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.

Of course you are right to be angry for your girls. They have been robbed by a cheat.

( and from what is emerging post competition, not all of the new ‘females’ are unmoved by the changing rooms.)

I think dividing things up by gender is as wrong as dividing them by race or sexuality

But biological sex has marked differences on how you perform physically. Being attracted to same sex or having darker/lighter skin doesn’t.

Serena Williams is amazing but wouldn’t win anything in an open competition with men.

How right you are!

why should our daughters have to accept blatant prejudice?

women were second-class citizens for far too long.
women fought for their rights. Now they have to fight to keep these rights.
any diminution affects all women.

Dot Jones, the problem is that several hundred men/boys would place above all the women/girls in everything where body strength matters. How depressing never to have a fair competition for our own sex.

Why shouldn’t women have fair sport?

We have definitely had more trans boys playing in the boys teams than transgirls in the girls team (I can think of four trans boys playing boys football locally and not a single transgirl playing)

A large Australian study found that even at the age of 6 years old boys have physical advantages over girls.

Very true.

You only need to visit gymnastics, dance, athletics and swimming clubs etc to see that every body puts in the same hours of training and yet physiology does have an impact. That's same sex bs same sex. It's recognised. Yet they don't seem to be able to accept that physiology also implies to when people claim to be a different gender. Especially when you consider gender doesn't have a definition - it's just a stereotype of how a biological sex presents.

Everyone can compete in their chosen sport.

You just have to compete fairly.

That (possibly imaginary) athlete is a cheat.

They didn't win the race. They 'won' by cheating, depriving a genuine athlete of a winning place.

They 'won' like someone who has taken performance-enhancing drugs, bribed a judge, intimidated a witness, stolen an exam paper, or kneecapped an opponent.

Why would you stand and applaud them?

Either a person can change from being a man to being a woman, in which case they should be treated as a woman just as much as someone born a woman is.

Actually no. Even if a man could become a woman and lose all his male athletic advantage (which he can't, as you know), he still shouldn't be allowed to compete as a woman.

It's the difference between fairness and equality. Once born males can take spaces for females, the men have all the men's opportunities plus whichever ones they choose to take from women. Women have only the smaller number that's left over.

If there are ten competing spaces for male swimmers and ten for female ones, then a man who chooses to become a woman takes an extra opportunity at the cost of the women. Born boys now get 11 chances and born girls get 9. The actual race itself may be fair, since the boy is now a girl, but the process is not equal, because the opportunities have been rigged in favour of born boys.

Sport should be a meritocracy, the best should win. I think dividing things up by gender is as wrong as dividing them by race or sexuality. Some athletes have a natural advantage over others

And this is just bollocks because the male advantage over females is so comprehensive (more haemoglobin, more testosterone, more fast twitch muscle etc etc) that if we don't sex segregate, there'll be no women champions and actually a lot more securely injured women. Melanin in your skin doesn't confer these sorts of advantages, but I think you know that.

Yes, some people are better built for athletics than others, but the male advantage outweighs it all when it comes to otherwise equivalent women. There's a reason Michael Phelps, a man, is said to have the perfect swimmer's body. Some women are built very well for it but none of them can be as perfect as a man who was always better built for broad shoulders, narrow hips, huge wingspan and flipper sized hands and feet.

So, not knowing that it was a male who beat the girls makes it ok? Lesson learned.

Just a lesson to learn that you cannot win all the time.

Why do you want to make it even harder for someone to win in what is supposed to be a fair situation though?

And you bring up valid points, so why are you adding to the opportunities for people to miss out on opportunities instead of making sure that the opportunities out there are as fair as possible?

https://boysvswomen.com/#/

There’s no room for nuance when it comes to men in women’s sport.

It seems to be the wrong way round XX are women XY are male trans women

But I’d say vast majority agree they should be segregated by sex

I've said this before on other threads but personally I don't have a problem with this. Sport should be a meritocracy, the best should win. I think dividing things up by gender is as wrong as dividing them by race or sexuality.

@Dotjones so you are basically saying that women should not bother competing in sports. The fastest/strongest will always be a man.

other people will cheat to win, won't they.

Well that makes it OK, then!

Why bother having rules at all?

@ReneBumsWombats sorry but you are paranoid. No one can ask any kind of question and they are treated with suspicion and anger. This is precisely why people are fearful of asking anything because there is always aggression. It's like you're having an imaginary argument in your heads constantly and think people are trying to catch you out. Siege mentality. No one on this thread has called anyone far right or suggested anyone is anti trans..

What have I said to indicate I am paranoid?

I had sporty DSs (rugby) and the thought of them competing against girls would have been ridiculous and cheating. Even they recognised that at 16! It's a shame adults can't see it.

I bet the only reason the OP didn't realise is because she didn't think it would happen. The default is to assume they are all biologically female. With hindsight, it's always blindingly obvious when they aren't.

Why can't Usain Bold identify as a 10 year old and thrash everyone at sports day? It would be no different.

We all see what you're insinuating blatantly accusing us of, but it's nil points for you, I'm afraid.
Not paranoid much. Certainly not welcoming to discussion no ?

And I've said that there's no room for nuance on mumsnet.

The nuance is that male athletes can compete in male sports categories. That male athletes are not 'banned' from sports if they identify as the opposite sex.

You mentioned one sport while forgetting the huge effort that has gone into that Triathlon decision. It seems to be you who is missing the 'nuance' here.

You twisted another poster's post which was talking about males who do want to compete in female categories to attempt to shame them by framing their post as if that poster was saying 'all' males with trans identities wanting to compete in female categories. The nuance is, that if you spent time discussing the issue as we have, you will know that we KNOW there are male competitors who won't compete in the female category out of fairness..

But you seem to lack to the ability to acknowledge that while some sports have now made policies that protect the female categories of sports, it is only at particular levels for some sports and there are other sports who have not yet made that decision.

So, many of us have been involved in girls and womens sports, many of us have been campaigning on this issue. It has meant that while these decisions have been made, there have been women and girls who have missed out, and sometimes when they have missed out it has very negatively impacted their future.

The decision to allow males to compete in female sports categories should never have been made. It was made and it was made without female athletes contribution. It has taken a very long time to roll this very poor decision back.

I can keep telling you all the 'nuance' that you seem to think that posters haven't considered. Many of the posters on here know a great deal about it and can supply as much nuance as you would like.

The 9th post in did. It's now been deleted, hopefully for the use of the word 'cis'.

Siege mentality = majority believes in common sense, i.e sport should be fair.

@PSNonsense I agree with you though ? Argue with yourselves if you could.

Oh, I see, it's because I called out your attempt at deflection and irrelevant accusation. Thanks, I was scratching my head at that one.

Be grateful, it gave you the excuse you needed to completely ignore the rest of the post.

On with the show.