Trans Girls Belong on Girls' Sports Teams
Trans Girls Belong on Girls' Sports Teams
There is no scientific case for excluding them
In February 2020, the families of three cisgender girls filed a federal lawsuit against the Connecticut Association of Schools, the nonprofit Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and several boards of education in the state. The families were upset that transgender girls were competing against the cisgender girls in high school track leagues. They argued that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in high school sports and should be forced to play on boys’ teams.
Conservatives around the country have jumped on the question. Attorney General Merrick Garland was pressed on the issue during his confirmation hearing last month. State legislators around the country are pushing bills that would force trans girls to compete on boys’ teams. In describing the Connecticut case in the Wall Street Journal, opinion writer Abigail Shrier expressed a representative argument: when transgender girls compete on girls’ sports teams, she wrote, “[cisgender] girls can’t win.”
The opinion piece left out the fact that two days after the Connecticut lawsuit was filed by the cisgender girls’ families, one of those girls beat one of the transgender girls named in the lawsuit in a Connecticut state championship. It turns out that when transgender girls play on girls’ sports teams, cisgender girls can win. In fact, the vast majority of female athletes are cisgender, as are the vast majority of winners. There is no epidemic of transgender girls dominating female sports. Attempts to force transgender girls to play on the boys’ teams are unconscionable attacks on already marginalized transgender children, and they don’t address a real problem. They’re unscientific, and they would cause serious mental health damage to both cisgender and transgender youth.
Policies permitting transgender athletes to play on teams that match their gender identity are not new. The Olympics have had trans-inclusive policies since 2004, but a single openly transgender athlete has yet to even qualify. California passed a law in 2013 that allows trans youth to compete on the team that matches their gender identity; there have been no issues. U SPORTS, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S.’s National Collegiate Athletic Association, has allowed transgender athletes to compete with the team that matches their identity for the past two years.
The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.
Claiming that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in sports also neglects the fact that these kids have the deck stacked against them in nearly every other way imaginable. They suffer from higher rates of bullying, anxiety and depression—all of which make it more difficult for them to train and compete. They also have higher rates of homelessness and poverty because of common experiences of family rejection. This is likely a major driver of why we see so few transgender athletes in collegiate sports and none in the Olympics.
On top of the notion of transgender athletic advantage being dubious, enforcing these bills would be bizarre and cruel. Idaho’s H.B. 500, which was signed into law but currently has a preliminary injunction against its enforcement, would essentially let people accuse students of lying about their sex. Those students would then need to “prove” their sex through means including an invasive genital exam or genetic testing. And what happens when a kid comes back with XY chromosomes but a vagina (as occurs with people with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome)? Do they play on the boys’ team or the girls’ team? This is just one of several conditions that would make such sex policing impossible.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time people have tried to discredit the success of athletes from marginalized minorities based on half-baked claims of “science.” There is a long history of similarly painting Black athletes as “genetically superior” in an attempt to downplay the effects of their hard work and training.
Recently, some have even harkened back to eras of “separate but equal,” suggesting that transgender athletes should be forced into their own leagues. In addition to all the reasons why this is unnecessary that I’ve already explained, it is also unjust. As we’ve learned from women’s sports leagues, separate is not equal. Female athletes consistently have to deal with fewer accolades, less press coverage and lower pay. A transgender sports league would undoubtedly be plagued with the same issues.
Beyond the trauma of sex-verification exams, these bills would cause further emotional damage to transgender youth. While we haven’t seen an epidemic of transgender girls dominating sports leagues, we have seen high rates of anxiety, depression and suicide attempts. Research highlights that a major driver of these mental health problems is rejection of someone’s gender identity. Forcing trans youth to play on sports teams that don’t match their identity will worsen these disparities. It’s a classic form of transgender conversion therapy, a discredited practice of trying to force transgender people to be cisgender and gender-conforming.
Though this can be hard for cisgender people to understand, imagine someone told you that you were a different gender and then forced you to play on the sports team of that gender throughout all of your school years. You’d likely be miserable and confused.
