There have been various debates on trans athletes [in competitive sports] here on BigCloset. Here is a Fact Check on that subject.
I do not intend to open a controversy or even a debate on the place of transgender athletes participating in various professional, so-called amateur or school-based (secondary and tertiary level) sports events or competitions. Sadly the right and far-right political actors of the host country for the upcoming Summer Olympics are imposing unilateral rule changes based on ideological backlash.
After seeing a lot of ideological hate-mongering from so-called sports journalists, the Deutsche Welle yesterday published a science based fact check that pretty much achieves a neutral presentation of the available scientific facts without presenting or promoting a bias one way or the other. You can view this 8:42 minute report at Fact check: Banning transgender athletes from women’s sports – fair or unfair?.
Please consider this blog purely as a FYI.
Comments
Well
The excuse that is used is that an MtF athlete has a decided advantage. Assuming for a moment that's true. The advantage comes from going through male puberty.
BUT they also seek to prohibit T-Blockers, insisting that those are unsafe for kids. (Decades of research and implementation prove otherwise.)
The Cool Hand Luke of Junk Science.
Your Testosterone gives you an advantage.
Fine, I'll work with my child's doctor to secure T-Blockers
NOT SO FAST!!!
I lament the eleven-year-old trans girl getting kicked off medical help!!!!!!
Love, Andrea Lena
Hypocrisy
You don't allow TG girls to compete in women's sports, but you deny TG kids the treatments that will permit them to avoid a male puberty.
And allowing blockers and hormone treatments during teenage years prevents there from being a problem. Added to that is the actual percentage of TG participation in those sports where there might be some advantage is miniscule.
The solution is medical; the problem is political.
Thanks for the link
It’s a good overall summary, but a lack of details limits its usefulness. For instance, Lia Thomas won one race, tied for fifth in another, and finished eighth in her best event. Laurel Hubbard did get to compete, but couldn’t complete her first lift and did not place. If she had matched her best performance, she still would have been a distant second. No trans athlete dominates her sport the way Katie Ledecky does.
But for detractors, a trans athlete even placing third is “unfair”.
We need more real data, which we will only get by letting more trans girls participate. But GC politicians are blocking that, especially in the U.S. and UK.
And sports are not just about who wins. 99+ % of the participants lose. But there are social and psychological benefits to being able to participate. But the detractors don’t care.
The Newsom California compromise might help, but most states will just block it. Utah just passed a law to allow a relative of a Senator to get a lighter sentence for a statutory rape of a 13 year old girl. Utah only had one trans girl competing, but they passed a law to ban her and ‘protect’ the other girls.
The comment thread was discouraging. The usual facile, question begging assertions with no real discussion. But it’s near impossible to have a useful discussion on YT.
Gillian Cairns