This shouldn’t have been necessary, but it at least represents a little progress back to sanity in this area. Without a ruling like this, eventually there would be no more Olympic medals going to women swimmers. Let’s hope the other sporting bodies follow suit.
In one of the older threads, I proposed doing away with gender-based competitions and instead choosing a biological marker (say total testosterone, though that's probably overly simplistic) to derive competition classes.
Like we do for martial arts by competitor weight. Or even for car racing where classes are by engine performance...
Of course, we can keep one class called "women" and another called "men", but that would quickly run foul of language and feelings (are you saying I am not a man/woman?).
The ruling explicitly recognizes that the athletic advantage of men over women persists even if their current testosterone levels are equalized, because of the man’s developmental history. There is no problem in having separate competitions for men and women, as we’ve had for so long, unless people decide to create contrived issues around it. Along with this ruling is a decision to examine the creation of an open (third) category for everyone, which I think makes sense.
But how do you think "men" and "open" categories would work together in a sport in which men have a significant advantage? If you let people enter both then they could end up being boringly similar to each other, while neither of them generates the excitement of being the main competition, and if you force people to choose one or the other then you might end up with a weird situation in which the best two players agree to avoid each other and other players choose ... how exactly?
So I would guess that having two categories, "open" and "bona fide female", would make more sense.
Also, in tennis, do you call the "open" category "open" or is that too confusing as the word "open" is already used in a different sense?
I guess these are some of the issues that the committee examining the possibility of an open category are considering. I would think it makes most sense to require people to choose, and not compete in both the open and one of the sex categories. Whether people get excited about the “open” competition is up to them. I think it’s pretty easy to predict that it will be populated by men like Lia Thomas who don’t want to compete in the men’s competition, and there won’t be many people who care about it.
Gender divide in sports is there to increase participation by giving a chance to women to win as well. There are smaller classes of people who naturally don't fit in either male or female category (eg someone mentioned chromosomes, so people with XXY are usually almost male but not quite): there is nothing contrived about it.
Similarly, people converting have their own sporting characteristics, and we should work to find ways to include them as well.
As such, we need classes that distinguish between different levels of de facto biological advantage: a completely open category would still be dominated by males.
I don't understand why would people find different martial arts weight classes normal, and not even entertain the thought that this might apply to other sports as it pertains to other genetic and acquired traits.
Uhm, it's an example how we recognize more than just gender as biological predisposition in sports to allow "inferior" sportspeople to compete, so I don't see how it doesn't.
The fact that those are orthogonal today matters exactly how (when talking about introducing more granularity at the first, gender level)?
> Along with this ruling is a decision to examine the creation of an open (third) category for everyone, which I think makes sense.
The general public are unlikely to take this seriously. Who is going to compete in this third category? Women are unlikely to compete in it because they stand to be outclassed by any men entering the category. Men will be similarly unlikely to compete because there is likely to be higher prestige in men-only competitions.
The whole thing will revolve around game theory, where every potential participant will weigh up the likelihood of winning, personal pride, and monetary or publicity rewards.
What you'll end up with is a bunch of transgenders participating with a minute niche following. Then they'll start complaining about "cis privilege", or whatever, because nobody (and hence lucrative sponsorship deals) will take them seriously.
I see this misconception a lot so I'd like to correct it. Hormone levels at a given moment have very little to do with physical performance in sports. Testosterone is important during childhood, puberty, and while training. Not at the point of competition. A large, athletic adult male, put on estrogen for a few years will still be incredibly, incomparably stronger than an elite woman. His bones are bigger, his muscles are bigger, his connective tissue is bigger, his leverages are better, he recruits more muscle fibers at max effort, his vertical leap is higher, his power production is higher. All of these things are innate physical characteristics of a body bathed in testosterone throughout childhood development, and they will not go away until he begins age related decline. The biological difference is insurmountable once puberty takes place.
This is why even elite female athletes, even with high testosterone, even when taking testosterone, even on steroids, even in the olympics, are physically competing on the level of high school boys. It is impossible to overstate the physical advantage that being a male provides. It is not about the current hormone levels.