As a child psychiatry fellow, I spend a lot of time with kids. They have many worries on their minds: bullying, sexual assault, divorcing parents, concerns they won’t get into college. What they’re not worried about is transgender girls playing on girls’ sports teams.
Legislators need to work on the issues that truly impact young people and women’s sports—lower pay to female athletes, less media coverage for women’s sports and cultural environments that lead to high dropout rates for diverse athletes—instead of manufacturing problems and “solutions” that hurt the kids we are supposed to be protecting.
As a short man let me tell you how hilarious it is when people bitch about fairness in sports when it comes to transrights. Sports are not fair at all, they are literally a display of ableism. Transwomen deserve a spot on womens teams fullstop its not complicated.
Absolutely. Top sprinters have a whole different kind of muscle structure to the average person. I can train 24/7 for the rest of my life and I'm never going to develop a whole different muscle structure.
As a short person I could never be the best basketballer, and with shorter legs I'll never be a hurdler.
Sport is always a good percentage "what you're born with".
Absolutely agreed! I'm a short trans guy, and I go swimming 4 times a week. Admittedly it's not competitive, but the huge range in speed and stamina is just staggering. There's women that are faster than me, or who can keep going longer. There's men that are slower or have less endurance. Human beings are so incredibly varied, physically speaking, that the difference within groups is much greater than the difference between groups. In so many sports, an inch of extra height, or slightly longer arms, or slightly more flexible joints, or a slight variation in hormonal configuration, can all give someone a competitive edge. The only way to have truly fair sports is to only allow identical twins to compete against each other.
That said, I do accept the science that suggests 2+ years on HRT is a reasonably fair threshold when it comes to trans people, given what is known about testosterone's effects on the body. It's not a perfect solution, since 100% fairness is impossible, but it's a compromise that has scientific backing, which is probably the best that can be asked for.
It really is interesting watching the mental gymnastics involved in ensuring 'fairness' in sport this one particular instance and no other. I've noticed that the people I encounter who feel the most strongly about this think of themselves as 'big powerful men'. I'm not big, or particularly powerful, so it's always been obvious to me that it's basically a load of bull. There are plenty of women who could outperform me at any sport, and there always have been. Meanwhile I saw competitive cornhole on TV at a bar the other day and it was gender segregated. Wtf?
Seems to me there is near unanimity from relevant scientists & physicians that female trans athletes have no advantage over their female cis counterparts.
If the state of that knowledge changes, then by all means revisit the rules, but unless & until that happens, banning trans women & girls from competing is deeply unfair & arbitrary.
I could see that a trans girl or woman who has yet to commence HRT might have some physical advantages, but until we're considering national level competition, I think it is reasonable to let this (utterly tiny) minority compete.
For high level stuff, it would be easy to have a requirement of being on HRT for a minimum period. That said, attaining one's peak achievable performance whilst going through what amounts to a second round of puberty sounds... impossibly hard.
I think we really need to know why sports are segregated.
If it's because males have physical advantages over females, then you really want to separate by some kind of size or strength criterion. Weight classes, like wrestling or boxing.
If its because we don't want children titillated by seeing the opposite sex change clothes in the locker room, then you need to come up with some way to address people with same-sex attraction.
If it's just because that's the way sports were when you were a kid, then let the two transgender kids play with the 10,000 cisgender kids.
FINA already bars trans-women who went through male puberty from competing as women, and that seems like a pretty fair compromise. At least until you pile on states trying to ban medical care for transgender youth - i.e. puberty blockers - or other difficulties many trans-youth have in obtaining such care. My understanding is that HRT after puberty doesn't come anywhere close to the biological effects of actual puberty, in terms of strength, size, and speed.
FINA already bars trans-women who went through male puberty from competing as women, and that seems like a pretty fair compromise.
I didn't know I was trans until I was 18 because nobody explained it in a way that made sense to me. The literature was not made accessible. You need to put a ton of effort into educating kids before you can put in a rule like that fairly.
