I am a huge supporter of trans rights (and frequently get myself downvoted to oblivion for it). Women are women, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth. Androgen blockers dramatically suppress the effects of testosterone.
And yet... I have to think about the reasons we have women's sports in the first place. There's more than one reason, and I think they're in conflict. Some of it is social, acknowledging the community of women, much as the Olympics itself brings the world as a community even though not every competitor stands a realistic chance of coming in first.
Trans athletes are women, and should be treated as women... but maybe sports is an exception. Going through male puberty brings advantages, and it doesn't really represent the female community to compete on that basis.
My heart breaks for it. I'm not even exactly sure why they would want to be in such a competition. If they just want to play as women, as a way of bonding with other women as women, they absolutely should. But when there is money on the line (scholarships, endorsements, the draw of a medal in future coaching jobs)... maybe that's where they should acknowledge the natural disadvantages that conflict with the competitive nature of women's sports.
I'm not comfortable with that conclusion. I don't think there is a comfortable conclusion, not when so much is on the line. The line being drawn between high-testosterone assigned-female-at-birth athletes and low-testosterone assigned-male-at-birth athletes is not sharp and is always going to be somewhat arbitrary, and people will get hurt by that.
This is the problem with simplistic slogans like "transwomen are women" - it shortcuts analysis in favour of an ideology.
If instead we start from the biological reality, which is "transwomen are men presenting as women", and take it from there, a much more reasonable conversation can be had about where these trans-identifying men should be politely regarded as women, and where they should not.
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[ 68.0 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadI am a huge supporter of trans rights (and frequently get myself downvoted to oblivion for it). Women are women, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth. Androgen blockers dramatically suppress the effects of testosterone.
And yet... I have to think about the reasons we have women's sports in the first place. There's more than one reason, and I think they're in conflict. Some of it is social, acknowledging the community of women, much as the Olympics itself brings the world as a community even though not every competitor stands a realistic chance of coming in first.
Trans athletes are women, and should be treated as women... but maybe sports is an exception. Going through male puberty brings advantages, and it doesn't really represent the female community to compete on that basis.
My heart breaks for it. I'm not even exactly sure why they would want to be in such a competition. If they just want to play as women, as a way of bonding with other women as women, they absolutely should. But when there is money on the line (scholarships, endorsements, the draw of a medal in future coaching jobs)... maybe that's where they should acknowledge the natural disadvantages that conflict with the competitive nature of women's sports.
I'm not comfortable with that conclusion. I don't think there is a comfortable conclusion, not when so much is on the line. The line being drawn between high-testosterone assigned-female-at-birth athletes and low-testosterone assigned-male-at-birth athletes is not sharp and is always going to be somewhat arbitrary, and people will get hurt by that.
If instead we start from the biological reality, which is "transwomen are men presenting as women", and take it from there, a much more reasonable conversation can be had about where these trans-identifying men should be politely regarded as women, and where they should not.