Getting dicey: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mo...lia-thomas-has-an-unfair-advantage/ar-AATubg5 So here's the thing. Lia Thomas went from being ranked #462 as a male swimmer to #1 as a female swimmer. I think that's all the evidence you need. The way that this should have been handled IMO is that if you are a transgender woman who is still biologically male - even if hormone blockers get you down to acceptable levels - present yourself and identify however you want, but compete as a male. If you don't start hormone therapy in prepubescence or shortly into puberty, there's no turning back the clock on your muscle and skeletal development. That's a fact. You'd think that Lia Thomas wouldn't throw her weight around with an agenda that is actually hurting transgender people if you ask me. Of course everything I've said here will be seen as transphobic by some which is total bullshit. It isn't anyone's fault how they're born but biological sex and gender identity are not the same thing. Where it gets truly cloudy is when athletes are born intersexed. I have a ton of sympathy for Caster Semenya for example but not much for Lia Thomas. Semenya has been through the wringer through no fault of her own. Thomas is gaming the system. I'm waiting for someone to blare 'I Am Woman' by Helen Reddy over the loudspeakers. It's up for grabs which side of the fence does it first.
Not lost on me that the all time jeopardy champ used to be a man, because, you know, brains and real women aren't exactly always in the same package.
I have no problem with gender reassignment. People should be comfortable in their own skin. There are a fair number of babies born with indicators both ways and the parents and doctors sort those out at an early age. There are a *lot* of teens that feel like they are in the wrong body and parents and doctors again help them sort that out. These kids by the way are at a very high suicide risk if nothing is done and every pediatrician that doesn't have some weird religious counter-objection is on board with sex reassignment in the teens if the problem presents itself. All of that is well and good. However sports is about physical advantages and males have undeniable physical advantages - even after their estrogen/testosterone mix is changed. This effect is so undeniable that it makes no sense to ignore it. My solution would be to have four different classifications and competition lanes. Female, Male, Trans-Female and Trans-Male. The latter two would obviously be much smaller than the first but they would let Trans athletes compete without unfairly disadvantaging anybody. I'd let Trans-Female and Trans-Male compete in the Male lane if they wanted too. I'd have to look at the performance altering effects for Trans-Male before letting them compete with Trans-Female or Female athletes. All competitions have rules about performance-enhancing drugs/hormones and there are likely several of those used in the process of transformation.
That sounds like a lot of work. Plus, you're really changing the sport forever. Remember the America's Cup? For generations, Americans had won the thing, and everything was right in the world. Then, those hipster Australians decided to introduce a funky "winged keel" thingy, giving their boat more stability and speed. That's pretty much what we have here. Biological males swimming with a winged-keel against a bunch of traditional female hulls with boob-drag. Not to mention added yaw and roll from uneven weight distribution. It's just not right. Here's my solution. It starts with the English language. Not sure how this plays out in international competition, but one problem at a time. First, we should be separating out terms. The terms "male" and "female" are biological and immutable. You're born one or the other. Now, someone might want to dispute this by pointing out how a minuscule number of babies are born "intersexed," with both male and female junk, but I have a solution to that: The highschool-beat-off test. We take an ordinary teen boy and put him in a sterile room with an ipad full of nude photos of our subject and an ordinary tube sock. If, in 24-hours, he hands you back a crusted-up tablet and a sock that can hit at least a double in a regulation wiffleball game - we have our answer. Works with both gay and straight testers. But back to language. If we can all agree that "male" and "female" are biological terms that apply throughout nature, I'd be willing to concede that the terms "man," "woman," "boy" and "girl" are identifying terms. I'll also concede that those are changeable, but only up to the point where we enter the realm of the absurd, like the Teesside "woman" in the post above. Because, if we're going to venture into the absurd, we shouldn't be half-assing it. I have a totally more fun approach. A male identifying as a man would be referred to as a "male-man". A female identifying as a man would be called a "female-man". Yeah-yeah, it sounds confusing, but hear me out. Where it gets really fun is when we have to start pinning that to another identity characteristic. Like a job, for instance. So, a male-man who also works for the U.S. Postal Service and identifies as a man would be properly referred to as a "mail-male-man". A woman who delivers the mail and identifies as a man would be a "mail-female-man". And, you could add as many of the banana-headed identifiers as this tender generation is telling us we need to adopt. A female, nonbinary person who identifies as a flex-gendered serpent-woman would be a "Mail-nonmale-nonfemale-flex-snakewoman". And so on. Simple, really.
