this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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She can't compete with women. You were missing an important word there. The problem here is that her results are not even that competitive, and it leaves this unfairness feeling. We need solid criteria for allowing transgender women to participate on women support. I'm sure it is ok to allow some of them, but definitely not all of them. Compare it to certain phisique enhancing drugs. They are banned at sports. Now, imagine someone who used such drugs the whole life competing against people who did not. It makes sense to ban them as well. But we have half of population like that, so instead of banning we have divisions.
Trans women should be allowed to participate. The thing is that her results are reflective of most trans women, they perform on par with cisgender feminine athletes. This entire "trans women in sports" debate is just transphobia masquerading as fairness. It essentially boils down to "trans women can only participate if they lose".
I'd be fine with banning trans participants from professional-level compensation if we also banned anyone who ever took a PED ever. It's the same argument. If trans people get lifetime bans, then so should PED users. Of course the second will never happen, so...
On the list of important issues we need solved, say in the next 10-20 years, this one is so far down the list it doesn't even need to be discussed at all. Certainly not on national and international media.
Let referees and sports organisations deal with it and start discussing, I don't know, how to avert the climate apocalypse.
Can we turn the magnifying glass to trans women who do seem to have an unfair advantage? Something resembling the use of performance enhancing drugs? I'll wait until you find one.
The Olympics have this solved. Trans women have been allowed to compete for the last 20 years as long as they've been on HRT for at least 2 years and have hormone levels in the expected range. The results plainly show there's no advantage, and possibly even a disadvantage. The only trans person to win a medal was an AFAB nonbinary soccer player who wasn't taking hormones, and the only trans woman to compete in an event came in dead last. No other trans athletes made it past qualifiers.