To think that trans athletes have no place in women's sports?

[cdvegan2023]

I don't think most people realise how huge athletic differences between men and women are, maybe because human sexual dimorphism doesn't appear that significant on first glance?

Not too long ago John McEnroe caused quite a stir by stating that Serena would only be around the 700 spot in men's rankings. He was called sexist, a caveman, pig etc. If anything, he was being generous and PC (as much as Mac can be, anyway). Andy Murray also stated years ago that "I would be surprised if they were inside 1000" . People don't seem to understand that the 1000 guy is still a very good player and that men's tennis is not only far more physical but also more technically complex.

www.express.co.uk/sport/tennis/822372/Andy-Murray-John-McEnroe-2010-best-women-top-1000-men-Serena-Williams

In football the best women's teams lose to local 13-14 yo boys all the time. The world cup winning USA team was demolished by a Dallas boys team , 2-5. The national aussie team lost 0-7 to a random boys team of similar ages. There are countless examples like that. And these boys are no world beaters either, many of them won't even sign a pro contract in their life, never mind start for Real Madrid. If no name barely teenage boys can outplay a top adult women's team without breaking a sweat , imagine how the women would fare against grown ass men. Checking wiki I could not find a single sport where senior women had better records than junior boys. Women's olympic results are often lower than men's who do it as a hobby at their local club. And don't even get me started on violent sports.... Aibu that this is insanity?

www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-boys-squad-beat-the-u-s-womens-national-team-in-a-scrimmage/

www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/australian-womens-national-team-lose-70-to-team-of-15yearold-boys-a3257266.html

[NettleTea]

sort of related www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3101669-A-Spartacus-letter-re-Jo-Cox-Leadership

[TheFickleFingerOfFate]

Totally agree. And frankly the same goes for those who are genetically on the fence - I get that they can't help it but their bodies respond to things in different ways and they simply should not be able to compete against genetically ordinary women.

[Scabbersley]

So if transwomen tick 'woman' in the forms, will the funders presume their are low levels of transwomen and spend more time trying to attract them??

[Andrewofgg]

When the question about sexual orientation was first asked in my office 90% ticked nothing at all or Prefer not to say. The office is 60% female so even if all who answered were women - which I doubt - half the office were women who would not answer even confidentially.

The response rate for religion was similar; for ethnic origin it runs at about 50%.

[Betty185]

why do funders want to know about the ethnic origin of participants? Isn't that data meaningless unless you have the data about the ethnic make-up of the area? Where do funders stop? Religion? Sexual orientation? What if participants all tick the Prefer not to say box?

They'll want to know if they are attracting under-represented groups into their sport - They can look at the data in relation to the ethnic make-up of the area as that data is included in the census, although I don't know in practice what analysis they do. It can also help to highlight that there may be barriers to certain groups participating that need to be addressed.

We weren't asked to provide information on religion or sexual orientation in this instance - although there are LGBT and LGBT friendly sports club which can receive funding from LGBT funders so I would imagine that data will be confidentially gathered in some cases. People can tick 'prefer not to say' so the validity of the data would be dependent on how many people are prepared to answer the question.

I think the equality monitoring data issue indicates a more general point though - I can see that in some of the clubs I'm part of that it's 80% men - I don't need forms to tell me - and I've got a pretty good idea what some of the barriers are - but, if I try to raise it, the response is that 'we don't see gender/sex' and 'we just treat everyone the same' - even if that 'same' is a way that has been set up (unintentionally) to suit men, not women.

[BeyondAssignation]

When a study done on newborn babies - that haven't undergone any stereotyping plasticity - proves quantifiable sex difference that correlates with later tgism, I will stop posting on the matter.

Or perhaps when someone provides that non-circular definition of "woman" we're waiting for?

I foresee a long wait...

