@twoinanddone I wasn’t commenting specifically about the 2 athletes who have been winning. I was only stating that the policies for allowing transgender athletes to compete aren’t consistent. Someone might be able to compete as a female in high school but not in college due to the different standards.
Have there been any cases of individuals who were born female, transitioned to being a male, and then competed successfully against other males in high level sporting events? Seems like it’s always the other way around. Wonder why.
Last year I had a born female, high school freshman come to me wanting to be on the high school diving team. She informed me that she had not begun transitioning/hormone treatments yet, but was beginning to identify as male. I inquired as to which team she wanted to try out for (they fall during different seasons) and at that point the answer was the boys team.
I began researching and our state does have rules around hormone treatments having begun and when as to eligibility to compete as the identified gender. This made the decision easy as she could not compete as a male, at that time.
While the above solved my immediate issue, my research brought to light another potential issue I may face next school year. Both the state association and NFHS have stipulations on what is a “swimsuit” and the parameters it must meet. For boys the suit can not extend past the knees or above the hips. This would pose quite an issue for one in the process of transition, where there is still an upper body female appearance. The rules could be amended/special exception granted however that would be a slippery slope in swimming as the rule is there for competitive reasons which would open another can of worms. These are not easy decisions and I feel bad for those thrust into making them.
According to my strength training podcasts (so take it for what it’s worth!) there will always be top female athletes who can outperform some less gifted males.
The sticking point is the difference in the musculoskeletal system. Said podcasts emphasize the differences begin in the womb & that female and male athletes are different. Males are, by and large, much stronger. There is such a thing as genetic potential.
Males and females have different neuromuscular efficiencies – which matters in training for strength sports, for example.
Some have advocated against M – > F transgender athletes competing in the female division of mixed martial arts. Bone density, fist size, even within the same weight class is not fair game.
There’s no easy answers here. Transgender adolescents are already at such high risk for depression, suicide, etc that I really hate that a sport that they love may be an additional area of stress and conflict. But I can’t deny the biological advantage in SOME sports. It was on display this weekend at a state level swim meet. All athletes needed qualifying times, so only strong athletes were represented, and about 100 per event. Particularly in the sprint events, it’s just no contest. Every single male beat the winning female time in the 50 Freestyle - so the fastest girl would have placed 100+ if there were no gender division - and probably only a couple of girls would have qualified for the 50 free at all.
Didn’t a mixed martial arts transgender female break the skull of her female opponent some years back? It’s just dangerous in contact sports.
But this is not just a transgender issue. Inter-sex issues are popping up in athletics as well. These are individuals who are not genetically XX or XY. Or individuals with other “disorders of sexual development” that might affect things such as testerone levels. Caster Semenya is a relatively recent example
If you are XXY…then you have the Y, and have the advantages that go with it. That is my understanding.
Connecticut is one of 17 states that allows transgender athletes to compete without restrictions. It is not clear when the two transgender athletes started taking hormones. Out of curiosity, I checked Terry Miller’s 55 meter dash times for 2019 indoor versus 2020 indoor on athletic.net. Terry miller’s times are significantly slower in 2020 (7.20 ) than in 2019 (6.91). This explains why she lost to Chelsea Mitchell. If she recently started hormone therapy, this could explain her slower times.
As a parent of a daughter, I am concerned about this issue.
Yes, there is a swimmer at Harvard who was admitted as a woman but now swims for the men’s team (or did, may have graduated). She was a very good female swimmer and not a competitive male swimmer.
“Yes, there is a swimmer at Harvard who was admitted as a woman but now swims for the men’s team (or did, may have graduated). She was a very good female swimmer and not a competitive male swimmer.”
So he was not able to compete successfully against other males.
The question I ask myself for trans women competing in athletics is, are they better than they would have been if they were born XX and had been raised from birth as girls? And I think they are. So then they clearly have an advantage, having had that Y chromosome from birth, and then later transitioning. This doesn’t seem fair to their XX competitors.
I guess you could say the advantage is small, and many athletes have other genetic advantages (being taller than average for example). But with these two transgender track athletes, the advantage does not look small to me.
Advocates for the trans women athletes say that after their transition, and with taking female hormones, they are worse athletes than they were before transition. I don’t doubt it, but the question is, are they better or worse than they would have been if they’d been in XX bodies all their lives?
It seems like there are two different questions here:
- Do trans women athletes get an advantage from having grown up in male bodies?
- If they do, should they be allowed to compete with other women anyway, because they are women now?
Right, but taking testosterone blockers does not shrink lung capacity; it does not shrink pulmonary function; it does not shrink shoulder girth. All of which are valuable in track and field (and swimming and…)
@TatinG - you are thinking about the fight in 2014 between Fallin Fox and her female opponent Taika Brents.
A quick google search brought up this article, but there are many others.
https://bjj-world.com/transgender-mma-fighter-fallon-fox-breaks-skull-of-her-female-opponent/
The legal issue is what does it mean to discriminate on the basis of sex. The literal interpretation would be any distinction on the basis of sex is discrimination on the basis of sex. A couple of Supreme Court cases were argued this term related to that.
Anabolic steroids which boost testosterone levels are banned in women’s sports, such as the WTA, recognizing that they provide an unnatural advantage in increasing muscles. It would make no sense to allow trans female players to have the advantage of increased testosterone and not to allow female players to dope to get the same advantage. I could almost see some male player who wasn’t making a living on the Challenger circuit, looking at the money involved and declaring himself female to earn bigger money on the women’s circuit.
But they could get around the ‘discrimination based on sex’ by defining members of a woman’s team as those with XX and no XY. Transgender individuals could then claim there are no teams for them and the school might have to provide equal opportunities, but not on the women’s team. Those opportunities are based on the number of students in that group. Smith college doesn’t have to offer men’s teams because it is 100% female. My daughter’s school is about 30% female, so only has to offer that percentage of teams for women (football takes care of that) to be in compliance with Title IX.
I understand the legal issues but sometimes I’d love it if common sense could just win. I get that some people will be hurt by not being able to participate in a spot they love but isn’t that better than the total dismantling of women’s sports after all the gains we have fought for over the years?
At the same time, is it really such a big deal? How many transgender athletes are there? I guess for track and swimming it’s a big deal. I’m not sure how big a deal it would be in team sports just due to numbers.