cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/40174373

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a pioneer for LGBTQ+ rights who decades ago upset leaders in his own party when he defied state law and issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples, suggested Democrats were in the wrong in allowing transgender athletes to participate in female college and youth sports.

  • scarabine@lemmynsfw.com
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    3 days ago

    Just seems like this is coming from a place of deep ignorance to be honest. The Williams girls are just starting their career in that story, Serena started at 14.

    Just to cut to the chase, you watch women compete out there, right? They’re brutal. And trans women, you’ve watched them play too, right? Because they get stomped by girls just like all the other girls do.

    If there’s a quantifiable advantage, it’s nestled deeply in sports nerd statistics, which are - to be blunt - bullshit for bubblegum cards.

    • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      If you really believe there is no advantage then why does absolutely nobody care when ftm athletes try and play? It’s because they don’t compete anywhere near the top when they do that. When men transition to women they seem to have this uncanny habit of absolutely smashing records in women’s sports and taking the top spot in many competitions.

      Sure not all mtf athletes just walk in and destroy the competition but it’s literally never happened a single time with a ftm athlete. Why do you think that might be? Could it just be a bunch of coincidences? Or could it be because there is an underlying issue with allowing someone who was once a man to participate in a women’s league?

      • KaRunChiy@fedia.io
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        3 days ago

        Sources please? Sounds like you’re pulling this info from propaganda sources

          • knightly the Sneptaur
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            3 days ago

            Okay, to begin, you ought to have just linked to the study, not given us an extra step with an article referencing the study.

            https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/56/22/1292

            Frankly, if you think you can draw a generalizable comparison of athletic performance from a study on 45 non-athletes (that very conspicuously doesn’t include any trans men), from grip strength and treadmill performance alone then you shouldn’t be doing any generalizing.

            Here’s a more comprehensive study on a similar number of actual athletes (including trans men):

            https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/early/2024/04/10/bjsports-2023-108029.full.pdf

            Here’s it’s conclusion:

            This research compares transgender male and transgender female athletes to their cisgender counterparts. Compared with cisgender women, transgender women have decreased lung function, increasing their work in breathing. Regardless of fat-free mass distribution, transgender women performed worse on the countermovement jump than cisgender women and men. Although transgender women have comparable absolute V̇O2 max values to cisgender women, when normalised for body weight, transgender women’s cardiovascular fitness is lower than cisgender men and women. Therefore, this research shows the potential complexity of transgender athlete physiology and its effects on the laboratory measures of physical performance. A long-term longitudinal study is needed to confirm whether these findings are directly related to gender-affirming hormone therapy owing to the study’s shortcomings, particularly its cross-sectional design and limited sample size, which make confirming the causal effect of gender-affirmative care on sports performance problematic.