Hello everyone,
I’m interested in gathering thoughts and perspectives, particularly from the trans community, regarding trans women’s participation in women’s sports. This is a topic that often sparks debate, and I want to understand the various viewpoints better.
My question is: What are your opinions on biologically male trans individuals competing in women’s sports? Do you think there should be separate categories for trans athletes, or should they compete in accordance with their gender identity? I am looking for thoughtful, respectful discussions, as my intention is not to discriminate but to understand the complexities of this issue better.
Thank you for sharing your insights!
This question is loaded. Trans women are not really biologically male, depending on the time transition happened there will be varying degrees of masculinised secondary sex characteristics but things such as fat distribution, muscle mass, organ size changes etc are going to look much more “standard” female than male.
AFAB women aren’t excluded from sport if they’re unusually tall, or have PCOS, or some other hormone variation that leads to an advantage. Women with PCOS will have an advantage in sport involving strength because they have much higher levels of testosterone (some grow patchy beards ffs) but nobody makes a fuss over that.
All sport is inherently unfair, we try and set limits of degree of unfairness. There is no evidence that trans women have more advantages than all the usual variations in women we allow competition among without issue. The Olympics has allowed trans competitors since 2004, where are all the trans gold medalists? where are all the trans women winning everything? Have you seen the differences in male and female records for most sports? If trans women are meaningfully similar to men then the average trans women would just demolish many sports. This doesn’t happen, only a few people have attracted attention for success and that’s in an environment of media controversy with actively trying to seek them out.
One caveat about the Olympics is, you can’t just choose to compete there yourself as an athlete, even if you are world class. You have to be part, and chosen by, a national organisation. So even if the Olympics allow trans athletes, as long as most countries don’t, there won’t be trans athletes any time soon. I agree on the rest, I just don’t think the Olympics will be a forerunner in terms of trans representation.
It would only take one country to field a team of trans women for prestige (quietly of course) if there was a clear advantage. Countries have engaged in various other schemes to supposedly improve performance previously.