Rojo - Do you support transgender athletes competing as long as they receive hormonal treatment? Or are you fully against?

More than half the comments have tried to be reasonable. That's pretty remarkable for this place.

But no. Transwomen have an unfair advantage in distance running at all levels that no amount of hormones can fix. To give one example: most teenage girls and women will menstruate once a month, which will negatively impact their athletic ability for one to several days. This can impact women at all levels, from the girls JV team to world record holders. Transwomen do not menstruate, do not have the organs that cause menstruation, and will never face the corresponding athletic disadvantage. One day a month is already a 3% advantage. Even if it's not race day, it's one more day for a big workout or for recovery.

And the level of the athletes shouldn't matter. The girls JV team cares about the outcome of their races just as much as the pros. Even after all the surgery and hormone treatments imaginable, it's hard to overcome the performance disadvantage of having to carry around a uterus and deal with your period when the competition doesn't have to.

I don't think the policies are set in stone and will never change. What makes sense for a tiny number of cases may not make sense when cases are much more common, and social attitudes can change. People think that attitudes toward gender and sexuality only get more liberal over time, but that's not true at all. History has seen waves of liberation followed by overreach and reaction.

And this isn't a theoretical problem. There was a gender fluid child in my own child's elementary school class. None of my business so I didn't ask about particulars. Now they're in middle school and HS sports are around the corner. And this is in a small town in the middle of nowhere in flyover country. Within a few years, the local school board could have a tough case on its hands involving sports.

It is an issue that will only be resolved if women make a decision about what they want with regard to protecting their interests in sports.

^^^^ Well said.

A transgender woman will never physically be the same as a biological woman. Please get back to me when a transgender woman has her period.

On a personal level, I truly feel for these people. It must be really hard to feel like you are the wrong sex. To find happiness by switching is great but please stop trying to play elite sport. There is not right to play highschool sports, college sports, pro sports etc. Tons of people try out and get cut.

Please tell me at hormone level would it be fair for Shaquille Oneil be allowed to play women's basketball? Answer: None. Imagine if Kareem or Bill Walton - who are roughly the same age as Caitlyn Jenner - had transitioned over. They likely coulds still be factors in the WNBA.

If we are going to do it, a sliding scale would be the way to do it but that doesn't do it for me.

So if Usain Bolt switched over and finished third in the women's 100, you're fine with that? I'm not.

Sport is all about one thing - pushing the body that you were born with to its absolute limit. Be the best you can be. It's not about, "Let's waste millions of dollars studying this crap, testing this crap, so I can be 80% of what I could be if I didn't take anything."

We don't allow PEDs in sport. Same thing with the opposite.

Liberals think of it this way. At what level would it be ok for me to go college as a minority? I have the same name as several very prominent black men after all. As a white guy, I attended Princeton. Is it Ok, if I take a spot from a black kid as long as I go to a little less prestigious school - maybe Georgetown?

Armstronglivs wrote:

It is an issue that will only be resolved if women make a decision about what they want with regard to protecting their interests in sports.

It's an issue that would need to be litigated in court and why women want to make a decision regarding a problem that doesn't yet exist except for in a handful of occurrences in minor sports.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

It is an issue that will only be resolved if women make a decision about what they want with regard to protecting their interests in sports.

It's an issue that would need to be litigated in court and why women want to make a decision regarding a problem that doesn't yet exist except for in a handful of occurrences in minor sports.

_________________________

The problem clearly does exist. You just want to deny the evidence put forth to show that it does.

1. You claim that there have been no instances where this matters. I show you the evidence, and you reply that these are "minor sports." The state championship. Minor.

2. You claim that there is no increase in trans identification. I show you that there has been an increase. You don't respond.

3. I mention the clear advantage of intersex athletes who are male. This shows that rare conditions whereby males live as girls/women have a strong impact on women's sports. You claim that these male athletes competing in women's sports are entirely irrelevant to the question of whether transwomen (males living as women) ought to compete without offering any sort of argument.

Maybe you don't care because it doesn't affect you? I don't know, but it doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

It is an issue that will only be resolved if women make a decision about what they want with regard to protecting their interests in sports.

It's an issue that would need to be litigated in court and why women want to make a decision regarding a problem that doesn't yet exist except for in a handful of occurrences in minor sports.

The problem might not seem so "minor" if you were the one impacted. At what point should we take action? I would like to stick my thumb in the dike now. You are seemingly willing to wait for a catastrophic flood.

rojo wrote:

Please get back to me when a transgender woman has her period.

Really? Lots of "biological women" don't menstruate for a variety of reasons. You can take birth control pills and skip the placebo week and not menstruate. You can stop menstruating because you are underfueling your body. You could have a uterine ablation and stop menstruating.

Of all the ways to define a woman, that seems like a really stupid one.