However the fact remains that man-anything has biological advantages in terms of sport over born female not man anything. That's the crux of the matter. This goes back to the East German Women problem in the Olympics in the 70's. The East Germans were very good at creating pseudo males that were hard to detect by normal methods of the day. That gave them a brief heyday as the best swimmers on earth pound for pound just a bit behind men overall. The real problem and the reason that we stay away from doping and PED's in general is that you don't want sports to become a pharmaceutical competition to find out who makes the best drugs and synthetic hormones. The point of sport would quickly diminish to the point that nobody cared much about it.
The only thing better about the Cold War over the Cold War II is that we weren't fighting a Cold Civil War at the same time.
Less than a percentage of teens identify as such. If you add another two percent because there might be some who don’t want to reveal it, it’s still a minuscule percentage that few such trans competitions would actually take place across the country.
There are not other alternatives available. Letting trans-women compete with actual women is a joke that degrades the competition. Again, this is not a judgement based on discriminatory intent, it is a judgement based on the realities of what that competition turns into. Let's say we decided to let AI's compete in human Chess tournaments. The result would be an unbroken string of AI victories that would undermine any interest the average spectator had in watching the sport. The answer is of course to ban AI's from competing in human Chess tournaments. Trans-women should not be allowed to compete in the same tranche as actual women. The results are uncompetitive and unfair. They deprive actual women of the right to compete in a balanced competition. Again, none of this is based on any judgement as to the mores of trans-women. They are absolutely entitled to wear the skin they are most comfortable in. They're just not entitled to the unfair advantages that go along with that transformation in terms of sports.
Yeah so trans-people need to compete as their original biological sex. You know. Let science and all dictate what competition they enter. We don’t need to create new competitions for the 1%.
There doesn’t need to be an alternative available. If you choose to change genders you choose to not compete or you choose to compete as the gender you were born. Choices and actions have consequences, Wby do we need to bend everything to fit every single life choice someone makes?
Trans-Men can't be allowed to compete in Women's athletics. The process of becoming a man includes extensive testosterone treatments and a continuing regimen of testosterone to maintain form, so to speak.
It’s very simple and you’re complicating it. So I’ll break it down with harsh terms. If you’re born with a dick you compete in mens competitions. If you’re born with a vag you compete in women competitions. I don’t give a flying fuck what you choose to do with your body after your born. If you want to have a unicorn horn permanently attached to your forehead and sell me windows for my overpriced house as a male who chopped their dick off to become a female. More power to you. If you can sell - I’ll buy it. But you compete with what you’re born with. No questions asked. I don’t care if you load your body up with more testosterone than prime Barry Bonds. You hit puberty as a male. You’re a dude with big boy bones. And I’m all for playing the percentages. If we were teetering at 45% of the population confused about their cocks, then we might need to change the rules. But we’re not. It’s a minuscule percentage.
But this really doesn’t work going in the other direction. Biological women transitioning are pumped full of performance enhancing testosterone.
So adding more sporting categories is too complicated but having an undereducated public start using and understanding proper terms isn’t? You’re not wrong, but you have waaay more confidence in the general public than they deserve…. About 1/3 of the country thinks a time traveler came back in time to save us all from the baby eating libs.
This is the problem, no one wants to accept the consequences of their actions, so society becomes Enablers because what starts out as a helping hand becomes excuses and rule bending but no one will draw the line because then they become outcast as homophobic, or anti trans…etc.
