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World swimming bans transgender women from competing

msethhunter said:
You keep saying “all the credible studies I’ve read” yet produce zero proof, the same fucken thing you lambasted me for.


Everything I’ve read from credible sources says you’re pretty damn wrong.

https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20210715/do-trans-women-athletes-have-advantages


https://amp.dw.com/en/fact-check-do-trans-athletes-have-an-advantage-in-elite-sport/a-58583988

“Without hormone therapy — yes. But even with hormone therapy, current research suggests trans women still maintain an edge in strength.“

https://sex-matters.org/posts/sport/a-new-review-of-retained-performance-in-transwomen/


There’s mountains of information available that says you’re flat out wrong. Add to it that trans women are extremely rare in everyday life, and immeasurably even more so in elite level sports, and my conclusion is we should start letting women who have to compete against biologically different specimens use PED’s to compete.

I’ll say it again until you get it dude. Biology isn’t identity. If this were an issue of trans women competing with men…..oh wait. That’s not an issue.
Click to expand...

As I said, I'll post up my sources when I get home, but I'm not sure why you are linking an interview with Harper, I am familiar with her work, and overall she agrees with my opinion. The article even says as much in one of her answers:

What really matters is can trans women and cis women compete against one another in meaningful competition. There's no indication that trans women are anywhere close to taking over women's sport, it's not happening now. It's not likely to happen anytime in the future.
Click to expand...
 
GAJ said:
This has gone from swimming to an endless tennis match.
Click to expand...

It’s tiresome and I don’t get it. There are so many more important battleground issues with trans rights other than trans women in sports with cis women.

Anecdotally, the trans women I know or have spoken to knew that things will be very different in many ways, some good some bad. But if sports were part of their life, they accepted competing against cis women is out of the picture and that mattered less than just being comfortable in their own skin.

Being at peace with who they are is 10 times more important than sports bullshit.

Again, just anecdotally.

Connor, a lot of people here are on your side with trans rights but you’re pushing them out because what you’re saying is so radical. HRT HRT HRT transphobia transphobia transphobia. This became obvious when you tried to compare black athletes to trans athletes and then doubled down on it.

You’re not talking to a bunch of transphobic people here.

Outliers like Ms. Thompson who are gaming the system (because that’s exactly what she did) are just that, outliers.

And it’s been said many times in this thread, if we were talking about female to male trans people in sports, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. So is this really a trans issue? Or a discussion about biological men that want to compete with women where they knew they have an unfair advance? If it was really a trans issue, then maybe let’s get some examples of women who transitioned to a man and know competing against men will always be much harder but love the sport and do it anyway. Anybody got examples of that?
 
ScarySpikes said:
As I said, I'll post up my sources when I get home, but I'm not sure why you are linking an interview with Harper, I am familiar with her work, and overall she agrees with my opinion. The article even says as much in one of her answers:
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You’re getting really good at moving the goal posts. You should be in construction.

No biological men in women’s sports. They have an unfair advantage. Period. Double amputees aren’t allowed to run with people that have both legs because they’ve figured out how to make prosthetics better than human legs. It’s an unfair advantage. It’s got nothing to do with being trans. It’s got everything to do with keeping the playing field equal. I’m not worried about my son being beat in Highschool sports and losing a scholarship to a biological girl. I am worried about my daughter losing a scholarship to a biological boy.

I also find it rather off putting that on this issue, we have to wait until you get home to post a source. You post at work. You post other sources at work. What makes this topic so different?

There is also this, from Harper.

“There's absolutely no question in my mind that trans women will maintain strength advantages over cis women, even after hormone therapy. That's based on my clinical experience, rather than published data, but I would say there's zero doubt in my mind.”
 
Kurosaki said:
It’s tiresome and I don’t get it. There are so many more important battleground issues with trans rights other than trans women in sports with cis women.

Anecdotally, the trans women I know or have spoken to knew that things will be very different in many ways, some good some bad. But if sports were part of their life, they accepted competing against cis women is out of the picture and that mattered less than just being comfortable in their own skin.

Being at peace with who they are is 10 times more important than sports bullshit.

Again, just anecdotally.

Connor, a lot of people here are on your side with trans rights but you’re pushing them out because what you’re saying is so radical. HRT HRT HRT transphobia transphobia transphobia. This became obvious when you tried to compare black athletes to trans athletes and then doubled down on it.

You’re not talking to a bunch of transphobic people here.

Outliers like Ms. Thompson who are gaming the system (because that’s exactly what she did) are just that, outliers.

