Former UNC All American Megan Kaltenbach Burke sounds off on males in female sports

I more or less want to agree with most of this. If an adult man wants to live like a woman, I wouldn’t want to stop them. They need to stay out of women’s sports though.

But the trouble is, do we ACTUALLY have real proof that trans people are “really” the other gender, or that they are speaking accurately when they claim - as they’ve started doing recently - “actually I was ALWAYS the other gender, merely assigned the wrong gender at birth”? Because that latter claim sounds like a word game or playing around with definitions to suit their convenience rather than anything they could prove, and the fact they need to rely on word games makes me question the whole idea that anyone is actually the opposite gender than what their body parts would indicate. It seems to me that if there was actually strong evidence that a healthy female brain and personality could be born in a male body (or vice versa), they would be able to point to that scientifically, rather than playing word games. As a result, I’m not convinced that trans people “exist” in a real sense, even though yes, trans people exist in that a lot of people choose to live like the other gender. I’m still waiting on this hard scientific proof and I don’t think we should be, for example, transitioning children until we get that proof. Once they’re adults they can do what they want, and by “that proof” I don’t mean what is usually offered, “oh but trans people seem to be happier when they live as the other gender” but I mean real, hard scientific proof that there is a female brain inside a male body rather than a disordered male brain. Some guys are happy putting on a dress is something very different. Until that proof arrives (it almost certainly won’t, by the way), I’m going to think, under one definition of the word “exist,” that trans people shouldn’t exist.

I didn’t say it was fair. I’m against trans women being allowed to compete against biological females in higher level sports, but I’m not a jerk like you who needs to go around demeaning and dehumanizing people. You are the real fool. All you do is further strengthen the claims of discrimination being made by trans individuals.

You could teach your daughter the healthy perspective on sport as an extracurricular activity to do for fun and winning not being the most important thing. If you want her to feel it's the end of the world because she might not come out at the top in any context in life, I can't stop ya. Maybe don't involve her in chess, though, apples relative to trees.

It's always funny to see men who never say a peep in support of Title IX prior, and in fact are known to decry Title IX hurting men, and generally have supported sentiments that feminism and women's rights are routinely taken too far now want to reverse course of their life's entire narrative because of this single, mountain-out-of-a-molehill issue. It's gotta be because they feel threatened by new concepts that don't fit their inherited black-and-white mindset on sex and gender.

You are 100% right that some people are anti-trans. That is fair (and not surprising given how common anti-trans attitudes are in the world).

But please be intellectually honest... 95% of these comments aren't "anti-trans." It is normal and logical to want girl's sport to be a category that excludes people with male biology. This isn't even about the trans athletes themselves, it is about the unfair advantage.

That is the literal reason we have protected classes. Masters sports, junior divisions, little leagues. etc. Why do you think we even invented "women's sports" in the first place? Why didn't we just include them in "sports"? These categories exists because the inclusion of "open men" would ruin the experience for these groups.

It isn't "anti-trans" to acknowledge that there are circumstances where it is unsportsmanlike for certain individuals to dominate outside their actual biological category. If these people were mid-packers, nobody would mind. 95% of us aren't really bigots in real life. The problem arises when DSD and transwomen represent 0.1% of the field but 66% of the podium over and over again.

Joanna Harper (one of the top experts on this issue) understands that. We all know that. You probably know that too.

science.org

This scientist is racing to discover how gender transitions alter athletic performance—including her own

Following her groundbreaking study of transgender runners, Joanna Harper now advises sporting bodies on the role of testosterone in athletics

Open link

I've heard this before. I have an uncle who also says dads should "teach their daughters that they shouldn't care so much about sports and winning" because he knows that girls aren't that good at sports. We all think he is a jerk.

Girls have the same right to experience success and win in sports as boys. That is literally why they have their own division.

Also, your suggestion to teach girls that wanting to win is not a "healthy perspective" is the most misogynist thing I've read on Letsrun this week, and that's saying a lot. You sound like the bigot on this issue... SHM.

Didn't you get the memo?

