Lack of impact on Olympics

[PorcelinaV]

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but reasons for why we have only seen limited impact on the Olympics from trans women?

I know that we have seen XY DSD be successful.

Because female Olympians are really bloody good and it still takes a decent transwomen to beat them. Statistically there are just not that many of that calibre.
More significantly, until 2016 transwomen had to have undergone genital surgery and until 2021 hormone treatment - things that will further reduce that statistical likelihood. Now those restrictions have been removed, we're going to see a lot more taking women's prizes.

I think they are keeping their powder dry until they have enough laws in place to stop people talking and complaining about it!

As truthfulness points out, it was the change to allow males without surgery. That was the
change.

But yes. Female Olympians are awesome!!!

I think also the medical transition plays quite an important role. Generally a male would need to be at an optimum age for them to reach the same standard as an elite female. Too young and the PBs and CSHs will play havoc with a male person’s ability to reach his athletic peak; too old and you’ve got a middle-aged bloke competing against elite women (still doing well but not winning medals). The likes of Emily Bridges and Lia Thomas are likely to pose the most risk because they’ve reached their peak fitness and maturity as men, have pretty good sporting ability and have only been taking the harmful medication for a year or two.

The other thing I wonder about when they talk about men being under represented in women’s sports is that some of these men probably aren’t completely narcissistic and do have a level of integrity that prevents them from trampling over women’s boundaries. Alternatively they may not want the negative attention that they will have to deal with when they displace actual women. Some men seem to thrive on the attention but I can imagine it would be off putting for many.

Grey area in a few sports, BMX for one, where no one seems to be sure of the sex.

Many sportswomen and commentators have noted that transwomen dramatically improve their performance when competing against women. Presumably, male advantage can get you so far but when all your opponents are highly skilled elite sportswomen, that male advantage isn't enough? Female skill eventually wins the day?

I hope

Yes, this, and especially the fact that until 2016 genital surgery was required and a longer time on hormones, too. It takes time for such rule changes to become visible on the highest, elite levels.

Though this is not about Olympics, I saw someone say that US cycling events have a much larger percentage of male athletes on the podium in all kinds of women's cycling events than the percentage of them participating in those events because there is apparently almost no gate-keeping (testing hormone levels etc). So trans-identifying male athletes have a higher likelihood of winning/getting the monetary prize than their participation percentages suggest.

This could be the future for the Olympics without protests.

Though this is not about Olympics, I saw someone say that US cycling events have a much larger percentage of male athletes on the podium in all kinds of women's cycling events than the percentage of them participating in those events because there is apparently almost no gate-keeping (testing hormone levels etc). So trans-identifying male athletes have a higher likelihood of winning/getting the monetary prize than their participation percentages suggest.

I suspect the other reason that cycling is so badly affected is that cycling is a male dominated sport anyway but also it’s quite an accessible sport and a lot of males do it to a very high standard just by participating in their free time. All it takes is for a few of those men to transition and it has a very negative impact on the female category.

It's surprising how recent some events are for women in the Olympics: cycle sprint and marathon (1984), ski jumping (2014), sprint canoe (2020) etc.

I'd give it just a little longer for the dominance to become occur if the sports organisations refuse to support women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_of_women_in_the_Olympics

There has only been one Olympics since the rule change removing the requirement for genital surgery, and in that one, there were, IIRC, trans-identifying males entering nine separate women's events.

Why haven’t we seen an impact in ANY sport from transmen?

Why are we ignoring 100 years of data on sports and medical records?

Transboy Mack Beggs triumphed in girls wrestling (I use the non-adult forms advisedly). As an adult, Beggs is training in MMA and an LGBTQ+ advocate who wants legal support for transgender young people to compete in their preferred class.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/27/517491492/17-year-old-transgender-boy-wins-texas-girls-wrestling-championship

I’m guessing the problem with Beggs isn’t so much that they’re a girl / woman competing with other girls / women per se.

It’s that they’re basically doing something which, outwith the ‘transitioning,’ would be classed as ‘doping’ (ie taking testosterone).

It's a different issue, but I also don't think it's fair on males to expect them to fight a biological female (even one doped up on testosterone), knowing they could very seriously hurt them. Most men don't want to fight women.

Yeah, but on the other hand there are lots of men who love bashing women around.
Lots.

It's not filtered through yet.

Most of the Olympic programmes to get selected you have to be on the circuit for a number of years before.

