Former marathon champ says not enough women are being consulted about trans participation

Yawn^3 wrote:

Slippin into the future wrote:

The whole business of segregating sports by sex is just as dumb as the old system of segregating sports by race. We got rid of segregated baseball leagues. Sex segregation needs to go next. Get rid of archaic categories, make one category that everyone competes in, and leave it at that.

More talented people will be more successful and less talented people will be less successful. No one complains because taller people do better at basketball. That's just life.

Idiot of the day award goes to you bro. There would be no women in any professional sports or in college

And there are no slow people running professional track, a tiny number of normal height guys in the NBA, no fat people who are successful jockeys, etc., etc. Athletic talent isn't evenly distributed. So what? In a competitive sport it's fair for the spots to go to the people who can play it the best. There are intramural and rec leagues for people who want to play but lack the skills, genetics, or whatever for every sport.

Are you talking about Allison Roe, the former Boston marathon winner, one of the signatories to the letter?

no need for a consult wrote:

Why does anyone need to be "consulted" regarding women competing with other women?

So rules should be made that affect what people are able to do without hearing from those affected by those rules?

So you agree that trans people should be in the red league. Thank you

ddidididid wrote:

Yawn^3 wrote:

You must not be a real mma fan. Read the interview from a few of the fighters who had to fight fox. They say they never felt punches like that before.

Are you really trying to argue the average man does not punch harder then the average female, or better yet, that someone like max holloway doesn’t punch harder then Amanda nunes ?

Are you a fan? Seems like you are surprised by fractures and ignorant of the fact that the tranwoman didn't dominate. She lost against mediocre competition. If she would have been allowed to fight, all the evidence is she would have been in the bottom quarter of her division.

Are you really trying to argue that a tranwoman has the strength of a man? Are you that ignorant of the effects of hormones on human performance?

I’m a big fan. I don’t want to see Mackenzie dern have to fight a man who had the benefit of male puberty. How is this hard for you to grasp. I don’t care how much estrogen you give a man, his body will still typically be stronger then that of a natural born woman.

I’d say knocking her opponent out in the first round and sending them to the hospital is a show of dominance.

The concern should be legal equality. Women have sued in the past to get into the boy scouts and other opportunities to compete against men. Well they won the law suits and legal equality allows the men to compete against women. Trust me I'm against it. But ...

Women who are completely transitioned have a testosterone level of like ONE nmol or less. Go ask some post-menopausal woman what's it's like to run like that. Now imagine they have the same body weight of a man their size.

WTF? You've just equated post-menopausal women with males who "are completely transitioned." How insulting to us post-menopausal women.

Kris Jenner is post-menopausal. You really think that she & her former spouse are now physiologically the same? And athletically in the same league?

"Completely transitioned" for males nowadays means taking T suppressants, exogenous estradiol and perhaps getting some cosmetic surgeries to the face, trachea, chest & other body parts apart from the groin. 95% of trans-identified males do not have any genital surgery.

The physical advantages that give males such a leg up in most sports come from having gone through male puberty in infancy & adolescence . These advantages are only minimally reduced when they lower their T, take exogenous estrogen & make cosmetic changes to look like the opposite sex.

If it's true as you say that trans-identified males have T levels of 1 nmol/L or less, it seems odd that the IOC regs require them to reduce their T only to 10 nmol/L - a level many, many times higher than the top of the normal female range.

Also, if most trans-identified males have such low T, it's curious that many of them & their allies are campaigning to get rid of the testosterone suppression rules altogether. They say that "transwomen" should be allowed to compete in women's sports without suppressing their T at all, and that regulations requiring trans-identified males to take drugs to lower their T in order to compete in women's sports amount to "legalized pharmaceutical genital mutilation."

Specialists in "transgender medicine" say that when the actual lab test results of males who take the standard drug regimens for "transition" are examined - rather than going by what such persons & their backers claim - the majority actually have a very hard time suppressing their T to anywhere near female levels. In 2018, a paper was published in the journal Endocrine Practice, that was said to be

"the first to investigate the efficacy of transgender treatment in terms of achieving targeted and subsequent stability of testosterone levels achieving over a prolonged period of several years."

