Transgender athletes face growing hostility: four tell their stories in their own words

Sport is such an unfair world, trying to find equality and justice in it is futile. We don't want kids taking growth hormones to boost their chances of making it into the NBA. But that also means we crush the dream of plenty of people. Athletes with asthma can't use their inhaler under certain circumstances. A few years ago an UFC fighter with Asthma got his win overturned because he used an inhaler inbetween rounds.

There was a huge discussion about allowing prosthetics in "regular" competition. Turned out at the time that proshetics weren't advanced enough to give an advantage. But I think we all know that this is only a matter of time. And eventually a hard ruling needs to be made that dictates in which direction sport goes.

Banning athletes who take as many hormones, hormone blockers, and other mediaction as transwomen usually take is 100% something that needs to happen. Especially considering that in certain leagues the usage of these substances is the only reason that transwomen are allowed to compete. That feels against the spirit of sport and TUEs. But untill more data exist, I doubt a useful ruling can be made.

What I don't like about the whole discussion is going for the "They aren't real women" argument. That feels degrading and hurtful for everyone involved. I don't want cis or transwomen to have to undergo inspections to determine their gender.

If you're position is excluding trans women from sport because of vibes you're just a transphobe.

There is no rabid hoard of transwomen waiting to overrun sport and sweep the awards. Until recently this wasn't even an issue, the Olympics has allowed trans women to compete from like 2000. Where are the medals?

We're a tiny population who generally perform worse than natal women because our T is lower. Despite all the contrived "just asking questions" about skeleton size or whatever nonsense there is no clear picture of advantage. At any rate tall women aren't banned from sport. Even women with PCOS aren't banned from sport.

We don't have seperate leagues for people raised in stable households on good diets and yet that's got performance benefits that swamp anything from having a slightly higher forearm to middle finger ratio or whatever insane thing people bring up.

This whole thing is completely drummed up and is just an acceptable way for the general unease cis people feel about trans people to be voiced.

In general, and I'm sure some people here will be incensed at the suggestion, people do not give a shit about women's sports and the only time many of them do is when they find out a "man" is competing in them.

Yeah it's a fairly standard grift now, they point at again random trans women winning (or make them up) and say it's not fair because obviously trans women are just dudes in wigs, and because that's what a lot of cis people think (or at most - they know that breast implants are a thing despite the fact trans women avoid them like the plague) and they screech about muh biomechanical males and females and whatnot.

You can explain and show a million times how most trans women have lower Testosterone levels than cis women do (weak biological loose regulation vs the cold perfection of medicine) and it will do fuck all because it's all pretense, if trans women were wizards who changed completely including genetically they'd still just wanna brand us for it.

So tiring and exhausting. All just screaming into the void. So much bloodlust. Can't wait for the civil war at this point.

EDIT: ah the bloodthirsty have come here

EDIT2: for all the people below saying I'm being too extreme just a reminder that I did not even say anything mean in this comment. Still downvoted to oblivion and disagreed with like some extreme take. You take from that what you will.

Trans women are biologically female btw in all ways that aren't literally just the presence of the Y chromosome, from gonads, to their blood, to gene expression :3

Sports are inherently unfair, and trans women's strength advantage is lost with transition.

Puberty blockers for minors are the compromise. (this would also eliminate the stupid sport shit hence why they wanna ban it)

I have said it before and I'll say it again: this issue exists to stir up controversy. Very few people can ever be professional athletes, but lots of people suffer as a result of the hostility generated by this debate.

Also, very few people talk about trans men in sport. There's no real justification for excluding trans men from sport other than fragile egos of male athletes being scared of being outperformed by an afab athlete.

Also also, if we're making the argument that people with higher exposure to testosterone for a short duration in their life have increased athletic performance (which to be clear is kind of true but not actually relevant for all trans women), then I have to remind you that anabolic steroids can benefit athletes for up to a decade, which is exactly much fucking longer than these drugs remain detectable in an athlete's system.

Also also also, professional sport is stupid and doesn't deserve this much attention. It certainly shouldn't be allowed to stir up this much hate toward regular ass trans folks just wanting to live their damn lives, but it does have that effect.