Western States transgender policy seems to be a good one

I think it seems reasonable.

The first key thing is that the rules are clear, no matter whether one agrees or not, and I think this gets pretty much there.

People can then choose if they want to compete under those rules or not.

As for whether 1 year is the correct amount to offset prior advantages. It's naturally not going to be an exact time. It will depend on the distance, it will depend on the person, but it's not a bad ballpark to start the ball rolling, and in time the rules may well get tweaked. But they have them.

This "policy" is woefully incomplete.

For instance, what about re-transitioning runners (either back to cis status, or to a new alternative)?

It's a joke that they only try to "solve" whatever problem is on their timeline (10th place possible this year), but don't consider the rights of minorities who aren't sufficiently visible yet.

That doesn't make sense, if they aren't being placed, there aren't any questions. What rights are they losing ?

How many re-transitioning runners are you aware of ?

Fantastic point. You basically want to be smaller for running. But for the WNBA it would be awful. I mean17% of US men who are 7 feet tall make the NBA, I imagine it would be close to 100% for the WNBA.

I loved the post by Jaime as it reveals the personal side of the issue and have three questions.

1) I wonder what transgender women feel about the differences in male/female ratios of certain jobs. Many feminists see that a certain job is way less than 50% female and call for sexism to be overturned. Yet, you are saying there is a very real difference between the sexes. Would that express itself in jobs?

2) I loved what you wrote there but what about the situation in CT with Andraya Yearwood?

You say there is no advantage to being trans but that appears to be because you appear to be logical like Joanna Harper. Do you admit that Ms. Yearwood has a huge advantage to being a trans athlete who hasn't had hormone therapy?

3) And what you recommend for sports like basketball? In running, the skeleton doesn't matter but what if someone's passion isn't running but is basketball? Height is a huge factor.

Most of the people here are obsessed with distance running. Athletics also includes several jumps and throws. Don’t forget sprints either. I am pretty sure that the average D3 thrower who is 6’5” and 280 is going to do well competing as a woman. The 6’2” guy who is running 51 in the 400 hurdles will transition well to shorter hurdles also. Even the average D1 800 runner who runs 1:49 is going to be pretty competitive.

I've been looking through the internets trying to find legitimate instances where women are complaining about competing against trans athletes in road racing and ultra/trail running. The complaints are obvious in sports like UFC, but I'm having trouble finding stuff for distance running. It seems like a bunch of men blowing hot air, with very little input from the women who are actually affected by the issue.

I also looked through the internets and found no legitimate instances of transgenders complaining about not being able to compete in the women’s category. So since there is no issue, let’s just leave the categories alone.

It seems like the science says transitioning puts people at a disadvantage in running when compared to cis female athletes. This thread is full of transphobes saying "look at the science" when you actually do look at the science it's clear that a transgender athlete on HRT should always be allowed to compete. They also talk about the larger skeleton you were concerned about rojo.

It would be nice and tidy if this was the case, but the science is not settled on this. You have one study of 8 people that has questionable funding and athletes of average ability.

As noted above, the hypothesis that the only difference between men and women in running is hormone therapy doesn't pass the test of what we have seen in the history of running. The women and men's records are still 10-12% apart despite state sponsored doping attempts to make women the fastest they can be from China and former eastern block countries.

What are your thoughts on having "recreational and low level sports .. allow athletes to self identify as male or female" and having them compete as their biological sex? Seems to me that all those involved are best served by this practice.

The concerned parties are: the competitors or participants; the event organizers or sporting event owners; and the transgender individual athlete. The proposal above is better for the event and the many competitors, but worse for the transgender individual who is female (they could not make use of their physical and athletic advantage competing against biological women).

The policy that you think "There seems to be an emerging consensus (for) that recreational and low level sports should allow athletes to self identify as male or female" and compete as the gender they choose is worse the event organizers and the many competitors, but better for the transgender individual who is female.

Which policy seems to serve the most people best? Which seems to be the most common-sense approach?

The latter one allows transgender athletes to compete, and compete against the same sex that were also given the same advantages by nature at birth. Allowing biological males to compete against women, and take prizes, places, wins and titles is fundamentally unfair.

Smaller is definitely better for running. That said, men are generally faster not withstanding the size “disadvantage”

Sounds great. Let the guy win the NCAA 3k against the women and then don’t allow him to run the 1200 leg in the dmr because the science says he has an advantage in mid distance? Distance is only 20% of a meet.

It’s been disputed for centuries, but recent Darwinian studies theorize that overpopulation has often been troublesome for humans (whole civilizations have collapsed from it), so there’s less evolutionary pressure to procreate, and more room for gender variability.

Internets pl wrote:

I also looked through the internets and found no legitimate instances of transgenders complaining about not being able to compete in the women’s category. So since there is no issue, let’s just leave the categories alone.

Aside from the fact that we don't call people "transgenders" trans people have been competing as the gender they identify with for decades. It's only recently that mostly cisgender people had a problem with it and are making rules around their participation.

Transgender Runners In the past few years as a Race Director, I've had to deal with feedback on the fact that I awarded a podium position to a male-to-female transgender runner at VT100. ... Non-Binary Runners The registration company that I use (runreg.com) defaults to allow runners to register for any of three gender categories - 'male', 'female' or 'non-binary/prefer not to answer'. ...

We did consider, initially, just having a third gender category for non-binary athletes. However with only few athletes identifying this way, in some races simply selecting 'non-binary would qualify a runner for the overall non-binary victory. Further, it would ultimately be a scenario where 'sub-elite men' could quickly determine that they would be eligible for overall victories if they register for non-binary.

I'm pretty sure there was some negative vibes toward Lauren Jeska dominating women's fell-running.

Since the TG status was largely kept a secret, obviously people didn't speak too publicly.

rojo wrote:

Fantastic point. You basically want to be smaller for running. But for the WNBA it would be awful. I mean17% of US men who are 7 feet tall make the NBA, I imagine it would be close to 100% for the WNBA.

broken arrow wrote:

You are either a male or female at birth, regardless of what crazy plastic surgery or hormonal therapy you have had.

Except for the FACT that some are born with BOTH sets of reproductive organs.