Transgender athletes back on the agenda

[David]

Note: so that we don't keep veering off-topic, please use this new thread for any further discussion of non-sport related transgender issues: http://magpies.net/nick/bb/viewtopic.ph ... 27#1803627

[Skids]

Transgender Athlete Smashes Four Women’s Powerlifting Records

Olympic gold medal winner Kelly Holmes says it’s a “bloody joke”.

Former swimming champion Sharron Davies said the situation was unfair to biological women.

“This is a trans woman a male body with male physiology setting a world record & winning a woman’s event in America in powerlifting. A woman with female biology cannot compete… it’s a pointless unfair playing field,” she tweeted.


Feminists are increasingly denounced as “transphobic” if they argue that women shouldn’t be forced to compete against biological men.

Meanwhile, conservatives who predicted a long time ago that the left would eat its own over this topic just sit back and laugh.


https://summit.news/2019/04/30/transgen ... g-records/

[think positive]

Only won 8 out of 9 events, so I guess someone will point to it being ok. It’s not ok. These competitors have every right to be upset. But hey, I guess 1 is happy! It’s just wrong. At the very least NOT FAIR!

It doesn’t matter how many times we have this conversation about what ever sport. Bottom line is you cannot change a persons complete biology, when a transgender gets autopsied, their basic biology will not have changed, their bones may be less dense or more dense, but they will still be the bones they were born with, same with heart size, lung capacity. you don’t have to watch CSI to figure that out. And that makes any physical competition just wrong.

This doesn’t mean I have a problem with someone who identifies as the opposite gender living as the opposite gender or having any operation of therapy to change parts of their biology. On the contrary they have my empathy,it must be terribly difficult to struggle with, and very brave to confront.

It is possible to see both sides of an argument and still have an opinion

[Skids]

I think they should have a transgender category, let them compete against each other. That's the only fair solution to this ridiculous situation.

[think positive]

I think they should have a transgender category, let them compete against each other. That's the only fair solution to this ridiculous situation.

totally agree.

[stui magpie]

This is not about a transgender athlete, but goes to demonstrate the same issue, that naturally occurring excess testosterone gives an unfair advantage.

Caster Semenya allegedly has Hyperandroginism, which means her body naturally produces much more testosterone than the usual female range. She's been undefeated in 30 consecutive starts over 800 metres running, and the IAAF has bought in a new rule that anyone competing in the female running events between 400m to the 1 mile has to have testosterone levels below 5 nmol/L, which is still more than double the usual female range but apparently significantly less that what Caster has,

Average female has around 2 nmol/L, average male is around 20. So to compete, she'll have to take medication to lower her testosterone below the limit and maintain that for 6 months before competition.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-01/ ... tion=sport

No you could argue it's not fair, Caster is a biological woman, she's passed a sex test and her condition is natural so she's not a cheat.

But you could also argue that allowing her to continue to compete with the high testosterone levels is unfair to all the women who no matter how hard they train cannot build the strength that Caster can because of the extra testosterone.

[David]

[stui magpie]

[Skids]

[stui magpie]

I don't usually read the Guardian, but this was a reasonably balanced article.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... rt-science

These 2 quotes sum up the argument from my side.

For many of the athletes she has been beating for years, not to mention those anxious to keep politics out of sport, this argument doubtless feels intensely frustrating and unfair. The blunt truth is that without sex segregation in sport, women would never win medals, and segregation can only work if there is an agreed definition of what makes someone biologically male or female. There is no room on the track for the grey areas and blurred lines increasingly emerging in real life, even if the boundaries created by the IAAF look increasingly crude and artificial by comparison.

And this, arguably, is only the beginning. Semenya’s case is, strictly speaking, separate from that of whether trans women should compete in women’s sport, since it revolves around how far testosterone drives performance. For trans female athletes, whose hormone levels will have already been lowered by transitioning, the debate centres more on whether some advantages linger on from years of living in a body flooded with male hormones.

But both are different expressions of the same basic problem, which is that sport relies on strict binary divisions between men and women to create a level playing field. Yet society is drifting away from them, thanks not only to the shifting sands of gender identity but to greater medical understanding.

[Skids]

Good!

Female Trans Powerlifter Stripped Of Women's Championship Titles

“It was revealed that this female lifter was actually a male in the process of becoming a Transgender female,” Federation president Paul Bossi said in a statement to media. "“Our rules, and the basis of separating genders for competition, are based on physiological classification rather than identification."

"On the basis of all information presented to the Board of Directors for this particular case," Bossi continued, "the conclusion made, is that the correct physiological classification is male.”

http://dlvr.it/R4Z9NQ

[think positive]

... but only until next time....

as for Caster Semenya, i admit, at first sight i thought, that aint no woman! and yet She was born one, so i dont have any expectation She should change anything. give her the gold. can you imagine what growing up was like?

and yes i know David, its the same for trans athletes, sorry, to me it will always be a different thing.

[stui magpie]

No arguments she would have done it tough growing up, and none of it due to her own actions.

But, if we agree to segregate men and womans sporting competitions there needs to be a line somewhere and the current approach to Gender doesn't work in sport, plain and simple.

Some things can be a spectrum with shades of grey, some things are binary.

[think positive]

No arguments she would have done it tough growing up, and none of it due to her own actions.

But, if we agree to segregate men and womans sporting competitions there needs to be a line somewhere and the current approach to Gender doesn't work in sport, plain and simple.

Some things can be a spectrum with shades of grey, some things are binary.

50 shades of grey?!

[Skids]