[WhatWouldGenghisDo]

So from from a quick skim of LanceLottie's paper (just looking at the structural data, I can't even be bothered to begin to address the problems with the functional stuff)

There are some studies comparing the brains of gay and lesbian trans people with the brains of heterosexual non-trans people. There may be some evidence that lesbians have a slightly more 'masculinised' brain structure than straight women; and gay men a slightly more 'feminised' structure than straight men. (Even if this is the case and if you accept this terminology we have no idea why - don't forget you can change your brain structure by being a taxi-driver). This actually tells us nothing about being trans as it appears no one has compared trans homosexuals with non-trans homosexuals (!)

There's only 1 study on heterosexual trans women (I.e. natal males) and it suggested that their brains were much the same as non trans males. Nothing on hetero trans men that I could see. And a bunch of mixed studies which are basically meaningless.

Happy to be corrected as only gave it a skim

[falange]

YANBU. And that's that.

[Andrewofgg]

Betty185 At the risk of being stereotyped as just another white male who doesn't understand: why do funders want to know about the ethnic origin of participants? Isn't that data meaningless unless you have the data about the ethnic make-up of the area? Where do funders stop? Religion? Sexual orientation?

What if participants all tick the Prefer not to say box?

[SlowlyShrinking]

Then you’ll be able to claim your back-dated pay rise StrangeLookingParasite

[Lancelottie]

Oops, forgot the clicky link (it's on PubMed)

[StrangeLookingParasite]

Maybe when the area of the brain that deals with liking pink and sparkles is discovered, it’ll be a different story...

And then I'll discover I've been a man all along!

[Lancelottie]

Brain studies have definitely been made of transgender people, but you have to wade through a hell of a lot of qualifiers before you can find any useful data.

There's a review here if anyone has an unwanted hour or two. They make the point that half the time, the study didn't specify whether the subjects were homo or heterosexual, or whether their transgenderism was early or late-onset.

Couple of things:
'In FtMs, the gross morphological parameters correspond to their natal sex; their cortex is generally feminine but differs from males in different regions than do control females'
[In homosexual MtFs]
'the main morphological parameters of the brain are congruent with their natal sex ...but... some cortical regions show feminine volume and thickness. Nevertheless, this feminine cortical pattern is not the same as the one shown by control females . So far, the studies on the white matter...strongly suggest that [homosexual] MtFs have their own brain phenotype'
[In nonhomosexual MtFs -- only one study mentioned]
'their data did not support the notion that the nonhomosexual MtF brain was feminized... MtF adolescents differ from both male and female controls... the cortex presents morphological peculiarities in regions in which male and female controls do not differ'

I think, though, that all of those were postmortem studies of structure, not MRI live studies.

[SlowlyShrinking]

Maybe when the area of the brain that deals with liking pink and sparkles is discovered, it’ll be a different story...

[WhatWouldGenghisDo]

Because there's as yet no consistent evidence of structural differences in transgender brains. Unlike, for example, taxi drivers' brains:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC18253/

[SlowlyShrinking]

Good question, BeyondAssignation!

[BeyondAssignation]

If the difference in brains is so significant, why are scans not used in diagnosis of tgism?

[CertainHalfDesertedStreets]

I have a mate who is a neuroscientist and she says that there is a lot of time put into studying this when theres not much at all to study as its pretty clear that there is no real differences (besides male brains being heavier and usually having more grey matter, apparently)

Yes I posted earlier in the thread about this. It's almost as though some massive group of people has a huge amount invested in finding reasons for societal inequalities related to biological sex..

Hmmmmmmmm.

[Scabbersley]

So if you believe in male and female brains, how do you explain, for example, a girl born with a girls body who is a tomboy, refuses all stereotypical girl things, will only wear trousers, answers to a boy version of her name, who then, once in her early teens, starts to grow her hair, experiment with make up, starts to wear skirts and is generally happy with being a girl? What's happened to her brain?

[Betty185]

YANBU OP. Even if we shared the belief that these people have a female brain in a male body, sports are segregated because of those physical differences in the body, not the brain.

Seeing the comments on here (which overwhelming seem to agree) has made me think back to a post I have been repeatedly seeing on Facebook.

