Male, Female & Transgender/non-binary Sport categories

We need to come up with options that are palatable for all

No we don't. Male and female categories based on sex. 'Gender' is entirely irrelevant. Especially when 'trans' can mean anything from a man simply saying he's a woman and changing nothing to full reassignment surgery. No one can change sex.

If males aren't good enough to compete with their own sex class. Tough.

If females want to take drugs that give them a greater advantage over other females. They don't participate as it is cheating.

There is nothing 'complex' or 'sensitive' about it.

You make a lifestyle choice that affects your own participation in sport, your problem. No one else has to 'accommodate' you or provide validation for your identity. The rules still apply to you, based on your sex.

There is a very simple solution - it just needs people to listen when women say no. It really shouldn't be our job to find a solution. It shouldn't be up to us to fudge sports so men can compete as women. And frankly even if we find a way to nullify male advantage in sport it will be used to push boundaries further and justify men in womens prisons, hospital wards, rape crisis support groups and DV refuges.
We say no that should be enough. Men are not women, women are not non-men, we are not men with less testosterone, women are not high heels, lipstick and giggling. Male bodies have no place in female spaces.

@Runningupthecurtains

Horribly complex yes, I agree. But it is possible. The Paralympics prove that we can make such assessments. From what I have read, it isn’t without controversy but it is generally seen as fair.

But it could also be seen as so horribly complex and still unfair to women, that it pushes forward the idea of separating trans sports. Because we tried and failed to find a solution to include trans athletes

I just looked up that 'they' Zackary Harris who is listed as the first place non-binary at last years NYC marathon. He came in 1033rd place, including 138 women who finished ahead of him. (And 1033 for a 3hr09min marathon time is an unusually low number, in 2019it would have been around 2400, indicating a lower number of runners, likely due to Covid.) But he got newspaper articles about him for being the fastest NB and he was miffed that he wasn't awarded prize money.

A non-binary category would just end up as a category for shitter males with no shame. The winners would all be biologically male for the same reason that female sports need protecting. And those males would almost certainly all just be, in races, doing times slower than the top 50 or so males but get a medal because they are so special. It would be a joke.

It would be like this joke the New York marathon made of itself by giving a mediocre man a special award, as First Place - NB, even though his time was a full hour behind the man who came third but identified as a man.
www.outsports.com/2021/11/17/22785781/nyc-marathon-2021-zackary-harris-non-binary

@Mysteryclub
We need to back away from trying to accommodate male bodies in female sport. It's not safe, it's not fair. We don't need to tie ourselves in knots trying to be accommodating. If we went with your handicap plan and said well the women's record for X event is Y% slower than the men's record would we give men a Y% handicap or would we subtract something to account for reducing testosterone or the use of female hormones? If a new women's record is set that reduces the gap between the male and female records would a trans competitor in that race then be give a revised time? Or any trans competitor in the discipline? Will the handicap be fixed at the same for all events and reflect aboard average even if this means in some event men competing will have an advantage? It's would need to be horribly complex and still doesn't address team sports or contact sport. The very simple solution is sport needs to be separated by sex - if those who feels their gender if different to their sex don't want to compete in their sex class they need to create their own category.

@Runningupthecurtains
@ErrolTheDragon

It’s a valid point that this wouldn’t work with contact sports.

@Runningupthecurtains
An argument about a trans athlete complaining that they have lost by.5 secs, I’m not sure how likely this is to be. Categories would have to be established at the outset and their implications understood. I’m not sure how many results in the Paralympics are contested because of the categories each athlete is placed in and what impact that has on their result.

If the ultimate goal is sports defined by sex. That women only complete against women, then how do we get there? Because right now women and girls places are being taken by biological males. Their scholarships and podium places taken from them. The reality is, right now there is not enough trans athletes to develop separate leagues/races across all sports. This could be seen as an intermediary step, to accommodate trans athletes until each sport can move forward and develop trans only leagues. It means right now, we could be making rules that makes sport fairer for women. It’s not prefect but can be seen as part of a bigger movement to separate trans sports.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4413181-Non-binary-runner-at-NYC-marathon

[quote Mysteryclub]@ErrolTheDragon

We know that biological men are not women. I understand the argument of not comparing apples and oranges. But Jacob Bronowski also tells us that science seeks to order and categorise. That Newton found a way to group an apple and the moon.
This way would allow those with a Trans identity (which they believe to be female) to come under the category of female sport but that the bar set is by the female sex. Delayed starts, seconds added, we see from the paralympics how to level the field.
It could also mean that a trans athlete coming under the female sports category doesn’t necessary race directly against females. It’s the time recorded and adjusted to see where they place.
I’m not saying this is the answer, but it’s an option. What is happening right now to women in sport can’t continue. We need to come up with options that are palatable for all[/quote]
How would that even begin to work in team sports or in contact sports. Do we tell a man they can box against a woman as long as they don't hit too hard?
When a male in the female category loses by .5 of a second will they be happy or will they complain that their delayed start penalty was too harsh and actually they should have started a second early and therefore won by .5 of a second. Separated by sex is the only way to maintain safety and fairness.