I think few untrained men today, and even fewer women, truly understand the magnitude of natural strength difference between the sexes. They don't experience it in daily life. They think, oh, a man can just take estrogen and he'll be pretty much on the same level as the elite women. Let me put it in context:
- The US women's olympic soccer team lost a training match to an under 15 boys team, and it wasn't close
- The world record for 100m sprint by a woman is regularly beaten at state competitions by high school boys
- The world record for female deadlifting, 606lbs, set by a woman weighing over 200lbs, was beaten by a man weighing under 123 pounds (the lowest male weight class)
- This record of 606lbs is considered "pretty good" for a powerlifting male, nothing special at all
- It takes most fit, active women months of training to even be able to press a 20kg barbell above their head 5 times. A sedentary male can always do this.
- It takes years of serious training for a woman to bench press 60kg. Most men can do this innately, or within a couple of months of the same training.
- The world record for female standing vertical jump is 30 inches, which is below the average of a college football player (vertical standing jump is considered a proxy for power)
- A man can train to lift 100lbs over his head relatively easily. A woman will basically never be able to do this even after years of training. Any random gymgoer can grab a woman and lift her overhead like Rafiki lifting Simba. Most women cannot lift a 25lb box over their head.
I can go on. Why does this happen? Is it because the men currently have higher testosterone? No! It's because their tissues were bathed in testosterone in the womb, during childhood, during puberty, and into adulthood. It made their bones thicker and stronger. It made their muscles develop to contract more efficiently. It made their joints develop with more advantageous moment arms. It made their lung capacity greater. None of this has to do with muscle size, training, or muscular development! It also made their muscles bigger, but that's not the issue. None of this goes away when you reduce your adult testosterone levels.
The article makes the distinction between transgender athletes being on two years on supression or less.
While you are right that there is a developmental advantage (which is why men are tested out of competition too), I am sure you don't have the experience of being without natural testosterone for a prolonged period either (I do due to testicular tumours: 6 months until I started TRT): you might not lose muscles outright, but even for those that remain, they put too much stress on your joints and the rest of your body (a couple of tennis sessions, and I had plantar fasciitis, only recovering shortly after starting TRT). I don't think I'd ever be able to fairly compete with men regardless of being a pretty strong, sporty male beforehand. (Without TRT ofc: testosterone replacement therapy mostly covers that, though it could also be used to my advantage if I train hard 1-3 weeks after administration when it's at peak levels which are above the normal range until it goes down to the low end at 10-11 weeks, but that also means that I've got 4 weeks when training wouldn't be very effective)
Assuming you have your facts straight, that's a pretty convincing argument of the need for restrictions on trans athletes that can compete in the "women's" class. But surely there are better ways we can measure it than just say "anyone who was male at the age of 12 is automatically ineligible"...
I honestly can't see any better way than this. The disparity stems from sex. Biological, real, physical, genetic sex. This is the difference, and this is what the categories are, in recognition of the difference. Humans are a binary sex species, and the males are stronger. We realized this many many years ago, and understood that in order for women to be able to compete in any sport at all, they need to not compete against men. Transsexuals do not have biological, real, physical, genetic claim to being women. They just feel like women. Sorry, but physical development doesn't care about your feelings.
Transsexuals, I understand you want very much to compete in the womens' section, but you are not women, and so you cannot fairly compete with them for the same reasons that men cannot compete with them. I understand this is an upsetting problem for you, but your desires do not overrule the entirety of female competitive integrity. If you went through puberty as a male, tough luck, you cannot compete against women anymore. Just as I cannot compete in the Special Olympics intellectual disability sports because I went through full normal brain development, you cannot compete against women, because you went through male hormonal development.
a) handicaps? might not work for all sports, but worth looking into surely.
b) instead of a hard "male at age 12" rule, allow the athlete to undergo a series of tests to demonstrate their physiology is in line with that of a female rather than a male.
But...realistically these decisions should be left to the experts.
(BTW I'm pretty sure your statement "They just feel like women. Sorry, but physical development doesn't care about your feelings." isn't really accurate for many such transsexuals - the reasons they decided to transition are just as much biochemical as anything else. And if it weren't true, then there's no issue - they just compete in the "men's" category).
I don't see anyone arguing that transsexual women should be allowed to compete with women, so I am not sure who are you directing your comment at.