I don't think there is real consensus.
Besides, this is not a mathematical formula.
I got into a very strange argument with a relative (who doesn’t know any trans people -at least none they are aware of). They were absolutely convinced that ANY man is better than ALL women at all things. Athletic, intellectual, creative; men are inherently better at all of it.
Therefore, in their mind, anyone who was a man/boy at any point in their lives will be better at everything than a cis woman ever could be. So trans women will always dominate no matter what.
The profound misogyny at the base of their argument was flabbergasting.
@StringTheory @Five that's something that some people do actually believe. it is scary that people like that run around, but every ones in a while you run into that sort of person.
This same relative also argued that cis men would go through transition just so they could be at the top of their sport (because they’d beat all the women) or so that they could get scholarships ear-marked for women (because they would be smarter than all the women and would win the scholarships). Somehow that seemed reasonable to them? How on earth!?!?
It's amazing watching sporting bodies ruin their own sports for transphobes who don't care about women's sport.
Separate male and female teams is the problem in the first place. It just reinforces the gender binary and makes life more difficult for trans, non binary and intersex people.
Exactly, switch over to leagues based on whatever benchmark makes sense for your sport and call it a day
The types of benchmarking needed to measure an individual athletes potential to ensure they aren’t sandbagging would be too costly to implement at anything but the highest levels of athletics.
It is an incredibly complex solution to a non problem.
Let trans athletes compete with cis athletes.
There simply aren’t enough trans athletes for this to be a problem worth considering at a systemic level. At an individual level, if someone lacks the level of self awareness to enter an event where they consistently beat cis women(like if they were an accomplished cis athlete just a few months into transition), then there can be an individual ruling on that person.
Don’t fall for the conservative trap, their hyperbole is engineered (in part) to produce untenable “solutions” from progressives.
My loose understanding is that a lot of men's divisions are actually open, while it's women's divisions that are strictly confined to women. For some sports though, there's such a strong sex gap that very few women are realistically competitive with men. Ensuring a division where competitively play is the entire purpose of having women's divisions in the first place.
This obviously depends a lot of the individual sport though. Muscle mass and strength are a lot more pivotal in something like weightlifting or American football than in archery.
What are you talking about?
Separate teams are the only thing that lets biological women have any possibility to compete
Biological men are stronger faster and more resistant, this is a fact
Now downvote me to hell and then ask an admin delete my comment for being transphobic
Separate teams are the only thing that lets biological women have any possibility to compete
no, they mostly exist to protect cis male egos from the "devastation" of not only competing against, but very possibly being beaten by, women (feel free to look up some of the endless list of examples where a women beat a man/some men, not even in anything physical, so even stuff like chess, so the men proceeded to change the rules, to make sure they could never be hurt like that again, the poor snowflakes)
Biological men are stronger faster and more resistant, this is a fact
no it isn't fact, it's a circumstance that has arisen from the discrimination and segregation of women from sports, not some natural or biological fact. Also there are millions and millions of women out there that could easily wipe the floor with any man at literally any sport you test them at, they're just never given a chance, because see aforementioned reason.
Now downvote me to hell and then ask an admin delete my comment for being transphobic
So you know you're a wilfully ignorant transphobe, you just can't help yourself but declare it to the world because you simply can't keep all that hate pent up inside your turd of a brain..
Won't see me complaining about the trash taking itself out.. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Hey I've seen this line of thinking before!
biologicalwhite men arestrongersmarterfaster, civilized and moreresistantethical, this is a factNow downvote me to hell and then ask an admin delete my comment for being
transphobicracistJust so you understand what logic you are using. Would you tell a commenter like this they need to challenge their beliefs?
Your stance relies on your gut feeling and bias, not historical or biological understanding. I won't spend my time linking studies you won't read, seems like a lot of others have done that already. But the reason you keep getting told you are wrong is because you are literally ignorant of the facts. Not because everyone else is virtue signaling or being more PC like a white nationalist would say.
