Debunking “unfair advantage” myths about trans athletes...

[SoCaliGirl]

I don't have any issue with trans individuals competing in segregated sports on either side as long as they are undergoing HRT.

 

Interesting info:

 

After transgender women have undergone the medically accepted two years of hormonal replacement therapy; it is actually more difficult for transgender women to attain and maintain the same muscle mass and testosterone levels as the average non-trans woman; leaving them at a slight disadvantage in terms of female only sporting competitions etc.

 

https://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/debunking_unfair_advantage_myths_about_trans_athletes_partner/

 

http://www.outsports.com/2013/6/26/4467346/trans-athletes-fallon-fox-fairness

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/do-transgender-athletes-have-an-unfair-advantage_b_4918835.html

 

http://www.outsports.com/2011/9/12/4051806/moment-22-international-olympic-committee-allows-transgender-athletes

[Mister Mister]

sorry why is this important?

[Wuzzums]

Skeletal structure remains the same which offers them an advantage over women in most sports regardless of muscle mass. There's a reason why there's no such thing as an unsegregated sport. Men are simply built for physical labor and hormone therapy cannot fully erase 3 billion years of evolution.

[ValueOfBrevity]

You are claiming that medical technology can make the physical differences between an adult man and an adult woman trivial.

This is unfounded.

[SoCaliGirl]

Skeletal structure remains the same which offers them an advantage over women in most sports regardless of muscle mass. There's a reason why there's no such thing as an unsegregated sport. Men are simply built for physical labor and hormone therapy cannot fully erase 3 billion years of evolution.

 

What were your thoughts about the portion of the article that specifically addresses your concern?

 

You are claiming that medical technology can make the physical differences between an adult man and an adult woman trivial.

 

This is unfounded.

 

When did I do that?

sorry why is this important?

 

You seem to have felt it was important enough to read and then post a snarky comment that contributed nothing of value to the thread...

[dsayers]

You seem to have felt it was important enough to read and then post a snarky comment that contributed nothing of value to the thread...

I detected no snark. There is never any harm in asking one's self or others questions like "how do you know?" or "why is this important to me/you?" Based on the posts I've seen, I would wager that the answer is something along the lines of "this is a topic that I am passionate about and I wanted to get the input of a philosophical community."

[Wuzzums]

What were your thoughts about the portion of the article that specifically addresses your concern?

 

 

I didn't waste any time reading any of them. This thread immediately made me think of Fallon Fox. I then saw one article was about her with the word "debunking" in the title. I googled the author's name and saw how she had nothing to do with the world of MMA. It's her word against that of actual professionals. The case is clear.

 

However I went back to the article to humor you and saw this paragraph proving my point: "Try this thought experiment, if you were looking at two different skeletons would you be able to tell what gender, race, or age they were? Even trained forensic scientists can only tell this information correctly 9 out of 10 times."

[Will Torbald]

I'll take the empirical evidence that every single time a transwoman enters a female sex sport they destroy the competition as enough for me to reject all rationalistic arguments that it is a myth. Sorry, but the experiment has been done. They win.

[SoCaliGirl]

I'll take the empirical evidence that every single time a transwoman enters a female sex sport they destroy the competition as enough for me to reject all rationalistic arguments that it is a myth. Sorry, but the experiment has been done. They win.

 

Do you think it's possible that the majority trans men and women competing in sports don't "destroy the competition" and therefore don't make headlines?

I detected no snark. There is never any harm in asking one's self or others questions like "how do you know?" or "why is this important to me/you?" Based on the posts I've seen, I would wager that the answer is something along the lines of "this is a topic that I am passionate about and I wanted to get the input of a philosophical community."

 

I agree with this.

[Will Torbald]

Do you think it's possible that the majority trans men and women competing in sports don't "destroy the competition" and therefore don't make headlines?

 

It's not an impossible scenario, but given the media's high interest in every trans-sport story, I don't know if I can assume there is a large group of trans athletes that no one is talking about.

