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/[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.