There are no trans women athletes at the Paris Olympics. So bigots manufactured them.
There are no trans women athletes at the Paris Olympics. So bigots manufactured them.
The true story is much more complex than can be explained clearly in a handful of rage tweets.
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Honestly we might just need a different metric than gender to separate sports. Something like testosterone level or something, similar to weight classes. Because no matter how you look at it, this isn’t really fair for their opponents, regardless of gender. But then again, there’s also other body differences that might not have anything to do with current testosterone level, so I don’t know.
Fair for her opponent? The punch that ended the fight didn't knock out her opponent nor did it break her nose nor even give her a nose bleed. And suddenly all the rules need to be changed? Trying to get that granulated opens a whole new can of worms. What about arm length and height? Blood sugar levels? Angle of shoulders and hips? By this logic Shaquille O'Neal had a unfair competitive advantage on everyone.
Testosterone is complicated. Women athletes have higher than average testosterone. Some have higher than athletes who are men! Also T-levels don't accurately correlate to performance, so there's a factor of hormonal responsiveness as well.
But yeah, boxing also has weight classes, so we already know that sometimes we have to segregate leagues in order to keep contests among near peers and exciting.
Here's an interesting article about that: https://daily.jstor.org/gender-incommensurability-in-sports/
The issue is that these athletes are already exceptional. If I, a 6' tall man, got into the ring with any of these women I'd get my ass handed to me. I'm not asking them to make a division that I could win though.
I don't know what the best solution is, but there should be an open "Premier league" that anyone can compete in. If we decide to have other leagues then that gets complicated. Should we have one for class differences, hormone levels, mental capacity, or all other conditions? I'm unsure. The playing field can never be leveled though.
For sure, I have no clue how all that works but there has got to be a better way to do it than just separating by genders.
The "problem" is that gender is a spectrum and there doesn't exist any real metric to discern or categorize people into a social binary. Honestly, I'm surprised this topic is even popping up again when I thought this was hashed out several years and Olympics ago when right wingers were bringing this up back then. Trying to categorize and disqualify women by testosterone content just doesn't work. This is all ultimately a method of trying to police and control women's bodies.
In a similar vein, why aren't men looked at in the same manner. Why not say that any particular man either has too much estrogen and is either too womanly or not manly enough to qualify or compete. It's because these people aren't looking for fairness, safety, or any other dog whistle they might cry about. It's all just about controlling women.
I don’t want to disqualify anyone, I want them to compete with people at their level. It has nothing to do with women, this should be done to men too, and everyone else.
I think there are already limits to T levels? I don't follow sports closely though.
there’s also other body differences that might not have anything to do with current testosterone level
Like what? Bone density changes with hrt, that's the only example I see people use.
I'm not saying this would happen, because it'd have a lot of side effects, but I could see a situation like how wrestlers try to drop as much water weight and everything else before weighing in, people drop as much testosterone before measurement. Again, this is purely a hypothetical and not a criticism of anything in our world today, just something I could imagine. Sex/gender is complicated, but hormone levels are also probably also not ideal measurements because it could lead to issues like the above, which I'm sure isn't healthy. I really don't know what the right solution is, but there's clearly no perfect one.
I think because you can have a normal T-level currently but have a more “manly” body because of past T-level. How would they test it in these scenarios, I do not know.