[Guest Gee]

Anyone here ski?

 

Men's ski boots are higher cut than women's ski boots.

 

This is because men's calves are higher up on the leg than a women's.

 

This means men have longer tendons.

 

This means men can store more energy in their tendons during locomotion and during explosive activities.

 

This means they can use energy more efficiently during locomotion: http://www.brown.edu/Research/Functional_Biology/files/26.pdf

 

This also means they have a greater capacity for explosive movement: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17685695

 

Of course men don't just have longer tendons, men's tendons are stronger and much less prone to injury (a huge advantage!): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17696904

 

Should I continue? We could fill this entire board with information just about the advantages of men over women in just a tendon, irrigardless of wether the man is mentally ill and has mutilated his genitales or not. There is a whole "science" called sports science which churns this sort of stuff out about everything you could imagine.

[SoCaliGirl]

It's not an impossible scenario, but given the media's high interest in every trans-sport story, I don't know if I can assume there is a large group of trans athletes that no one is talking about.

 

The vast majority of trans men and women 'go stealth' post transition and blend right back into society... No one would ever know if someone were trans most of the time...

 

Anyone here ski?

 

Men's ski boots are higher cut than women's ski boots.

 

This is because men's calves are higher up on the leg than a women's.

 

This means men have longer tendons.

 

This means men can store more energy in their tendons during locomotion and during explosive activities.

 

This means they can use energy more efficiently during locomotion: http://www.brown.edu/Research/Functional_Biology/files/26.pdf

 

This also means they have a greater capacity for explosive movement: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17685695

 

Of course men don't just have longer tendons, men's tendons are stronger and much less prone to injury (a huge advantage!): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17696904

 

Should I continue? We could fill this entire board with information just about the advantages of men over women in just a tendon, irrigardless of wether the man is mentally ill and has mutilated his genitales or not. There is a whole "science" called sports science which churns this sort of stuff out about everything you could imagine.

 

Seems like there is likely a lot of very minute positive and negative advantages and disadvantages on both sides; do you think that trans women have more advantages than disadvantages? How about in comparison to trans men?

[Mister Mister]

All things being equal, would you rather fight a 150 lb woman, or a 150 lb trans woman who went through puberty as a man?

[SoCaliGirl]

All things being equal, would you rather fight a 150 lb woman, or a 150 lb trans woman who went through puberty as a man?

 

This seems a bit fallacious in that it seems to seek to ignore the nuance and scientific analysis that is the topic of the thread lol...

[Libertus]

Unless anyone here is running a sports association, I don't see why we should have to know these things. If the NBA wants to ban a certain group of athletes from being a member of their members-only club and participating in their competition, it should be their right to exclude and discriminate by whatever standard, whether it's medically right or wrong does not matter unless you're one of the decision-makers. Sure, if everybody has to have an opinion about everything, everybody has to become an expert in everything.

[algernon]

Interesting info:

 

After transgender women have undergone the medically accepted two years of hormonal replacement therapy; it is actually more difficult for transgender women to attain and maintain the same muscle mass and testosterone levels as the average non-trans woman; leaving them at a slight disadvantage in terms of female only sporting competitions etc.

 

 

So after 2 years of HRT you stop taking everything?

[SoCaliGirl]

Unless anyone here is running a sports association, I don't see why we should have to know these things. If the NBA wants to ban a certain group of athletes from being a member of their members-only club and participating in their competition, it should be their right to exclude and discriminate by whatever standard, whether it's medically right or wrong does not matter unless you're one of the decision-makers. Sure, if everybody has to have an opinion about everything, everybody has to become an expert in everything.

 

Not sure anyone would contest voluntary association angle, the focus of the 'opinions' around this topic has unfortunately been clueless people making uninformed and relatively hateful comments against trans athletes when they see a headline. (not in this thread, but in mainstream news articles & comments)

 

So after 2 years of HRT you stop taking everything?