Next, I would say it's undisputed that even if someone has gone through body development as male, after prolonged period of lacking testosterone, their advantages diminish and they are not really competitive with males (it seems like you might be disputing this, but not in so many words).
If we agree on the above, the question is simple: do we want to include them in sporting competitions, and if so, how would we do that?
I think we all agree on including them, and for the same reasons we've got a gender split in sports at all (to allow women to win and thus encourage them to play sports), an obvious way is to introduce another (or few) categories. It's easy to say what shouldn't happen (they should not compete against women), but the question is what should happen without outright banning some athletes or putting them in a losing proposition against men.
Btw, your premise about Special Olympics is also untrue. If you get brain impaired at a later date (or become a paraplegic), you will be admitted to competition. I am sure there are strict rules to reduce cheating.
Again, the goal should at all times be to support anyone and everyone to compete in sports, while maintaining fairness to all participants. That's sometimes not clear cut or simple, or maybe not economical, but those should be the goals we strive for.
> I don't see anyone arguing that transsexual women should be allowed to compete with women, so I am not sure who are you directing your comment at.
Many people are arguing it, successfully; that's why TFA is notable. My comment was rhetorically directed at readers who may agree with them.
> Next, I would say it's undisputed that even if someone has gone through body development as male, after prolonged period of lacking testosterone, their advantages diminish and they are not really competitive with males
Their advantages diminish to the extent that they cannot maintain as much muscle mass as a man. The structural advantages remain, such that they are always at an advantage against women. I would say they become like weak men.
I have no problem with a transgender section of sports. I just don't foresee that happening. The pool is so small, and nobody would watch it.
What about XXY people? They usually present as males with lower testosterone levels. Or XYY (these are usually outright males). There's also XXX.
We are at a point where we have a deeper understanding of human body development than before (not at all complete knowledge though). I don't see a reason not to account for that deeper knowledge in sports.
And doing that for natural differences presents an opportunity to not exclude people willingly converting as well, so why not make the most of the opportunity?
Sure, all the classes might not be fair as we construct them today, but you know, let's iterate.
Gender split in sports comes from a desire to be inclusive in sports: without it, women would be largely excluded from sporting competitions. But the goal is inclusiveness, and gender split is such simply because that was the historical extent of medical knowledge about what influences performance.
So whatever we come up with should serve the goal of inclusiveness, strictly increasing it! Otherwise, we'd only get super heavyweight boxing class: too bad those guys never grew past 170cm.
So someone with XX male syndrome[1] competes in the female league despite being phenotypically male? And everyone has to get DNA tested before they can compete?
Sure. The condition is so rare it wouldn’t significantly affect any outcomes.
Better still if you have rare chromosomal aberrations a committee can decide especially with something like this that affects 0.005% of the population.
Fair, but even if you do for rank, you still would be people complaining because the top ranking and the ones that would receive money from sponsorship would be only the top ones, and most of them would be men.
Pro athletics have never been fair. Born women pro athletes are the top of the top and have higher testosterone and muscle development.
For a MTF athlete to compete they have to actually be tested for hormone levels over years of time. Yes, they will still have physical superiority over the average women. However, this is pro sports.
There are very few trans athletes, and the stories of MTF competitors being unfair are either 1. Fabricated, 2. The sports org did not implement proper rules. Or 3. People are looking to hate on something.
While bad things happen everywhere, that is not an accurate representation of the issue in a wider scope. It would be like saying water is bad because some water harms people. The "community" does not agree with forcing anyone to transition.
I'd like to think there won't be cases of pre-pubescent boys with talent and ambitions in a particular sport who are also going through a phase of gender identity questioning being pressured in such a way (and specifically I mean gender-reassignment treatment/surgery), but it seems a bit naive to assume it won't happen at all. I can only hope it was taken into consideration when handing down the ruling.
Research how transitioning actually works. You don't just declare your gender and get into a pro sports team.
Trans isn't new, you can find plenty of references to it in movies from the 80's even. You just didn't see it until the internet brought information to everyone everywhere.
Dan, I don't see the GP flaming anyone. Compare that to this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31820486 where the commenter impugns the motives of those who disagree, which is clearly against site guidelines. Is the GP comment dead because of a breach of the rules, or because it expresses a position that is not allowed to be held?
