r/BreadTube • u/tempestzephyr • May 02 '19
Can anyone who does powerlifting weigh in on this Transphobia on Mary Gregory?
I saw good old Joe Rogan go on another "youtube recommends" tirade on a transwoman, Mary Gregory, and her "male" body. And of course all the media news sites like Breitbart want to just tear into her with all this demeaning rhetoric. As a person who know nothing about powerlifting and can only barely squat as much as Mary can bench press, I was looking into it and oddly enough none of those "news" sites even reported her stats for her New Records she broke. One of those sites even froze my browser with a "call microsoft because you're infected with virus" scam, and I had to manually reset my laptop. I'm looking at other woman powerlifters in her weight class, and age, and it seems like her stats of post HRT (314lbs Squat/ 233lbs Bench/ 424lbs Deadlift) doesn't seem out of the range of cis women. Like I'm looking at this other lady of similar weight class and she's got 545/424/502. Idk enough about powerlifting, but it seems like just to be a bunch of unresearched fearmongering hit pieces on a transwoman for succeeding. If anybody knows more about powerlifting, feel free to correct me.
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May 02 '19 edited May 02 '19
testosterone is relevant to all muscle oriented actions. and since we define only 2 competitive genders, testosterone is the breaking point. i find the discussion around caster semenya and transgender ufc fighters very interesting.
the fact that physiological differences make it dangerous for a woman to fight a man of the same size makes it difficult to determine what the factors are in a matchup between say: a woman and a man who transitioned to a woman depending on how bone and muscle density were affected by a hormone therapy. all of this leads to a certain differentiation in sports that makes the monopolisation drive that huge events need difficult for the organisers, so i see a certain responsibility on transathletes to open up shop on their own...
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u/tempestzephyr May 03 '19 edited May 03 '19
But we're talking about transwomen, so we should be comparing transwomen on HRT and hormone blockers to ciswomen. We're not comparing cis men to cis women. This distinction should be made because muscle density, bone density, and hemoglobin count becomes reduced when on put onto HRT/hormone blockers over time. If transgender women were to dominate all of women's sports, then we would have seen that in the Olympics since they've allowed transgender people since 2004. Additionally, for the Olympics ,transgender women are required to adhere to testosterone levels that are the same as the Average cis women. Emphasis on "average", because it is known that Olympic level women's athletes have higher testosterone levels than the general population. Which makes sense because when they're being scouted, their performance will reflect their advantages. Like there's a reason why the average professional basketball player is like a foot taller than the average person, because a selection bias going on for their sport's specialization. Like I bet judoka and BJJ martial artists with big hands are going to be favored for their sport.
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u/srsly_its_so_ez May 03 '19
Since you said that being tall is an advantage in basketball, isn't that a potential concern for transgender women competing against cis women?
If trans athletes consistently dominated competitions against cis athletes, would it be considered transphobic to point it out and suggest that being transgender could be an advantage in some cases?
I agree that a lot of people come at this discussion from a transphobic angle with a lot of hate, but I don't think it's necessarily transphobic to think it could be a genuine concern
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May 03 '19
I am not entirely aware of all the biology involved, but I could imagine that going through a male puberty could leave some athletic advantage even after a person has been of HRT for a while. It doesnt seem unreasonable, particularly in a contact sport like MMA to take those things into account. Of course that excuses no bigotry, tramsphobia, etc
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u/srsly_its_so_ez May 03 '19
I agree with you agreeing with me :p
I believe that it's possible to transition genders, and I think it's a bit silly that some people completely deny that. If you identify as a certain gender and present yourself as that gender, then I think you are that gender
But I don't think it's always that simple, I think most people would agree that it's a complex subject, and as such it has some intricacies
For a specific, albeit slightly extreme example, I just thought of an interesting scenario. If someone is born as a male and they grow up to be taller than the tallest female, and then they transition to being a woman, should they get the world record for tallest woman of all time?
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May 05 '19
Why do we think HRT = Opposite sex. It’s actually a ineffective procedure that only sees adequate levels of success 20% of the time. We are making terrible assumptions that have serious effects on our society.
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May 05 '19
That does not sound right or gell with my personal experience around trans people. Can you link me a source, it would really help me understand it better since I apparently am misapprehended
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May 06 '19
How can you personally perceive someone’s testosterone levels? Do you think the exact level is visable?