And it’s been said many times in this thread, if we were talking about female to male trans people in sports, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. So is this really a trans issue? Or a discussion about biological men that want to compete with women where they knew they have an unfair advance? If it was really a trans issue, then maybe let’s get some examples of women who transitioned to a man and know competing against men will always be much harder but love the sport and do it anyway. Anybody got examples of that?
Click to expand...

On your anecdotes, I agree, that's my experience as well.

In terms of the comparison to black athletes. In the US, in the late 19th and early 20th century, black people were banned from competing in the largest professional sports leagues There was a lot of propaganda about how black people were inherently, genetically superior at athletics, so allowing them to compete was not fair to white athletes. These bans were gradually peeled away in the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, however, as was demonstrated with some people here talking about 'systemic breeding' and other nonsense, even though the idea isn't as widespread as it was decades ago a lot of people still believe it. Now, it's always been bullshit, it's never made that much sense, but the problems caused by those bans and that propaganda lasted way longer than the bans were officially in place.

I'm sorry if you don't see the similarity, I do. One of the big problems is that the rhetoric can sneak in and become pervasive all to easily. I absolutely don't think that you are transphobic. I've pulled up the records multiple times, Lia Thomas was the best swimmer at her college, one of the best nationally, prior to starting HRT, when she competed as a man. It's pretty easy to imagine that had she decided not to transition, She could have gotten into the men's Olympic swimming team. Nothing's certain, of course, but she was in that realm. Instead, she chose to be true to herself, and spent what would have been peak competitive years either getting blown out because she was competing in the men's division while on HRT, or not allowed to compete because the previous rules for swimming required a couple of years on HRT before being allowed to compete as a woman. You, again, a person I do not believe is a transphobe, who a few paragraphs prior said that anecdotally the trans women you know cared more about being comfortable in their own skin than the sport, just called that decision 'gaming the system.'

So, I have my reasons for pushing back on this stuff, and I have my reasons for pushing back particularly when people who I believe are decent and not bigoted nevertheless say some bullshit.
 
ScarySpikes said:
It's not valid because it's incredibly deceptive and dishonest to compare her records while on HRT but competing in the men's division, when the fair comparison would be her performance prior to starting HRT in the men's division.

I already posted this, post 15, here it is again for you.

As a freshman, Lia Thomas was top 6 nationally for the 1000 yard freestyle, top 100 nationally for 500 yard free and 1650 yard free, She was the best swimmer in her school on the men's team, second place finishes in the Ivy League championships, and her times and performance going into sophomore year, before she started on HRT, were only improving. She was not a mediocre performer when she competed on a fair playing field as a man. She went from being one of the best up and coming swimmers in the men's division, to one of the best swimmers in the women's division.

Well, Thanks for admitting that the actual data on her performance, does support my claims.
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Right, which gets to the point about the lack of available data.

The gap you seem to be missing in your calculation is the wildly superior baseline for athletic performance between men and women. Typically in pretty much any sport, the performance standard and the records in place are just flat out significantly better in men's events.

Say the 100 Meter Breaststroke for example. The men's world record is like 50 seconds and the women's record is about 1 minute. I'm just ballparking, but that record is SIGNIFICANTLY slower than the men's record.

Granted, HRT does reduce performance in an athlete, but still just throwing numbers as an example, if as a man you perform 20% better than woman athletes, you transition to female and lose a big bite, 15% performance drop due to transitioning.

You would still be coming in at a net advantage over cisfem athletes due to what one would assume are the aforementioned skeletal and cardiovascular advantages.

It is a missing data link that I haven't heard being very clearly defined anywhere.

Kurosaki said:
It’s tiresome and I don’t get it. There are so many more important battleground issues with trans rights other than trans women in sports with cis women.

Anecdotally, the trans women I know or have spoken to knew that things will be very different in many ways, some good some bad. But if sports were part of their life, they accepted competing against cis women is out of the picture and that mattered less than just being comfortable in their own skin.

Being at peace with who they are is 10 times more important than sports bullshit.

Again, just anecdotally.

Connor, a lot of people here are on your side with trans rights but you’re pushing them out because what you’re saying is so radical. HRT HRT HRT transphobia transphobia transphobia. This became obvious when you tried to compare black athletes to trans athletes and then doubled down on it.

You’re not talking to a bunch of transphobic people here.

Outliers like Ms. Thompson who are gaming the system (because that’s exactly what she did) are just that, outliers.

And it’s been said many times in this thread, if we were talking about female to male trans people in sports, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. So is this really a trans issue? Or a discussion about biological men that want to compete with women where they knew they have an unfair advance? If it was really a trans issue, then maybe let’s get some examples of women who transitioned to a man and know competing against men will always be much harder but love the sport and do it anyway. Anybody got examples of that?
Click to expand...