 

Depends, it is my understanding that most trans women stop taking 'blockers' after 2 years when their body gives up trying to make testosterone and only need to take estrogen from there on out so that their body has normal female hormone levels.

 

I assume a similar story is the case for transgender men but in reverse.

[Libertus]

The focus of the 'opinions' around this topic has unfortunately been clueless people making uninformed and relatively hateful comments against trans athletes when they see a headline. (not in this thread, but in mainstream news articles & comments)

But that's also my point, people don't need to be informed and loving about these things, unless they happen to run a sports association. And everybody can avoid being subjected to comments in the mainstream media by avoiding mainstream media altogether. "Problem" solved.

[Troubador]

The problem is there are different ranges for both women and men regarding things like height, muscle mass, strength etc. When we start to approach human peaks the ranges tend to be dominated by men. There are definitely lots of women who can compete and excel against men in the middling range. Now a man who is perhaps in the right point on the spectrum upon hrt may be right in the sweet spot to be "fair" competition for peak females, but hrt doesn't exist to create absolute parity between a transwoman and average women, it creates an approximation.

 

If you are really interested in creating parity at a competitive level, which is a goal I can see why you might. Sport is a fantastic community focus point, teaches values like determination, coping with failure and competition, and I'm all for inclusion and aspiration. However what you'd need is a reframing of the boundaries at a competitive level with respective tolerances and potential putting people in the right band. Just like you wouldn't put a bantam weight boxer against a heavyweight.

 

You'd still have men dominating in the top tiers, but what your proposing will serve to completely all but erase a lot of women at the higher levels. I also note that the discussion as it stands seems to focus exclusively on transwomen, trans men I note as usual are left entirely out in the cold as usual. Any solution that allows only half the trans community to compete only solves half the problem imho.

[Guest Gee]

Seems like there is likely a lot of very minute positive and negative advantages and disadvantages on both sides; do you think that trans women have more advantages than disadvantages? How about in comparison to trans men?

 

Here is what you do.

 

Look for any performance test which is used to predict future performance, just check out the NFL combine there are lots (vertical jump, standing broad jump, max rep bench, max strength deallift/squat/bench/clean and jerk/snatch, 5, 10, 20m sprint, 2k row, cooper test, yoyo test, bleep test etc...)

 

Look at values for men and women normalised by lean body mass.

 

Look for any value for which women are better than men.

 

But you don't find any, there are literally no advantages because the gene set that produced men that were physically less able than women went extinct.

 

I don't know what a trans is, men who mutilate their genitals and dope estrigen are just mentially ill low-test men, women who mutilate their genitals and dope testosterone are just mentially ill women on steroids.

 

One advantage a women would have over the mutilated, mentally ill, low test man, is that the man has a 41% chance of trying to kill himself. I think people who try to kill themselves proberlly make bad athletes.

[algernon]

Other than the obvious possibility of cheating, by deciding your TRT doses need modification to be in the "proper" (e.g., best range to be better than everyone else) you also have to consider the fact that something like the vertical jump is a measure of athleticism, the reason being is the vertical jump cannot be trained to any considerable degree. If you have two athletic people, or at least reasonably fit, whatever their vertical jump is now, regardless of the amount of training it will increase very little.

 

The vertical jump is a measure of explosiveness, the ability to recruit muscles quickly, you cannot train it.

 

The average vertical jump for men falls between 16 to 20 inches while it is around 12 to 16 inches for women. A good vertical jump is one that's over 2 feet for males and over 20 inches for females. As you move towards the upper end of the genetic pool for athleticism these numbers diverge further, here is an example from the University of Lincoln records page-

 

Mens Basketball

Ross Buckendahl  37" - 5/2/01

 

Womens Basketball

Tanya Upthegrove 26.5" - 10/13/94

 

You can search and find many male athletes with 40"+ verticals

 

The average female college basketball player has a vertical leap of approximately 19 inches, compared with more than 28 inches for the average male player. Hormones will not change this. You cannot chop off a few bits here and there, take some hormones and change this. You cannot change body proportions and muscle dispersion. You cannot change neurological recruitment speed of muscle fibers.