The U.S. did the same thing by banning the use of ALL gendered speech during all congressional hearings. Postmodernism has become a scourge within the western world.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

It is an issue that will only be resolved if women make a decision about what they want with regard to protecting their interests in sports.

It's an issue that would need to be litigated in court and why women want to make a decision regarding a problem that doesn't yet exist except for in a handful of occurrences in minor sports.

Long-term thinking isn't your forte, eh?

Biological males have absolutely no business competing in women's sports. It is absurd. What is equally absurd is how everyone is just supposed to pander to a microscopic subset of the population and how they supposedly take precedence over all else.

Armstronglivs wrote:

It is an issue that will only be resolved if women make a decision about what they want with regard to protecting their interests in sports.

Wow, I can't believe I agree with a post from this guy. I think this does largely need to be decided by women stating how they feel about this policy and their interests. One concern I do have is there are groups of trans activists that are very intolerant and will disparage anyone not willing to adhere to their narrative. There will be attempts to disparage individual athletes who speak out and to try and hurt their sponsorship income.

By logics you use then we is say men 7 feet tall is has no business because they is got height advantage in nba. And we is say if you is too big and is too fast then not should play sport because you has advantage so you not can say just because someone taller then they not right to play because it not fair and is bigotry.

astro wrote:

Biological males have absolutely no business competing in women's sports. It is absurd. What is equally absurd is how everyone is just supposed to pander to a microscopic subset of the population and how they supposedly take precedence over all else.

hgtff wrote:

Tatar wrote:

Concerning the voices supposedly speaking for women's rights are now not speaking of 'women' but of 'females'. Reminds me of the incel alt-right use of 'femoids'.

Most of the voices I hear that are speaking about the mistreatment of black happen to be white. Non of their business?

If white people started talking about black people as "negroids" and claimed Arab, Asian and multiracial people should be considered white and don't experience racism because racism is specific to the biology of dark skin.

That's what we're dealing with; narrow definitions of womanhood to exclude people with very valid experiences of sexism.

You didn't make a compelling case for any of your points.

I do care about males running "as-is" against women. I have respect for transgender athletes, but would have a seething hatred for any "fakes". If I was an AD, I would fight to the bitter end to prevent them from ever joining any of my women's teams. Anyone that knows anything about sports would feel the same way.

old news wrote:

The odd thing is that the ones that go through transgender, homosexuality, etc are the most mentally messed up, because it’s not natural. A long time ago these people would be seen as having a mental disorder, now they’re put on a pedestal and told how brave they are.

So are they just messed up because of people's reactions, in the past being told they had a mental disorder? Because I would imagine if we went back a lot of years, gay people would be a lot more messed up. I am not surprised that people would be more likely to have mental health issues if they were gay and living in the 1950s for example. As for it being not natural, it is seen a lot in nature. The majority of people would not choose to be gay. Being told they are brave has happened in the last few years, the responses to it before were not close to that.

I am Sam wrote:

Men are also taller. Are they going to do tibia/fibula reduction too? They can do it when they cut the dick off

You bring up a good point.

Their are biomechanical differences between men and women that don't go away with hormone treatment which allows the man to be stronger, faster, and more powerful.

Alan

god forbid I post this without anonymity wrote:

Against. There's more to being male than just testosterone. The most obvious example, of course, is what if Lebron James decided to transition and play in the WNBA. It would just be silly.

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Would it? Sure he might be the best player (i.e. just like he was the best man) but how silly would it be? People have the delusion if Lebron transition, he would be the Lebron we see playing for the lakers. He wouldn't be. Sure he would still be 6'8 but now he will be missing all that muscle mass that lets him jump out of the building. His shooting touch is likely be trashed given his different levels of strength. His basketball IQ would be messed up beyond belief as he is now a step slower than he was.

TransLebron isn't going to be like 10% better than the best woman player. The question is he 1-2% more or 0%? For amateur athletics, nobody cares. At elite levels? It makes a difference. And there is probably some sport dependent issues.

Paradoxical wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

It's an issue that would need to be litigated in court and why women want to make a decision regarding a problem that doesn't yet exist except for in a handful of occurrences in minor sports.

Long-term thinking isn't your forte, eh?

No one is going to court over a long-term, theoretical problem. Who would be the plantiff?

Disgusted wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

It's an issue that would need to be litigated in court and why women want to make a decision regarding a problem that doesn't yet exist except for in a handful of occurrences in minor sports.

The problem might not seem so "minor" if you were the one impacted. At what point should we take action? I would like to stick my thumb in the dike now. You are seemingly willing to wait for a catastrophic flood.

"We" are going to take action? None of us have been affected by a transgender athlete.

Sure, some people have been negatively impacted, but nothing that would justify undertaking such a mammoth and expensive legal undertaking.

There has been pretty much of a 45 year drought since Richards won the right to compete, so a catastrophic flood isn't going to occur without there being any water.

Why do you guys keep predicting a future that no one wants?