The only one I know of is Patricio Manuel. Boxing is an excellent sport for this kind of competition to take place, because of the carefully curated weight class separation.
 
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msethhunter said:
You’re getting really good at moving the goal posts. You should be in construction.

No biological men in women’s sports. They have an unfair advantage. Period. Double amputees aren’t allowed to run with people that have both legs because they’ve figured out how to make prosthetics better than human legs. It’s an unfair advantage. It’s got nothing to do with being trans. It’s got everything to do with keeping the playing field equal. I’m not worried about my son being beat in Highschool sports and losing a scholarship to a biological girl. I am worried about my daughter losing a scholarship to a biological boy.

I also find it rather off putting that on this issue, we have to wait until you get home to post a source. You post at work. You post other sources at work. What makes this topic so different?

There is also this, from Harper.

“There's absolutely no question in my mind that trans women will maintain strength advantages over cis women, even after hormone therapy. That's based on my clinical experience, rather than published data, but I would say there's zero doubt in my mind.”
Click to expand...

I post links at work, I usually don't post scientific studies, which I want to read first. For this topic, I've talked about it before, I have notes.


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pits.22500
a study looking at LGBTQ youths taking part in sports in general. The finding is that trans teens are less likely than cis teens to take part in sports at all, something the article believes we should make efforts to change due because school sports improve self esteem/less likelihood for depression and suicide.

https://www.sapiens.org/biology/female-male-athletes-differences/
https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2014.00195/full

An article, some data, and a study, all looking at differing performance between men and women in sports, the findings are that it's more complicated than 'men are better than women', the reality is that there are some sports where women have definite advantages over men, others where men have a big advantage. Women tend to do better in high endurance sports.

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/15/865
Harper on physiological changes trans people undergo during transition. Her findings are in major areas like hemoglobin and testosterone levels, trans women end up basically at the same level as cis women, their muscle mass decreases as well. A note on this is that Harper has admitted that in the studies looking at muscle mass there is a weakness in that the studies look at non athletic trans women, according to her the trans women started out with a lot less muscle mass than cis men, so they had less to lose, and which might effect the slower rate of muscle mass loss. Also, muscle mass does not necessarily equal muscle strength.

Which brings us to:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8090355/
Which looks at muscle strength, Harper does not like this study because it's scope was limited to 8 people, but it's one of the only studies looking directly at muscle strength available. The data shows that trans women's muscle strength is in line with cis women's muscle strength.

This is also partially backed up by
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577
which shows that trans women's ability to perform push ups and sit ups are equivalent to cis women after 2 years of hormone therapy. It does show that running speed is about 12% better than an average cis woman, however, separately the author of this study does note that high level and elite athletes are substantially higher still, so the performance advantage is completely within the performance advantage that one cis woman could have over another cis woman.
Also, the findings on running isn't consistent, Harper looked at running as well
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307766116_Race_Times_for_Transgender_Athletes

Her conclusion was that trans women in running do not have an advantage.

Which comes to what still is essentially the overall state of the science on trans women in sports:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357259/

Which basically concludes that the data available does not show a consistent, unfair advantage for trans women, and policies that sports organizations have implemented are not justified by the science.

Anyway, since it was brought up, I searched for opinions of people who actually compete with trans women, and found this:
https://bridges.monash.edu/articles...n_Sport_and_the_Pride_Cup_Initiative/12731810
Only 24% of women who actively compete against trans women believe that the trans women have an unfair advantage. For some reason, 46% of men, who don't compete against trans women, feel the same. Odd how the people who aren't competing against trans women are the ones that think it's unfair, but the ones actually competing think it's fine.

Going into policies being passed in the US and around the world would probably get very political, but suffice to say, a lot of states in the US are banning trans children from getting gender affirming care, and internationally the US is still one of the more progressive states, so, a lot of trans women will be excluded by a rule that prohibits those who go through a male puberty.

Read up, if you want.
 
Scary, I scanned your short notes on the studies and one thing I did not see is them comparing elite trans athletes to elite cis atheletes. Sure a normal trans person and a normal cis person may be within 12% but what happens when someone who has been training their whole life as a cis male then decides to switch and does HRT do they retain an advantage overr a similar cis athlete of that gender? I didn't see that comparison in your studies and if I missed it I apologize.
 
Kurosaki said:
It’s tiresome and I don’t get it. There are so many more important battleground issues with trans rights other than trans women in sports with cis women.

Anecdotally, the trans women I know or have spoken to knew that things will be very different in many ways, some good some bad. But if sports were part of their life, they accepted competing against cis women is out of the picture and that mattered less than just being comfortable in their own skin.

Being at peace with who they are is 10 times more important than sports bullshit.

Again, just anecdotally.