You should think more critically about your beliefs.
Now downvote me to hell and then ask an admin delete my comment for being transphobic
Cringe
And they didn't say we shouldn't have any teams, they said teams not be divided by sex.
Sexual dimorphism is a real thing and the reason they are split in the first place.
i mean, no, that's ahistorical. historically, the reason they are "split" is because men didn't let women do sports for a really long time, and when women began pushing for their own sports, men didn't want them to be the same thing. it wasn't some dispassionate analysis of sexual dimorphism, it was rooted in the culture of misogyny of the time, and backed by deeply held pseudo-scientific beliefs about the fragility of women. they thought that sport, like higher education, literally caused infertility, and used that as a justification to restrict women from those pursuits.
"But think of the children!" They will cry. "Boys might touch girls!"
They always seem to be thinking about children...
I hate this new ridiculous argument, trying to tie in worrying about children's experiences to pedophilia, as if even thinking about them and how best to support/safeguard them is pedophilic in nature. 🙄 it's very easy to see through.
Let's make a bet. We combine men and women's sports. There will eventually be no women in sports, because, even though the top ranking women can beat some, or even most, men, they cannot beat the top men.
If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't see such a wide gap in points/speed/weights/whatever between top men and women in their respective sport.
There may still be trans people in said sport (though I doubt it, but maybe), but there will definitely be no women.
Let's say this does happen. Then what do we do for women in sports, who are now, by default, completely excluded?
the idea that the only solution to the gender based segregation of sports is to make a single sports category for every person is disingenuous. weight classes in wrestling exist. there are plenty of ways to organize sports that don't collapse the diversity of the human condition into a single ranked competitive event, and there are plenty of people who currently engage in co-ed sports for recreational purposes that like it just fine. there is a small minority of athletes that compete for the highest possible performance, but the vast vast majority of people who do sports are just regular folks, and don't need arbitrary gender barriers to have a good time.
the rules set out to make competition at the highest levels of sport possible are not by default the best way for regular human people to do sport for their own pleasure. things that could be exclusionary in a ranked competition are not so in the context of average human performance, or even below average human performance. the Paralympics is a fantastic event that showcases the physical talents of people with disabilities. the specific events are tailored to the limitations of the athletes, and it's great! its great that even people who have more physical limitations than the average have a space to push their bodies to their personal limits, and it showcases how arbitrary those limitations actually are. the diversity of disability is vast. some of these athletes bodies look very different from their competitors, and that comes with specific physical limitations that are unique to that person. they still do sports.
i think we forget sometimes how utterly arbitrary sports are as an activity. its a game, for fun. anything, literally any set of arbitrary rules that involve physical movement can constitute a sport. and while we can insist that in our most special extra serious sports only certain kinds of people get to play, that doesn't mean those restrictions are any less arbitrary, or that they have to be that way. and if you're playing a fun game, and somebody who doesn't have the same kind of body wants to play the fun game with you, saying that because the way their body works it won't be fair is still not a proper justification for their exclusion, because we can change the rules whenever we want to.
this is uh...kind of a mess as far as science goes. Making claims about completely uncited studies, and being weirdly proud of the metric that would be something that needs adjusting in an actual study, that most female athletes are cisgender and also most winning female athletes are cisgender. This needs adjusting for population, you cant say white people are more likely to be obese in America because there's more obese white people than other races.
There is no inconsistency in study results on the effects of testosterone levels https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2917954/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21058750/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199607043350101Which is why trans girls need to have completely blocked testosterone, usually for a full 2 years, before any kind of competition.