If there are opinions or positions that are not permitted on HN, it would be helpful to know what they are.
36 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 79.0 ms ] threadLike we do for martial arts by competitor weight. Or even for car racing where classes are by engine performance...
Of course, we can keep one class called "women" and another called "men", but that would quickly run foul of language and feelings (are you saying I am not a man/woman?).
So I would guess that having two categories, "open" and "bona fide female", would make more sense.
Also, in tennis, do you call the "open" category "open" or is that too confusing as the word "open" is already used in a different sense?
Similarly, people converting have their own sporting characteristics, and we should work to find ways to include them as well.
As such, we need classes that distinguish between different levels of de facto biological advantage: a completely open category would still be dominated by males.
I don't understand why would people find different martial arts weight classes normal, and not even entertain the thought that this might apply to other sports as it pertains to other genetic and acquired traits.
The fact that those are orthogonal today matters exactly how (when talking about introducing more granularity at the first, gender level)?
The general public are unlikely to take this seriously. Who is going to compete in this third category? Women are unlikely to compete in it because they stand to be outclassed by any men entering the category. Men will be similarly unlikely to compete because there is likely to be higher prestige in men-only competitions.
The whole thing will revolve around game theory, where every potential participant will weigh up the likelihood of winning, personal pride, and monetary or publicity rewards.
What you'll end up with is a bunch of transgenders participating with a minute niche following. Then they'll start complaining about "cis privilege", or whatever, because nobody (and hence lucrative sponsorship deals) will take them seriously.
This is why even elite female athletes, even with high testosterone, even when taking testosterone, even on steroids, even in the olympics, are physically competing on the level of high school boys. It is impossible to overstate the physical advantage that being a male provides. It is not about the current hormone levels.
I think few untrained men today, and even fewer women, truly understand the magnitude of natural strength difference between the sexes. They don't experience it in daily life. They think, oh, a man can just take estrogen and he'll be pretty much on the same level as the elite women. Let me put it in context:
- The US women's olympic soccer team lost a training match to an under 15 boys team, and it wasn't close
- The world record for 100m sprint by a woman is regularly beaten at state competitions by high school boys
- The world record for female deadlifting, 606lbs, set by a woman weighing over 200lbs, was beaten by a man weighing under 123 pounds (the lowest male weight class)
- This record of 606lbs is considered "pretty good" for a powerlifting male, nothing special at all
- It takes most fit, active women months of training to even be able to press a 20kg barbell above their head 5 times. A sedentary male can always do this.
- It takes years of serious training for a woman to bench press 60kg. Most men can do this innately, or within a couple of months of the same training.
- The world record for female standing vertical jump is 30 inches, which is below the average of a college football player (vertical standing jump is considered a proxy for power)
- A man can train to lift 100lbs over his head relatively easily. A woman will basically never be able to do this even after years of training. Any random gymgoer can grab a woman and lift her overhead like Rafiki lifting Simba. Most women cannot lift a 25lb box over their head.
I can go on. Why does this happen? Is it because the men currently have higher testosterone? No! It's because their tissues were bathed in testosterone in the womb, during childhood, during puberty, and into adulthood. It made their bones thicker and stronger. It made their muscles develop to contract more efficiently. It made their joints develop with more advantageous moment arms. It made their lung capacity greater. None of this has to do with muscle size, training, or muscular development! It also made their muscles bigger, but that's not the issue. None of this goes away when you reduce your adult testosterone levels.
While you are right that there is a developmental advantage (which is why men are tested out of competition too), I am sure you don't have the experience of being without natural testosterone for a prolonged period either (I do due to testicular tumours: 6 months until I started TRT): you might not lose muscles outright, but even for those that remain, they put too much stress on your joints and the rest of your body (a couple of tennis sessions, and I had plantar fasciitis, only recovering shortly after starting TRT). I don't think I'd ever be able to fairly compete with men regardless of being a pretty strong, sporty male beforehand. (Without TRT ofc: testosterone replacement therapy mostly covers that, though it could also be used to my advantage if I train hard 1-3 weeks after administration when it's at peak levels which are above the normal range until it goes down to the low end at 10-11 weeks, but that also means that I've got 4 weeks when training wouldn't be very effective)
Transsexuals, I understand you want very much to compete in the womens' section, but you are not women, and so you cannot fairly compete with them for the same reasons that men cannot compete with them. I understand this is an upsetting problem for you, but your desires do not overrule the entirety of female competitive integrity. If you went through puberty as a male, tough luck, you cannot compete against women anymore. Just as I cannot compete in the Special Olympics intellectual disability sports because I went through full normal brain development, you cannot compete against women, because you went through male hormonal development.
a) handicaps? might not work for all sports, but worth looking into surely.
b) instead of a hard "male at age 12" rule, allow the athlete to undergo a series of tests to demonstrate their physiology is in line with that of a female rather than a male.
