The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
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TBH I could live with it if the world accepted and honored trans people, and trans people recognized that the biological legacy of their birth sex makes it unfair for them to compete in gender segmented sports. Maybe someday we’ll find a better way to segment sports. Maybe not.
We already found a way in weight classes, but nobody will use it for some reason
Seems like weight class would mostly break down into men’s and women’s anyway, but I guess it would allow for exceptions. Weight class doesn’t seem ideal for all sports though. And even if used, you’d have to have class divisions for each position. Because basketball centers are just bigger and heavier than forwards generally. Perhaps height classes would be just as relevant for basketball. It could all work, but it would be really complicated. And I think smaller men would be afraid to compete in a mostly-women league because, by old world values, winning over women would have no glory, but losing to them would have tons of shame. I wonder if any women would actually want to be the only woman in their league, too. Perhaps it’s about more than just physical ability? Anyway interesting topic.
whatever we should change to would be better than the blind seperation of sexes we have now, whatever we come up with has to pass the prerequisite of overcoming transphobia first. thats unfortunately gonna be a larger hurdle than the sports
i try not to think about it, it makes me mad lol
It’s generally not a blind separation of sexes, it’s an everyone league and a women’s league. Two leagues explicitly exist to protect women/give them a chance.
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But biologically, there is a lot of difference between a cisgender man and a transgender women on HRT.
You can argue that residual advantages remain, that’s reasonable. But to just talk about trans women as if they are basically just cis men is both inaccurate, and offensive.
I think you raise valid points. My counter argument to you would be this: how does the average strength/dexterity/whatever measurement of sports of cisgender woman compare to the average transsexual woman? While one transsexual woman can still be beat by many women, it could arguably be unfair that their transition put them in the top ranking of the women’s league, even if they aren’t number 1.
I’m not here to argue on these points, I’ve done that enough in my life. Just stopping by to let you know that the term “transsexual” is outdated and shouldnt be used. Transgender is the proper term
Thxs from Nikki
I appreciate the correction. Though I do ask that if you say it’s outdated, you provide at least a brief explanation as to why. My understanding was that transgender was for those who identified as a different gender than their own, and transsexual were those who had medical procedures to change their physical sex.
The term transsexual came first, long time ago (I dont care to look it up rn, early 1900s i believe), as we learn more about it we came to realize that gender and sex are completely seperate mentally, hence why its frowned upon to use the term. Lots of hateful people use it knowing this.
Medical transition or not, a transgender person is who they describe, the lengths at which you go to in order to affirm this vaires (Personally I am on the fence on bottom surgery, but basically need HRT). Medical transition is only a part of being transgender, so theres no need to seperate by using the old term, as it stopped being used by us and has been largely picked up by people who think we belong in the looney bin, or just people who (understandably) dont spend all day thinking about their gender.
To be clear, that wasn’t the argument that I was making. In my comment I was only pushing back on the common tendency in these discussions to talk about transgender women as if they were simply cisgender men. People say, uncritically, things like “oh it’s common sense to ban [transgender women] because we know that men on average are faster and stronger”. But transgender women on HRT are significantly different, biologically, to cisgender men.
It’s perfectly fine to talk about advantages remaining after HRT is started, and for how long they remain. But that isn’t what is happening when people talk about transgender women as if they were cisgender men. That is completely ignoring the effects of HRT, making a proper discussion of the relevant facts impossible.
It’s also worth pointing out that, transgender women make up 0.5-1% of all women. So it shouldn’t surprise us if transgender women make up 0.5-1% of top female athletes. That’s proportional.
In reality transgender women are under-represented at the highest levels. While even singular examples of transgender athletes performing well are treated as obvious proof of advantage. That’s very lop-sided rhetoric.
The discussion around this topic is terrible, with a lot of people being quite confidently incorrect about basic empirical facts, while arguing theory.
Oh boy, here we go. He’s just upset we’re not treating his agenda as tried-and-true fact. Mad we’re having a discussion at all that doesn’t revolve around telling him he’s right and we know nothing.
Boo! Stop being a douche and attack their arguments. Attacking them personally just makes you look petty.
It’s like you ignored everything else I wrote, to hyperfocus on one sentence, in order to take offense at something I didn’t say.
From my comment: “It’s perfectly fine to talk about advantages remaining after HRT is started, and for how long they remain. But that isn’t what is happening when people talk about transgender women as if they were cisgender men. That is completely ignoring the effects of HRT, making a proper discussion of the relevant facts impossible.”
Please at least try reading.
I’m not the intended recipient but thanks for a considered response. Even if I can’t fully agree, it was a much better approach
Transgender women are women not men. Get out of here with that hate.
It’s not hate, biologically they’re still men. Sex changes and HRT doesn’t change your chromosomes.
Are these trans women dominating women sports leagues in the same room with us?
Serious response: look for statistics for trans women consistently kicking cis women out of cis sports to the point your position predicts they would. They don’t exist. Sports leagues that allow trans women require them to undergo hormone therapy for specific amounts of time, which levels the playing field. Ironically, this requirement is preventing cis women from competing.
Personally, I don’t give a shit about sports, but anyone with a minimum of intellectual honesty understands that if the claim
were to be true, it would be easy to find outrageous situations where all athletes with any possibility of winning in certain leagues would be trans women, but these cases don’t exist. The closest thing this kind of arguments are accompanied by are specific cases of trans athletes who are successful, which must necessarily exist due to statistics, unless what you want are ludicrous rules that forbid them from participating no matter the reality of their physiology.
jcs?
Source? I thought current evidence said HRT does a good job at leveling the playing field
Except this just doesn’t happen
Except they just don’t. The idea that trans women are going to dominate women’s sports simply has not played out in reality, despite the fact that trans women have been allowed to compete in women’s divisions for many years before these bans.
I don’t know how else to put that. The feared outcome just has not happened, despite regulations being more lax than they are now.
Further proof of this is found, ironically, in the examples brought up by people pushing this fear. It’s the same small handful of trans competitors, most of which did not make any significant impact. If trans women were dominating women’s sports, they would have more, and better, examples.
TERFs have been raging for months over a trans women finishing 6171st in a marathon. People still bring up a specific trans MMA fighter as if she was destroying the competition, when in reality she had a mediocre record, lost to a cis women with a mediocre record, and retired back in 2014. Trans women have been allowed to compete with women in the Olympics since 2004, with looser hormone regulations than those currently in place, yet we saw the first one compete only in 2020 where she didn’t even medal.
The strongest example is one swimmer who was also very strong when she previously competed against men. And people ignore that she still lost to cis women in multiple events. They ignore that her times dropped dramatically after starting HRT.
The fears have not played out in reality.
The feared outcome has occured in every sport trans people are allowed in.
If its so prevalent, please show some examples.
Source
You live in a fantasy land then, because here in reality, it simply has not.