Male-born hurdler 4th in Girls Massachusetts Indoor State Meet

You’ve contradicted yourself. To acknowledge sex differences by definition limits “personal freedoms” instead of maximizing them. Why stop at limiting people from chopping off their genitals if that’s what they want to do? By your definition of goal the of politics to maximizing “personal freedom” that should be allowed. That is why this false notion of freedom is a false idol and must be stopped. Why shouldn’t allow people do anything they want and in fact must restrict them if we are to have a society and laws at all. What we need is to get back to society that properly understands “freedom” not as the ability to be licentious and do whatever you want, but as the ability to pursue the good. That is what West was built on from the ancient Greeks until the last few hundred years and that’s why it’s falling apart now

Is this a joke? Your solution is to have a runner in the race and then in the results have two 4th places? And the 10th place runner is now the 9th place runner? And one of the 4th place runners does not factor into team scoring?

Do they announce it before each race so that the runners and spectators know?

"Attention fans, in this race, the runners in lane 4 and 6 will not count in the scoring, but we will still record their place so that they can say they earned a placing in the race, but really they are in a separate race taking place concurrently with the scored race that you are about to witness. Easy to figure out. Easy to understand. Runners to your marks! Set!"

I agree, resolving these situations on a case by case basis invites chaos.

The text from Title IX seems fairly straightforward:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

The text only references sex and not gender, so it would follow that a policy that would allow a biological male to compete and displace females would be discriminatory and unlawful.

The problem is that in the 50 years since Title IX, the regulatory agencies, such as the dept of education, and the federal courts, have issued contradictory rulings as to whether or Title IX should be interpreted to bar not just sex based discrimination, but gender based discrimination too. Gender may be a social construct, but it is ALSO a legal one. Current education dept regulations say that gender based discrimination is not legal, but this goes back and forth depending on the administration. Until this issue is definitively resolved by congress clarifying Title IX, or a Supreme Court ruling, there is going to be ambiguity on whether or not gender is legally relevant and what to do if claims of discrimination based on sex and gender run counter to each other.

Since it doesn't seem like this insanity is going away any time soon, it seems like the obvious course of action is to create an open division and a division for biological females. This kid is non-binary, so they can compete in the open division and no one can cry sexism, transphobia, or any of the like.

It's also worth noting that Nikki Hiltz (biological female) identifies as non-binary but opts to compete in the women's division. Why? Because they have a greater chance of wining there. Funny how no non-binary athletes choose to compete in the men's division isn't it?

One girl could not reach the final because of this nonbinary athlete.

Another girl did not qualify for "Meet of Champions" (the meet where schools from all divisions compete together).

So that's where the unfairness is.

But this student in MA does not identify as female.

Should they compete in the nonbinary division? If there are no other nonbinary athlete competing, maybe this student should do a solo time trial between a boys race and a girls race?

And the right likes to strangle puppies.

She ran about 4:40 compared to the 4:08 conversion from the 1500m she ran as a male and finished 60th at the NCAA regionals in XC. She competing was not a threat to female NCAA distance running.

Elaine and Shelley-Ann are also rans, though. Track is one of the sports where we equate men's and women's champions, but it's kinda weird that we do. Do you think Chelsea Gray is as much of a champion as Steph Curry? One is WNBA Finals MVP, the other is the NBA Finals MVP. You'd be telling a pretty tall tale to act like you view both of those players in the same light.

Anyone who is not competing for the top male championship is an also-ran. In a road race of 10,000 people, outside of the top-10 overall, you have 1000s of men and women who are all in the same position, running hard with no chance of winning. As long as they have a chance to cross the start and finish lines, then the sport is accomplishing what I believe is the goal: opportunity to compete. But if there is no impact on the overall finish, then what difference does it make if a runner is a man or a woman?

Ask yourself this: If a woman transitioned to a man and then ran 1:52 for 800m, would you consider them the "woman-born" World Record holder? If you truly believe that birth gender is the only thing that matters, then you would have to say. I would say "no" because that runner would then be a man, and a man can't have the women's WR.

But those cases have been handled on a case by case basis in many states without chaos, until rightwing politicians decided to step in, and ban mediocre at best student athletes who had been approved on such basis by medical boards appointed by the HS Sports Associations.

None of the athletes who were turned down by those medical boards has ever filed a lawsuit to overturn the decision.

Here is why I think it should be done on a case by case basis. Not every preteen in the country has access to gender affirming care at early age. If we enforce across the board rule like the new World Aquatics rule, that would be unfair to trans girls who did not have the chance to get puberty blocker by age 12. If someone started the blocker at age 13 or 14, she should not be automatically banned.

There is a HS softball player in OH that the state legislature is trying ban. By all accounts, she is a totally unremarkable player. (Her team went something like 3-20 last season, and she is not even among the best players on the team.) But she didn't start puberty blocker until she was 14. Her mother says all the medical documents she had to submit are cumbersome and even intrusive. But they are necessary to weed out imposters. Should she be banned?

I am talking about HS and Middle school sports here. For elite level competition, I totally agree with World Aquatics.

To be fair, this is not unusual. In things like dual meets its common to have some finishers not score in order to allow bigger and smaller teams to compete against each other. Maybe the top 2 from every team score or something.

But, there probably ought to simply be just two categories....male at birth and female at birth. But, I'm weary of worrying about it. Girls got to take a stand, I can't do it for them. Refuse to race. Line up and walk off the track after the gun. That happens just a few times, and things will change.

Good point, but I think in the current social and political environment we find ourselves exercise of local judgement and discretion won’t fly. It does strike me as fairly foundational that “we” decide if the relevant protected characteristic is biological sex or gender or somehow both.

Obviously, Steph has achieved a lot more, since he is more than just one time Finals MVP. Gray is not even the best player on her team. (Aja Wilson is.)

One of the big issues is that many (and I suspect the large majority) of adolescent and young adult female athletes support trans inclusion. I realize many say this is because of coercion, fear of cancellation, etc., but I don’t buy it. I think for many it’s a strongly held feeling about fairness and justice even if others think it is self defeating. We don’t actually have any representative recent survey data from this group, the group directly impacted by these decisions.

I get that, but what the poster was proposing would be like not scoring the top-2 from the bigger school and instead seeing whether the big school's 3-4 runners beat the smaller schools 1-2 runners. Once you start changing rules on a competition-by-competition basis in order to give disadvantaged teams a better chance at winning, I think you're going too far in the name of "fairness." Call me old-fashioned, but I think you should just run the race and see what happens.

If a girl or a team decides not to run a race because they are worried about losing to another runner, you know what would actually happen? The race would go on without them. The right thing to do is go out and compete. You win some, you lose most. If you're a 5:30 female runner and you lose to a 5:29 trans female runner, it doesn't make you any less of a 5:30 runner.

Worst solution ever. Sometimes you don't get what you want.
Unfair, too bad.

An earlier poster stated it correctly. The female athletes have to fix this. Refusing to compete will end it. Either that, or a trans woman will also decide that she wants to compete in blackface. That will end it too.

There are many Kenyans who train in Japan. They frequently race in Japan as well, including the Japanese national championships. They do not get any award for placements in the national championships (although their record is official), and everyone knows it in advance. They still want to compete, and the Japanese athletes welcome the competition.

No one complains about it, except maybe some xenophobes who do not want to see any foreigner in their national championships.

Except she still is female. Shooting up massive amounts of testosterone doesn’t change that