Female swimmers beaten by transgender athlete stage podium protest at ‘unfair’ result

[whytcvv]

When will the rules change as I completely agree this is unfair and I expect that you will all largely agree with me.

For anyone that doesn't agree, please explain your reasoning to help me better understand.

This reminds me of the weightlifting story from last year.

People that are born female and people who are born male should not be competing in these events together. Our physical bodies are not comparable.

Have as many genders as you can think of, but there are only two possible sexes that you can be born as and that is what eligibility in these competitions should be based on.

AIBU

Don't know how to add poll.

@SnowWhiteLobelia

There is an article where other swimmers are saying that LT is exposing their genitals and is clearly still attracted to women. That is where I got the erect penis from. I will try and find it.

Yes I remember that too. Might be the same one I’m referring to where the mother is talking about this.

I am so angry on behalf of those young women, forced to pretend to be okay with this.

@Dinoteeth yup there really are that many differences between men and women. Actually it’s more like 6500!

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170504104342.htm

The differences have a massive impact. Everything from the way certain health conditions present (did you know that the symptoms of a heart attack in women are different to those in men, but we only really hear about the male symptoms) to the way that drugs are absorbed by the body.

Highly recommend reading Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.

@DrivingHomeChristmas

Are there any stats on how many times Transpeople don’t win at races? Maybe she was the best because she was so motivated and worked hard? It must take a lot of determination to be a trans athlete and maybe that determination is in her sport preparation too.

Will Thomas was ranked something like 576th in the USA. As Lia Thomas, Lia is ranked the 1st woman.

Nothing to do with training or hard work. Men don't belong in women's sport.

Sally Gunnell got a huge backlash for calling this in athletics. She even had the stats showing the gains from testosterone alone.
She had people calling her transphobic and calling for her MBE to be stripped.

Apparently womens events are closed, mens are not.

Some of the posts on here are hateful and transphobic (I'm not talking about the ones saying transwomen shouldn't compete against cis women BTW, but the ones who try to insist transwomen are not women).

For my take on the debate I do agree that certain transwomen competing against cis women is akin to a cis women taking steroids/testosterone competing against cis women not taking these which would be seen as an unfair advantage.

Saying that, a transwomen competing against cis men can be seen as unfair in the same way if they've taken hormone replacement for a while as their testosterone levels would be much lower than the average man.

I do like the idea someone mentioned of transwomen having had to take hormone replacement for long enough to decrease their testosterone to cis female levels before being allowed to compete against cis females.

I also like the idea of having your women's sports, men's sports, then a free for all everyone can compete just because that sounds like it could be fun.

Haven't gone through all twelve pages (partly due to some of the hate) but in case anyone hasn't mentioned it, aside from the gender identities male, female, non binary, gender fluid, and everything in between, just considering for once the purely physical sex rather than gender categories you can pass on x or y to your children.

Xy is male at birth. Xx female at birth. However you can also get combinations such as xxy and xyy. Xyy presents as male sex. Xxy again tends to present as male, but has different levels of testosterone and characteristics to Xy.

Then you get into intersex. A baby born with both male and female parts. This gets complex as there are various causes. You can have Xx intersex, Xy intersex with all kinds of causes. If you have an Xy baby for example who is unresponsive to testosterone so has even less than a cis woman and thus more female and less male build and other characteristics than cis women, would you consider them male or female when it comes to sports.

Added to that you can get xxx or even xo (only one x chromosome).

I think op's question could make an interesting debate if we don't devolve into transphobia (including deliberately misinterpreting what trans is. I've seen a few posters who've phrased it as a flippant choice) and I greatly thank those of you who are considering the subject objectively and not filling this thread with more hate.

P.s. For the poster who stated transwomen were not women as they can't bear children, please think things through before posting. There are plenty of cis women who are also unable to bear children.

There's no such thing as "cis".

It’s totally not true that there are only two sexes. Honestly. It is completely biologically possible to be of mixed sex.