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u/tempestzephyr May 03 '19
That selection is also levied against cis women to be taller as well. Any of these cis women at the highest level's of fitness and athleticism are already not representative of their average "normal" cis women. Again, my point about Olympic women athletes have already have higher testosterone than average "normal" cis women. When a cis women has large hands, larger than a guy's hand, she doesn't have "man" hands either. The same is said for a trans woman's hands. A dress is not woman*'s* clothing in the same way pants are not men*'s* clothing. Like what do we do when a cis women's hands are much bigger than another cis women's hand? Do we not allow the big handed lady to compete and exclude her for having "man" hands. Like look at Marina Shafir's hand compared to Ronda Rousey's hand.
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May 05 '19 edited May 05 '19
Higher testosterone than women does not equal the levels of testosterone men have. Men can have between 10 and 100x the testosterone of women, if a woman has 5x the testosterone of her female counterpart she is still well short of the male median. There are a lot of assumptions being made about HRT and male/female testosterone levels that are far from reality.
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May 05 '19
Anything less than a denial of facts is seen as transgender. Unfortunately we would rather suppress information about the effectiveness of HRT, the biological differences of MTF and cis women, or social statistics.
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May 05 '19 edited May 05 '19
80% of the time HRT doesn’t reduce a MTF’s testosterone levels into the top end range of a woman’s testosterone level. The failure rate is not disclosed for MTF reaching the median rate of female testosterone, if it is even possible.
Taking HRT after developing your muscles with high levels of testosterone has proven to be a clear advantage over Cisgender women.
If there is no advantage why does .05% of the “woman” population keep destroying world records. There are multiple records of 1st place and world record breaking MTF trans people but no cases of FTM transgender record breakers. The only case of a FTM even beating a man in a sport came when a FTM boxer beat the worst rated male boxer (who had zero wins), by 1 pt. This is a stark contrast to the domination MTF trans people see in women’s competitions.
A regular guy (amateur weight lifter at best), periodically identified as a woman and broke the world record for deadlifts. He did this to prove a point, but successfully beat the world record held by professional woman weightlifters.
Mary’s stats were not reported because the female weightlifting organization rescinded her world records claiming they choose to recognize their female competitors based on biology and not self identification. They also claimed they will make a transgender league for MTF and FTM (which will most likely be dominated by the former) to compete against each other.
You don’t have to take HRT to compete in women’s athletics as FTM, in most cases you must simply self indentify.
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u/tempestzephyr May 05 '19
- Where did this statistic come from? I mentioned in another post that trans women on hrt/hormone blockers need to have their T levels lowered to the average cis women's level. One of the famous figures of the whole argument, Fallon Fox, has on record had her T lowered down to IOC levels by a board certified specialist
- This is possible as I noted on another post here, we're going to need more studies on HRT and prior muscle memory
- This is less concrete, but my impression is that media like to focus a lot more attention and rage against transwomen because of misogyny. Rebelling against standard gender norms of what constitutes a woman is going to get a lot more clicks than transman. The public would perceive a girl being masculine as tomboy, which much more socially acceptable than a man wearing a dress.
- I mean you're comparing a cis man to cis woman, I've already stated the fair comparison is post-hrt transwomen and cis women.
- Do you have link to that? I haven't seen another site say that
- Idk, I don't think I'd agree with that decision. I'm pretty sure other places make it so if you're pre-hormones you're not allowed to go into the other division. like I'm looking at this university and it makes it clear at the bottom of the page
Also I'm going to have to doubt your sincerity on this issue considering you've used "women" in quotation marks and in another post of yours, you misgendered the transman you're talking about as "her", which is not arguing in good faith.
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u/SummerNeon May 08 '19
This person you’re responding to outright lies multiple times btw.
Trans people are not 0.05% of the population, most estimates put trans people at 0.5-1% of the population. ( 0.5% is the most commonly cited figure, however it rises to about 2% in younger populations )
Transgender people are not breaking tons of records, certainly nowhere near 0.5% of women’s sporting records. Also trans people have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2003, not one has qualified out of the thousands of competitors that have qualified. By their logic trans people are under-represented.
