How should trans individuals be included in competitive sport?

[Quodlibet]

I wonder if this has been debated already?

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/meet-the-texas-wrestler-who-won-a-girls-state-title-his-name-is-mack/2017/02/25/982bd61c-fb6f-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html

It's a really complex issue clearly, as no one would wish to discourage trans individuals from playing sport.

But as I can see it, if trans individuals are included in mainstream sports competition, girls/women are disadvantaged whichever way the call goes in terms of whether trans individuals are included with their birth gender or the gender they identify with.

If the former, then FTM competitors with a newly gained strength/speed advantage beat F competitors, as in this example in the US.

If the latter, then MtF trans competitors beat F competitors with their residual/inherent speed/strength advantage.

What is the answer? The only one I can think of is that competitors with modified bodies are not able to compete with non-modified competitors (the same way as Oscar Pistorius was not allowed to compete in mainstream men's events as his blades actually could have given him an advantage.) I envisage that there would be resistance to this from some in the trans community as it could be interpreted as excluding trans individuals from sports events. But I can't see how else women's sport doesn't end up massively compromised.

Crumbs1 they don't need surgery. It plays no part in declaring yourself trans. You can take hormones too without having surgery. Taking those hormones would apparently be for medical reasons, therefore allowing competition.

I think there should be a positive place for trans people to play sports because with a lifetime of mental health issues it can only help (for those who are comfortable enough in their bodies to want to), but competing against women who were born biologically women is ridiculous. They'd may as well remove the woman's category altogether and just have no sex division, because women will never win anyway.

Sport, especially professional sport is massively competitive. I can see many people being pressurised to 'transition' for the duration of the Olympics, for instance.

Doping goes on on a massive scale.

It won't just be regular transpeople, it will be, again, people taking advantage of it.

I am surprised the testosterone that is used isn't being flagged as more of an issue.
My DS competes at a sport and knows from the time he has been 16 he is likely to be subject to random drug testing.
He won't take anything without checking it as the risks are too great.
I have just looked on the website they use to check ingredients on anything they take and testosterone is a prohibited substance.
(I obviously just looked generally)
Inhalers for asthmatics are limited to a certain number of puffs per 24 hours etc. Lemsip is banned (as there is caffeine?).
It is the athletes responsibility to know what goes in their bodies. There is a movement called 100%me.
The whole trans debate aside I would have thought the performance enhancing drugs make them ineligible to compete-as they would any athlete...

Well as an example. Jillian Bearden started living "as a woman" (just not sure what living as a woman means) about 2 years when her wife gave birth to their second child. Jillian placed 1st woman in Arizona's biggest cycle road race, her TW team mate placed 20th. They are part if a TW competitve team so will be interesting to see how they go.
www.google.co.uk/amp/tucson.com/sports/local/transgender-cyclist-is-top-female-finisher-at-el-tour-de/article_2c7d291f-4376-57a6-9578-3831353032bc.amp.html

It was the question about trans issues in sport that made me hit peak trans and is my absolute line in the sand. I simply cannot accept that anyone who was born male and has gone through a male puberty can be allowed to compete with women. As PPs have highlighted, testosterone levels are a completely blunt tool for use here - there are so many differences that hormonal intervention does nothing to impact; for example, skeletal differences in the pelvis creating different biomechanics for sports involving running and VO2 max for pretty much every sport. Taking oestrogen might superficially change body fat distribution on a male, but you can't roll back the changes that happened at puberty when a massive testosterone surge catapults a boy into an adult male physiology.

I think this could easily be turned into a positive thing for the trans community - how powerful a statement on gender diversity it would be if we saw trans women competing against men! Now that would really shake things up.

For FTM, no problem at all if they wish to compete in women's sports, but subject to exactly the same doping rules on testosterone, with no medical use exemptions because they're clearly open to being abused.

I don't understand how that child was allowed an exemption for testosterone under medical exemptions.

Like a PP says, DP plays competitively and has had to limit the medication he takes for his asthma because he knows it will count against him in testing. He's aware that if his asthma worsens he will have to stop playing his sport because the next level of drugs available are banned substances.

I understand that the girls in the competition refused to compete against this child and forfeited which is even sadder in my opinion.

I understand that the girls in the competition refused to compete against this child and forfeited which is even sadder in my opinion.

Which ever way you cut it up it is going to be girls who lose. If you stick to people playing against their own sex, but allow a transitioning girl to be on testosterone for two years, that's unfair to all the other girls. If she fights in the male category, she will lose (again unfair to girls).

