AIBU - Transgender 'athletes'

[HappyHippo1234]

To start off - I have no issue with trans people at all. The only issue I have is transgender females (male to female) competing in women sports.

Yes, they may have been taking hormones and they have lost some muscle and gained some fat. But, they have stronger bones and bigger spines, hands, feet, lungs and hearts. Basically trans females have an advantage over biological females.

What I absolutely HATE about the situation, it the trans athletes attitude, it honestly disgusts me. Did they never take biology as teenagers or learn about puberty?
For them to sit there with their wins and say that they have no advantage just p*sses me off. Are they stupid or ignorant? There's no way they don't know they have an advantage. Do they not realise they are taking wins away from girls and woman who have spent their whole lives training for a sport only for it to be taken away from someone who was a mediocre male.

Look at Lia Thomas, she was somewhere in the 400-500th best college male swimmer or something like that. She is now trans and BAM she is number 1 and winning everything.

It just annoys me to no end. Especially the trans woman who you can tell that they KNOW they have a major advantage and are cheating the system and then sit there with a SMUG GRIN on their faces. I mean every Caitlyn Jenner said it's wrong.

Sorry for the rant. My DD15 has been upset all week as on the weekend another girl beat all the girls by a huge stretch in her cross country meet (her team is usually 1st but were bumped to 2nd). At first everyone thought this girl was great, until one mom heard the group the girl was with discussing the results and how it was great for the team that this girl came out as trans and was boosting their results etc! Fair to say that news travelled quickly and there were MANY parents complaining to officials. But surprise surprise nothing was done about it. So at the award giving ceremony everyone waited as everything up to 1st place was given out and as soon as they got to the 1st team, I would say 95% of people walked away. It felt harsh but necessary!
(Also the girl was 16 and had only recently transitioned from what we could gather and when you actually looked at her you could tell she had gone through at least some portion of male puberty). Again nothing against the girl just don't think she could compete.

And to get around all these discrimination lawsuits, I think they should change the categories! Have an XX category and an XY category, that why there is no debate and no 'discrimination' as you can't identify as XY if you are XX! (And then also have an open category where trans, non-binary etc. can compete).

SORRY THAT WAS SO LONG. NOW FOR THE VOTE:

YABU - Trans (XX) women are woman and should be allowed to compete with XY women, even though they scientifically have an advantage.

YANBU - They will always have an advantage and so should not compete with XY women.

It's not good to teach children to win, but it's good to teach them that other people might.

It's good to teach children others win, but if they have to cheat to do so, no. It's good to teach your children if someone cheats to win, make a point. Which they did. Not to just accept the loss.

And that would be all well and good if the the playing field was level.

At 16 I am sure that they already know that you won't always win, and by 16 you are competing to win - this is not the reception class egg and spoon.

The lesson here is that no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you train, you don't stand a chance.

Women’s sport will be killed by this

lots of teenage girls already opting out if competitive sport

there is no coming back from this

most people do not care or think that trans women rights too women’s rights, the same way men’s interests matter more than women’s interests

it’s trans women’s strong belief they are the top of the hierarchy of the category “women” that is actually just so typically “entitled male”….

this thread will go pooof soon I reckon

lots of teenage girls already opting out if competitive sport

They are opting out because of trans athletes? In the UK? OR do you mean that teenage girls opt out of competitive sport more generally?

If because of trans athletes I'd love to see the research on this. Certainly there's no shortage of competitive teen girls in the sports that I'm involved with.

Why on earth would anyone defend biological men competing against biological women? Knowing the males have bigger hearts and lungs, putting them at an advantage that won't change. It's ridiculous how people cheer for cheaters when it comes to men.

" Why on earth would anyone defend biological men competing against biological women? "

Agreed

So trans categories - the reluctance to create and then compete in a trans category leads me to believe that if not an actual cheat (because that would mean I hate trans people ) the athlete in question is comfortable with cheating on this occasion. Regardless a woman or girl loses out.

You can't spin it any other way.

My anti trans rhetoric for you. Or pro women and girls.

" Why on earth would anyone defend biological men competing against biological women? "

because they think it is the morally right thing to do, and are happy enough to feel that virtue at the expense of women.

True. Happy to throw women under the bus to make men happy.

I feel like what would make sense is creating a new category in competitive sports to encompass trans women.

That would be the men's category. Transmen have to make the choice between hormones or competing and nobody seems to care about that. I wonder why.

With that said, I've no objection to a category exclusively for trans women on hormones. No idea how they'd regulate it but that's their business. Just keep the women's category protected for natal female people only.

It's good to teach them that others might cheat to win.

Why on earth would anyone defend biological men competing against biological women?

Because they have been brainwashed/intimidated into thinking it's the just and inclusive thing to do, akin to the fight for marriage equality. People wouldn't be threatening to rape and murder JKR if she were wrong, would they? It must be her fault, she must be egregiously offensive to be getting that treatment, right? By the way, what did she actually say that was offensive? It's been on her website for three years, you'd think someone would have pulled a quote by now...

And of course, we are so used to placing male desires above female ones that many people don't realise they're doing it.

Oh fuck. If she were right, I meant. We need a five minute edit button.

It’s funny how the word ‘child’ gets used to distort this stuff. It makes it sound like everyone being mean to a 6 year old. But there’s a big difference between that and a 16 year old male who has chosen to compete in the girls category at cross country.

