Well, first of all under the current rules you'd have to have been transitioned for four years, so the three year thing sounds a bit strange. Then you have to fulfill a bunch of criteria, like test levels (which are likely to be lowered). Then you have the fact that no trans athlete has ever won, so a woman who wants to win gold should probably concentrate on beating the best. Beating the best trans women would be nice, I guess, but not as nice as getting the gold medal.
Transgender Athletes
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Sorry to be pedantic but this isn't true and highlights why this is so complicated. A 4 year old male is not beating a 25 year old female at any sport, a 4 ft Male basketball player is not beating a 6ft 4 female player. There is a huge spectrum of overlap between male/female physical attributes and capabilities that are as varied as you and me (ie small, frail, hairless biologically male - tall, large frame, hairy biologically female and anything in between) therefore the most fundamental "base" separation in classification cant be Male/female.
To extend an olive branch, the "common sense of it" splitting male and female does largely group correctly over the general population, however it;
A: doesn't fit every case, therefore failing in its utility as a category especially in a professional athlete level were the edges of the curve are almost essential(human beings define categories for their utility, i'e they have a usefulness, they don't exist outside of social constructs in the vast majority of cases. we say that pieces of wood assembled in a shape we can sit on are "chairs" but chairs as a category of thing don't exist in the universe outside of our interpretation.
B: Doesn't guarantee a fair sporting event. If your aim was to guarantee a fair sporting event you would group virtually every sport into extremely precise categories. 18-24 basketball, weight range limit, height range limit, wing span limit etc.
Why do we enjoy sport, is it to gawp at freaks of nature destroying their competition? is it to try to determine who is the best based on work ethic? talent? intelligence at their sport? these are incredibly hard to nail down.
I don't know what the answer is, it clearly isn't allowing a biological male who experienced a full puberty, now compete as a female at the Olympics. But hiding behind Male/females categories also fails the litmus test.
People go mental over this for no good reason. So much heat. Not much light.
Even in something like chess the males are at advantage.
Well if nothing else it's going to be very interesting watching the event from a technical point of view.
The clean and jerk should be pretty standard, but the snatch could be very unconventional.
The clean and jerk should be pretty standard, but the snatch could be very unconventional.
I'm sorry.
That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it?
Unfortunately not, Olympic weightlifting is full of state sponsored doping. I'd be amazed if 80% of gold medals haven't involved it over the past 20 years. China, Russia, anywhere Eastern Europe, old Soviet Block, or South American. USA and Germany are probably one of the only few examples of clean good performance.
Edit: I should add this I do (for once) actually know the subject, I'm a Olympic weightlifting lifter, coach and technical official and know many of the elite GB squad and Olympic squad. I've trained many times with one of Laurels direct competition, Emily Campbell. Emily and other GB women (Emily Godley, Sarah Davies) are hopefully showing promise in a clean system with some European medals this year.
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I'm a 40 years old male, if I become a transgender tomorrow and face Serena williams, chances are she'll beat me 100-0.
Changing gender doesn't mean you'll be number 1, but comparing apple to apple let's say the trans trained since 10 vs a natural woman who also starts training at 10 the transgender athletes would still be ahead of the curve. And just because you eventually don't win the number 1 spot doesn't mean it's OK. It simply means it's ok if they "cheat" they never won it anyway. And olympics only have 3 medals for each class doesn't mean being 4th is meaningless for some.
The male and female classification is not the only one, it's one of the First thing you classify. When they finished with male and female, they'll move on with age, weight, etc.
Name any professional sport that only classified male / female.
We want to see determination, perseverance, strength, skill, mental fortitude, and probably bit of luck for the drama when we see sports. While not perfect the current classifications is the closes mankind can get, where players trained hard, and the eventual winner is normally within the same wave length, only separated by things that are beyond their capabilities to train and improve. In this system, normally (off course there's always exceptional case like Caster Semenya) players compete in a healthy competition where everyone that puts roughly the same amount of effort can compete in a similar difficulty.
We can never be 100% fair, but at least we tried. Putting a transgender against natural woman is beyond reason, it skews the curve too far.
Lance Amstrong says hi
We're gonna need some pics of your muscles for proof.
