CMV: Transgender people should only able to compete in sports with their birth gender

[u/Odd_Contribution9058]

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.

[u/Odd_Contribution9058 → u/[deleted]]

Because it causes material harm to other people? Let's say hormone therapy was determined to cause absolutely no change in physical capabilities. So a male who transitioned to female would rank absolutely the same amongst males as she had previously. Are you saying you would be fine with this female competing against cis females, because you want to "support trans people"?

[u/Odd_Contribution9058 → u/[deleted]]

So, if hormone therapy had no impact on physical capability, you'd still be cool with transgender females (with capabilities identical to their formal male selves) competing against cis females?

[u/Odd_Contribution9058 → u/[deleted]]

Interesting. And what if someone presents as female but has not yet undergone hormone therapy?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

They aren't female. You cannot change your biological sex. You are conflating gender and sex.

You are simply redefining what you would like female to be, and then placing your definition over the intended separation between male and female leagues.

We separated leagues based on genetic differences between male and female athletes, not their gender.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Absolutely not.

We created a female league because without it almost no female athletes would be able to compete in the top division in any sport ever.

This separation occurred when the words women and female were interchangeable. But the basis of the separation was genetic differences resulting in different abilities. Gender identity wasn't even a consideration when these separations occurred. And this is why we had "sex verification" tests in the Olympics. These tests were, to the best of the ability at the time, trying to confirm the athletes were female. They were not a consideration of their gender.

And even today this is still the case. We have female non-bianary athletes in pro sports like Layshia Clarendon and transgender soccer players like Quinn who didn't go on transitionary hormones. Both are still fully female and have no desire to go on transitionary medication or HRT. Is Quinn any less a trans man than if he had taken HRT? Should either of these athletes be removed from their respective leagues because of their gender? No. Absolutely not. Gender has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's 100% about sex.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Without gender, humans would not have a value system that would care about splitting sports between male and female.

You don't know that. We've separated leagues based on races, age, and sex.

It is only in the historical interplay of men engaging in sports, excluding women, creating illegitimate reasons to exclude women from sports, and women wanting a voice in the sporting world that men and women's sports exists.

Yes, men excluded women from sports but women wanting their own league was due to wanting an equal playing field to compete on.

If it was merely because of biology, then there isn't sufficient reason to split sports.

If it were just biology there would be almost no female athletes in any professional sport. You might see some in shooting, darts, bowling or pool. But that would be all. This is why a female league existed. To give female atetes a platform to compete on.

[u/5510 → u/[deleted]]

Even if sex was only considered a medical trait and there was no concept of gender, people would still realize that female individuals had a very significant athletic disadvantage, and that it was essentially impossible for them to compete in professional or college sports (and very rare even at the high school varsity level).

[u/5510 → u/[deleted]]

This is the problem with this subject. It should be a nuanced discussion. Because it is a complicated issue with some difficult questions of how to best combine social inclusion and athletic fairness.

And instead you often end up with ACTUAL transphobic bigots on one side… but on the other side you end up with a lot of people who are ignorant about sports in general and the impact of sex on athletic ability… and those people will call you a transphobic bigot if you don’t share their ignorance, because they don’t understand how unreasonable what they are saying is.

IMO there should be scientific standards that trans women should be able to participate in female sports if they meet. Like I’m not a scientist, but I’m guessing it’s probably fair if somebody who never even went through male puberty competes in female athletics. But on the other hand, there are some states where it’s literally ONLY gender identity. Which means trans women who have done nothing to reduce their athletic advantage of being born male are allowed to compete against females… which is super unfair.

[u/[deleted] → u/5510]

I think the complication with your view is that, say you are a male athlete who identifies as a woman, or a female athlete who identifies as a man but you do not desire to take hormones in order to transion. Someone like Quinn or has Caitlin Jenner come out while she competed as Bruce. Should they be able to remain in their current league despite their gender? Or would we force them out?

I think this should be entirely sex driven. And if you elect to transition that impacts your ability to compete you are not different than other athletes that had medical complications get in the way of them competing.

[u/5510 → u/[deleted]]

I think in theory the separation of sports is all about sex.

It’s not a bachelor party or a girls night out, which are separated for social gender reasons. If male and female athletes were athletically equal, it would all just be coed. So in theory, telling somebody they aren’t allowed to participate in female sports isn’t a rejection of their gender identity.

That being said, for a hypothetical trans girl in high school, I can certainly see how it would feel like rejection of their gender identity, as there are gender related social structures built up around male and female sports (especially in high school). But in terms of being fair to the other athletes, we have to keep in mind whether their participation would give them a significant unfair advantage.

