Trans women have no advantage in elite sport, new report finds
Trans women have no advantage in elite sport, new report finds
A new report has found that trans athletes do not have a biological advantage from things such as lung capacity and bone density.
FYI: i've given blackhole a(t least a) 3 day ban; you no longer need to engage with them in this thread, as it will not be productive to do so. thanks
To be clear, the report doesn't claim it's proven that trans women have no advantage in elite sports, but rather that the biomedical evidence is inconclusive and that the methodology of existing studies has been highly flawed.
It does go into some sociological factors which is good, and it draws attention to the fact that these studies are seemingly often conducted from a place of transphobia to begin with.
I suppose it's hard to do science on it as it's such a loaded topic, and the number of trans athletes is relatively small.
Right. I think that's a very important distinction.
To take it a step further, I think it's probably quite intuitive and obvious that if you're born a male, go through puberty as a male, you will have a different body composition than a female. Even with hormone suppressors. They are claiming there is no evidence that this is an advantage.
Well it is, absolutely, depending on the sport. I don't know that it could be proven that bone density, for instance, helps people perform better. But I know that some sports there is an advantage to being taller. And hormone suppressors aren't going to reduce that advantage. So that alone is definitive proof that being born a male and going through puberty as a male is advantageous in certain sports (as male's are taller on average, than females). I don't know how you could argue that isn't true.
I wish English had a more obvious way to distinguish "no evidence X is" and "evidence X is not." This type of confusion seems to come up a lot, especially about scientific reports where the language is very precise.
Even if there were a "biological advantage" the only reason people started to pretend to care about women's sports is because it's a way to alienate trans people. If there were a good faith discussion being had, it wouldnt be so infuriating.
I hope that something good comes from all this in the end.
Even with the high profile cases that got blasted all over the news (ex. Lia Thomas, Laurel Hubbard) it’s never talked about how those athletes still performed within the same range as their cis female competitors, even if they did perform well.
Lia Thomas won a Division I championship, but what's never mentioned is that her times are comparable to the previous years cis woman. Likewise, Laurel Hubbard qualified for the olympics, but no one talks about how she never ended up even placing.
People like to talk about how trans women are going to smash records etc. but rarely does anyone go back and see if they actually did. Which gives away the game.
Even if there is a "biological advantage", sports have had "biological advantages" all the time. Some people are taller than others, or have longer legs than others. All of the reactionary people don't care about fairness in sports because sports have never been fair.
I agree. But, for the sake of just exploring the thought process... IF the idea of trans women absolutely dominating cis women in sports were accurate (which does not seem to be the case), it would be something to discuss from a good faith perspective. Should we pivot to weight classes? Should there be a trans lady league? How do nonbinary folks fit in to this whole thing? Sports are inherently unfair, but that doesn't mean there's no room to talk about how we want sports to be.
It's really exhausting when every aspect of your life as a trans person has become politicized, because there are differences between cis and trans people generally, and they are worth talking about. Maybe one day discussions can be had that aren't simply thinly veiled transphobic talking points.
If we start to examine fairness in sports closer i think it all falls apart pretty quick. There are so much factors that can aid a competitor while drawing someone else back. Where someone was born, how they were raised, which trainers and equipment they have access to, what personal crisis happens to them, etc. all are things that are largely based on luck. Any rules that are made by the hosts of a given sports event are also somewhat arbitrary. That said, i do think there is an advantage for biological males in physical strength, even if it starts do diminish over time with HRT and even this study doesnt prove it otherwise, just states that previous studies were non conclusive.
I think what so often gets missed in these conversations (and they're conversations that happen a LOT in lots of social media spaces and off-line spaces) is that this discussion - about inclusion and access in high-end competitive sport - is absolutely having a negative impact on any trans person trying to engage in any sport and recreation at any level.
We know that sport, recreation, and exercise is a great protective factor for our health and wellbeing - and that trans and non-binary folks are engaging in those activities less often than our cis peers. The excessive attention on inclusion in sport (primarily conversations being had by laypeople, i might add) mean that those of us trying to play sport or exercise in our communities are hyper-aware of the discourse, are even more worried about what people might think of us - - and in some cases are experiencing heightened transphobia in our communities as a result.
Lots of sporting codes have introduced some great standards for trans inclusion that really work, and reflect the evidence base - and those decisions have been made by sports medicine experts and experts in those codes - and that's whose opinion i really trust, not people making assumptions based on what they think about sex and gender.
Exactly this. I really want to do some rec sports just to meet friends and stay active. With they way things are currently with sports - absofuckinglutely not. And ffs I've passed pretty flawlessly for the past 8 years now (although the first few years were rough), and I'm still terrified of that shit.
It's sad that I'm much more scared to be involved in sports now than I was 5 years ago
Yeah, I've been out 10 years and for a good five years at least being trans wasn't even a factor in a lot of my decision making any more - that's changed in the last 18 months with all the negative attention on us.
This article is also really good: https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-racing-discover-how-gender-transitions-alter-athletic-performance-including
It goes into detail on a real world athletics study (instead of studies on individual factors like muscle mass or grip strength that may not be representative at all of sport performance) in running that shows that after transitioning, trans women perform the same relative to their cis women peers as they did to their cis male peers prior to transitioning — i.e., same place in the distribution curve.
Key detail being "after transitioning".
Someone who says that they identify as trans but doesn't medically transition at all could still wreck competition. So sports competitions can't just allow all trans people, but only those who have medically transitioned. Then they need to figure out how to draw the line when it comes to different hormone dosages, surgeries, etc...
And all major governing bodies do, including the Olympics which opened up to trans people years ago. Making this statement about the system shows you're ignorant of the current state of sports governance.
At the end of this I linked an extract of a positive letter that United States Utah governor Spencer Cox wrote. It grounds the conversation back to Earth in a fantastic way. Bear in mind, he's specifically referring to student athletes in this discussion. So this is tangential to OP's discussion, but the underlying premise is near identical from my understanding.
https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/2d4b3581-fa4e-42d3-b2e2-cdb63c237c5c.png
That's the thing that I find particularly bad. Elite sports, sure there's transphobia aplenty but I get why people take it seriously at least. But kids' sports? Come on, people. Let the kids have fun without demanding you fucking inspect their genitals or whatever they are doing now. People take kids' sports way too seriously, I think it's really harmful.
I'm glad some people see that, like Spencer Cox.
The real issue trans women in sports potentially opens up is bringing scrutiny to the diversity of body and hormone levels people have and how that has a big influence on performance in sports, which would be a big change to sports categories and make blood tests mandatory, and im unsure sports orgs want to open that can of worms given it'd hurt some cis people, as there's already a few examples in a few sports
Would scrapping gender splits in sports and base catagories on weight work?
I honestly do not know and don't like sports in the slightest but it's a question that has come up while discussing things with my kid.
Lmao I could have told ya, I can barely do knee pushups since starting estrogen and spiro