However, there remain only two sex categories in sport. So for the purposes of this discussion, there are only two sex categories available.

Starting from the assumption that it is fair and possible to be trans, what can be done?

Is it fair to ask a trans woman to give up her sport to be herself? No. Is it open to abuse? Yes. Are there sportsmen who would fake identification as female to be first. Yes. Is it fair on women who were born into female bodies they identify in? No.

So what’s the answer here? No trans women in professional sport? Seems pretty damn miserable and discriminatory. A trans catergory in sports? Surely most trans women would end up in categories virtually by themselves, unless being trans is a lot more common than anyone thought. Some sort of regulatory body that only allows trans women to complete if their trans nature doesn’t give them an unfair advantage or are given a handicap to reflect it ? Nightmare. But it does happen in other sports, doesn’t it?

I think the only answer is to exclude trans women from professional sports. It’s unfair to genuine trans women, I know. But it currently can’t be fairly inclusive. It’s fairer to be unfair to a small number of people than it is to be unfair to a much larger number of people. Professional sport is SO competitive that I think it erodes peoples true identities so far anyway, you already have to sacrifice so much to be the best (that’s part of the problem. It’s a sacrifice some men in this situation will happily make) this just seems like one more thing. I’m sure it doesn’t feel like to trans women, and there are very few real scenarios where gender matters so much. I wish I could envision something better, but I can’t. It’s not fair that trans women are excluded from sport. It’s not fair that women are excluded from winning by a trans women who has had the benefit of growing up with a male hormone profile. There are absolutely men who would transition fraudulently. It’s not possible to prove who they are. So we have to pick a least worst option. What else is there?

I also think it’s problematic that we place so much so emphasis on competition and being ‘the best’ and that debates like this, which affect a tiny minority of women and trans women, should dominate the trans rights movement. It simply isn’t most people’s reality, and rights and rules should benefit the majority, not be made for the outliers. If it’s not possible to be completely fair, we should strive for the most fairness we can practically manage.

I really hope this isn’t seen as anti trans. I’m genuinely not. I just can’t see what else can be done.

Zuby, the highly educated rapper, has been speaking out on twitter about how ridiculous and unfair this is for a while. In 2019 he became the women’s British deadlift record holder whilst identifying as a female (to make a point at how absurd it is!).

twitter.com/zubymusic/status/1100348562041462784?lang=en

There are women and there are men. There aren't two sexes of women.

Trans women are not female. They cannot change sex. It is not phobic nor hateful to state fact.

I just find it odd that they seem to want the outward appearance and ‘feeling’ of a woman but without the actual experience that being a woman brings.

I haven’t seen any reporting that suggests Lia Thomas’s penis is erect when Lia exposes their penis to their female team mates in the changing room. I’m flagging this because it’s important not to embellish and to let the facts speak for themselves.

Erect penis, flaccid penis - it's still a penis in the WOMEN'S changing room.

Men have no place in women's sport. They should not be in women's 'so called' safe spaces either. I say 'so called' because nowhere feels safe for women now

Stop using the C** term here on a board where we reject that term entirely and do not consent to its use. I will report every use of it.

I am a woman. I am not a subset of my sex.

Xy is male at birth. Xx female at birth. However you can also get combinations such as xxy and xyy. Xyy presents as male sex. Xxy again tends to present as male, but has different levels of testosterone and characteristics to Xy.

Calling people with disorders/differences of sex development "combinations" is offensive to many of them. They aren't more or less female or male than you.

@EvilPea

Aren’t they trialing the boxing changes at the moment? So trans women fighting women?

One of the UK sporting bodies, Sports Council England I think, published guidance on trans inclusion recently and came down on the side of safety and fairness. This meant saying it was kinda OK in non-contact events but not OK in contact and collision sports where the risks to women rapidly increase. The UK kickboxing body immediately came out in favour of trans inclusion, including males in women’s events…. Rugby Union is following the same line as kickboxing despite World Rugby’s very carefully balanced, well-evidenced review conclusions that transwomen cannot compete safely and fairly with women. Women will have to be maimed or killed and these sporting bodies sued into oblivion before women are even considered deserving of safety and fairness by the sporting bodies that should be safeguarding their participation. It’s disgusting.