 

Gender is a biological term, it is not an idea or thought process. Some animals possess the ability to switch genders when it's beneficial for survival of the species, humans do not possess that ability, and medicine isn't capable of facilitating it (yet, anyway).

 

I really don't care about sports at all, never watch them and don't care. The sports organizations can do whatever they want, if it becomes standard practice to include men in female sports, who wish they were born women, I think what we will start to see (if there are enough trans women out there who are natural athletes), is women slowly displaced by men, in female sports. You will have the NBA, and then you will have the Trans-WNBA, bye genetic female athletes. 

 

There is a reason there are no females in the NFL, and there never will be. Taking exogenous testosterone will not change that. You will never see a trans man legitimately compete in a male sport.

[AccuTron]

How is vertical leap measured, relative to what point of the body?  Are we talking about a running jump?

[algernon]

How is vertical leap measured, relative to what point of the body?  Are we talking about a running jump?

 

Standing, planted vertical jump, here is a short video demonstrating it using a Vertec -

 

You measure the highest point you can reach planted, and then the highest point you can touch while jumping.

 

[SoCaliGirl]

Other than the obvious possibility of cheating, by deciding your TRT doses need modification to be in the "proper" (e.g., best range to be better than everyone else) you also have to consider the fact that something like the vertical jump is a measure of athleticism, the reason being is the vertical jump cannot be trained to any considerable degree. If you have two athletic people, or at least reasonably fit, whatever their vertical jump is now, regardless of the amount of training it will increase very little.

 

The vertical jump is a measure of explosiveness, the ability to recruit muscles quickly, you cannot train it.

 

The average vertical jump for men falls between 16 to 20 inches while it is around 12 to 16 inches for women. A good vertical jump is one that's over 2 feet for males and over 20 inches for females. As you move towards the upper end of the genetic pool for athleticism these numbers diverge further, here is an example from the University of Lincoln records page-

 

Mens Basketball

Ross Buckendahl  37" - 5/2/01

 

Womens Basketball

Tanya Upthegrove 26.5" - 10/13/94

 

You can search and find many male athletes with 40"+ verticals

 

The average female college basketball player has a vertical leap of approximately 19 inches, compared with more than 28 inches for the average male player. Hormones will not change this. You cannot chop off a few bits here and there, take some hormones and change this. You cannot change body proportions and muscle dispersion. You cannot change neurological recruitment speed of muscle fibers.

 

Gender is a biological term, it is not an idea or thought process. Some animals possess the ability to switch genders when it's beneficial for survival of the species, humans do not possess that ability, and medicine isn't capable of facilitating it (yet, anyway).

 

I really don't care about sports at all, never watch them and don't care. The sports organizations can do whatever they want, if it becomes standard practice to include men in female sports, who wish they were born women, I think what we will start to see (if there are enough trans women out there who are natural athletes), is women slowly displaced by men, in female sports. You will have the NBA, and then you will have the Trans-WNBA, bye genetic female athletes. 

 

There is a reason there are no females in the NFL, and there never will be. Taking exogenous testosterone will not change that. You will never see a trans man legitimately compete in a male sport.

 

There are hundreds of trans men "legitimately" competing in male sports...

 

"The average female college basketball player has a vertical leap of approximately 19 inches, compared with more than 28 inches for the average male player. Hormones will not change this."

 

Assuming this is accurate, what do you think is responsible for the difference?

 

Also, do you not believe there is any difference at all between the words "sex" and "gender"?

It's not an impossible scenario, but given the media's high interest in every trans-sport story, I don't know if I can assume there is a large group of trans athletes that no one is talking about.

 

I can understand why you might think that; for myself, having met hundreds of trans men and women, I know there are thousands of trans men all across the country that are 100% "passable" (it's very very easy for trans men to 'pass') engaged in body building and all sorts of 'manly' sports. Trans men tend to gravitate toward body building and hardcore 'male' oriented sports as a way to build up their bodies and engage in affirming activity.

