How do the people who believe gender is more important than sex think about the sport issue?

Would a TW compete in a woman's event if they thought they could win a men's one?

Other posters have done a much better job at expressing what I feel, but I'd just like to add my 2 cents.

I'm an experienced female runner and I've witnessed the differences between the sexes. Males have larger lung capacity and hearts, bigger muscles, generally longer legs etc. It all adds up.

It may be 'only' be about 5 transwomen a year, but they qualify and run the Boston Marathon in women's spaces. This event is prestigious and most runners have to time qualify by age and sex in another marathon to apply. This is also the event in which women were banned from running for decades and it took the likes of interlopers Bobbi Gibb and Katherine Switzer to prove that they could run it to open it up to women.

Those 5 slots have been taken from deserving females. I'd be open to a trans category. www.marathoninvestigation.com/2018/03/trangender-boston-marathon.html

Main thing I take away from it is that many people aren't very good at logical reasoning.

They know how to semi-intellectually justify a position, but they don't know how to interrogate it for coherence. Or they just don't want to.

The actual fallacy is obvious and straightforward - as Jon Pike just put it on Andrew Doyle's Free Speech Nation yesterday:

The argument that people advocating for Thomas's right to to swim is that those male advantages don't matter from the point of view of fairness. Now there's an argument there, but it's an argument for unisex sport - is an argument for the abolition of women's sport.

You could say, look let's just everyone compete in the same competition. No women's sport. Men will win all the time - almost all the time - because of their biological advantages.

What you've got here is actually a worse argument than that 19th century chauvinism. What you've got here is that with kind of added postmodern salt and pepper, yes, added seasoning, to say that, well, male advantage does matter so we should have a female category, but then male advantage doesn't matter for trans people to compete in that female category.

From what I can see there are essentially two groups of people on this.

One group actually believes that there is no real difference between male and female competitors. Most people like this aren't highly sporty themselves and don't work in very physically demanding sectors where they can directly compare themselves to people of the opposite sex.

They think that the idea of differences in this way is just sexism.

Then there are people who realize there is a difference but think it doesn't matter. Some of them think that basically if you are making transwomen compete with men, it is horrible and impossible, so in order to be welcoming and inclusive, they must be with women. They tend to value inclusion over eveyrthing else - that is the ultimate good.

Others believe that transwomen are just really good at sports compared to other women, in the same way tall people are better at pole jump. They have totally accepted the premise that TWAW in a completely literal way.

I have seen it argued that we should be reframing sport to make it about participating and not winning.

If girls/women are just as strong as boys/men, why are they worried about getting attacked because they could just flick them away like flies, surely?
And obviously the men's and women's sporting achievements etc would all be on a par too!
How stupid are these people??!!

Here are two of the arguments I’ve seen from trans allies:

One man said that the key test was how trans women actually perform in competition and as some of them hadn’t done very well, that proved they had no unfair advantage.

One woman said it would be unacceptable to make trans women compete in the men’s category as it would out them as trans.

.... and one of my pals was all for supporting JK Rowling and thought it was all rubbish until all of a sudden she said she had changed her mind and didn't want to talk about it any more.

She had seen all the abuse Laurel Hubbard had got and felt sorry for her and was rooting for her to win. I honestly don't know what to say to that, except that it's a very obvious and rather sad example of women always putting others first - abuse and threats hurled at women mean nothing, but when a trans woman is criticised, everyone feels sorry for them.

Because there is some indefinable and unspeakable quality that transwomen have which means that their views matter more than women’s views.

That would be their biological sex. Which is different to gender. And which illustrates why those of the female sex require their own spaces, services, resources and sports, because in a mixed sex group they are always subordinated.

I was floored at our last teacher training when I said that boys were stronger than girls, all the other teachers in the room - younger than me - turned on me and acted as though I had just said something appalling.

I remember thinking 'sheesh, girls are going to get hurt!!'

But then amongst my pals, many of whom have teenagers, it is amazing how many completely buy the untruths - a trans woman just has to lower her testosterone though and voila - exactly the same as a woman.

Solve the problem of athletes having the advantage of male puberty by giving young kids puberty blockers because it's completely reversible if they change their minds.

Etc.

Either they have believed what they have read, or they are just parroting what their teenagers are telling them.

Also, I have actually competed at a sport at European level and trained with men, so I know how strong and fast - and deadly - they can be compared with women. Without that actual physical experience maybe women really don't know.....

I've not read the whole thread so sorry if I'm repeating anything but I've worked with some very young women who would not accept that men are, as a sex, stronger and faster and thought I was old fashioned and sexist for believing otherwise. I used to joke that they'd been watching too many superhero movies and also put it down to their being fortunate enough to have never had to learn the hard way i.e from an assault. I never dared ask what they thought about transwomen in wonen's sport but I feared the worst.

Another argument is that affects so few people because transwomen are a tiny minority, so why even bother worrying about it.

I’m just checking in here to read the well argued, well thought out and scientifically based arguments from some of our regular contributors/ monitors.

Is there really nothing apart from

1. Transwomen are more like women as a class than they are like men as a class.

1. Transwomen should get what they want regardless of the cost to women. Because there is some indefinable and unspeakable quality that transwomen have which means that their views matter more than women’s views .

We have seen the arguments here and on other social media that because transitioned males will ‘shape’ their bodies to suit their perception of female, that means they lose muscle etc. This means they simply cannot compete as males.

Does that also mean any female who goes on a drastic diet to lose kilograms and have the figure they want should compete with the under 16s?

I mean posters have seriously used the argument that their own decision to reduce muscle condition and take hormones should be rewarded somehow. That the female category is their reward.

When it is perfectly clear that many females have to make very hard decisions on medications etc that will mean them not competing in their sports. The logic alludes me why anyone thinks this argument works for transitioned males when it doesn’t for any other able bodied category.

Some say things like some women have advantages over other women in sport, longer legs, more speed etc and so all sport is fundimentally unfair and has inequalities built into it, so transwomen just have an advantage given by nature and its all fine.
I think it was Lisa Nandy I heard with this argument.

Still there's no answer as to why we can't just have trans categories. It's almost like a shame thing. Surely the rational thing to do is have a separate group, not pretend you're identical to born women

Meanwhile , all that trans men need to do is... nothing, just use their natural testosterone and muscular skeletal advantage. easy- peasy.

There was that amazing poster a while ago who thought women should use their natural attributes of not being as big as TW and could thereby succeed in the "ducking under a bar" event, I seem to recall.

TM are allowed to take testosterone and compete in the male category