serena Williams at tennis. But if there's no gender in sport, the top 200 tennis players in the world who actually make a living off of tennis would be 99% men. I think even Serena Williams said something like that. The battle of the sexes in tennis was an old alcoholic vs a pro woman, and even that was pretty close. I think it's sexist to say "women, you can do sport for fun at the low levels, but men you can actually go pro and take it more seriously".
If you don't believe this then you don't believe in sexual dimorphism and we're not having a serious discussion. At that point there's no point of trans women lowering their T levels, or transmen going on T because clearly it has no effect. Why do you think baseball players roided up? It's not to have smaller testicals, it's to make ball go farther with the extra T.
Professional men and professional women both train at their sport for their job. Pro women soccer teams lose to U18 boys teams because of the testosterone, and those U18 have less training and experience.
In weightlifting the male and female records at every weight class differ by a lot. In athletics the records are all pretty different. The only completely equal events women can win at high levels are shooting and ultra-marathons. And idk maybe curling or breakdancing and not-as-directly-physical stuff like that.
I'm arguing currently professional equally fully trained pro men vs women. Or equally trained men and women at any level really. Abolishing gender in every league tomorrow would mean women wouldn't really have opportunity to compete. Every coed league has the quota rule because otherwise there's be a group of cis guys plus one woman taking games too seriously and crushing everyone, and that wouldn't be fun really.
You don't sound like you follow any professional sport or know much about performance.
If you're injecting T I don't think pro sports leagues let you compete in the women's division.
That is called doping (provided it's for non medical reasons) and you will not compete in either leauge.
That's only going to serve to remove women from professional sports, moreso than they already have been. Formula 1 does this already, with f1 being the highest skill class and then f2, f3 and f4 below it. The sport has always been de jure coed and there's no reason women can't succeed in motorsport. For example Michelle Mouton and Sabine Schmitz are two incredible drivers that have performed excellently, so motorsports would be a perfect testing ground for this idea, and they are already doing it. It's going terribly. Most women end up in f4 and occasionally make it to f3, two series that nobody watches and they hardly pay. This is because if you don't have women at the top competitive tier (the only one people will care about), you don't have inspiration for girls to enter the sport and then you're stuck in a loop of women only being in f4 and f3. There's so talent pool because girls aren't interested because there's no representation at the top tier because there's no talent pool. Keep in mind this is a sport that doesn't really depend on physical strength, so women don't have an advantage. The FIA needed to create a women's league to fix this (still in f4 machinery and with no progression path, but it's a start) and it's kind of working. Academy certainly has inspired more people than formula 4.
it's not a magic bullet, but it's the bare minimum. continuing to divide competition on the false basis of the western european rendering of gender is as physically dangerous as it is empirically nonsensical.
i don't disagree, but you're just addressing the overall misogyny of society at that point. as you note, the division in f1 is literally nonsense and still exists. if it were the case that interest in equalizing women and men in sport could be solved by simply having womens and mens leagues then it already would have been the case. the representation in sports argument i don't think makes sense because there are male dominated sports like boxing where there's still professional interest at weights other than heavyweight. i think you're ultimately correct about the issue being more to do with statistical interest across the population and then access to entry into the sport for formula 1.
For example Michelle Mouton and Sabine Schmitz are two incredible drivers
put another way, i guess my point would be to ask why they aren't just in F1 if they're incredible, and is the answer simply that teams have decided not to hire them? because if so, that's an issue of objectified hiring and a disinterest in correcting the historical wrong of inclusion. what it sounds like is needed is "reparations" for women in sport rather than the explicit segregation of women into their own, lesser class. similar to how making HBCUs and then never making up for the history of slavery didn't actually make formerly enslaved black people and their descendants equals to white settlers. separate and intentionally unequal.
if it were the case that interest in equalizing women and men in sport could be solved by simply having womens and mens leagues then it already would have been the case
It is the case. They recently made F1 Academy which is the women's league and it's certainly a step up above formula 4.