I don’t think it’s brave I think it’s common sense, that’s not what I meant about Caitlyn Jenner though, I meant from when out of all the females on the planet, a trans woman who just changed gender is crowned women of the year who has been a women for about a year, then something is going on?
Not 1 actual woman - cis - natural - normal - woman I dunno what we’re allowed to be called anymore but what ever we are, not one was worthy enough to be woman of the year, because an ex man was what mattered, I dunno if it was the publicity off the back of the kardashian frenzy that’s taken over the world or people like the 1st commenter on this post that just presumes all people are so think and uneducated to understand these complex things, when the irony is it’s them that don’t seem to have any understanding of anything other than what the media is pumping out there.

I think that was the turning point of it all which set the standard of what women feel doesn’t matter because a man in what ever form is in, matters more than what any female females feel.

I don’t know if i have said that as well as I mean it but I think you get the jist.

So far we have had

• everyone has differences (did we get Phelps dropped as an example?)
• those girls should try harder (maybe dig deeper psychologically too)
• it is just a few, and they don’t always win
• what does it matter if one or two win anyway
• what about those with differences of sex development too.
• sex is a spectrum (I even saw the usual Ainsworth article posted )

Have I missed any listed here?

Xy is male at birth. Xx female at birth. However you can also get combinations such as xxy and xyy. Xyy presents as male sex. Xxy again tends to present as male, but has different levels of testosterone and characteristics to Xy.

None of this actually changes the fact that you can't change your sexual makeup.

No matter how much surgery you have, how many hormones you take, how you dress or present yourself, your body will still be immediately identifiable as the sex you were born as.

A trans women, will never be female. Females have Vaginas.Go fight for your own rights.

Amazing how such a small minority have managed to achieve these levels of crazy.

Saying that, a transwomen competing against cis men can be seen as unfair in the same way if they've taken hormone replacement for a while as their testosterone levels would be much lower than the average man.

Then they have a choice not to take the hormones as that would affect their body negatively for sport. Much like women athletes have the choice not to get pregnant for the same reason.

P.s. For the poster who stated transwomen were not women as they can't bear children

Why can't TW bear children? Can infertile women produce sperm? Stop with the gaslighting.

@ToCaden I don't wish to be rude but your entire post is a first class example of why a little understanding of biology is a bad thing.

Castor Semenya who is XY but naturally higher testosterone due to internal testes (DSD)).

Yes Castor was born XY. XY is male. Her testes didn’t develop properly, as they usually do in XY people that don’t have a disorder of sexual development.

Trans women are women and I’m happy to refer to Lia Thomas as she wishes to be referred to. However there are some exceptions and we can do this in way that is respectful and fair.

It is entirely legal to exclude trans women from female sports in the U.K. In the US the NCAA chose not to do that. They originally had a rule that trans women must have reduced testosterone for 36 months, which is at least more fair. However they removed that threshold this year and that’s why Lia Thomas is competing. That is wrong and unfair to women that were born female and don’t have that advantage.

Research has shown that it takes over 2 years of low testosterone/ oestrogen therapy for trans women’s metrics to mostly come down to female averages. If that doesn’t happen then yes it’s unfair.

So the NCAA were wrong to do this and should take the blame. Emma Weyant came second but I consider her the real champion.

Males and females have different bodies and that’s why we have male and female sports. If trans women’s stats don’t come down to natal women’s averages with treatment then they should not compete with natal women. We can still treat people like Lia as a woman in most other areas of life. Blame the NCAA. Celebrate Emma Weyant.

amp.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/15/testosterone-boosts-womens-athletic-performance-study-shows

This is an interesting study in testosterone