Discuss...
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Fury-unfair-competition-trans-swimmer-smashing-womens-records.html
Saw that a couple of days ago. Swimswam ran an article about it......but did not mention the trans part. And prior to the transition, Thomas (then WIll, off of memory) was mid pack. Among 18 year olds (because I can look up that info), there is an 8 second differnce between the top man and woman. Thomas would have been in the 50's among 18 year olds with his best time (at age 21). As a woman, the time just swum was a full second faster tahn the #1 woman. Only 2.5 seconds off the prior best. Will's PB had him 22nd in the field in a meet first weekend in December, so same time of year as now. Lia's time was nearly 2 full seconds faster than the winner at the same meet. (just looking at 200 Free)
This will be discussed with my daughters at some point. ONe in particular is very supportive of the current social trends, and has not fully realized how this couild negatively affect her. This may change. She has seen through college applications how some policies are working against her.
I"m not opposed to finding some place for trans women to compete, under some sort of system. But Thomas' performance is a pretty darn strong indicator that a trans woman has distinct advantages over a conventional (is that the right term?) woman. I believe the IOC has a 2 year period where they must test at normal female levels (testosterone) before they can compete. Maybe another year will make a difference? Not sure, but I hope for my daughter's sake that this isn't normal.
This is a really complicated situation that I don’t think they have a good solution for at this point. Certainly trans people exist and have a right to be who they are. Certainly testosterone gives an advantage. One of the failures of our anti-doping system is that androgen used years ago can still offer a competitive advantage to the person who was taking exogenous androgens.
I am very much in favor of a level playing field and also I am very much in favor of trans rights. I think the IOC is closer with their requirement that transitioning and hormone replacement needs to have occurred at least two years prior to transition to competition. I do not have a good algorithm make a solution but measuring estrogen and testosterone and other sex hormones and androgens seems reasonable. A two-year transition seems probably reasonable. And Prejudice against Trans people is endemic and unfortunate.
Agree on all points, Allen. We have a lot to learn about what all of this will mean. The folks that may be stuck are high school kids. Meaning if there is a 2 year transition requirement, it will be diffilcult for kids to deal with. I am no expert in any of this, but all of my friends who are gay who are close enough to have shared their experience with me have indicated that they knew at a very early age (hard for me to figure, because I really wasn't interested in girls before puberty!). I can't imagine a freshman who maybe went through puberty the Summer after 8th grade realizing their orientation should lead them to a reassignment scenario (and apologies if my semantics are poor). At what point should hormone treatment be introduced? And then a 2 year "waiting period" would put that person at what point in their high school career?
But the flip side, as I mentioned, is how the other girls could compete fairly against a person whose physique is more like a male than a female. At a meet this weekend, and my daughter got really close to making her bonus cut a full cut in the 200 Back at 2:01.41. Her 15 y/o male teammate just missed making his first Winter Jr cut in the same event at a 1:49.59. 67Princess beat the field by 3 seconds.......would have been 11th with the males.
I just have absolutely zero idea what a good solution would look like. Somebody will be excluded or unfairly pushed out.
Well, if we are going on "greater good" which seems to be a mostly appropriate argument for many things (+/- vaccine mandates), the solution for this seems simple to a simple person such as myself. If you possess a Y chromosome, you deserve to be happy and live your life free from persecution in whatever orientation you choose; however, (I believe) you do not have any "rights" (especially given obvious muscular and cardiovascular advantages) to compete against the most maligned and persecuted group in all of history...XX (we used to call them female). One can quote all the junk IOC science about testosterone levels and appropriateness to compete against traditional genders and I will still call bs. I have certainly had my questions about title IX but in the spirit of it's enforcement of protecting women are we to tell 10,000 women that we must compromise their experience so that the one may feel better and more included?
Obviously, with conditions such as testicular feminization, the waters become muddied.
Some analysis of published science on the matter, (with an emphasis on cycling)
Watch the mixed relay from the Tokyo Olympics, and ask yourself if a year of testosterone suppression would change the results.
Well, someone said that males have a different skekonal frame than females which also might be a factor. Besides hormones. Anyways, there is not enough athletes for a third team sport where trans or people that want to compete against trans could do so since theer is not enough people to form another team besides your regular male and female teams.