Connor, a lot of people here are on your side with trans rights but you’re pushing them out because what you’re saying is so radical. HRT HRT HRT transphobia transphobia transphobia. This became obvious when you tried to compare black athletes to trans athletes and then doubled down on it.

You’re not talking to a bunch of transphobic people here.

Outliers like Ms. Thompson who are gaming the system (because that’s exactly what she did) are just that, outliers.

And it’s been said many times in this thread, if we were talking about female to male trans people in sports, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. So is this really a trans issue? Or a discussion about biological men that want to compete with women where they knew they have an unfair advance? If it was really a trans issue, then maybe let’s get some examples of women who transitioned to a man and know competing against men will always be much harder but love the sport and do it anyway. Anybody got examples of that?
Click to expand...


I think what we really need is more data. Competition data. I realize that a lot of swimming is fundamentally time trials but you still get a drive to push when the person you're trying to beat is the next lane over.

I don't know what the solution is to get that data. Lots of folks think its not fair for Cis women to compete with Trans women and I understand that, but I also don't believe we've reached conclusive evidence either way as to if Trans women have an advantage.

I'd love for there to be an opportunity to collect that data where everyone feels like their being treaded fairly as competitors. I don't know what the solution for that is.
 
I'd save her too. (End joke here) :laughing

This has not been brought up and I truly am exploring it at the moment: YY vs XY birthing and what happens.

Also: from the ages 0-10 I have observed significant, identifiable difference in risk analysis and approach between *groups of boys and girls. I am not in the business of studying child development. My question is complicated: if a child grows up as XY does the risk assessment vary from a child that grows up YY.
 
TylerW said:
I think what we really need is more data. Competition data. I realize that a lot of swimming is fundamentally time trials but you still get a drive to push when the person you're trying to beat is the next lane over.

I don't know what the solution is to get that data. Lots of folks think its not fair for Cis women to compete with Trans women and I understand that, but I also don't believe we've reached conclusive evidence either way as to if Trans women have an advantage.

I'd love for there to be an opportunity to collect that data where everyone feels like their being treaded fairly as competitors. I don't know what the solution for that is.
Click to expand...

I mean, you're saying the same thing I have been here. The right thing to do as far as I can tell is exactly what FINA is doing. They are creating models of opportunity that should easily generate clear competitive results for analysis of the sport without being polluted by social issues. After the trans-specific competitions have gone on for a while, it should be much more easy to see if a more direct competition model is the correct approach, or if a more chromosome segregated model makes more sense.

GAJ said:
Regarding swimming.

Fantastic job by the coach.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/sport/anita-alvarez-swimmer-coach-spt-intl/index.html
Click to expand...

I am glad the swimmer is alright, apparently this is not the first time this has happened for her? That seems strange to me, but I am not very familiar with the sport.
 
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James said:
I'd save her too. (End joke here) :laughing

This has not been brought up and I truly am exploring it at the moment: YY vs XY birthing and what happens.

Also: from the ages 0-10 I have observed significant, identifiable difference in risk analysis and approach between *groups of boys and girls. I am not in the business of studying child development. My question is complicated: if a child grows up as XY does the risk assessment vary from a child that grows up YY.
Click to expand...

Teenage car insurance quotes seem to reflect that girls are lesser risk takers. I can also attest that I took some pretty stupid risks when I was younger.
 
Yep, if you want the cruel truth from data, look to insurance companies.
 
James said:
I'd save her too. (End joke here) :laughing

This has not been brought up and I truly am exploring it at the moment: YY vs XY birthing and what happens.

Also: from the ages 0-10 I have observed significant, identifiable difference in risk analysis and approach between *groups of boys and girls. I am not in the business of studying child development. My question is complicated: if a child grows up as XY does the risk assessment vary from a child that grows up YY.
Click to expand...

YY children don't exist:thumbup

Risk taking behavior is a mix of genetic and environmental factors, though to my knowledge the research showing that there were genetic variations associated with more risk taking did not show that those genetic variations are sex based.

The difference between the risks that girls and boys take is probably either purely or mostly based in their environment. Gender roles, including risk taking behavior, are reinforced all the time, basically everywhere, it's completely unavoidable if you interact with society at all.
 
TylerW said:
Yes, I have perceived that people don't care about women's sports unless a transgender woman wants to compete. There is significant evidence to support this observation, and very little to refute it.

You don't know how much I'd like to be wrong about this - unfortunately the overwhelming evidence has led me to different conclusions. This isn't about preserving women's sports.

This is about something else.
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How many threads about women's sports have you started or participated in that weren't about trans women? I think we might have to adopt your logic and conclude that your participation in this one must be about something else.
 
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