[algernon]

There are hundreds of trans men "legitimately" competing in male sports...

 

"The average female college basketball player has a vertical leap of approximately 19 inches, compared with more than 28 inches for the average male player. Hormones will not change this."

 

Assuming this is accurate, what do you think is responsible for the difference?

 

Also, do you not believe there is any difference at all between the words "sex" and "gender"?

 

I can understand why you might think that; for myself, having met hundreds of trans men and women, I know there are thousands of trans men all across the country that are 100% "passable" (it's very very easy for trans men to 'pass') engaged in body building and all sorts of 'manly' sports. Trans men tend to gravitate toward body building and hardcore 'male' oriented sports as a way to build up their bodies and engage in affirming activity.

 

My references were to competitive professional sports such as NFL, NBA, MLB, or the Olympics. These are the organizations which actively seek out and attract the absolute best. I'm sure at lower level organizations as you get more towards the average on the bell curve you could have trans men competing. I used to play low level softball, and there were plenty of women that were better than me and other men on the team, but once you get towards the right side of the bell curve they wouldn't have been able to compete with men.

 

Regarding the "assuming this is accurate", what is responsible? Evolution.

 

There are other interesting differences between men and women when it comes to training. You can't train men and women the same, if you look at powerlifting competitions you might have a man doing near his absolute max on a deadlift, the bar is moving slow and he barely makes it... Add 10lb to the bar, he lifts it up and the bar moves even slower, it's a real grinder but he completes the lift. Now you have a woman, she is lifting towards her max on the deadlift and the bar moves slow but she completes the lift, add only 5lb to the bar, it's glued to the floor, she can't move it at all. With men, expression of strength is more linear, and women parabolic, what might appear a less than maximal lift due to bar speed is actually near 100% of the capability of a woman, these are things not effected by hormones.

 

From my experience most people use the term sex and gender interchangeable, though I suppose over time as all words do change meaning, gender might be more widely accepted as the cultural idea of the sexes, and sex as the biological term. When a baby is born people ask "What gender is it". The baby has no preconceived notions what it wants to be.

 

I'm not sure if I would consider bodybuilding a "sport", though bodybuilders might disagree, my analogies were in reference to direct competitive sports. Though will you ever see a trans-man win Mr. Olympia or Mr. Universe?

 

Let me ask you this, if you took a NBA team and every single player 'transitioned', do you think it would be a fair competition for WNBA teams to play against them?

[LandoRamone30]

http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/census-lgbt-demographics-studies/gallup-lgbt-pop-feb-2013/

 

The Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender debate has been annoying me because I think there are more important things to talk about. I looked up the numbers. Often, if you watch any sitcom or movies LGBT are in the cast. You would think maybe 1 in 4 people identified as LGBT. Nope. The total population is much smaller than that. Then you have President Obama wanting to reorganize the whole of society for this tiny tiny group of minorities. When I saw the numbers I was floored. Statistically, these people make up 0% percent of the total population in 2012. If we magically add 4.7 million people to bring the LGBT 2012 population to 5 million people they would make up about 1.60% of the total population in 2012. If the 99.9% have to bend over backwards for the 0.066% percent how is that not tyranny of the minorities? What annoys me is that LGBT  would not even be an issue if not for the initiation of the use force from the government toward free innocent people.

[st434u]

Gender is a biological term, it is not an idea or thought process. Some animals possess the ability to switch genders when it's beneficial for survival of the species, humans do not possess that ability, and medicine isn't capable of facilitating it (yet, anyway).

 

I agree with everything you said, except I think the proper biological term is sex. Sexes for plural. As in, the male sex and the female sex. It gets confusing because nowadays in everyday speak, most people use the term "sex" as an abbreviation of sexual intercourse, i.e. copulation or mating. I think the term "gender" was originally created to differentiate between biological sex and the socio-psychological beliefs and behaviors relating to the identification to one of the sexes. I personally think gender is an even more confusing term, so I avoid using it.

