alt Hacker NewsOlympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events
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My two cents as a transfem athlete:
The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level.
Most of us do sports for fun/friends and don’t care how they rank us, but would be sad to be banned.
There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, but by this many years in it feels silly. I registered as a man for the last event in case anyone might get upset, the staff changed it to say “woman” when I got there anyways, and then I lost to a woman twice my age.
Trans women have competed as women in the Olympics once ever and have 0 medals. By the numbers it's a non issue under previous rules (despite the incredible amount of ink spilled over it). People are talking about trans women here but the vast majority of people affected by this change are women who are not trans who have a "disorder of sexual development".
Headline is inaccurate.
Transgender athletes are not barred from women's events. Female athletes who identify as men, or otherwise do not identify as women, can still compete in this category, as they have been doing already.
What the IOC's new policy actually does is make male athletes ineligible for competition in the female category, with very few exceptions. These exceptions are for athletes who are technically male but have a disorder of sex development that confers no male advantage, e.g. CAIS.
what always strikes me as weird is how often the conversation is framed around "men competing in women's sports" when trans women cant really be said to be biologically male anymore. Taking Estrogen and blocking testosterone has a huge effect on how fast/strong/athletic someone is. I feel like that should be the key point of discussion, but somehow always gets burried under other, kind of less relevant subjects (for example I dont think it matters that up until now no trans woman has really won anything significant, as that could always change in the future).
so sad to see how trans women are treated.
This is not completely true. (Not saying I agree or disagree with it.) Trans athletes can compete under the sex indicated byu their chomosomes.
Has anyone measured trans athletes performance?
I see this topic come up repeatedly in different guises, protect women from the evil trans-agenda. But I haven't seen where this is actually a problem.
Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) athletes?
I always thought the more elegant approach to all of this was to add a mixed sex league. Keep the traditions, add a novel new one, and let people consent to who they want to compete against and watch
This always should of been left to sports committees than our government, what a waste of our representatives times, but I guess they got the culture war points
It's gonna get buried, but petesergeant had a good comment sharing this article.
They are also banning females from female sports as well with this ruling.
https://www.olympics.com/en/news/semenya-niyonsaba-wambui-wh...
There should be Genderlympics, similar to the Paralympics. It's only fair!
Good thing IMHO
This story/topic should not be on HN.
Not only trans athletes, but any biologically born women the IOC thinks are insufficiently feminine.
It’s an unfair advantage apparently. You know, like being born tall for basketball players. Curious how no other biological advantages are being policed.
Sports already exclude most people as they're not performant enough. So I don't see a problem with excluding biological males from female sports.
But, we should compare actual body parts that are relevant, for example I'm male but I'd not belong in male sports as my body is more feminine..
Still, it's not who you think you are that should decide, it's the body type so the competition can be more interesting as that is the point of sports anyway..
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The easiest way to explain this nonsense
is that in 100+ years of Olympics, there are ZERO elite athletes who were transgender
none
it's brought to you by the some of the very same people who want you to prove you are a citizen every time you vote
because there have been no previous cases of that either
However there are women who have given birth who will fail that SRY test
Because biology is messy, not black and white, never "on" or "off", there is always overlap
They tried this before in 1996 and quickly ended it by 2000 because the result was a disaster
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Generally.. I think people takes sports far too seriously.
The fair answer is to remove sex, gender, and everything related to that from classification. Dont look at it. Dont consider it. Everyone competes together.
It means that floor gymnastics is fair for *anyone* to compete in. None of this "wrong crotch shape" bullshit. Or intersex. Or trans. If you are good enough, you get in. If not, you dont.
And the whole trans argument would go away.
Means testing and gender means testing is a scourge. Time to be rid of it.
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URz-RYEOaig
I think that alt gender athletes can compete as there own group, or we do away with gender (ha), and everybody can compete in everything "fairly", and by fairly I mean nobody gets to have any feelings about this! since when does an ancient universal reality get to be re-decided behind closed doors by anonimous interest groups? and then become taboo to question, hmmmmm?
Men who weigh 100kg are also banned from participating in the 63kg weightlifting category. So what? There are physical traits that offer advantages in sports. We bucketize so that we see more interesting competitions (aka a 120kg weightlifter would completely dominate all of the smaller folks, every single time, so what's the point of competing ).
olympics should be entirely unisex. simple as that.
This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball), this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make women’s sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course.
Remember, sport is and has always been about statistical outliers competing. Fairness has never been, and will never be, a genuine consideration.
It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)
Stuff like this is why professional sports is widely seen as a cheater’s club where everyone tries to cheat as hard as possible just shy of getting caught, then acts completely innocent and indignant when someone else just barely crosses the line into getting caught.
The only reason is topic is even on the table is the sheer amount of political grifters riding the trans “panic” for many years, trying to rile up a mob. This is a non issue, and online trans investigators and people like jk Rowling so far managed to only hurt multiple (assigned at birth) women in sports, whos looks don’t conform with traditional femininity.
The differences between cisgender bodies are already so varied that the logic falls apart almost immediately.
For that matter why not restrict rich athletes who have access to training and equipment that poor athletes do not?
The point at where the line is drawn is entirely arbitrary. Gattaca vibes.
It's clear how insane this culture war against trans people is when you consider this only applies to trans women and not trans men?
Also, so many of these anti-trans efforts end up hurting cis women too, the ones who happen to look too masculine or have too high of testosterone.
Gender is not as straightforward as bigots and transphobes would like to think. I wonder how many cis women will be affected by this ruling because their chromosomes and hormones aren't within so called "normal levels"
I can't imagine trans women who avoided male puberty are statistically any better athletes than cis women. A total ban seems discriminatory to me.
Trans women are women.
If you want to see men dressed as women, watch "This is the Army" (1943), an American wartime musical comedy film that features actor Ronald Regan, and a lot of musical numbers performed by men in drag.
I thought this article does a good job explaining why some people care a lot about this topic https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/how-youth-sports-supercharg...
This is the most objective viewpoint on transgenders in sports:
https://shows.acast.com/realscienceofsport/episodes/whytrans...
When I was growing up, I remember some drama because East German and Soviet male athletes were trying to compete as women. If male to female trans athletes were allowed to compete, I imagine it would just be a matter of time before a female athlete would HAVE to be trans in order to stand a competitive chance.
https://archive.is/WRmUo