I think we’d need three categories - men’s, women’s AND open because I also don’t think it’s fair to ask men to rugby tackle, box, go all out in professional sport etc with females (especially pregnant females) who identify as men.

We’ve already seen pregnant women giving birth not realising they are pregnant and also serving on the front line of war zones at 8m pregnant. We know that the menopause affects women physically. Sex matters.

Where would NBs compete
Where they compete at the moment. As far as I know no non binary person born female competes with men and vice versa. They seem to be quite happy to compete with members of their own biological sex.

Presumably transmen can't compete anywhere as the level of artificial testosterone would exclude them from competing in the male category?

On another note there used to be campaigns for open categories to allow drug using - effectively an anything goes category

Where would NBs compete?
In the female+ open - exactly the same as anyone else of their sex (assuming unmedicalised). Their gender or lack thereof is irrelevant.

science seeks to order and categorise.

There's a perfectly clear scientific categorisation already. Your ideas may strive to be kind to transwomen but they aren't good for women, and only a partial solution. They wouldn't work for contact sports. It would be hard to assess the different factors of male vs female frames/development/basic biochemistry ... much better to compare different types of apples and then make the adjustments from there.
We really just need to be clear - sport isn't gendered, it's sexed. Sorry, everyone can't have everything they want.

Transmen can sometimes get a therapeutic use exemption for testosterone at the moment when competing in men's categories. However, yes they might need to choose between testosterone and sporting competition.

I'd assume a transwomen and transmen category would both be needed as opposed to one trans category

As you say, an open category would exclude T-taking transmen from sports competition unless there were yet another division which this creation of new divisions had been intended as a solution. Where would NBs compete?

I’d say men and womens (XY and XX respectively).
Or open and womens.

Like you say women have to make life altering sacrifices like postponing having families or risking having them altogether. Which I think is a bigger deal than whether or not to pop a pill.

I think Jenner stopped taking estrogen to pursue his relationship and have a family with Kris Jenner. Again, family reasons, it's notable he transitioned when their kids had grown up.

@ErrolTheDragon

We know that biological men are not women. I understand the argument of not comparing apples and oranges. But Jacob Bronowski also tells us that science seeks to order and categorise. That Newton found a way to group an apple and the moon.
This way would allow those with a Trans identity (which they believe to be female) to come under the category of female sport but that the bar set is by the female sex. Delayed starts, seconds added, we see from the paralympics how to level the field.
It could also mean that a trans athlete coming under the female sports category doesn’t necessary race directly against females. It’s the time recorded and adjusted to see where they place.
I’m not saying this is the answer, but it’s an option. What is happening right now to women in sport can’t continue. We need to come up with options that are palatable for all

That’s not my point. That women are impaired men. My point, is the advantages that a male bodied person would have would be acknowledged and set against the bar of a female athlete.

But it would be the inevitable effect. Better (for women) to stick with reality - suppressing testosterone etc may impair transwomen relative to men but they're still males. We don't have male and female categories merely as social groupings, it's fundamentally because we have 2 dimorphic sexes.

Female athletes routinely have to make hard life choices particularly around their fertility and when/whether to have kids. Serious trans male athletes can do similar - Jenner was an outstanding athlete and then medically transitioned afterwards.

There's the issue in a lot of sports that the athletes affect each other- eg in all water sports including swimming, rowing, the advantage of being at the front with undisturbed water is known. So having differecategories racing together has an impact.

I'd favour female and open. Where female means no Y chromosome. And the efforts made to improve diversity in sport focus on making the open category inclusive and welcoming to all, rather than on allowing males into the female category.

I agree that an open category is a concession with a risk of devaluing women's sport. It is, however, not a lie. The current situation cannot stand.

There is of course also the issue of how results in the open category are reported... 'fastest woman' etc.... but that's another thing.

Justin Fashanu

There is no one currently out in the UK. Josh Cavallo is out playing in Australia’s top flight football league and has received homophobic abuse for it.

Fashanu was subjected to homophobic abuse throughout his life and committed suicide, so not exactly a beacon for male sport inclusivity.