The paper reported that when researchers at the Boston University examined the "electronic medical records of 98 anonymized transgender women treated with oral spironolactone and oral estrogen therapy" - the standard regimen used in the US - they found that

Only a quarter of transgender women taking a regimen of spironolactone and estrogens were able to lower testosterone levels within the usual female physiologic range. Another quarter could not achieve female levels but remained below the male range virtually all of the time, while one quarter was unable to achieve any significant suppression.

https://www.bumc.bu.edu/busm/2018/02/20/medicine-alone-does-not-completely-suppress-testosterone-levels-among-transgender-women/

Hobby1jogger wrote:

The concern should be legal equality. Women have sued in the past to get into the boy scouts and other opportunities to compete against men. Well they won the law suits and legal equality allows the men to compete against women. Trust me I'm against it. But ...

Please cite the cases where women sued for "opportunities to compete against men" in sports. I don't recall any. Scouting isn't sports.

Yes, women sued for opportunities to compete against men in the classroom, in the professions and when applying for jobs and promotions at work. Women sued for the right not to be fired from our jobs or expelled from school when we got pregnant. Women sued for admission to some social clubs and organizations from which we had been barred. Women sued for the right to be able to get credit cards & bank loans without a male co-signer.

In sports, women sued for the right to be able to participate in events like the Boston & New York marathons alongside men. But I don't believe any women sued so that instead of a male winner & a female winner, there would be only one winner.

In 1974, women sued for girls to be allowed to participate in Little League, which at that time had a rule in place barring girls. But if you look at that case, and what has happened since, women wanting girls to be able to join Little League can't be equated with asking or insisting that female people be given "opportunities to compete against men" and boys directly in sports.

Women made a case for, and built, our own sports separate to men's sports. Some sports - like some running relays, mixed doubles in tennis, horse jumping & racing and some target shooting - are mixed sex. But most sports are not because of the myriad male advantages. Most women who are athletic know full well that our bodies are different to male bodies, and that people with male bodies generally perform better in most sports.

AFAIK, there has never been a push amongst women to get rid of all sex segregated sports so that we'd be made to compete against men. But if you know of cases, please share the details.

As for your claim that legal equality allows the men to compete against women - I don't think you understand what legal equality means & how it works. Equality in law doesn't mean pretending that all people are physically the same. It means recognizing that despite our physical differences, all humans have equal worth & rights.

Giving everyone equal opportunity in the law often rests on recognizing physical differences & accommodating them. Equal opportunity means things like wheelchair ramps, reading material in Braille, closed captioning & sign language, maternity leave, access to contraception, & health insurance coverage for both mammograms & prostate exams. Equal opportunity & fairness do not come from ignoring physical differences between different kinds of people.

Your comment makes you sound like all the guys who say with glee that males using "gender identity" claims to horn in on girls & women's sports today is all women's fault - something we brought on ourselves by seeking fair play & equality in the first place. In other words, it comes off as blaming women for the behavior of entitled males who've come up with a clever new way of displaying male dominance & showing us who's boss. Same old, same old.

Really? Do we need scientific research and empirical data to make the case that mediocre male athletes who pretend they are girls shouldn't be allowed to compete in events for real women and girls? This is an absurd notion. This is as bad as the days when the testosterone laden ladies of the former Soviet Union showed up every four years to harvest medals at every Olympics.

_______________________

Yes, this post does a great job of telling the T & A people, uterus-havers, bleeders (people formally known as girls and women) that they need to stop whining about fairness. Why can't they set their petty concerns aside and realize that they should prioritize others' feelings and problems over their needs and desires?

Precious Roy and Lenny Leonard are here to protect those who were assigned "Don't be so selfish!" at birth from commodifying their athletic talent. Hopefully, neither one of them has ever visited a strip club or looked at porn!

As usual, couldn't be better said. It is also valuable having a woman's perspective on an issue where it is males who are typically telling women who they are.

Armstronglivs wrote:

As usual, couldn't be better said. It is also valuable having a woman's perspective on an issue where it is males who are typically telling women who they are.

