The Athletic Advantage of Transgender Women

[andyoldlabour]

Most of us on this forum are already convinced, of the undoubted and quite obvious advantages which transgender women have when competing in women's sport.
However, as we have witnessed on social media and mainstream media, there still seem to be quite a number of "ostriches", with their head buried fully in the sand.
I think the following video is great at explaining the myths and presenting facts which are based on science and performance results.

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=50Iok5At7Hw&fbclid=IwAR3QeDkZayCy7LumG1JLJ-IdPtmHWup9UeuZxDxuyILuQXbM_fBbg3VcKQs&app=desktop

You even see people arguing that men don't have an actual advantage over women (despite all the statistics relentlessly proving it, as if we actually need proof) - reasons given are either that women are 'socialised' not to try hard or are simply just too fucking lazy, apparently.

VickyEadie

I think there are a lot of nasty, vindictive, sneary, disingenuous people, who actually enjoy seeing women being beaten by these transwomen. It is a sad situation and it doesn't give me any pleasure at all, but I think the tide may be changing as more people are being made aware of the situation.

It's such a frustrating waste of time isn't it? TRAs simply want everyone to say 2+2=5.

If there were no blindingly obvious sporting advantage to being male, women's sports categories wouldn't have been created.

But if, like they argue, there's no advantage then there's no need for women's categories, is there? They could be abolished and transwomen would have to take their sporting talents back to a single open category. Where genuinely elite males will trounce them as before.

Complete lack of logic. But they know that. It's all a massive timewasting gaslight.

I am wondering if there needs to be an event which makes this more obvious to people.

There are lots of athletes who understand the problems with this. What if someone held a giant mixed gender sports event, with all kinds of categories? We would see what the outcomes were clearly enough, I think.

Antibles

Indeed so.

I've seen people saying - and thinking they've come up with a great idea - 'just have different categories for different abilities...'

They seem unaware that there are hundreds (in some events, thousands) of men better than the best woman in the world in almost every sport.

I've seen people saying - and thinking they've come up with a great idea - 'just have different categories for different abilities...'

They seem unaware that there are hundreds (in some events, thousands) of men better than the best woman in the world in almost every sport.

Also, as a female veteran runner I don't want to be competing against 20-something males (or younger females to be fair) who are only in my category because they have just started out or they can't really be arsed to train properly - it's not a relevant comparison. These sort of systems would be really easy to game anyway.

I am wondering if there needs to be an event which makes this more obvious to people.

The 800m women's race in Rio?...

I've seen people saying - and thinking they've come up with a great idea - 'just have different categories for different abilities...'

Yes, like the women's category isn't exactly that! What do they think it is for - people with more eleborate hair and nails?

Antibles

I think it needs to be even more obvious than that. People are used to seeing certain kinds of people win the top elite events, so maybe it doesn't have much impact. All the girls these days who win at gymnastics are tiny, short waisted, very young, etc.

But a big open competition? I think that could be very revealing when you see the top three, and the top ten, and top 50, in every event. interesting too to see where trans and intersex competitors fit into the results.

You could do it by looking at tables, but I think it would not have the same visual effect.

I don’t think this will come to a head until a woman athlete is actually killed in a contact sport.

That's a great video - I'd already seen it on PeakTrans, where there is loads of stuff on this topic. www.peaktrans.org/sports/

You do all know that muscle atophy is a big thing when you begin hormone treatment, right? To keep any muscle at all you need to work at it three times as hard as before treatment.it isn't as if a Trans athlete has gompeted in the Olympics or anything either.

You do all know that muscle atophy is a big thing when you begin hormone treatment, right?

You know thats not the only advantage of a body thats been through male puberty right?

it isn't as if a Trans athlete has gompeted in the Olympics or anything either.

Yet. Because the rules have pretty much just changed to be pretty much any dude who lowers his testosterone. When it used to be about full transsexuals, who tend to be extremely rare in the big melting pot of 'transgender' which seems to include..well..anyone who wants a label.

Anyway yeah, I agree with others in here. Its kind of a waste of time arguing about this, as its like arguing that water is wet, saying males have an athletic advantage over females. Been known forever really.

"You do all know that muscle atophy is a big thing when you begin hormone treatment, right?"

I assume you mean't to say "atrophy"?
If this is true, then how come Rachel McKinnon is boasting about putting on more muscle, lifting heavier weights and going faster on the bike?
I also think that RM spends more time on twitter than they do training, let alone doing three times more training than anyone else.

You do all know that muscle atophy is a big thing when you begin hormone treatment, right?

That is true, but male bodies still outperform female ones, even under those conditions.

You do all know that muscle atophy is a big thing when you begin hormone treatment, right?

Any bloke who takes medication that makes him feel a bit under the weather should be able to compete against women on that basis then.

Televised athletics on earlier with a relay event that caught my eye, each team having one male and one female athlete running 400m twice each. Firstly demonstrating clearly the speed differential (teams could decide if their male or female athlete ran first). Secondly made me wonder, if this became a more established event and some of those teams started entering a male athlete and a trans athlete what would be the reaction of those teams that did not?

PickleC the teams without trans athletes would be at such a disadvantage that they would have to drop the female athletes in favour of trans athletes to remain competitive. Same with whole Olympic teams. Given state-sponsored abuse/drugging/etc of athletes under some regimes, I suspect they won’t have any problem ‘finding’ trans athletes to compete.

Depressingly you are probably right. I am perhaps naively hoping that in any period before other teams made those changes the disconnect between what spectators and indeed the other athletes saw as being 'fair' would force a change. It would be that much more obvious a power difference and while I would hope that male athletes would support female teammates anyway naked self interest, once they are personally impacted, could force the issue.

Does it atrophy their lungs so they are smaller and change the shape of their pelvis too?

It also does not magically shrink the size of the heart or decrease the number of highly oxygenated red cells in the blood.