Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming
Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming
You realize that most trans women undergoing HRT have less testosterone in their systems than many of their cisgender competitors, right? Women naturally have some testosterone in their body; if they have PCOS, then they have a lot (in comparison to other cis women). Trans women on HRT take medicine to block testosterone, so while their body might generate the most of all, the amount bioavailable to them after the medicine neutralizes it is less than non-PCOS cis women have. If the sports debate was about testosterone providing an unfair advantage, then we would ban cis women with PCOS from competing, but we don't.
In the case of teenagers, it's even simpler - contrary to propaganda, very very few doctors are willing to put a minor on HRT. Instead, they simply give them puberty blockers to delay the onset of puberty until they're over 18 and can decide for themselves whether to go on HRT or not. So, a 17yo trans girl is developmentally equivalent to a 10yo boy - her muscles are massively under developed compared to any of her cis competitors.
So whether adult or teen, a trans woman winning at sports is not someone with an unfair advantage; rather, it's someone with a massive disadvantage managing to win despite her handicap.
Is current testosterone the only consideration? Or could having higher testosterone earlier, even though you’re on par with peers now, give you a musculoskeletal advantage?
You have one of the longer comments under this post -
Are you familiar with the lifter from this comment? Hoping for an educated debate, as it’s outside my knowledge area.
If we're considering testosterone to be a PED, perhaps we should ban everyone from sports...
On a more serious note: why not advocate for putting people into "testosterone-level groups", similar to how boxing, etc, do it with weight classes? Rather than just excluding trans women from competing.
I also feel I have to ask: how do you feel about your niece losing in competitions to cis women who have biological advantages, such as higher (natural) testosterone levels, longer limbs, bigger hands, smaller busts, etc?
Just a note, there's some studies that have shown that a massive proportion of high tier female athletes actually have chromeosone issues that would put them into the intersex category.
Shh, stop. They need their false narrative
My niece is a competitive swimmer. If a trans woman kept her from winning the competitions she's trained so hard for, getting up at 4am for practice, spending weekends training or at meets, etc, thats absolute horse shit.
So if that trans woman also worked hard, got up at 4am for practice, and also spent weekends training and going to meets, she doesn't deserve to win after her own hard work?
Not at all in the women's league, no.
Men have a biological advantage in sports, there's no way around it. It's a fact
Does she deserve to win solely because she has the skeleton structure and muscle mass of a biological male from birth.
Is a cis male allowed to compete as a male if he takes the same drugs for 6 months? a year? ahead of the competition?
Honestly, it should be up to whoever is organizing the event.
If you have a problem with how the hosts run their competition, withdraw and/or make your own.
Really depends. For people that never went through puberty of their birth sex there's effectively no difference in terms of strength.
After adulthood it's definitely debatable, after a few years of treatment physical capabilities mostly align but not entirely, and while unlikely it would kinda suck for the rest if someone did win olympic gold bc of anatomy differences or something (plus countries with a history of cheating potentially could abuse it by sending an athlete that is not actually on HRT). I also don't think the ability to compete in high level sports is anywhere near a fundamental human right.
However it would also suck for the transwoman in question having to choose between high level competition in the sport they likely poured their life into and transitioning (as there is no way a transwoman on HRT could ever compete at the highest level vs males in sports unless it's something where cis women can, too).
Personally I'd argue for pro sports requiring proof of consistent HRT for x amount of time (based on studies of at what point physical capabilitues are equal for the vast majority) should be sufficient. If against all odds we end up with a disproportionate amount of transwomen winning competitions (we won't) rules could still be changed.
At an amateur level it makes very little sense to restrict transfems, the difference isn't great after a while on HRT and so much of the point of amateur sports is usually on a social level that if you restrict transpeople from playing/competing with their own gender, you will often remove a large reason for wanting to do that sport in the first place.
Are trans women keeping her from winning competitions? Last I heard they aren't dominating anything.
getting up at 4am for practice, spending weekends training or at meets, etc
Nice job on the appeal to emotion too. It isn't like trans people still have to put in the work to do well and have their own challenges to overcome. They have to compensate greatly.
To be clear about my opinion on trans people in sports (because we always ignore transmen here), I am waiting for sports and exercise scientists to do more research and make more conclusions. The science is too nebulous on it. Women's medicine is centuries behind, and trans medicine even further.
When climbing started to become a televised sport, they changed the entire format to support televised timings. When they have athletes who are way taller or way shorter, the routes etter needs to take that into account for the setting for the comp.
Honestly, I think the sports and or rulesets could take a pass and see if there's anything they can do to find a middle ground that can suit trans-athletes and cis-gendered athletes more equally.