They literally have less testosterone than the cis girls.
as far as i can tell, the claim that most female athletes are cisgender is mostly a refutation of the political motivation, that trans women are dominating women's sports, which is a common refrain in much of the legislation around this topic. the reality is that trans people aren't winning any prominent competitive sports, in part because they are such a small minority of athletes.
i would honestly doubt this is something we could get a very conclusive study out of, if only because there isn't a very huge sample size of competitive trans athletes that exist to be studied, and the ones that are there objectively haven't been winning very many awards. nor do i think this needs to be adjusted by population. competitive sports are not a random sample, they are the self selected group of the most physically fit people for a specific task. the fact that trans women aren't breaking records for competitive women sports, despite being in the self selected group of the women most fit for the task at hand, does say something on its own without the need for a more in depth statistical analysis.
There is no inconsistency in study results on the effects of testosterone levels
i mean, maybe read your sources a little more? two of them are about the effects of dosing testosterone in "normal male" subjects, which is not generalizable to women, or to endogenic testosterone, or to the effects of HRT for either transfeminine or transmasculine people, and the middle one is an overview of testosterone's role in exercise in both men and women which says this in the abstract:
Findings on the testosterone response in women are equivocal with both increases and no changes observed in response to a bout of heavy resistance exercise
which directly refutes your stated claim. equivocal is a synonym for ambiguous. the effects of testosterone on resistance exercise in women is explicitly recorded as inconsistent according to the article you're citing.
Or they could just stop going by sex/gender all together and separate leagues by bodymass or skill level
For any given activity level and body weight, people with active testosterone in their system have more muscle mass and less body fat than people without significant levels of testosterone.
Body mass division doesn't solve the problem
I'm not against that but historically men tend to do better, so that would mean men would largely dominate the Olympics, football, etc.
I mean where is the healthy debate about this?
Maybe there is something about sports and how it's generating so much money that it's the most money generating way is to show men losing (obviously in some way so you can interpret it as it was not 'the fault of the team', it was unluck, the referees, unluck again etc, if only "guy" would havedone this and not that) but make believe it might be possible one day maybe.
As Sabine Hossenfelder's video on trans athletes notes (note, not all of her non-physics takes are good), sports is not about fair but interesting. There are a lot of factors that inform the capacity to do well in a given sport, and gender segregation in some sports is only an effort to filter out uninteresting matches. (Note Boxing which has weight classes as well as gender segregation).
In the information age, if we wanted, we could categorize individuals according to their athletic records and then organize matches according to similar capabilities, if we wanted. And in the end, as we start to CRISPR human genetics we'll likely need to do this, since it will be too easy to grow our own athletes rather than rely on drafts from schools.
It'd also be nice if we didnt value people only based on their physical capacity to do well in a ceremonial battle (id est, sports) and perform in a specific moment, knowing for each of us, there will always be others who are better at it. Maybe we should appreciate that some people not born with Usain Bolt's long legs have value as well.
gender segregation in some sports is only an effort to filter out uninteresting matches
i'd be more willing to accept this rationale if the history of gender segregation in sports wasn't deeply rooted in misogyny. are you sure that isn't at least partly a post-hoc rationalization for a practice that has a lot of cultural inertia?
Maybe we should appreciate that some people not born with Usain Bolt’s long legs have value as well.
i'd recommend looking into the Paralympics if you want to see what sport, and even competition, without that kind of value judgement can look like.
i'd be more willing to accept this rationale if the history of gender segregation in sports wasn't deeply rooted in misogyny.
Oh you're absolutely correct in asserting that womens leagues in the modern west started segregated due to bigotry by a male dominated sector. To this day we.have women glad to participate in male leagues who are boycotted and harassed for daring to cross that line (especially when they are particularly good at their sport.)
Stories in Hellenic mythology like that of Atalanta suggests games in the classic age might not have been segregated, at least in some of the city-states. There are also records of Roman gladiatrices who were sometimes pitted against their gladiator counterparts, so women's leagues aren't unique to modern day.
But in the 21st century, we should be looking to include everyone who wants to participate who doesnt have a substantial edge over the rest of the league, and the Olympics is headed in that direction. Also those activist groups looking to exclude trans athletes from women's sports really have no interest in women's sports except as a way to signal their ideological position.