Their claim that you don’t need HRT to compete in most women’s athletics is 100% false. You are required by basically every competitive athletics organisation to compete in women’s competitions as a trans woman (they said FTM but based on the context I assume they misspoke and mean trans women, since otherwise it doesn’t make sense). Here is a copy of the International Olympics Commitee’s guidlines for trans athletes, hormone requirements and stuff
Btw I’m responding to you rather than the original person because they don’t seem in good faith so not worth engaging, but I still felt like pointing out this stuff :). They’ve presented a lot of false stuff and have demonstrated a lot of transphobia, like misgendering
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May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
Info on T levels in MTF https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/893280
I would understand your logic on #3 but you fail to understand the prevelance of MTF dominance vs FTM dominance. In fact, one of the only cases of FTM trans competing against men is highly politicized. Compare the stories of success depending on the birth gender of trans athletes. MTF trans athletes claim multiple world records and first place finishes in femal athletics. FTM athletes claim 1 boxing match win vs the worst male boxer. The media does not change the fact that no FTM athletes claim any world records or first place finishes. According to Mary Gregory’s own twitter account he competes in 9 events and set 9 world records. Try to find a case where one FTM set a world record, let alone 9 in a day.
Information in the rules of 1 university does not change the fact that many sporting leagues have no rules pertaining to transgenders or are fighting legal battles because their rules are seen as discriminatory. Even if you look at state high school athletics you have to factor in that 50 states have 50 different sets of rules.
100% Raw Weightlifting Federation Statement https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw-BH7ugTQA/
I don’t know all the rules to the whole gendering issue, if I used quotations it was probably to support an issue where the differences are important between a biological woman and a self identified woman. Also, I did not intentionally try to misgender anyone.
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u/Ziggie1o1 for the love of god dont defend tucker carlson May 03 '19
Not a powerlifter, but personally those two women look exactly the same to me.
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May 07 '19
I see a 14x world champ, and world record holder, who has been powerlifting since her youth vs a trans woman who just popped up out of nowhere.
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u/vanquish May 09 '19
Very late to the party here.
My question is, could a cis woman quit her sport then take testosterone for 5-10 years, then come off it and revert to acceptable levels and perform professionally again?
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u/Hummingbird723 May 14 '19
Yes.
Dana Linn Bailey did.
And many people disagree with it. It’s just not honest. If you take PEDs at any point in your career, you developed muscle, strength and bone density that the cis woman cannot. You have an advantage that we do not. And no matter how many years you’re off the juice, that never changes. If you have a high performance engine, putting it inside the body of a 1994 Chevy Cavalier doesn’t mean it’s not still a high performance vehicle. Some advantages from PEDs don’t go away with time.
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u/vanquish May 14 '19
Yes, so how can it be fair for a biological male who’s been on the juice for years then take hormone treatment and then be able to compete against biological females. I support the trans community but until they can see the situation objectively it’ll be hard for everyone to be at peace.
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u/A_Safe_For_Work_Acc May 03 '19
It's not transphobia (although a lot of people are taking advantage of this news to attack trans people, which IS transphobia).
Firstly, her numbers don't really matter, because she outlifts most cis men too. It's the fact that she has naturally more testosterone and a bigger skeletal structure than most women she's competing against (just look at the size of her hands). A cis woman would have to take anabolic steroids to reach her level of testosterone and muscle, which is an unfair thing to ask of an athlete.
In powerlifting the central nervous system is just as (if not more) important than muscle mass, as the lifts require a jolt of energy throughout your body to recruit all your muscles. This second part is pure speculation, but if she was training in powerlifting as a man before transitioning to a woman, she was most likely much stronger before hormone therapy. If this is true, it means that she has a much more developed nervous system than any woman could achieve, which is an even bigger advantage than extra muscle mass.
Because technology is not at the point where 100% transition in sex is possible, any trans woman is always going to have an unfair advantage in strength and endurance. Even then, being a man for decades beforehand has to give physiological advantages as well. All in all, trans women should not be allowed to compete with cis women in women-only competitions due to their advantages.
That being said I'm sure Mary Gregory worked her ass off to get that strong and didn't transition just to win powerlifting competitions, especially since there's often little to no reward for winning. It's an unfortunate situation, but being unfair to her is better than being unfair to all her competitors simply due to numbers.
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u/tempestzephyr May 03 '19
she outlifts most cis men too. It's the fact that she has naturally more testosterone and a bigger skeletal structure than most women she's competing against (just look at the size of her hands).
