"no trans Olympic athletes ever" seems unlikely to me: statistics help please

[MsTiggywinkletoyou]

For L&G, the phrasing is usually "the first out/openly lesbian (or gay man)", e.g. Maureen Colquhoun was Britain's first openly lesbian MP (arguably, but that's another story). So wouldn't it be more correct to say, there have been no openly transgender Olympic athletes? Why don't the T claim lots of unknown predecessors? Is it because "being trans" is thought of as a phase in one's life, so before or after the transition, one isn't really trans at all?

If gender identity is an essence that only the individual can know deep within, then maybe there have been thousands of trans athletes. Maybe when they were competing, they didn't know they were trans (like Jenner says). Or maybe they came in last place in the volleyball/shotput/swimming, never made headlines, and later in their own country, made a quiet transition while working as an accountant/hairdreseser/candlestickmaker.

If those images going round with numbers like 15 000 Olympic athletes are correct (since hormone testing?), and for sake of argument 1% of the population is trans, then statistically it is extremely unlikely that none of them ever thought they fitted better into society by living as the other sex. Or not none, one: Jenner.

Can any statistician explain the equation of just how improbable it is, that exactly one Olympic contender in the past half century has experienced life as a trans person?

Because of course to be trans, you don't have to have surgery or take hormones or change your name or update your legal documents or alter your external appearance or even tell anyone else. You just have to know it in your soul. Right?

Laurel Hubbard was very close to winning Commonwealth Games (not the Olympics but still high level international). It was only injury that stopped them.

There was some report of Team GB almost sending 2 transgender athletes to Rio, and it quoted them saying they'd throw the medal if it looked like they'd be in a winning position. Has anyone got that link?

Haven't the rules only recently been changed to allow pre op transwomen to compete? Or did I imagine that?

And transwomen like Jenner won gold at the Olympics. Imagine they'd decided to compete against women at their peak? Because now they could.
Philipa York, "king of the mountains" in the Tour de France, imagine they'd been a woman then? They would destroy the field.

I know their are several transwomen on teams (I think Brazilian volleyball is one) that will most likely compete at the next Olympics.

It's what's coming I'm worried about.

I wonder how many transwomen will reach their 40s, look into their soul ms tiggy and indeed mess with those statistics

There is also the issue if the dates of various regulation changes.

2015 the IOC changed it's rules. So it will be the 2020 games before we see any trans competitors.

They will all be men, as transmen won't be able to compete against men effectively. But you won't hear anything about that!

The claim about the GB trans-athletes who 'almost' made it to Rio is almost certainly garbage. If they had represented their nations* at European chamionship level this would be very apparent.

(*Either GB or England/Scotland/Wales etc, depending on sport.)

There is a call to retrospectively trans Bruce Jenner for 1976, and some East Germans have subsequently been forced to transition for health reasons after their year of state-enforced drug abuse.

It is probably utter bullshit, but where did i read it? It's bugging me now....

How could they retrospectively trans Bruce Jenner for 1976? They won gold in the decathlon. There wasn't a decathlon event for women, instead, women participated in the pentathlon. But even if there had been a women's decathlon, how could they possibly relegate the medal winners. Whoever is suggesting this is barking.

They want the IOC to amend their records in the manner of IMDB, who now file Caitlyn Jenner who appeared in films 'as "Bruce Jenner"'

So they want the IOC to officially recognise that a woman won the men's Decathlon at Montreal in 1976.

Not just barking but howling at the big round thing in the night sky.

Katvon I've read that the IOC changed the rules in 2015/16, previously trans women had to be post op and have lived as a women. I think they now only need to lower their testosterone levels (to three times the level of a woman) for a year to compete with women. And no meddling with hormones required in amateur sports, or under 18's. I think this is why the shit's hitting the fan now, the changes are recent.

So they want the IOC to officially recognise that a woman won the men's Decathlon at Montreal in 1976.

Perhaps they should change it, at least if they're going to be logically consistent. Maybe the idea that declaring a transwoman won the men's decathlon would irritate men enough for them to get louder?

It also might be used to argue (rightly, IMO) that MtF transpeople can possibly win GOLD in the Olympics while competing against their own biological sex, aka other males. Sure, at the time, Jenner was non-op, non-hormone, and still in the closet, but we've all been told that gender identity is fixed and innate. By gender ideology logic, it would be pretty transphobic to suggest Jenner wasn't trans in 1976!

I can see the implications for further erosion of women's sport if we play along with this idea, as it could be used against sex-segregation of sport. However, I think the Jenner example is actually an argument for female-only sport, for an "open category" instead of a male one, and against "gender identity" based rules. Because my question when considering Jenner is: why would any self-declared transwomen need to be allowed to compete in the female category, if the most famous MtF trans athlete alive won against males?

Unless the goal of these transactivists is really just demanding validation, asserting control, and destroying female sport.

For me, the most important counter argument to this is it’s not just the Olympics that matters. It’s about the women who missed out because of McKinnon. It’s about the teenage girls in Connecticut sprinting. It’s about women and girls in all sports, in all age categories, weekend warriors, part timers, amateurs, who put in all the hard work and may still miss out because a male is in their race. McKinnon’s repeated focus on “this rule has been there since 2003” just distracts from the fact that McKinnon has hindered the success of women themselves.

If you are talking about people who have been suicidal, dissociated from their body, undergone multiple major surgeries and taking cross sex hormones (what the pre-2015 Olympics considered trans), then of course you don't have any.

You also don't have any who have butchered their faces and bodies with (not gender related) plastic surgery. Professional sports people have a healthy and respectful attitude towards their bodies and health.