Have You seen Rebecca Watson take on Sabine's videos about trans kids care though? I think it's an important one to watch for anyone watching Sabine's videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Kau7bO3Fw
Yes I had. Sabine was
TERFyTE about puberty blockers despite the history of blockers being used to delay precocious puberty for decades now.Watson even mentions Hossenfelder's take on trans athletes, that it's less terrible. Granted, after her take on capitalism, I'm super wary of any future videos from her.
But her points on the Athletes video seemed to be a good take, that we're less looking at fair but competitions that are interesting, and in schools, the whole point should be about inclusion and participation, getting as many students on the field passing the ball around.
Article makes a lot of flawed arguments.
I think it should be fair from transgender people to make a conscious decision to not compete in sports. Women sports have by themselves had problems with athletes taking certain chemicals or have abnormal testosterone production since birth. For sure it doesn't need biological males competing. I'm all for trans rights, but this is not doing anyone a favour. If you love a sport so much that you just need to do it, there are tons of ways to be a part of it and earn money from it.
I can't accept that competing only in official tournaments would be so imperative to realizing oneself as a particular gender.
I’m all for trans rights, but
I'm not a bigot, but... (you are a bigot)
Ah, you are one of those people that sees the world only in the extremes. I'm sorry, but my post was not meant for you. Please move along, I'm sure you will find the bubble you are looking for around somewhere.
The main problem with this argument is that most of the people complaining about trans people in sport object to trans children playing in sports at school, a category that is definitively not competitive, outside of the vague sense of "these two teams are competing and there can only be one winner". They object to trans people participating in little sports teams that only "compete" with the team from the nearest town or that other company their place of employment has a low-level rivalry with.
But if you take the stance that this is enough of an "official" competition that trans people should be barred from participating, then you've basically ruled that trans people aren't allowed to play any non-solo sports at all. Then, once you've also decreed that trans people aren't allowed in changing rooms, you've banned trans people from all exercise other than running and walking. No golf or 5-a-side football (soccer to the Americans here), because those have opponents that the trans person might beat, even if the opponents are their friends and neighbours. No swimming or gyms, because trans people need to use the changing rooms.
If you draw the line at official sports tournaments, when is a tournament big enough? Do only major leagues and Olympics count? What about the second biggest league? How about the third biggest? If there's a little local league where all the towns in a 100 mile radius compete against each other and declare a fairly meaningless championship title at the end of the season, does that count as sufficiently competitive that trans people should be banned (or voluntarily agree not to participate)?
Participating in high-level sports isn't imperative to realising oneself as a particular gender... but being able to participate in society is. A trans person should be able to play for a local sports team, even if there is an element of competition, scores tallied over the season, and a tiny cheap trophy given to the winner. Because being able to exercise, and doing that exercise by playing sports with members of one's own community, is imperative to realising one's gender. Social transition, which includes participating in activities as one's gender, is an absolutely essential part of the process.
All the people I talked to about this were talking about adults. Nobody was thinking about gym lessons and pre puberty children.
Saying that with my stance they can't go into locker rooms is an absurd streatch. Everyone can privately do whatever they want and do any recreational sport they want against and with any willing participant. No problem.
We draw the line. We draw the lines all the time and redraw them and do all kinds of creative things with lines. Drawing lines is nothing special, it's nothing necessarily good or bad.
I don't think participating in official sports tournaments is some kind of uninalienable human right. There are many types and groups of people what can't join for example: county basketball tournament for girls ages 12-14. There is no right to that.
okay. lemme burst your bubble, then. trans people aren't gonna unanimously decide of their own volition that they don't deserve a place in sports for a variety of reasons, ranging from the ideological to the personal. sorry, that isn't going to happen, and your personal understanding of what is or isn't important to "realizing oneself as a particular gender" is irrelevant to the lived experience of the people who disagree with you about that. and so your next steps are fairly clear. you either allow trans people to do what they choose to and address problems as they become relevant, or you try to force them to comply with your vision of competitive sport at a time when trans people are virtually absent from competitive sport, and align yourself with the legislators pursuing that agenda.