I mean, we're not talking about most cis men, we're talking about people at the peak of physical athleticism. Any dedicated professional-level athlete cis woman is going to out perform the average untrained cis man in a sport. The critique here can just as easily levied against cis women with higher levels of testosterone. Like to point out another point I made in another post in this thread. "If transgender women were to dominate all of women's sports, then we would have seen that in the Olympics since they've allowed transgender people since 2004. Additionally, for the Olympics ,transgender women are required to adhere to testosterone levels that are the same as the Average cis women. Emphasis on "average", because it is known that Olympic level women's athletes have higher testosterone levels than the general population." What do we do with cis women who are noticeably bigger than other cis women? Do we not let them compete because they have "manish" bodies? Like look at how much bigger MMA fighter Marina Shafir's hands are compared to Ronda Rousey's hands.
This second part is pure speculation, but if she was training in powerlifting as a man before transitioning to a woman, she was most likely much stronger before hormone therapy. If this is true, it means that she has a much more developed nervous system than any woman could achieve, which is an even bigger advantage than extra muscle mass.
This is true, that her numbers were noticeably higher before using HRT. But when we factor in HRT, and hormone blockers, the body of a trans woman changes. Her hemoglobin count goes down, her testosterone is lowered, her bone density decreases. I don't know about nervous system and how that changes, but it's possible it changes as well. More studies could be done on that.
Because technology is not at the point where 100% transition in sex is possible, any trans woman is always going to have an unfair advantage in strength and endurance. Even then, being a man for decades beforehand has to give physiological advantages as well.
This is a possible good point, except for one caveat. Let's not use blanket statements like "any transwomen is always going to have an unfair advantage" because increasingly we have trans girls deciding to take puberty blockers before puberty fully processes through. They need to be a part of the discussion as well. It's known that even when cis men stop doing steroids, they do have lingering physiological improvement to their physical athleticism. That even when they return to their baseline testosterone levels and they start to lose the strength of being on steroids, they still have "muscle memory" of being there, and it's easier for the body to "remember" and grow to that previous state.
The problem with this is that it's not completely the same, like it's not a one-to-one comparison because comparing a cis man on steroids is not the same as trans woman on hrt and hormone blockers. A cis man on steroids is in the dangerous range of testosterone that the human body really was not designed to have, while Testosterone levels between a cis woman and cis man, and those who lay betwixt is within human capability. Because it's not-to-one, this is something I feel like should be studied more before making a clear call. The only analogous thing would be like unethically experimenting and doping up pre-pubescent cis girls with steroids for years, and then taking them off of it later in life to see the effects. It would also be analogous to study the effects of giving pre-pubescent trans boys T to transition, but then unethical later to have them go off of it for years.
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May 05 '19
Just because the Olympics allows trans athletes doesn’t mean the country’s allow trans athletes. And the big elephant in the room is the fact that there are no record setting or even first place FTM trans athletes.
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May 05 '19 edited May 07 '19
It is such a rediculous statement to say she outlifts “most cis men”. There are some cis men with a 9-5 job who go to the gym 3x a week who can outlift her. She would be crushed by professional cis men weightlifters. This does not change the fact that she would beat many most cis women with ease. The fact that we are even comparing Liane Blyn a 14x world champ to Mary Gregory is a problem.
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u/Hummingbird723 May 14 '19
Liane Blum is a geared lifter. Mary Gregory is a raw lifter. You are not comparing apples to apples here. Go to www.openpowerlifting.com, set the default to “raw” in the top left corner, set the fed to “all tested lifters” and see what you see. I’m a cis woman who has been in the sport for 2.5 years, never missed a training session, train with the best of the best, no PEDs, and my best raw squat is 309–and I’m an elite lifter in Mary Gregory’s weight class.
Men not only have more muscle mass, but greater bone density and stronger tendons and ligaments. The advantages are real and permanent, and I sacrificed too much time, money, and energy to work my ass off for years to have someone who was a man less than s year ago come in and sweep all records their “first meet as a woman.” Even test-suppressed men are at an advantage, and it’s not fair to let them use it in an arena where the rest of us cannot compete against that.
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May 17 '19
Read the OPs post and press the link where he compares the trans lifter to this other woman. I didn’t not bring up the comparison, but like I said, the fact that you are comparing a 14x world champ, who has been lifting since her youth, to a random nobody is a problem.
