Many sports are divided in a women’s and an open competition. In the open competition any genetic advantage goes (hence the name open), whereas the women’s competition is restricted to people with a specific trait. In such a context I think it’s totally valid to restrict the women’s competition to “born with vagina”. Transgender (both M->F and F->M) can continue to compete in the open section.
Sports that are instead divided in a men’s and women’s section are more problematic, because they may completely block transgender people from competing at all levels, which is very exclusionary. I don’t see a particularly good solution for these sports, apart from changing sections to “open” vs “women’s “.
Finally, I do not see a role for genetic testing (born with vagina, but XY for instance). People make life decisions based on the gender they believe they are. Takebacks based on genetic tests that could occur in far advanced stage of an athlete’s career is completely unfair.
But what advantage do women without a vagina have versus one that does? What if they didn’t go through cis puberty? How do we knows trans woman have an innate advantage instead of being effectively handicapped by their hormone treatment? This is my entire point. People want to ban Trans women specifically because of a reactionary feeling of “its not fair” while having zero evidence. There are like 2 cases where a trans athlete outperformed their cis peers. Yet the way some people (not you specifically) act you’d think trans women are sweeping every sports competition.
In my opinion, it comes down more to being exclusionary towards trans woman. More-so then it ever was about “protecting women’s sports”. I don’t think that everyone that wants to bar trans women thinks this way. But people like Charlie Kirk 100% do and will abuse that at every turn. This is the same man that calls June “Groomer month”.
That’s a fair point. To my understanding the science is not clear if transition started pre-puberty, though I think it is pretty clear if transition happened after puberty. You are also absolutely right that in practice the problem (if you consider it as such) concerns very few cases. I think my only point was that having an open (instead of a men’s) section would circumvent both the possible exclusion of transgender people, and the controversy of those born as men, participating in women’s competition.
Many sports are divided in a women’s and an open competition. In the open competition any genetic advantage goes (hence the name open), whereas the women’s competition is restricted to people with a specific trait. In such a context I think it’s totally valid to restrict the women’s competition to “born with vagina”. Transgender (both M->F and F->M) can continue to compete in the open section.
Sports that are instead divided in a men’s and women’s section are more problematic, because they may completely block transgender people from competing at all levels, which is very exclusionary. I don’t see a particularly good solution for these sports, apart from changing sections to “open” vs “women’s “.
Finally, I do not see a role for genetic testing (born with vagina, but XY for instance). People make life decisions based on the gender they believe they are. Takebacks based on genetic tests that could occur in far advanced stage of an athlete’s career is completely unfair.
But what advantage do women without a vagina have versus one that does? What if they didn’t go through cis puberty? How do we knows trans woman have an innate advantage instead of being effectively handicapped by their hormone treatment? This is my entire point. People want to ban Trans women specifically because of a reactionary feeling of “its not fair” while having zero evidence. There are like 2 cases where a trans athlete outperformed their cis peers. Yet the way some people (not you specifically) act you’d think trans women are sweeping every sports competition.
In my opinion, it comes down more to being exclusionary towards trans woman. More-so then it ever was about “protecting women’s sports”. I don’t think that everyone that wants to bar trans women thinks this way. But people like Charlie Kirk 100% do and will abuse that at every turn. This is the same man that calls June “Groomer month”.
That’s a fair point. To my understanding the science is not clear if transition started pre-puberty, though I think it is pretty clear if transition happened after puberty. You are also absolutely right that in practice the problem (if you consider it as such) concerns very few cases. I think my only point was that having an open (instead of a men’s) section would circumvent both the possible exclusion of transgender people, and the controversy of those born as men, participating in women’s competition.