Girls 800 National High School Champ Speaks Out About Transgenders in Sports

Have you not paid attention to what the Penn swimmer is doing? One man beating women is the end of women's sports because it is no longer for women only.

joe owner wrote:

Have you not paid attention to what the Penn swimmer is doing? One man beating women is the end of women's sports because it is no longer for women only.

It is "the end of women's sports", as you say, because the best women will never be able to beat the best men - and transwomen are still men.

Armstronglivs wrote:

joe owner wrote:

Have you not paid attention to what the Penn swimmer is doing? One man beating women is the end of women's sports because it is no longer for women only.

It is "the end of women's sports", as you say, because the best women will never be able to beat the best men - and transwomen are still men.

Well, a transwoman does not have a uterus, so at least no concerns on that front. Perhaps we should now be concerned about men running marathons just in case any of them lose their uterus along the way.

While women's sports remains a biologically-determined category there is no "solution" to trans participation in women's sports. Their participation defeats the purpose of having women's sport a protected category, and reducing t-levels remains only a partial compromise because there are still many other advantages that biological males will have. With "inclusivity", women must lose - literally. We see that is unimportant to trans advocates when they declare - falsely - that sport is inherently "unfair" because some competitors have advantages (like speed, strength and stamina) that others don't. That fundamentally distorts the whole meaning of competition, which is to determine who are the best amongst those who share the same common features, like age, weight - and sex. Men and women don't share common features that are crucial to competition in a way they do with others of their own sex. It is a reality some in this debate simply cannot see or accept.

There are really not many on this thread claiming that biological males do not have an advantage over biological females in athletics.   Are there any posters claiming this?   My position is that a certain level of competition it does not matter, and that the effort and negative impact of ensuring biological fairness outweighs the benefits.  You may disagree, but don’t dumb down the argument to believers in science versus irrational flat earthers.  

Follow on post to my last.

I know you are an anti doping crusader.   I agree doping is a scourge.   Do you think we should be doing wide speed testing among high school athletes at high school level competitions?   If not, why not?   Is it because you judge doping at this level to be too rare?   Is it because testing at this level would be too intrusive?   Is it because at this level of competition it’s silly to ensure such a rigorous level of biological fairness?

It is too costly. They would test professional runners before and after every competition it it were instant and cheap.

And you are incorrect thinking that millions of people don't belive that there is an advantage. Reputable sources have made this claim.

https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/verify/verify-do-transgender-athletes-have-an-advantage-over-cisgender-athlete/509-74cdd673-df9c-4cb0-b899-3a08f1cd16b5

No, but they still have rules saying you're not allowed to dope. Just because they can't rigorously enforce the rules doesn't mean they're still not there.

Just like if they had a rule that said 'no biological males in the female events' they couldn't go so far as to check the fine print, but in most cases it would be enough to ensure fairness.

Yes, but most of us are runners or former runners who know better.   Let’s have a meaningful conversation about what rules and enforcement are appropriate at different levels of competition.   

When my daughters ran in HS I would volunteer as a meet official.   You know, help to check runners in, organize the event and make sure it went off smoothly.   We would check uniforms and spikes.   If you saw the array of kids before you, gender ambiguity (to me as an old man) was not uncommon (more often girl towards boy).  At that level I want no part in asking for them to prove their biological sex by providing documentation, or even something more intrusive, since forging the documentation is not that hard.  I also am pretty sure to pull a child out for that reason would be very damaging.  I just don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze.   We took it a face value who showed up for the boys vs girls race.   It worked well.  I have no idea if a trans child competed in a category other than their sex at birth, and nobody cared.  I don’t think this is the same situation as Lia, and certainly would not be among professional runners.  At these higher levels biological fairness is important enough that we do put athletes through testing to look for doping and to try and discern surrogates of biological sex.

A poster on the previous page literally wrote this:

"Men, women, trans-people, everyone are ALL very capable individuals in athletics (and all other endeavors). Anyone disagree?

If that's the case, there should not be ANY separate divisions based on sex/gender."

So while this is not a specific statement of "biological males do not have an advantage over biological females in athletics" that obvious implication is that there is no need for separate divisions based on sex/gender because of that. I mean yes? no?

While not a poster on this site, a journalist (or alleged) wrote this in an online published article

"There is no proof that cisgender men are inherently more capable than cisgender women."

Except there is in the context of competitive sport which I know and obviously you know, but you would be shocked at how many people don't have that context (including the poster on this board I just refereed to). My fiancé wanted to have this discussion with me and I didn't with her because when I asked her quite simply did she know what an elite (we can even just say capable) time was for a male and female competitive 100m sprinter her answer was "like 20 seconds I dunno".

Regarding your position I actually agree with you - at some point/level of competition and performance it really doesn't matter at all. But I do believe that this level is either grade-school athletics (like 8 year olds and under) or casual, non-competitive sport. I remember as a 6-7 year old running the "100m" (more like 50) school sprint with everyone and it was just fun. But that's not the NCAA or even high school athletics. So to that point I don't think gender has ever mattered in this realm to begin with did it? Unfortunately this topic isn't about that.