All types of dysmorphia are met with concern, psychotherapy and sometimes medication in order to revert to normality. The exception is the special kind of dysmorphia, for which treatment is prescribed not for the patient but for the world at large.

So let's keep celebrating and owning the bigots.

As a hardcore liberal, it makes me feel sick that this is the type of person we have to rely on to stand-up for women's sports. I probably disagree with her on everything in life, but this is the one issue in which I have to support her view. Sickening.

#sexnotgender

and its specifically transwomen. you don't see transmen dominating men's sports. you don't really about that enough if at all

Did you read this article? Much of her research actually confirms that many of the important advantages biological males have over females disappear after a period of hormone therapy.

This is a quote from her from 2021:

“The bottom line is, we can have meaningful competition between trans women and cis women. From my point of the view, the data looks favorable toward trans women being allowed to compete in women’s sports.”

Anyway, I believe there is a irreversible biological advantage and fair competition is not possible. I struggle to determine if this unfairness should impact decisions about inclusion at all levels of sports, or only elite sports (like NCAA, pro) but I won’t get into that. What I cannot stand is the level of derision and downright hate expressed on many of the threads towards trans people. Maybe you’ve missed it, but go back and read the others. Not accusing you of this, and the the discourse on this thread is better than most.

For further context on the VT basketball story, the private school that forfeited has 5 students in its graduating class, and 29 total students in the high school. The private school with the transgender student is graduating 20.

Simply speaking of the scope of this dilemma, in terms of Vermont HS sports, this is not currently a pervasive issue at all.

*source: nces.ed.gov

I don't want to make this more of an issue for the specific girls (and trans-girls) involved, but any sport such as swimming, triathlon, cycling, wrestling, rock climbing, running, has protected divisions (masters, juniors, women, girls) for a reason.

I think it is just frustrating that people can't acknowledge the original point of Title IX. Being a girl is a protected class for physical reasons, which is why this shouldn't be hard to understand.

p.s. I will text you. I have you in my phone from when we met at the Eugene World Championships.

Thanks for acknowledging the tenor of this thread. It is mostly respectful and trying to get a difficult issue. I am a liberal person who works with a lot of trans-people and I don't have any problem with them or with the notion of trans-ness at all.

I have a problem with one or two very specific situations that can't just be solved by waving a magic wand and saying, "girls don't need to win; winning isn't a healthy approach to sports." I know a lot of very competitive girls and they have the same right to a successful athletic career as the boys.

Harper's comments about hormone therapy might be a good solution for adults, but most youth sports (rightly) avoid this option, so at the junior levels, we still don't have a good option for youth athletes.

Thanks again for helping to keep this thread on track. :)

The "anti-trans" part comes in when they don't provide an alternative for trans people to compete in sports. Some of them don't belong in girls sports, some of them don't belong in boys sports, where do they belong? We don't have enough participants to have trans-only sports. Excluding all of them without context could be considered "anti-trans."

We shouldn't ban them all, but also shouldn't allow them all. There should be guidelines and protocols that a trans athlete should meet before being allowed to compete at the high school level or above. The athlete should be able to apply and show that they meet the guidelines that have been set, then nobody would have a legitimate problem with it. Without guidelines, people do have legitimate issues.

Megan was a joy to watch running XC for Smokey Hill Team. She left it all on the course and many times could barely walk after finishing. Whether you agree with her or not, I'm glad she is expressing her opinion.

If a trans girl started competing in her sport after she started transitioning, and is mediocre at best in her sport, how does she know she have advantage over other girls? And I am not saying she doesn't. She might have some advantage. But how does she know? How do her teammates and friends know?

And it is exactly kids like her that state lawmakers around the country are trying to ban from all K-12 sports. Those states already have policies set up by their HS sports federations, and no trans girl has dominated scholastic sports. It's in the states with no policy or "open" policy where trans girls occasionally make headlines for their athletic feats. Even there, the vast majority of trans girls are utterly unremarkable as athletes. And you don't hear about them because they are not newsworthy.