Remember that there were lots of other children - 16 year old girls - disadvantaged here and expected to cheer on the person given the unfair advantage over them. Do their feelings not matter?

I agree with the current set up being the fairest because of the effects of testosterone.

I'm completely fine with anyone dressing how they want and claiming to be whatever they want - but there has to be protected sex spaces.

They could set up particular races for trans athletes in sport.

A M-F and F-M race and limit the number of events they can enter.
They do this for para sport. It's a reduced number of events and not all categories can do each event - but at international level you solely compete against those with the same classification.

Below international level para sport works on a points system (multiclassifcation) which would be something I think could be looked at and a similar system rolled out for trans athletes.

For example if the woman world record is X time. All biological woman compete against that time and keep their actual time/ distance/height or whatever.

Those who are transalthletes then lose so much time, height etc dependent on a number of factors. For example when they started taking testosterone suppressants, their current testosterone levels, lung capacity.

It wouldn't be easily set up but I also wonder when they lose their male advantage how many transwoman would want to compete in the woman's race.

I say this a lot on trans threads. But my ds is a para swimmer. His classification means he's expected to be behind by 3 secs in a 50m, 6 at 100 and 30 at 400m free based on world records compared to other athletes his age and non disabled.

Despite this he will be and is expected to be similar speed or quicker than woman.

I don't for one minute believe suppressing testosterone has a greater effect than someone's who's got barely any leg function 🤣

You’re not wrong OP, it’s pure male supremacy, women are thrown under the bus in order to validate a male. But this shouldn’t be the only area you’re concerned about, men in women’s prisons, especially rapist men, is even more horrifying.

It’s an issue -DD plays a sport and is in a girls league. boys aren’t supposed to play but the equality act means that because girls are allowed in boys teams if there’s no girls team for them - it’s football - then boys can play on a girls team if absolutely necessary.

We’re started to come against teams where a boy has been added as a clear competitive advantage by coaches who just want to win.
we can’t question it as transgirls can play no questions asked.
These players are bigger, stronger, play in a more physically aggressive way, as the boys tend to, and have more match experience as their leagues start at 6/7 years not 9/10 like the girls.
Psychologically the girls are really put off knowing there’s a boy ( or 2 ) on the team. The unfairness rankles and they know they’re going to get really knocked about.

it’s coaches taking the loss that’s the issue IMHO - there can’t be that many trans girls suddenly popping up wanting to play compete football.

Swim England have adopted this.

There's plenty on their FB page now saying they aren't inclusive 🙄

No one wants to see a trans kid excluded but we’re talking about 13/14 year olds and puberty matters. It’s putting some girls off playing.
they don’t want to play with boys, if they did they’d be in a mixed team - there are some mixed teams.

This makes me angry too!
My 18 year old DD is a sprinter, she has a few trans friends and has no issues with them but feels aftraid to voice her opinion that trans women should not be allowed to compete as female, for fear of reprisal.
The recent world athletics decision was celebrated in this house.
Trans athletes should have their own catagory.

No one wants to see a trans kid excluded

They aren't and never have been. They just need to compete in their correct sex class.

This.

The problem comes when people want inclusion that disadvantages other minority groups rather than inclusion which includes fairness.

My ds says he's forever grateful that parasport is done through classification based on how much your disability affects performance. And you have to have an eligible disability. He said if it wasn't he wouldn't be surprised if they allowed anyone to compete because they purely state they identify as disabled.

So once trans women have accepted that they cannot compete fairly in races with biological women, that they cannot enter protected spaces solely for the use of biological women like bathrooms, changing spaces and domestic abuse refuges etc (all perfectly reasonable) are we happy or at least accepting enough to call them by their chosen female name, respect their choice to present superficially as a woman (whatever that means) ? Not all trans folk are rapists, violent, fetishists are they ? Surely if you know and like the trans person or they are a random person you meet for a second there's nothing wrong with going along with their wishes and addressing them as she...or are people wholly opposed to the idea of trans people and have no intention of going along with it all ?

OP Things are changing

World Athletics has a new policy, it's reported as 'anti trans' but it is a vote for reality.

https://www.science.org/content/article/world-athletics-banned-transgender-women-competing-does-science-support-rule

@JaffacakeJanine Do one please, you know trans athletes do not want their own category and that the vast majority have had no hormone treatment so no they are not weaker or lowering testosterone.

Trans women should never have been allowed to compete against actual females, they also should not be in their changing rooms and showers.

Yeah, good chat. really, great chat.

Hey parents, make sure your daughters are fully prepped that they will continue to lose jobs to males, and to lose opportunities to males. fuck! When they get to university or join a political party the ‘women’s officers’ have a very high chance of being males and have influence over policy that will benefit them - not your daughters.

And let’s remember to show them just how they measure up against male influencers who are only just approaching, or maybe has just past, 1 whole year of being a ‘girl’ and has already achieved more than the majority of ‘girls’ in that time.

That is the kind of chat that we need to have with our kids. Sorry, we put up with being past over promotions, opportunities and jobs because of discrimination based on us having female bodies, we worked to get rid of it. But you now have a new challenge, being past over for promotions, opportunities and jobs because you are not a woman with a male body.

Girls, you just have to accept you cannot win everytime, even if you are the best female there.