Ok, I agree with you in principle 100%, and of course the performance differences between biological men and women are vast as it pertains to athletics.   I would quibble with you over at what level of competition it’s important to make sure these biological differences are accounted for when assigning people to a competition category.  Insisting that the distinction be made in prepubescent athletes or true community hobby jogging competitions seems ridiculous to me.   Sounds like you agree.  Not insisting these differences be recognized and respected in the elite college and pros and competitive masters also seems wrong, and again we agree.   I’d say that HS is a gray zone, and I’d favor not banning trans athletes from competing as they wish for the reasons previously articulated.   I view HS athletics as being far closer to youth sports then to NCAA sports given the average ability level, the mental age of the athletes, the particular awkwardness, uncertainty and vulnerability of the age group as they sort out their sexuality, gender identity, etc.,  and the absence in general of money and other material privileges associated with success at this level, especially if those are to be enforced at the college level.

We should do away with categories in high school. That woukd solve the problem.

No that's exactly what I am saying - worrying about it at young ages or in hobby/recreational sports is pointless. However we know that at some point it needs to happen for all the obvious reasons and the question is when. High school is not a gray zone - as an example by the time I was 15 years old I had already run well inside the womens 800m WR and we all know the circumstances surrounding that record. Kids at high school take sports serious - it's a time when they are finding out what they are truly good at in life and in some cases it begins to define long periods of their life (as it did for me).

joe owner wrote:

We should do away with categories in high school. That woukd solve the problem.

No it wouldn't - what factual basis is there for that? The girls article points out the massive disparity between boys and girls even on state level in Iowa.

The only way one could possibly believe this is a solution is if you simply had no context of the performances differences between high school athletes and even the best high school boys vs the world best female athletes (hint: the Texas high school boys 100m record is currently 0.36 seconds faster than Flo-Jo's "WR").

You can't be serious with that take given the fact I just put on the table.

Wow, her argument is predicated on the fact that men can run faster than her, the state record holder. I don't think anyone had considered that angle, glad she can provide her unique perspective. It's a good thing that the bulk of her letter is just examples of men being generally faster than women, because most people had probably never heard of this phenomenon before.

(That's sarcasm - her whole opinion piece is 100% retread with an invocation of "faith in god" as a cherry on top, as if I didn't understand the real source of her weighing in on this moral panic issue.)

Here's how I see it:

* The debate about where transgender women belong in sport has valid questions with no clear answers. I think it can be both a moral panic (in the sense that some people are losing their minds over hypothetical scenarios as a cover for their subconscious discomfort with the way gender roles are changing in our society at large), and raise good questions.

* In a weird way, the debate is making me re-assess why women get to compete in a protected category to begin with. That was initially done in the name of fairness, because women were missing out on opportunities to show their (relative) speed due to (relatively) less-talented men taking their spotlight. In a zoomed out sense, by this same token, there is some argument that we should figure out a way to handicap races based on each individual's genetic potential. As it stands, we just chose to protect a specific class because it was intuitive to do so - it's easy to observe that full-grown women are generally slower than men. But what about a protected class for people born with cystic fibrosis who have barely any VO2max to speak of? People who are on anti-psychotic medications that make them gain weight? To me, the moral panickers are actually running the risk of protecting the status quo so fiercely that they force a larger reckoning that ultimately upends it in a more fundamental way. I, for one, had just taken it for granted that male and female categories made sense, but now I'm fundamentally questioning the structure we have chosen. I am thinking about what fairness means. Is there room for a clear and distinct male/female dividing line when we introduce the modern understanding of sex and gender? I'm not just talking about transgender individuals, I'm talking about people born XXY, people with two sets of genitals, people with external genitalia of one gender but internal genitalia of the other. It's exactly these edge cases that it's really hard to sort in an intuitive way that everyone can agree with. So basically we started sorting people by eyeballing them, but then we realized that there are more nuanced cases in the gray zone, and here we are, screaming about how men are faster than women. No duh. So how do we take this generally true population-level fact and apply it to individuals who challenge our understanding of how to sort people?

There are really not many on this thread claiming that biological males do not have an advantage over biological females in athletics.   Are there any posters claiming this?   My position is that a certain level of competition it does not matter, and that the effort and negative impact of ensuring biological fairness outweighs the benefits.  You may disagree, but don’t dumb down the argument to believers in science versus irrational flat earthers.  [/quote]

Firstly, there are those who staunchly maintain that males do not have a biological advantage. It even seems to include the IOC now, which has developed cold feet about using testosterone as a measure of that advantage.

But for you to say that at a certain level male advantage doesn't matter is an extraordinary claim, because it is only in women's sport that the majority of competitors face losing to those who don't biologically conform to that category. It isn't a disadvantage that male competition will ever have to endure. So your argument requires that women have to accept what men don't. Nice.

And how does "the negative impact of ensuring biological fairness outweigh the benefits"? Don't you mean to say the reverse, that the benefits outweigh the negative impact of ensuring biological fairness? If not, you are simply maintaining what I and others have argued, that inclusivity does not justify imposing on women's sport what isn't imposed on any other category.