The new "I love my female penis," trans umbrella lot is different, but given the comorbodities and time spent naval gazing and internet-ing, I still wouldn't expect many. The ones causing the trouble did a lot of their training as men before the trans thing started for them.

But if these transwomen are so good at stealth (as we're frequently told) how would we KNOW if there'd been Olympic champions?

This "where are all the trans Olympians" thing is so disingenuous. There hasn't been time for trans people to qualify under new looser regs for an Olympic Games. It's that simple. Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 may look very different to Rio.

I can't accept the suggestion that if it's just a small number that we should suck it up for the sake of inclusivity, either. Elite sports are by nature hugely exclusive and every single one of those places taken by a transwoman means an elite female athlete who trained like a demon for years of her life has lost out unfairly. That's not acceptable. Ever.

archive.is/NP7O4

I think the cry "there have been no trans Olympic champions ever" is true to a point because the rules only recently changed to allow male trans people into women's categories. So we will see this in the next Olympics.

They conveniently forget Bruce Jenner who by their ideology has always been a woman of trans.
This obviously proves that trans women should be perfectly suited to the male category and kept out of the women's category for patent reasons of fairness.

Female transmen are naturally at a massive disadvantage if they are expected to compete against men, so if "trans inclusion" was genuinely their prerogative they would address this by seeking genuine trans categories, but they don't. It's always, always about TWz obliterating women's sport.

Yes and YY it's not just about the Olympics. See Rachel McKinnon, Laurel Hubbord, Andreya Yearwood, Hannah Mouncey, Fallon Fox the Beater to name but a few.

It's amazing you can reel off the tongue several elite transwomen smashing records and gaining gold medals in women's sport, but absolutely zero transmen come up easily. (I think I have read about one TM sponsored by Nike for their woke points but is by no means a record breaker).
This isn't trans inclusion. It is misogyny writ large.

Just as a point of record, there are transmen elite (not necessarily Olympian) athletes. I can see it making sense for a sporty non-gender-conforming girl, especially one attracted to girls, to decide, in the current atmosphere, that she fits better into the world as a boy. If sport competition has given her life some structure and meaning, why give it up? But that's not my original question.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_sports#Trans_men

I'll try to rephrase my question. Someone with access to the numbers may be able to crunch them. There is a given and ascertainable number of athletes who have competed at each Olympic Games, winter and summer and para (leaving special aside). Plucking a number out of the air, let's assume that their average age at competition was 25. Let's further assume that people who were in peak physical health in their 20s live to be 75, taking into account everywhere from Somalia to South Korea. To make the equation easier, let's assume they all drop dead on their 75th birthday. Thus they live for 50 years beyond their first Olympics. So all those who competed in the 1968 Summer Olympics are dead, for the purpose of this exercise, and all those who competed in the 1970 Winter Olympics are still alive.

Let us imagine that Jenner is not the only Olympian who later (much later) felt a trans identity. Perhaps one of the Azerbaijani archers, or Botswanan bicyclists, or Chinese canoeists later (much later) decided they were trans. They never won a medal. They ceased competing decades ago. They transitioned quietly in their 40s or 50s. Obviously they weren't on any medical treatment when they were competing, so screening for testosterone levels wouldn't have come into it. But according to gender ideology, they were trans all along, if I'm understanding the theory correctly.

None of these people have, as far as I know, announced themselves (or been outed by tabloids). Fine - I wish them well in their quiet lives. Or, possibly, there are no such people to announce themselves, and I take on board a PP comment that athletes value and respect their bodies and are less likely to want to change them (a theory worthy of research).

So what are the chances that such people do or don't exist? There are tens of thousands of Olympians walking around today. If 1% of the global population is trans, what is the statistical likelihood that Jenner is the only trans Olympian?

OK sorry for the derail as I appreciate it's not your question exactly, but from Wiki

Transmen in sport
Kye Allums, basketball
Played on the women's team as transman and retired from sport shortly after leaving college.

Schuyler Bailar, swimming
Swam as a transman on the men's team.

Mack Beggs,[24] wrestling
Competes against women as a transman

Harrison Browne, ice hockey
Competed against women as a trans man

Balian Buschbaum,[25] pole vault
Competed against women as a woman

Willy De Bruijn, cycling
Competed against women as a transman

Zdeněk Koubek, track
Competed against women as a woman

Andreas Krieger, shot put
Competed against women while taking steroids as a woman.

Chris Mosier, triathlon
Competes against men as a transman (sponsored by Nike)

Erik Schinegger, skiing
Competed against women as a woman

Mark Weston, athletics
Competed against women as a woman

Patricio Manuel, Boxing
Competes against women as a trans man

So I just want to make the point there are only 2 transmen on that list competing against men, and neither are breaking men's records or sweeping up gold medals.

Transwomen in sport are virtually all also competing with women or they are listed as competing against men before transitioning.

Related to you post just above it is notable how many trans people in sport are listed despite the fact their sporting career was during their time before transitioning.

The reason why this is not a problem to me is because these people were always participating in the category aligned with their birth sex.

But yeah you're right some Olympians probably don't want to be outed if they transitioned after their career, there's a high chance there are more out there than just Jenner.

DpWm

Mack Beggs also took steroids whilst competing against the girls. Beggs I think is now going to be competing against men, I wonder how that will work out.
Bailar was an Olympic grade female swimmer before transitioning (Katie Ledecky was in the same team), and has only competed with the men at college level.
Willy De Bruijn was the Caster Semenya of their time, described himself as "hermaphrodite".
Patricio Manuel competes against men as a transman.