But...realistically these decisions should be left to the experts.
(BTW I'm pretty sure your statement "They just feel like women. Sorry, but physical development doesn't care about your feelings." isn't really accurate for many such transsexuals - the reasons they decided to transition are just as much biochemical as anything else. And if it weren't true, then there's no issue - they just compete in the "men's" category).
I don't see anyone arguing that transsexual women should be allowed to compete with women, so I am not sure who are you directing your comment at.
Next, I would say it's undisputed that even if someone has gone through body development as male, after prolonged period of lacking testosterone, their advantages diminish and they are not really competitive with males (it seems like you might be disputing this, but not in so many words).
If we agree on the above, the question is simple: do we want to include them in sporting competitions, and if so, how would we do that?
I think we all agree on including them, and for the same reasons we've got a gender split in sports at all (to allow women to win and thus encourage them to play sports), an obvious way is to introduce another (or few) categories. It's easy to say what shouldn't happen (they should not compete against women), but the question is what should happen without outright banning some athletes or putting them in a losing proposition against men.
Btw, your premise about Special Olympics is also untrue. If you get brain impaired at a later date (or become a paraplegic), you will be admitted to competition. I am sure there are strict rules to reduce cheating.
Again, the goal should at all times be to support anyone and everyone to compete in sports, while maintaining fairness to all participants. That's sometimes not clear cut or simple, or maybe not economical, but those should be the goals we strive for.
Many people are arguing it, successfully; that's why TFA is notable. My comment was rhetorically directed at readers who may agree with them.
> Next, I would say it's undisputed that even if someone has gone through body development as male, after prolonged period of lacking testosterone, their advantages diminish and they are not really competitive with males
Their advantages diminish to the extent that they cannot maintain as much muscle mass as a man. The structural advantages remain, such that they are always at an advantage against women. I would say they become like weak men.
I have no problem with a transgender section of sports. I just don't foresee that happening. The pool is so small, and nobody would watch it.
We are at a point where we have a deeper understanding of human body development than before (not at all complete knowledge though). I don't see a reason not to account for that deeper knowledge in sports.
And doing that for natural differences presents an opportunity to not exclude people willingly converting as well, so why not make the most of the opportunity?
Sure, all the classes might not be fair as we construct them today, but you know, let's iterate.
Gender split in sports comes from a desire to be inclusive in sports: without it, women would be largely excluded from sporting competitions. But the goal is inclusiveness, and gender split is such simply because that was the historical extent of medical knowledge about what influences performance.
So whatever we come up with should serve the goal of inclusiveness, strictly increasing it! Otherwise, we'd only get super heavyweight boxing class: too bad those guys never grew past 170cm.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
Better still if you have rare chromosomal aberrations a committee can decide especially with something like this that affects 0.005% of the population.
Pro athletics have never been fair. Born women pro athletes are the top of the top and have higher testosterone and muscle development.
For a MTF athlete to compete they have to actually be tested for hormone levels over years of time. Yes, they will still have physical superiority over the average women. However, this is pro sports.
There are very few trans athletes, and the stories of MTF competitors being unfair are either 1. Fabricated, 2. The sports org did not implement proper rules. Or 3. People are looking to hate on something.
In a few years manybe we have athletes transitioning just to win competitions.
If you think this is bullshit, just remember that in the past people would Take strychnine to have better performance in marathons.
Trans isn't new, you can find plenty of references to it in movies from the 80's even. You just didn't see it until the internet brought information to everyone everywhere.
Deleting and then reposting flagged comments is particularly abusive. No more of that, please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If there are opinions or positions that are not permitted on HN, it would be helpful to know what they are.