this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Just create a trans league. Trans men and trans women all in the same league. Id watch that shit, it would make money. So why don't we have this yet?
Segregated sports based on a demographic like that isn't as trans affirming as you would think... My gut reaction as a trans person is about the same aversion I imagine a person of color would experience if a white person tried to put forward a "People of Color sport league".
Ditching us all into a new category like we're quarantined in sport away from other athletes because we're implicitly not cis... Isn't something I would appreciate.
The unfortunate reality is that men are much better at women at sports. This is why we have women leagues. There are pronounced biological differences that would essentially prevent women from competing if everything was one league.
MTF trans, because they were born male, have all of these advantages. They can take hormone blockers / estrogen pills and that reduces some of the advantage. But not all.
So it results in a MTF trans being a) weaker than males and b) stronger than females
What other solution except a trans league would be just to all parties involved?
Hormones aren't binary though, some men are born with higher T levels than others. And some women have bigger bones than some men. If leveling the "hormone" advantage is desired, then drug test all participants and rank them that way.
Virtually all men with functioning testicles have higher T than all women. This is because testicles produce T at 10-50x the rate of ovaries.
Men going through puberty see permanent changes to the body. You cannot undo this. It gives MTF permanent advantages compared to women.
They are stronger than women on average even after years of being on estrogen.
As for the variance naturally seen, you're right. But consider this
Who ends up becoming a top athlete? The very best, right? So they are already near the top of the bell curve. So when you compare athletes, you're not pulling random samples from the entire population.
You're pulling a random sample from the people with highest T, densest bones, highest rate of fast twitch muscles, etc.
The male maximum and the female maximum is vastly different. This is why we see such a massive difference in performance.
Presence of hormones currently in the blood does not entirely measure this.
Yeah, isn't that the point? I mean you are talking averages but OP is talking about how to handle the outliers (trans folk).
All athletes tend to be outliers, regardless of gender. A small % difference in ability is the difference between 1st place and 300th
Which is why Serena Williams, the #1 female tennis player, loses dramatically to the 203rd male tennis player.
If the 203rd male tennis player became trans, he would instantly become the world's #1 female player overnight.