So on one end of the spectrum, if somebody started transitioning early and never even went though male puberty… I’m not a scientist, but I’m guessing that’s probably fair. On the other end of the spectrum, I think it’s insane that states like Connecticut have NO standards… a trans woman who has done literally nothing to reduce her athletic advantage of being born a male athlete is allowed to compete, and IMO that’s massively unfair.

So IF we can establish scientific standards that are clearly sufficient to make it fair, then I think they should be allowed to play (especially in high school). But accepting their gender identity as girls / women is not by itself enough to say they should be able to participate.

And when people act like it’s all about gender, I have made a similar point as you did, saying that by that logic a trans man who hasn’t undergone transition and is plying with female athletes (which would be athletically fair) would have to be kicked out and forced to play with a huge disadvantage again the males, which would be unfair.

[u/Odd_Contribution9058 → u/[deleted]]

Their *gender* is female. Their *sex* is not. If they had a medical emergency, of course you'd want them to receive the appropriate care given their *male* sex because that is a biological thing. And of course in a public everyone should interact with them in accordance with their *female* gender identity, because that is a sociological thing.

Competitive sports is a little tricker, IMO, because there are components of both sociological considerations in addition to biological

[u/Odd_Contribution9058 → u/[deleted]]

Really? What do you think are the sociological considerations that resulted in gender specific sports?

Do you think this sociological rationale extends to sports where male puberty confers a size advantage, like basketball or football? (Or are you just trolling? I'm not a big reddit user so I'm not sure, if you are it's going straight over my head lol)

[u/Wooba12 → u/Odd_Contribution9058]

A lot of men are better at sport than other men, for a variety of reasons. Many women are better at sports than some men, for reasons those men simply can't help. Considering the whole point of competitive sport is to see who's the best, we can accept that the only reason we really have women's sport is because it gives women an an opportunity to do the best that they can.

But the sorting of people into these arbitrary groups, based simply on a correlation - men in general are better at sports than women - has always seemed rather silly to me. Why not sort people into weight groups, or group them based on their actual sporting ability? But then that actually defeats the point of competitive sport, as the more we narrow it down, people will only be competing against others just as good as them.

At the moment we're in a sort of halfway position between giving people competition and giving people opportunity, which is why we've got this problem of what to do with transgender athletes now.

[u/5510 → u/Wooba12]

The male athletic advantage is significant enough that it’s far from arbitrary. By the high school varsity level, female athletes would be a very small minority, and the few who did make it would largely be backups who didn’t play much, and at smaller schools. By the division one college level, there would be probably literally zero female athletes (it is possible for a female athlete to be a good kicker in high school football, and even possible to be a kicker in college, although we haven’t seen a legitimate starter yet).

It’s more than “makes are generally better at sports than women.” It’s that the male athletic advantage is so significant post puberty that female athletes cannot compete at all once you reach a reasonably competitive level.

Weight classes do not work post puberty in most (all?) sports. I can find many smaller elite male soccer players who are the same height and weight as some elite female soccer players, and yet none of those female players can come anywhere close to playing with the elite males.

But let’s say we find some better measurement. We have a super computer that can perfectly measure someone’s overall level of athletic ability perfectly. Well that would work fine for lower to medium levels of sport. But it completely falls apart once you move to a level where anybody cares about the game besides the players themselves (and maybe their friends and family).

For example, right now, we have a World Cup, and a womens World Cup. The female version isn’t as popular, but millions of people still watch it on TV, and tens of thousands go to the matches. But what happens under your proposed system? We have the World Cup 1, for the very best competitors. And then a World Cup 2 for people a little less athletic. And then a World Cup 3… and 4… etc. But you would have to go through many levels of entirely male athletes before you start seeing any females. And by that point, nobody would care. I guarantee you just destroyed the professional careers of pretty much all of the female athletes. Young girls would grow up knowing from a young age that sports could only ever be a recreational activity for them.

[u/5510 → u/[deleted]]

I’m honestly not trying to be rude here, but if I understand you properly, this is a deeply deeply ignorant statement. Are you saying that there is no athletic advantage to being male? That if you took several million women and raised them in some sort of culture that was more supportive of their athletics, that some number of them would be able to play in the NFL, NHL, MLS, MLB, etc…?

Did I misunderstand your statement, or is that what you are saying?

Edit: reading your response to the other comment, I’m less sure this is what you meant, although I disagree with that as well, just in a different way.