Thank you kindly. Lots women of all ages & political stripes are angry & outraged about this. We can't get published in the mainstream media any more, so it's easy for people to think we don't exist or to write us off as right wing reactionaries.

Also, because of the way we are socialized from an early age, most girls & women keep our feelings to ourselves & swallow our anger. In fact, many of us smile, placate & scurry away when we feel the most threatened by male dominance displays & pissed off by male arrogance. But under the surface, women's feelings about & objections to the unfairness that's being shoved down our throats are coming to a boil.

Funny thing is, many "old school" male transsexuals agree with us.

RunRagged wrote:

We can't get published in the mainstream media any more, so it's easy for people to think we don't exist or to write us off as right wing reactionaries.

Chelsea Mitchell just published an op-ed in USA Today a few weeks ago. I guess that's not the mainstream media.

We need to improve the women’s times for the events to gain popularity. Sub 1:50 in 800m needs men to do it. Women have had their chance. They suck. It took three men to win to win the women’s medals at 800m in the last Olympics. The future of women’s sports is men.

If we have men in both the women’s and men’s race track would be more popular. The men’s 800m could be 1:43 or faster and the women’s could be 1:45 or faster. We don’t have to watch a 1:56 women’s 800m ever again. Its just not good enough. Men can do better, even in the women’s unitard. It won’t slow the men down at all. Maybe women will learn from the men in the women’s races and get faster. Like Kenya runners in NCAA, it make American runners step up their game to be competitive. Women will do the same when men get in their races and run faster.

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

RunRagged wrote:

We can't get published in the mainstream media any more, so it's easy for people to think we don't exist or to write us off as right wing reactionaries.

Chelsea Mitchell just published an op-ed in USA Today a few weeks ago. I guess that's not the mainstream media.

The loudest voices are the 'women also have balls' lobby.

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

RunRagged wrote:

We can't get published in the mainstream media any more, so it's easy for people to think we don't exist or to write us off as right wing reactionaries.

Chelsea Mitchell just published an op-ed in USA Today a few weeks ago. I guess that's not the mainstream media.

Shortly after Mitchell's piece was published, USA Today heavily edited it retroactively so as to remove all mention that the athletes she had to compete against whose participation she objected to are male. Only tabloid & conservative press outlets have covered this aspect of the story.

You are reading selectively for your own agenda.

I said "women who are completely transitioned".

Only women who are post-op are completely transitioned.

Women who are not post-op and on hormones only are in perpetual transition, they can stop hormones at any time and in a several weeks actually get someone pregnant. It's not permanent.

For example June Eastwood went from 3:51 1500m to 4:24 while transitioning. If she stopped hormones, in several months she could get back to 3:51. She is not completely transitioned.

Before 2016, only women who were completely transitioned could compete (mostly because with 1 nmol of testosterone they weren't even competitive so not a threat)

But instead of realizing of the difference between women who are completely transitioned and the loophole made in 2016 of women who are not, you decide to universally hate the entire minority.

Non-ops should non-compete, it's that simple. Really, there is nothing more to solve at that point.

I hate to arm the assholes but also there is no such thing as a "testosterone blocker". There seems to be an odd conspiracy theory among supporters and reporters and even scientists that testosterone is "blocked". Women who aren't completely transitioned are NOT blocking testosterone, their bodies are still cranking it out for recovery etc. They are washing it out periodically via a diuretic. You know the same way dopers wash out EPO with a diuretic before competition.

This is why non-ops should not be allowed to compete. But people are purposely abusing the odd change in regulation in 2016

However all need to still be welcome on teams and allowed to run. They are human beings.

But maybe you'd like women who are transgender to wear pink stars on their outfits so you know who they are. Seems they are headed that way in several states now because it's the ultimate dog whistle for hate.

You've drawn a long bow, from seeing an opposition to males participating in female sport to trans being required to wear "pink stars". It is too easy to label those opposed to male participation as "transphobic" or haters. But the problem you have identified is that the advocates for transgender participation in women's sports do not propose restricting that participation to those fully transitioned. I don't see how "inclusiveness" to that degree can be accommodated in women's sports.