oh, whoops! you just made common cause with the bigots trying to erase trans people from public life! weird look, for somebody who's "all for trans rights".
article about trans women
you: "biological males"
smh, enjoy your perma, we're not okay with transphobes around here
Genuian question here, are there any studies on bone structure and joint strength of trans athletes? The article says there's no scientific evidence to prevent trans athletes but only talks about testosterone. The complains I have heard center more around a person who had natural male hormones until say 16, and so had puberty male growth in bones and joints to support male muscle mass. Then, transitioned. The hormone levels would be the same as any other female athlete, but would prior bone and joint growth be "locked in"?
Does that give an advantage? Especially in a sport like swimming where arm length and shoulder size are so critical for the physics of propultion through water.
You can short-cut all the biology and just observe that bad trans athletes stay bad after transition, middling ones stay middling, and stellar ones stay stellar.
There may still be some minor advantages or disadvantages left but the ballpark looks fair, also don't forget that there's plenty of cis genetic freaks -- have you seen Michael Phelps' hands? Should he be disqualified because it's unfair that he's more fish than human? Should we change basketball rules so that short people aren't at a disadvantage?
There might be but keep in mind longer arms needs more force to drive and trans women generally don't have the testosterone to grow large muscles.
Also like all sport is unfair, it's inherently the point. When a tall, muscular, woman wins a swimming contest nobody is waiting in the wings to measure her serium testosterone level and determine whether it was legitimate. We accept that people have physiological variations, different economic opportunities, and different mental capacities. We are interested in exploring what a person can do within rough approximately fair bands of competition.
Trans people generally want to transition early, so there's not a huge amount of time for puberty growth or lack thereof (remember trans men dammit!) given proper support for most people. Even later transitioners don't seem to have any significant advantage, given the lack of winning they're doing. I suspect any advantage that may exist is massively, massively, dwarfed by being wealthy enough to hire competent coaches/take the time to train + good childhood for high likelihood of positive psychological coping with stress.
Trans people generally lose on both those fronts.
Does that give an advantage? Especially in a sport like swimming where arm length and shoulder size are so critical for the physics of propultion through water.
I think you answered your own question. I have nothing against trans people, but they really should not compete in women's sports, though women's sports are often unfair as it is. I think everyone should just accept that if you transition you cannot be a professional athlete anymore & most people do just that.
The argument about trans people not being better athletes right now is not very good, because if allowing trans people to compete became widespread, I guarantee you they would start winning everything in women's sports, because people would become carrier trans & all the potential gains would be maximized by professional coaches & their medical teams.
The hormone therapy they go through prevents all the supposed masculine traits they develop during puberty.
They are lying, or to be more exact, lying by omission. Of course there is bone density differences, on top of the obvious skeletal ones. The "hormones will change their muscles," is a red herring. Muscle fiber density remains unchanged, drugs or no drugs, all they have to do is go to the gym and they will develop musculature that is different to actual women. This is why they seem to olpy focus on "muscle mass," over muscle fiber density. No way they do not know the difference.
Not to mention that the argument that we should okay giving developing children/teens hormones is also a false argument. Since when are we okay risking chemically castrating children? Which will either affect them biologically and/or mentally during such important time of their lives. There is next to 0% objective research on the subject. Despite what proponents would like people to believe. For feelings does not equate empirical research.
So is centre of gravity, and other factors, that can play a role in sports. Men will always develop more upper body strenght over women. They are cherry picking arguments hoping that most people who do not know a lot of Human Anatomy will fall for it. In order to gain public opinion. It's underhanded, or at least it looks like it.
Hell, even skin elasticity and skin patterns are different between men and women.
Transgender women athletics are facing a catch 22 situation: If they win it is becuz of their "biological sex" But if they lose then it is becuz of their harmful transition surgeries.
Either way there is a reason to hate them.
I’m all for trans rights, but
I'm not a bigot, but... (you are a bigot)