Rule changes to allow biological males without surgery entry into women sport only really started within the last four years, some more recently.

So it stands to reason that national teams haven't started talent spotting along these lines and/or trans-women are only just getting into the next Olympic cycle.

The last Olympics did see the first couple of trans people competing - Laurel Hubbard being the most notable. But as others point out Hubbard isn't young.

The problem will come when Olympic committees start realising it's an advantage - it's been known that a number of countries on realising the advantages of intersex athletes, went out and actively sort them to boost their team and medal count. Sport is great propaganda and nationalism (especially if you can't question what sex a competitor actually is - and the legitimacy of the win). You would expect the same for transwomen.

You have to keep in mind that nation states have had state doping systems before - the idea that this type of country won't try and game the system using transwomen is utterly naive and bloody stupid.

There's a reason Sharon Davis is vocal on this.

Most male transitioners are over 30, and over 40 by the time they get their gonads removed (if they do it at all).

I cba to find proper references for this right now so here’s a Reddit screenshot (average age to begin transition for American MtF = 34)

Now that the rules have changed re: genital surgery we will see more come through than in previous years, but expect most of them to be past their peak athletic age, a la Laurel Hubbard.

Whether the social contagion aspect amongst teens will change this, it’s
hard to say. The ones I know (mostly female) are really unathletic, imagine 1980s goths doing the pole vault?

Like that.

I know it's already been mentioned but I think the rule about athletes needing to have undergone genital surgery massively reduced the already small pool of TW wanting to compete. Also the surgery itself is a huge operation (often with revisions following) that probably needs a year to fully recover from, which given the intensity of training in most sports would effectively ruin an athletic career.

It worked to keep TW out of women's sport, but the IOC should just grow up and say no to males in female sport no matter what condition their body might be in.

At least some of the individual sports governing bodies have introduced rules that mean that TW that have undergone male puberty won’t be eligible to compete - swimming, athletics, cycling for instance. Not sure that World Rowing has caught up though.

It’s really just a combination of timing, numbers, and mediocrity.

Firstly, there is suspicion and likelihood that men have won women’s medals in previous Olympics, but it was not well known and was in a lesser sport so no one noticed.

Second, look at the time line.

Rules changed.

A small number of mediocre male athletes are trans identifying. No elite male athlete is trans identifying.

An even smaller number decide to chance their arm in women’s sport, retrospectively.

Some start making progress.

Women push back. Some sports where males make progress change the rules.

Other sports either still have males in them who are yet to come to notice or bring about their sport’s rule changes.

It still remains to be seen what will eventuate at the Paris Olympics. If it wasn’t for swimming, cycling and athletics bringing about rule changes, there’s no doubt there would be an impact in those sports in Paris. So it will be other sports.

The IOC rule change opened it up for a gradual increase in the number making a prospective attempt by males - those at the start of their careers who could enter the elite pathway. This number would gradually increase over time if it was purely self ID and no pushback for individual sports to change their rules. It would be x number in Paris, then x + y in LA, then x + y + z in Brisbane.

These numbers would not be overall large as absolute numbers because the number of men who are trans identifying and physically elite enough to beat women is finite, but it would be enough over so many sports to make an impact, which in reality is just one male in women’s sport.

Yes I wouldn’t call that insignificant at all! They had to pass the thresholds as well so it was less than 4 years for them to know it was allowed and do the testing etc, seems like quite a high representation for that first year to me. Let’s see how the second Olympics with men who havent transitioned surgically allowed to compete in women’s sports goes.

Nine women who didn't get to go to the Olympics after many, many years of sacrifice to train to get to that standard. Nine women who didn't get the chance to represent their country in what would have been the most incredible experience of their lives.

The woman laurel Hubbard displaced was from Nauru, 19 or 20 compared to laurel Hubbards 37, well past the age female weightlifters can compete at that level but when you’re a male competing against the women you don’t need to be at peak age. The entire island would have been supporting her, their first Olympian in a long long time (laurel is from nz, a white middle aged wealthy male)

Plus the World Athletics rules for DSD athletes have also changed - they are now required to reduce T levels to 2.5 nmol/l for all events / distances, not just the middle distance events.

That will impact athletes like Mboma that dropped down to 100m / 200m events (and took the 200m silver in Tokyo).

Which also begs the question that since these athletes have been through male puberty and are genetically male, why are they still being allowed to compete in female events at all? (Plus the ethics of T suppression in healthy males is another matter as well).

Thanks for all replies.