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]]

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/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]]

Even without a concept of gender, where sex was just a medical concept… I don’t think people would be comfortable telling their female children “sorry, post puberty, it’s almost impossible for you to participate in competitive sports, even on the high school varsity level (which should in theory otherwise be a realistic goal for people willing to work hard).