That's said - I'm not very competitive of me, so my opinions Wil always be biased. While I think competitions push the sports I also have seen firsthand the toxicity and negativity high level sports bring. So basically, I think inclusivity and sportsmanship is more important that integrity of the competitive nature.
Ah yes, being male means that you are always better at all sports than female sportspeople. The mark of maleness is so strong that even after you are no longer male, the maleness lingers and makes you powerful enough to have an unfair advantage and beat all the women. /s
No transperson kept your niece from winning, did they? It's a boogeyman waved before you to justify making people feel excluded from society because they challenge gender norms.
If a transwoman ever beats my daughter at sport....I'll be proud of the team for being inclusive. If a transwoman outperforms my daughter and obtains a scholarship ahead of her.....I'll ask why scholarships have to pay for her education.
Society is at fault here, not transwomen.
I've heard the same argument from 'whataboutist' rightoids from Reddit when they started bitching about Lia Thomas and people blaming Katey Ledecky, a cis woman, for being trans. Also, this same group loves to bitch about Fallon Fox forget about Patricio Manuel, complain about Nyla Rose and twist the story about Mack Beggs.
If your niece loses then maybe you should teach her to lose gratefully rather than just jumping to blame someone else for her shortcomings no matter their gender, height, weight, natural talents, hormone levels, zodiac sign, etcetera
That's easy. We just declare "woman" has no solid meaning, it is just whoever says they are a woman. Then we will declare there are zero biological differences between the sexes, some women are just stronger than you. Get gud, scrub. Go against any of these declarations, you are the bigot.
So this is what the deep end looks like.
This is the weakest of the arguments for trans rights. There's a reason they want everyone to focus on it.
We shouldn't be allowing them to frame the conversation around the one area where identifying as whatever you want actually affects other people.
The Onion has been on a hot streak lately.
Edit: from May but still true lol
These people also never consider that they're measuring the wrong thing. If they're taking the position that the effects of testosterone from birth in trans M-to-F kids gives them an unfair advantage due to bone density and muscle mass, then they're failing to take into account that there are a number of natural health conditions that produce elevated testosterone levels in women as well.
I'm not saying this to be funny, but women with stubble especially around the chin often have elevated T levels, often due to PCOS. There truly are some women who are "built like a man" and they're not trans - at least certainly not in the way we use the term today. They're natural, their bodies just work differently.
Banning trans kids isn't going to level the playing field in the way they say they want to. Measuring things that testosterone affects like bone density would.
Yep. T level testing was a popular trans exclusionary test until the transphobes learned that there's significant overlap in t levels between trans women and cis women.
Edit: lol looks like we upset the transphobes
Most sports are dominated by people with genetic gifts. But having a little extra testosterone from a genetic quirk is a completely different thing than having extra testosterone because you were born with testes.
Yet the end result is the same, an advantage over those that don't have it. Why is one fair and one unfair?
Sport is arbitrary rules we decide. Some trans athletes are going to be better at some sports, not because of their trans status but because they work hard and train lots. It is just as unfair to exclude them in case another trans athlete has a genetic advantage, that most research says they don't have.
Why?
Not to mention the bigotry, the prejudice, the psychological trauma of existing in a world where people call you evil and an abomination and a cheat for merely wanting to play sports.
Aha, wait until she takes up chess, darts, and competitive crocheting... RIP cis women :'(
Pick your battles, people. Insisting that trans women be allowed to compete in women’s sports is just not a winning argument, even among people that might be willing to otherwise oppose other trans restrictions. All it does in reinforce anti-trans attitudes.
This isn’t some invented fiction. Here is a trans powerlifter that just came in and started shattering records.
Odd, here's women's records and the weightlifter in question isn't on this list: https://www.openpowerlifting.org/records/women So what are you really trying to say?
August 17th, 2023.
Anne Andres, a transgender powerlifter, competed in the women’s division of the 2023 CPU Western Canadian Championship and set multiple National and and Unofficial World Records.
Anne Andres Full Performance Squat: 212.5 kilograms (468.5 pounds) — +84KG Women’s Canadian Record Bench Press: 132.5 kilograms (292.1 pounds) — +84KG Women’s Canadian Record Deadlift: 252.5 kilograms (556.7 pounds) — +84KG Women’s Canadian Record & Unofficial ATWR Total: 597.5 kilograms (1,317.3 pounds) — +84KG Women’s Canadian Record & Unofficial ATWR
Let's just leave behind some human beings from being allowed to participate in life, why even let them be in society at all, maybe they should be sent away for the convenience of picking political battles
How is sports the only aspect of life? And even then, they are not blocked from participating, as they can complete with other cis-men in those divisions. It’s interesting, trans men don’t have this issue because they simply can’t compete with cis men. I guess they don’t get to participate in life by your definition?