Firstly, doping is not permitted at any level. The degree of the anti-doping response ought to be in proportion to its prevalence. If it is perceived to be prevalent at high school then it should not be ignored but addressed through education and testing if necessary.

The participation of males in female sport isn't directly analogous but it is at least easily identifiable. School children are just as entitled to compete according to principles of fairness as professionals. That principle isn't superseded by the desire of a few to compete where they are not biologically eligible.

Your explanation of why women (and girls) got a separate category of sport that for a while was protected is dead wrong. A separate category for women was not created "because women were missing out on opportunities to show their (relative speed) due to (relatively) less talented men taking their spotlight" LOL. Women were never allowed to compete with men in the first place. We got our own category because historically we were entirely excluded from sports. Men and boys had sports for millennia. Women's participation and competition only started to be added on, sport by sport, and often event by event, over the course of the 20th century.

When sports finally began to be opened up to women, boys and men never wanted us in with them - and women and girls never clamored to enter the men's and boys' category. Because girls and women are physically different to boys and men in myriad ways that mean in nearly all sports we don't perform as well as they/you do. It doesn't mean we are lesser human beings; it just means we are physically different.

Since the topic here is scholastic and interscholastic sports in the US: girls and women in the US have only had the full legal right to participate in school sports in government-funded schools for the past 44 years, since 1978. Until the US Congress passed Title IX in 1972, school sports in US public (and many private) educational institutions were for male students exclusively.

Title IX established for the first time in US history that girls and women attending US federally-funded educational institutions have the same right to scholastic and interscholastic sports as boys and men. However, Title IX did not come into effect immediately. The law gave schools and universities until 1978 to start putting in place programs and measures to insure that girls and women could actually begin to exercise this right. But it took time to get school sports for girls and women off the ground. Schools were given lots of leeway and many institutions intentionally dragged their feet. By time 1978 rolled around, schools were not considered in violation of Title IX if they were moving or could produce plans showing they were preparing to move in the direction of compliance. As a result, it wasn't until the early-mid 1980s that Title IX really began to have a noticeable effect.

Outside of the school and university contexts, women were explicitly barred from many sports organizations and events. In 1961, the sports governing org in charge of amateur road running in the US explicitly banned women from all distance running events. Many running clubs traditionally barred women from their memberships, not permitting women to participate even just recreationally.

Until the 1970s-80s, and in many cases later, women and girls in many places in the US were barred from using municipal and private sports facilities such as tennis courts, golf courses, ball courts, swimming pools and gyms all, most or many weekend hours, early evenings and other times when men wanted them for themselves. In many instances, women could only play tennis or golf during non-peak-demand hours on the weekends, and then only if playing mixed-sex doubles or in a foursome with at least two men. Where I lived, even if tennis courts were empty on a Saturday or Sunday, and the sign-up sheets showed no boys or men had reserved a court for several hours, girls and women still couldn't play by ourselves in case a man or boy showed up and wanted the court on the spur of the moment.

When women back in the day objected to policies that excluded or unfairly restricted females from sports solely because of our sex, the aim was never to invade boys' and men's sports or take away boys' and men's right to have sports that are effectively solely for males. When Little League was sued for unfairly excluding females in 1974, the larger intent was to get programs for girls under the LL umbrella. Girls in great numbers weren't champing at the bit to try to play LL Baseball back then. Though LL is now open to both sexes equally, it's ended up with two separate but parallel programs that are de facto sex segregated: LL BB for boys, LL SB for girls. Boys and girls can play either BB or SB in LL, but most boys choose BB and most girls choose SB.

Also, AFAIK, women don't generally and customarily rail against men's sports as represented by the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, FIFA, US college football, etc. We don't go around wagging our fingers and pronouncing in scolding tones that men's sports are not "inclusive" and diverse enough coz the players are all male. We don't castigate male athletes as bigots and haters for not doing their bit to show support, empathy and kindliness for all the females who now "identify as" boys/men" by giving up places on teams, purposely losing games/races and giving up podium places so that "trans men" can feel included and "affirmed" in their claimed identities.

Women want our own sports in addition to the sports men play, and we want to protect the hard-won gains we've already made and the territory we've already carved out through enormous amounts of effort over decades. Sure women would like our sports to get more attention and better pay. But we don't want to reduce the chances that boys and men have to play sports. We don't spend time devising ways to make sports less fair for males the way some males seem to be constantly plotting nowadays about how best to make women's sports less fair - and less safe - for females. And we certainly don't sit around agreeing amongst ourselves that some males should be forced to forfeit fairness and safety in sports "for the greater good" the way some guys do on LRC regarding girls and women and our sports.

Honestly, I can't imagine any woman claiming as some men have done on this thread that in order to protect "the vulnerable" and show respect for some athletes' claimed gender identities, a good number of male athletes are just gonna have to suck it up and step aside, lose out and sacrifice their own sports dreams and ambitions - and if they don't like it, tough luck, they need to learn that being robbed of their own chance to excel, win and feel the pride and joy of victory is "a small price to pay" to mollycoddle someone else and advance a political agenda they might not even agree with.