I play a few different sports and, recently, I have been seeing a story about a 'transwoman' in one of these sports appearing high on my newsfeed - very pro-trans article about how brave and wonderful they are, how they've overcome such adversity to now (surprise, surprise) be a star player among all the biological women in the sport, how everyone loves and supports them etc etc.

It isn't from any source I've 'liked' or 'follow', it doesn't say that any of my friends like this source and it has been appearing repeatedly (like about a dozen times across different days) very high in my newsfeed (obviously picking up the fact that I like this sport and reference it/follow other pages related to this sport on Facebook).

It is clearly a sponsored, targeted link that Facebook is being paid to promote to people like me - so the trans lobby must think that sport, rather than being one of areas where people will draw a line and see sense, is a way to win people over. The comments on the post seem to be fairly evenly split between 'how brave/wonderful/inclusive' and 'this is crazy and unfair to women'.

I don't really understand how people can not see how unfair this is but then I think back to some of my experiences and some people's views of equality.

E.g:

• One sports club I help run was (after receiving funding) asked to provide equality data for participants (e.g. sex, ethnic background), one of the (white, male) organisers was up in arms about this saying that it was discriminatory to ask, that we as a club don't 'see' race/sex and that we treat everyone equally by not noticing race/sex.
  

• I can see in various sports I have been involved in how things are organised (unintentionally) by men in a way which works best for men and disadvantages women and some of them have low participation rates for women. When I have tried to raise this in local clubs and suggested improvements, I have been told things like 'but it's not the case that all men are strong/tall/good at x, women can be just as strong' etc and basically make an argument which makes them sound very progressive, that women can do anything they put their mind to, just as good as men, while ignoring the physical differences and the reality of the situation and that women clearly are being deterred from participating in their club.
  

Sorry - probably a slight tangent there but, in short, I think some people have a misguided view about 'equality' and 'progressiveness'.

[TheGoalIsToStayOutOfTheHole]

there are plenty of people trying very hard to find convincing sex differences in the brain and yet ... none of the evidence is very convincing

Yes, there does seem to be an extraordinary number of people seemingly desperate to prove sex differences in the brain. I have a mate who is a neuroscientist and she says that there is a lot of time put into studying this when theres not much at all to study as its pretty clear that there is no real differences (besides male brains being heavier and usually having more grey matter, apparently)

[WhatWouldGenghisDo]

The brain thing:

1. you can't tell, just from a scan, whether you're looking at a male or female brain. You can make an informed guess, but a significant proportion of the time it'll be wrong. Compare that precision with the precision you get from looking at someone's genitals. Genitals are a much better 'biological' marker of sex than brains
   
   
2. evidence of sex differences in brains often arises as a side-effect of some unrelated investigation and is therefore very dodgy (you publish if it's there, not if it isn't: it'll be there by chance 5% of the time because of the way stats work)
   
   
3. there are plenty of people trying very hard to find convincing sex differences in the brain and yet ... none of the evidence is very convincing
   
   
4. brains are plastic (I.e., develop depending on life experience) and given the very different socialisation girls and boys undergo it's actually amazing there's so little evidence for systematic sex differences, even without positing hard-wired biological differences over and above those related to body size

[CertainHalfDesertedStreets]

Don't answer questions with questions. It makes people sound like dicks.

Find me a basic guide to writing to argue which doesn't include the use of rhetorical questions.

It's, like, rhetoric 101.

[StrangeLookingParasite]

You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

Yeah, no, no shame here. Bit of embarrassment at your handmaideny social justice warrior ignorance, though.

Also a bit of a shame about Mawalls list of links, most of which prove the exact opposite of what she was hoping. The utter arrogance in calling Cordelia Fine a 'hack' is breathtaking. Who the hell do you think you are?

[TheGoalIsToStayOutOfTheHole]

She did not report it. She thought she would not be believed as she has previously tried to report a sexual assault (not a transperson, a normal bloke) and was basically laughed at.

Yes, lesbians are being pressured to have sex with male bodied people. And we are meant to pretend its not happening. Theres been what, maybe 20 years where it was fairly accepted that being a female attracted to females was fine, and now its going backwards again.