[algernon]

I agree with everything you said, except I think the proper biological term is sex. Sexes for plural. As in, the male sex and the female sex. It gets confusing because nowadays in everyday speak, most people use the term "sex" as an abbreviation of sexual intercourse, i.e. copulation or mating. I think the term "gender" was originally created to differentiate between biological sex and the socio-psychological beliefs and behaviors relating to the identification to one of the sexes. I personally think gender is an even more confusing term, so I avoid using it.

 

You're right, I was thinking of how it is generally used and that's probably inaccurate.

[SirrusDundle]

This is an empirical question, and we do not have to rely on speculation. Do trans women in fact always or usually win against women in such a way that can be attributed to their innate physical advantages? If they do, then that needs to be taken into account, regardless of hurt feelings. If they don't, then it is similarly a dead issue, regardless of what our gut tells us. That being said, the doubt will always be there, so I wonder why trans women insist on having their cake and eating it too...

[SoCaliGirl]

This is an empirical question, and we do not have to rely on speculation. Do trans women in fact always or usually win against women in such a way that can be attributed to their innate physical advantages? If they do, then that needs to be taken into account, regardless of hurt feelings. If they don't, then it is similarly a dead issue, regardless of what our gut tells us. That being said, the doubt will always be there, so I wonder why trans women insist on having their cake and eating it too...

 

I was with you until the last sentence, which I don't understand.

[SoCaliGirl]

[SirrusDundle]

I was with you until the last sentence, which I don't understand.

What I mean is that even if a trans woman wins against a biological woman fair and square, it will never be viewed as a clean victory by the majority of people. So from that POV the choice is simple: follow your drive to make your body and social status conform to your perceived inner identity, or compete in a serious or semi serious sport and swallow the regret about the other thing, but not both. But it seems to me that someone like Fallon Fox wants to both blend into society as a woman, and undertake a role in which that will continuously be called into question. Maturity means--among other things--accepting gracefully that some choices preclude other choices. 

[Frosty]

It seems obvious to me that HRT would make it harder for male to female trans to compete against other men, and that there would be a natural disadvantage due to inability to grow and maintain muscle mass.

 

However that's not the same thing as saying that they're on par with naturally born females, the smart money would be that because they grew up male for some portion of their life and inherited benefits of being male during important growth periods and formed male skeletal structure but also suffer from diminished capacity that they'd lay somewhere between the average woman and average man in athletic ability.

 

I think it's something for athletes to figure out among themselves, what I'd expect to see is if it becomes a problem people do what they always do in the free market and vote with their feet, move to professional athletic competitions which support your preferred treatment of trans athletes, that is to say if you're a female runner and some trans woman joins the competition and thrashes everyone, stop competing there, go compete elsewhere where trans competitors are not allowed. The free market will sort the rest out.

[Boss]

Everything from height, hand size, feet size are on average bigger on a male body. Muscle/joint size and growth is different. Even the male brain is different.

Thinking a male who went through HRT doesnt have an advantage over a woman is absurd.


Salon.com is a pedophile enabler and defender. They are imo the worst leftest website. 

Jesus save us 

[Caley McKibbin]

I'm a track fan.  I was a track champ in school and and studied some physiology pertaining to it.  Even before puberty the top boys generally run faster than the top girls.  After years of hormone influence it is even more imbalanced and the structural changes are largely irreversible.  At least one important aspect in that category, the pelvis is a bit different in how the femur joint socket is oriented.  Maybe the one important reversible aspect, boys drop in body fat by 50% and girls increase by 10% from age 12 to 16.  A fairly recent study found that natural testosterone levels do not correlate with muscular protein synthesis, and women build muscle at the same rate as men on average.  All of the variation is intragender.  This means the male advantage is actually obtained before training starts.

 

So I regard this news as destroying women's events.  But I'm not surprised because the bureaucrats are clueless.