If it is a male transitioning, and fights girls as his preferred gender, the girls will lose - again.

Either compete with your own sex but without any drug intervention at all, or don't compete.

Those saying no, trans women should compete with men: logically, that means that trans men should compete with women. Which is what happened in the article I linked to in the OP. A FTM wrestler just beat all the female wrestlers in the state. It cuts both ways but neither works in the favour of the born-female athlete.

Yes logically transmen should compete with women. However, if taking performance enhancers like testosterone that give an unfair advantage then they do not compete. Basically you compete against your sex, but normal doping rules apply.

A separate group that includes transmen and transwomen could be made. But if not, then sorry you do not compete. It is a choice to take hormones, you have the option to stop and compete.

"Is it a non issue? How many people who are transgender want to compete competitively?"
A competitive person is a competitive person, regardless of whether they are male, female or transgender.

Lauren Jeska was a transgender fell runner.
Fallon Fox is a mixed martial arts fighter.

Those two spring to mind because they've been in the news, but I'm sure there are more. Competitive is competitive.

Having read several press reports on this I am concerned that the slant on it seems very much towards the issue being draconian laws which have forced the student to compete with biological sex when they wanted to compete with boys.
I can't see any other option than sticking with birth sex and enforcing the same limits on performance enhancing drugs - meaning that this young person would be banned from competition. I don't think the question is how can we include transgender people in sport, but how can we keep sport fair in the face of this onslaught. Taking banned drugs rules you out, whatever the reason.

I know it's been discussed before but I can't find the right thread. Does anyone know at what age the various growth happens with regards to bone density, muscle mass etc? I'm aware transactivists are arguing that transwomen who have transitioned young won't have these advantages only testosterone levels, but this still seems unfair to me. Could anyone clarify?

'Transitioning young', would have to be before puberty, which kicks in about what 11-13? It's illegal to have puberty blockers before 18.

No, it's not. Cross sex hormones aren't generally given before 18 but that's changing, but puberty blockers are.

That's so scary and obviously unethical. I just don't understand how medical professionals are condoning this.

Datun isn't puberty kicking in earlier and earlier? I've read of primary schools having to be aware that girls can start their periods as young as eight these days.

TheCountessofFitzdotterel

So what's the legal age for puberty blockers?

I've just tried to find out. With little success. According to Mermaids the Tavistock use something called the Tanner Scale which grades maturity according to adolescent development.

So it depends on when you start maturing physically.

where

So yes. If you start at eight years old, then that is the beginning of the process. I suppose they must balance the mental maturity of the individual against the need to start blockers before they develop sex characteristics?

I'll keep digging.

Ok. It's is graded in stages 1-5. 1 being from birth to the onset of puberty. In girls it starts at number 2 with breast development and this is when blockers are introduced. You can't do it before because the hormone it suppresses has to be present for it to be suppressed.

Link

www.transactiveonline.org/resources/youth/puberty-blockers.php

You can't run a gelding in a mares only race, even if you plait pink ribbons in its mane. They have no bollocks but are officially recognised to have a 7lb advantage over mares in the rest of the races (mares have to carry 7lb less) because the geldings have the athletic advantage of having spent their first few years of life with testes.
For humans, I think they should have women's events (XX chromosomes and a suitable level of testosterone...enough to allow women with PCOS to compete) and the rest should be open events.

At the moment they do it the other way round: effectively they have men's events, for proper real men, the default proper human, the perfect sex. Everyone hard to classify is allowed to just go in with the women as we're the leftovers in the seconds pile.

I don't see that it is a complicated issue at all. Either men compete as men and women compete as women biologically speaking. Or they make sport non gender and everyone competes together. You can't have men competing with women even if they identify as women. It's madness.

A TW has been selected to compete internationally for New Zeand in weight lifting.

www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/sport/other/nz-weightlifting-body-stands-decision-let-first-transgender-weightlifter-compete

'At one Dunedin gym, she broke two records held by Glasglow bronze medallist Tracy Lambrechts.

She took Tracy's place in the national team heading to Australia in a fortnight's time.'

Well I am sure Tracy is just thrilled. And not able to say anything as she would be a nasty bigot for commenting anything less than gushingly...

Reading more about this, Tracy Lambrechts is trying to make the team in the next weight category down, which involves losing a fair amount of weight.