Sometimes you make a decision in life that affects your future in a meaningful way. Becoming a trans is one of those things. Sadly there's no good solution to the problem it causes in sports right now so the only possible answer is to not have them in the competition.
They are not saying to leave them behind, and comparing this to not participating in life is an unfair exaggeration. The situation is far too complicated for that. It's not just about politics here, there's other people involved that would be put at a disadvantage, others that would abuse the situation to gain money, etc.
And yes, I'm well aware of the injustice being done to trans people on every possible level, and that needs to change, this battle itself though is just not the same.
*Edit: I'm reading further down that this "problem" it causes might not be as big as I heard it was in the media. So take this comment with that in mind if you will. It only proves the complexity of the issue though.
Wow, the phrenologists race realists transphobes fell for this hard.
Haven't some particularly haenous talking heads on TV literally already said this? Perhaps not in directly declaratory language at someone, because that's begging for a defamation suit, though I have absolutely heard Republican scum make this exact accusation in the general case several times against trans people.
This was one of the Onion's more brilliant articles. Absolutely loved it. I showed it to someone who rants about trans girls in sports and they got quiet. The truly good Onion articles make the object of their satire instantly recognize the logical fallacies in their own argument and get uncomfortable.
The author of this article was laying in bed and thought, “AHA! I can set the internet on fire!”
I love it.
Unpopular opinion (on Lemmy and coming from a guy who doesn’t have an issue with trans people): Transpeople are people too and aren't going to just go die in a ditch because the thought of losing to one makes you upset.
I used to have strong opinions about this, but then I realised that I'm not trans, I'm not female, I'm not an athlete, and to be completely honest, I couldn't care less about women's sports. And judging by the fact that a women's premier league football ticket costs about £5 and the stadiums are mostly empty, most other people don't care either. Certainly less than seem to care about the sanctity of women's sports.
It's probably going to be more complex than a blanket yes or no, and will involve individual sports bodies doing things on a case-by-case basis.
Wait I thought people could be trans without medical treatments and counseling because gender identity is a construct and not reliant on one's secondary or primary sex characteristics but rather reliant on their decision to identify with a gender they were not assigned at birth. Like I get it is the onion, but I thought people who think you have to have gender dysphoria or medically transition are called "transmedicalists," and much like "terf" I'm fairly sure "transmedicalist" isn't a compliment.
I'm not trans though so I could be wrong, but this is how it was clearly described to me by a nonbinary individual, a trans man, and a trans woman, all of whom I am friends with and one of whom I was dating at the time, so if I misunderstand so do they, I didn't make it up myself.
It is true that you don't need medical treatments and counseling to be trans. However, specifically within the context of gendered sports, the places that do allow trans athletes to compete with other members of their gender tend to require testing of hormone levels. When I've seen trans people talk about the sports issue, they've been fine with this, often using it as an argument why it's OK for trans people to compete with cis people of the same gender. Most of the stories reactionaries are trying to scare people with are about trans kids who have undergone medical gender affirming care.
So, yeah, I think there's some nuance lost here, but given that it's satire with punchy writing, I don't think it's terf-level. But I'm cis and I'd be happy to be corrected.
Ah ok, that makes sense.
My point of view is that if it was just a decision for someone that'd be alright and should be supported nonetheless. That being said I've never met someone who is trans and claims it was a choice.
If it's 'just' a construct then it is a fundamental one that occurs at a very young age and you can't just simply change that, so it's not really a choice. Like the trunk of a tree.
Also there are many reasons not to transition medically. There are many risks involved and requires considerable resources. For example getting facial hair removed can take 30 sessions, so even if it's free it costs you a lot of time.
Imagine you woke up in the wrong body tomorrow. Sure, you want to go back to the right body, but you might be OK with it as long as the people around you just see you for who you are. This can be done with a social transition, some clothing and makeup.
Should a trans woman be allowed to beat the shit out of a woman in a UFC fight? I'm not questioning this person's decision to transition, I'm questioning the rule that separates genders in sports (the UFC thing has happened and it resulted in a broken skull). If you have to separate genders for one sport then you have to do it for all.
Why don't you ask a woman fighting in the UFC? I'm sure you think you're white knighting for them but those women are tough as nails. They aren't death matches and all through my wrestling career if a woman wanted to wrestle they had to join the regular team. I wouldn't doubt a woman UFC fighter having a long history of competing with men.
if you have to separate genders for one sport you have to do it for all.
Nonsense. UFC and mini putt are not related.
Not just any swimming, but some amateur or extracurricular school event!
TERFs when I win a game of Battleship:
😂🤣😂
Everyone knows transitioning makes you clairvoyant, you damn cheat!
The ones that earn you grants and scholarships? The ones that can get you admission to good schools? Those ones that can help break a cycle of poverty that existed in your family for generations? Those meaningless old things!