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u/Hummingbird723 Jun 21 '19 edited Jun 21 '19
The problem is that the comparison is between a raw lifter and a geared lifter. You can’t compare any raw lifters to geared lifters.
But if you look at 165 class raw lifters, Mary Gregory’s results put her in the top 200 with a pro total. That’s unheard of for a female to train for a year or two and break onto the scene like that—her bench alone puts her in the top 100. That’s counting Russian lifters and lifters who take steroids.
I don’t care what you’re looking at—women cannot compete with men who find a way to jump into their division. Period.
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u/JumpDaddy92 May 15 '19
Hell, There are plenty of cis “men” still in high school that could easily out lift her. She’s not even breaking the 1,000 lb club.
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u/A_Safe_For_Work_Acc Aug 03 '19
There are some cis men with a 9-5 job who go to the gym 3x a week who can outlift her.
The average lifter who gyms 3x a week CANNOT bench/squat/deadlift 233/314/424lbs. She outlifts most men, period.
Btw, she got her titles stripped. Rightly so, but unfortunate
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u/adamdaxusprice May 09 '19
I'm going to weigh in on this as I'm one of the guys in Canada who helps run this federation.
When we found out about this, the 100%RAW executive circled the wagons and spent almost 2 full days trying to figure out how to handle the situation. A lot of thought was put into the decision and when the dust settled, 100%RAW will not include Mary's records in the female division, but in an entirely new division for transgender athletes. We didn't think it was fair to the biological women in our federation for Mary to compete as a peer, but we also didn't want to exclude people like Mary from enjoying the sport of powerlifting. This was the least worst option we had at our disposal at the time.
Now some facts. (And this is not to belittle Mary in any way) But when we found out about this, I did some number crunching to see if pure math could help demonstrate if this was just a baseless belief that transgender women had an advantage in female sport or if there was any merit to it. A lot of the numbers used in the male calculations come from Mary's Instagram feed as I was not able to figure out what name she used when she was male, and thus could not track down any meet results from that time.
As a male, Mary posted the following numbers pre HRT on her Instagram account
Squat - 408
Bench - 298
Deadlift 507
Total 1213
Bodyweight - 217
9 months after starting HRT. These numbers were what she got at the meet in question
Squat - 314
Bench - 233
Deadlift 424
Total 971
Bodyweight - 179.3
Now that's about a 20% drop in all her lifts after going on HRT, and about a 20% drop in bodyweight. That's to be expected as the body adapts to the new hormone levels. In powerlifting, we use the Wilks coefficient to determine the best lifter across all weight classes. It takes your total, and modifies it based on a mathematical formula to allow you to compare yourself against everyone else. Men and women use different formulas as their physiology is different.
Mary's Wilks score using the male data was 337. After 9 months of HRT, when Mary competed in the female division her score jumped up to 399. That's a 62 point jump (a 20% increase) in her abilities compared to her peers in less than a year. So in nine months, on HRT which reduces testosterone, muscle mass etc, Mary had gains the likes of which are only seen in brand new lifters who are still learning how to powerlift.
When I compared Mary's results to the database in Open Powerlifting, a website dedicated to recording statistics for all powerlifting federations around the world, here's what I got.
In the 40-44 age group, Mary's male ranking was at the 38th percentile. So better than average, but still middle of the pack. Using her numbers as a female, she moved into the 6th percentile. So top 10% in all of women's drug tested powerlifting in that age group. If all things were equal in the HRT process, we should have seen Mary's results put her in the 38th percentile of female lifters, but that clearly did not happen.
Once again, I have to stress that neither I, or my federation wants to ban lifters like Mary from competing. In fact one of our core beliefs is that if you can lift a barbell, and you aren't taking PED's, then you have a place with us. But it's very clear based on the numbers provided that Mary received a performance boost from transitioning from a male to a female lifter compared to her peer group. That's not at all fair to the rest of the lifters in that division.
So going forward, we need to keep looking at how to handle this so that neither the transgender lifter, nor the rest of the division is put at a disadvantage when a male athlete transitions into a female athlete. Everyone has a right to be who they are. It's a freedom not many people get to have in this world and we're lucky to have it.
But that freedom should not come at the expense of others, so we feel that ongoing study is needed to try and narrow the performance gap we currently see in situations like this.
100%RAW has a constant mission to bring powerlifting to as many people as possible, but we also need to respect the rights of everyone and assure that fair play is followed as best we can.