He wasn’t an Olympic weight lifter
How many trans people have qualified for the Olympics since 2004 when they were first allowed to compete?
I know there is a lot of doping in weightlifting but that’s totally different than a born male competing with women isn’t it? There is a lot of doping in cycling too but it would be even more unfair if Lance Armstrong would go in transitioning and ride with the women.
It’s sad that it’s unfair and I fully understand that you want to compete with women if that’s what you identify as and in amateur sports I don’t see a problem but it is unfair.
There's a big difference in strength based sport rather than skill and stamina based.
Unfair to say the least.
Unfair to say the least.
This is flawed because all else equal and the male almost always beats the female. Why is this important ? Because it's an unfair advantage.
Now saying there are other unfair advantages might be right. Like Federer had a world class coach while my family couldn't afford bread but that's not something we introduce as a rule at least.
Even in snooker and chess men have an advantage.
You're right, I was more making a daft point about weightlifting being unfair in general, this is just another on the list.
Quite different, I'm talking about doping at a state level, it would be surprising to me if USA cycling (or whatever they are called) would be th one aiding Lance in his cheating.
Then we agree mate.
It’s just daft allowing them to compete - it’s the whole you can be anything you want to be sentiment. Well, if you are a biological male transitioned to female that’s great, but one of things you’ll have to give up to do that is competing in some sports. It’s a shame but it’s just the way it is.
what’s going to happen if she wins a medal at the expense of a biological female? That would be awful.
what’s going to happen if she wins a medal at the expense of a biological female? That would be awful.
What will be really hilarious is if she doesn't get within an ass's roar of a medal.
Probably the most desired outcome. If she gets on the medals we won't hear the end of it.
Strong disagree. There's no sport that doesn't have some element of physical sexual dimorphism. Motor racing, horse racing, even darts. Whether that influences competing against same sexes is a different matter, but you can't have a physicality metric.
With chess there simply is not enough female chess players playing.
They make the greens smaller for female golfers?
Why on earth to they do that? If anything, that would suggest female golfers are better and more accurate than males. The would need to be better at generating spin to have the balls stop on these smaller greens. It also sounds like a groundskeeping nightmare.
Are you sure you're not thinking about them having different tee boxes for female golfers? They play a shorter version of the entire hole, but then so do seniors, amateur golfers, members, pros and various other categories of golfer.
Yea it could be that. They make something shorter.
Not my experience with women.
It’s the tee boxes.
Their courses are shorter in comparison to PGA tour events, but the LPGA courses are still in the 6500-7000 yard range, which is long for what non-professional men play.
This is a simple issue. Transwomen (with an XY chromosome pair) should not be competing in women's sport. Putting transwomen up against biological women is trashing women's rights. If you see it as an issue of competing rights, then there are way more biological women in the world than transwomen. So biological women's rights rule.
Most people tend to subscribe to this view from what I’ve seen, hence the controversy around the recent ruling that she will be competing.
Maybe Leona Messi can lift the world cup.
Cheers my bad.
What though was Sergio Garcia saying about spin? I can vaguely recall it. Something about the female players not being able to generate enough spin.
You have to be very naive to think that “marginal gains” and “more training” led to Sky / British cycling dominating and mediocre cyclists at 25 like Froome becoming GOATs.
It is a classical Western view, dirty foreigners cheating against clean locals.
The article I read said that Laurel Hubbard is the first.
He’s talking about the ball’s spin rate. The spin rate affects ball flight and the ability to make the ball stop on greens & roll different directions after it has landed.
PGA average spin rate for a 6 iron is about 6200 rpm while the LPGA average for a 6 iron is about 5900.
Cheers thanks.
Do you know anything about snooker? Would there be a similar difference in controlling the cue ball between male and female players?
You realize that his original comment is being made about weight lifting, a sport that he’s already said he is involved with at the Olympic training level?
He isn’t who brought cycling into a discussion about weight lifting.
No clue about snooker. I didn’t even know what snooker was until I joined this forum
In competitive sports it’s dangerous. Ridiculous that there was a trans MMA fighter fighting women.
Putting peoples lives at risk to avoid offending people
Putting peoples lives at risk to avoid offending people