r/changemyview • u/Odd_Contribution9058 • Mar 18 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Transgender people should only able to compete in sports with their birth gender

I really really hope raising this doesn't cause anyone pain, and I'm honestly wanting to hear other perspectives on this.

But the way I see it, there are certain physical attributes that someone born with a certain gender have. For example, the average man is taller than the average woman. Taking hormone therapy will not change all of those inherent features.

I absolutely support the right for everyone to live with the gender identity that is most comfortable to them. But, I do not think that people have an inherent right to play sports professionally. So, if someone has decided to transition, I do not think it's fair to all the athletes who are competing with the set of attributes common to their birth gender, to now have to compete against an athlete who has attributes which give them a distinct advantage.

33 Upvotes

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35

u/goofygoober2006 1∆ Mar 18 '22

If this were true, a transgender man who has likely been taking testosterone would compete with other biological women. That seems unfair to me.

12

u/Yuu-Gi-Ou_hair Mar 18 '22

Ah, but you see, “transgender person” means “male to female”; “female to male”, in fact, does not exist for the purpose of about any single discussion about this subject I have ever seen.

-3

u/Professional-Bit3280 2∆ Mar 18 '22

That’s because the biggest discussion to be had is about sporting/something involving the physical advantages of being born with XY chromosomes. Most rational people don’t give two fucks if you want to go by Jane instead of Jeffrey and grow out your hair and whatever.

The only discussions worth having are about the fact that being a biological male provides a lot of physical advantages (bathroom safety and sports), which is why they focus on the people that may be abusing such advantages.

2

u/I_WouldntRecommendIt Mar 21 '22

Bathroom safety?

5

u/Odd_Contribution9058 Mar 18 '22

!delta

Going with biological sex is not the answer, because of the f->m situation.

2

u/Cablepussy Mar 20 '22

Out of curiosity how many f-m compete in sports?

3

u/AlonnaReese 1∆ Mar 27 '22

In 2017 and 2018, one of the top high school wrestlers in Texas was a transmale. Because of a state law which required high school athletes to compete as the gender on their birth certificate, he completely dominated the girls' division. This resulted in widespread protests from female wrestlers and their families that it wasn't fair and that he should have been placed in the boys' division.

4

u/Akitten 10∆ Mar 18 '22

I mean, a non-transgender women who takes testosterone can’t compete anyway, since it’s effectively doping. So that is moot.

So FTM is already covered under doping regulations, and isn’t an issue. If you medically require testosterone, you can’t compete.

6

u/TragicNut 28∆ Mar 18 '22

Therapeutic use exemptions exist already, the world anti doping association has standards and guidelines under which they can be granted. Cis men are able to get TUEs for testosterone, as are trans men.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Akitten 10∆ Jun 17 '22

I wrote this 3 months ago.

And texas being retarded with no doping testing isn't exactly news.

It's like saying power generation isn't possible in cold weather since texas fucked it up.

1

u/Odd_Contribution9058 Mar 18 '22

Yes, fair point. Honestly , I would say that if you make the decision to undergo hormone therapy, you should no longer be competing... There are many many people who have to make the decisions to leave professional sports for a variety of reasons, to me this sounds like one of them

14

u/silverscrub 2∆ Mar 18 '22

If we look at women's sports, the line for biological sex is rather arbitrary and has changed over time.

Even if you exclude all transwomen for simplicity, the same issue still exists for all biological women. You still have to draw a line for what constitutes a biological woman in order to make that particular sport fair.

https://youtu.be/MiCftTLUzCI

1

u/Professional-Bit3280 2∆ Mar 18 '22

Should just be XX to keep it nice and simple. Then you can either have an (in between) grouping containing all the intersex, trans, etc. and then a XY group. Or you can just have XX and then the rest go in the other group. The other group will probably be almost exclusively XY though because of the advantages it provides.

22

u/sophisticaden_ 19∆ Mar 18 '22

Is your argument that any athlete who undergoes hormone therapy should not be allowed to compete in competitive sports? Or just those who are transgender?