why they aren't just in F1 if they're incredible, and is the answer simply that teams have decided not to hire them
Mouton was a group b rally driver and the skills don't carry over. She was a strong performer in rally cars but going between the two is like putting Usain bolt in a 5k and hoping he wins. Schmitz also didn't have experience in single seaters and was more of a Porsche driver and really loved one track that wasn't on F1 (her name is now written all over the track surface in paint now to memorialize her). Teams would absolutely hire a woman if she was performing well on f2 because it's a hype driven sport. It's not that the teams are misogynist, it's that there aren't any female drivers who could perform in F1 right now because there isn't a talent pool. The concern with putting women into seats in f2 or F1 today is that they'd probably be backmarkers even in top machinery because they aren't quick enough yet. If would just be setting them up to fail.
People who don't go through male puberty are at a massive competitive disadvantage in most athletics. People are concerned that competitors who have not gone through male puberty will never succeed in these sports again. I don't think this is completely ideological.
This is in no way a defense of the subject being used as a wedge issue, but saying "this is being used as a political wedge issue" doesn't really seem to be different than telling OP to respond with "who cares?"
People who don't go through male puberty are at a massive competitive disadvantage in most athletics.
The landmark study reported that physically active transgender women performed worse in certain cardiovascular tests and had less lower-body strength than their cisgender females. Researchers at the University of Brighton also found that, contrary to previous claims, transgender women’s bone density was equivalent to cisgender females. Bone density is linked to muscle strength.
Well, I guess none of those "key metrics" are related to cycling. We can just go through and cross them off the list. It will look very convincing to reactionaries. I guess that answers my own personal question of whether anyone here has a response other than "who cares? you're making this up". You don't plan to help OP at all.
Cope harder
Professional sports is about people who are physical outliers competing with other physical outliers. Even if your proposition were true for the general population (it's not; I used to fence and fencing has mixed gender competitions, there was no discernible difference between fencers based on gender) it's untrue for the statistical outliers.
Beyond that, serious citation needed on the "people who have gone through male puberty" claim. Everything I've read suggests trans athletes performance are indiscernible from cis athletes of the same gender once they've been on HRT for around 12-18 months
(it's not; I used to fence and fencing has mixed gender competitions, there was no discernible difference between fencers based on gender)
huh i didn't realize women's fencing was that advanced, i figured there'd be legacy cultural biases in athleticism or a toxic social situation like chess.
I agree that HRT makes 'skeletal differences' irrelevant, and that trans in sports is a non issue after the accepted window of HRT.
However, women's and men's sport is simply different. Fencing, well, perhaps there's less advantage for men, but it's still notable. I don't know much about fencing. I mean, I'm speaking anecdotally as you are but I knew a team GB fencer (I don't think she made international in the end, but still de facto one of the top womens fencers in the country/world), and the Chinese guys who also went to fencing all used to brag about beating her in straight sets (or whatever the scoring system is) Then there was a guy who was 6'6 by age 14 who would beat her too, but accounted for size difference there's not much anyone the size of the women's fencer could do in that scenario against the huge reach discrepancy.
Outside of fencing, in every other sport I've played, strength makes a huge difference. Any sport with a level of direct contact becomes unfeasible. Again, I have known multiple international rugby players of both genders. On the school fields at break time sometimes the girls would come and play touch rugby. At age 18, I, as a 3rd string player for my school team, could essentially score a limitless amount of tries against women who have since played at international level, in one of the best women's sides in the world. I was just faster, and able to switch directions a split second quicker due to strength. Of course, Portia Woodman would put me in the dirt, but then put Woodman against Alesana Tuilagi and see what happens.
Same goes for swimming. Up til age 12 this tall girl in my year would demolish everyone at breaststroke. I was level pegging in front crawl. By age 14, we both go to regional swimming competitions, having both trained for it equal amounts, and her times that she made podium with were not comparable even to anyone in my heats.
Testosterone is just a different animal. It's kind of insane.
The only sports, aside from events with a mental rather than physical focus, that women consistently compete and beat men in are ultra long distance marathons.