Article: transgender athletes claiming to be woman destroying womens' sports

[Nik]

And my personal favourite sports person of the year so far Jasmin Paris, winning the mixed gender 268 mile Montane Spine Race whilst stopping to breast feed her baby!

 

[Jimbo]

Thank you; I appreciate your concern about kids like my daughter. And sorry for the delay.

I think that one of the things missing here is that in the US; Many States interpret the older Title IX statute requiring gender equality to mean that any person who identifies as a female must be treated that way for sports, regardless of treatment. So you do in fact have males identifying as females bumping the females out.

Now, how we handle adolescent gender dysphoria is a whole other issue; and frankly from what I’ve read the science is not settled here as to the best way to handle it. But if you agree I’d set that aside for the moment.

For adults, though, If we say ''for this transgender athlete to compete, we require transition therapy that will reduce testosterone and muscle mass" then that’s something I think we can look into. It’s not as simple as ‘hey it worked for you though’ though I don’t deny this. There is more than just muscle mass going on. Hip and joint structure can get involved too. But it certainly debatable and might be the way to go.

For kids; I don’t think you can push through the idea that just because someone identifies with a sex they can then compete in their identified sex’s sports; or locker rooms. If a young lady has to share a locker room with a trans girl who has full male genitalia this could well be traumatic. Particularly if that young lady had been assaulted or mistreated by men earlier in her life.

And for things like power lifting, running, volleyball, etc. a non transitioned trans girl competing against biological girls just isn’t fair. You could well have a young biological male identifying as a female competing against my daughter.

 

[pnewton]

I would just love to say how I really feel about this but the flaggers have been awful busy lately so I better not.

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I have a simple and non-controversial solution. Simply eliminate women sports. That way real sports will have more money.

Now, I will await my flag.

edit… darn it, I can’t post back to back. Okay, here is my real post. I have no issue one way or another with the topic. I think it best to let the individual competition committees of each age, sport, and category determine what is best. This means not messing with other people’s business, stepping up if it is yours, and accepting that in the genetic lottery “fair” has little meaning.

If all genders competed together in a sport, for example, in which men, or women, had an edge, there still is no such thing as fair, as genetics still divides talent.

 

[Peeps]

Okay, here is my real post. I have no issue one way or another with the topic. I think it best to let the individual competition committees of each age, sport, and category determine what is best. This means not messing with other people’s business, stepping up if it is yours, and accepting that in the genetic lottery “fair” has little meaning.

I think this makes a lot of sense and I agree with your idea. Let the people who really KNOW the sport make decisions about their sport. Please, please, NO government intervention, please! Most people know very little about any sport other than the one(s) that they are personally involved with, and it makes no sense for people who don’t thoroughly understand the sport to make decisions about who can and can’t participate.

I know the sport of figure skating pretty well after being involved with it for most of my life. Figure skating has always been a hotbed of controversy! The sport has undergone a huge transformation since the Salt Lake City Olympics, and there is a lot of controversy about those changes, especially the IJS (the new judging system that utilizes “points”).

Anyway, a poster above mentioned that women figure skaters land quads. Five women have landed quads in competition that were counted as “completed.” To land jumps, a woman has to basically have the body of a little girl–no curves. It’s all about physics and body types, weight (not much of it!), strength, and proper training. Also money–getting to the point where a skater can land the big jumps takes a TON of cash, and this alone will stop a lot of skaters from ever landing doubles or triples, let alone quads, even if they are capable of it because of their God-given body type!

What’s really interesting is that only about 20 men in the world land quads in competition! So no male is guaranteed the ability to land quads just because he’s a male!

So much of figure skating is technique, and so few coaches in the world are capable of teaching this technique, and so few skaters have the resources to locate in the cities where these coaches live and work.

But as I mentioned in an earlier post, U.S. Figure Skating (and I believe the International Skating Union as well) has already put policies in place that require a male skater to be on hormones for quite a long period of time before competing as a female. I’m guessing that other sports have policies in place, too, and they know best.

Too bad the the high school and college sports federations don’t seem to have this issue nailed down. Sports scholarships help quite a few young people to get through college, and it’s a shame if this avenue to complete college is discombobulated by sexuality issues.