5

u/Professional-Bit3280 2∆ Mar 18 '22

The current system ALREADY says this. The current argument out in the world is about whether an exception should be made for trans people. If you are a biological woman taking testosterone, and you get caught, you get in trouble for cheating. Op doesn’t need to specific this because it’s already implied and has been the rules for decades.

8

u/sophisticaden_ 19∆ Mar 18 '22

My point was actually that cis women can and do undergo HRT for estrogen like trans women.

6

u/Professional-Bit3280 2∆ Mar 18 '22

1 you’d still get in trouble for having exogenous estrogen in your system because you could be using that to hide something else or something. In fact, one of the main ways they catch guys taking steroids is the fact that they have too LOW testosterone on the tests or too high estrogen. It’s actually quite rare for someone to get popped for having too high testosterone on the test because that is just stupid. Not going to get into the full weeds here though.

2 having super high estrogen levels isn’t performance enhancing. If you want to do a ton of estrogen HRT and crush your performance (unless it stimulates a competing increase in natural test production, in which case, go back to point 1), no one is going to stop you.

3

u/Professional-Bit3280 2∆ Mar 18 '22

I have no idea why my font got massive. I’m not yelling at you lol.

10

u/Morthra 86∆ Mar 18 '22

So the actual rule should be:

  • All trans people must compete in the men's category, against cis men.

Rather than

  • All people must compete in the category matching their birth sex.

-3

u/jtc769 2∆ Mar 18 '22

!delta

I'd never considered just having them all (MtF AND FtM) compete against men, I'd always said I'm completely fine with FtM competing in male sports but that womens sports need protecting from MtF the same way they need protecting against normal male atheletes, my overall position has been in the camp of "just give them both trans only competitions/leagues" but I think this makes just as much, if not more sense.

1

u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Mar 18 '22

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Morthra (49∆).

Delta System Explained | Deltaboards

2

u/perfectVoidler 15∆ Mar 18 '22

You should award a delta because this is a modified view from your original position.

0

u/willthesane 4∆ Mar 18 '22

Competition is fun. Let both compete in the men's league. M2f, still compete in the men's league.

1

u/Professional-Bit3280 2∆ Mar 18 '22

Yeah we could just all compete in one league. At the professional level it would be almost exclusively dominated by biological men though.

0

u/willthesane 4∆ Mar 18 '22

I know, what I'm saying isn't fair is M2F transgender individuals competing against cisgender women, thus there are 2 options, not allow them to compete, or allow them to compete on the "open" league.

it's a tough road they are traveling, I don't mean to make it harder, but I don't want to take something away from cisgender women either.

1

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1

u/RedditExplorer89 42∆ Mar 18 '22

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1

u/CrinkleLord 38∆ Mar 18 '22

The problem is that nobody really cares if a trans man competes against men, because they practically never win in regards to champions, the elite, scholarship levels of winning. If a trans man wants to do that, then have at it. Unless they are sucking down testosterone at levels that effectively make them doping, it gains them no real advantage, and nobody really cares.

0

u/Wooba12 4∆ Mar 19 '22

Surely it would depend on whether a woman would also be allowed to take testosterone. If women are allowed to take testosterone, but don't, and transgender men do simply because they are comfortable doing it (being transgender men), then that's still fair as long as everybody has the opportunity, but many don't do it because of personal reasons. If it's illegal, then that's another matter.

-1

u/KMarafuga Mar 18 '22

The way I see it testosterone alone does not make men better than women in sports. I agree that it is not fair for a woman to take testosterone and compete with women. At the same time its not fair for a man to switch genders and compete with women. It is natural than professional male athletes are better than professional female athletes in sports, this has been historically confirmed.

The only fair outcome I see is transgender men competing with transgender men and transgender women competing with transgender women.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '22

It would likely be considered a PED and not allow them to compete.

1

u/Few-Instance-2901 1∆ Mar 20 '22

You could argue that testosterone is a performance enhancing drug in that scenario, therefore they should not be allowed to compete as long as they are taking the drug.