punished edenWhen people say that trans inclusion in sports is a tricky issue, they are right, but generally for all the wrong reasons. And it's mostly only tricky because the current binary division of athletics into men and women's sports is kind of ridiculous. As much as I don't really care for combat sports, splitting divisions into weight bands seems like an approach that could be applied to other sports.
If the IAAF considers testosterone such an overwhelmingly powerful hormone that it gives people too much of an advantage to compete in the women's sport divisions, rather than force people (both cis and trans) to undergo hormone therapy to reduce blood testosterone levels to their eligible limit, why not just split sport divisions into bands based on blood testosterone averages? That's probably too naive of an approach, but you can probably see where I am coming from.
And frankly, sorry IAAF, but how is any kind of hormone therapy fundamentally different to the advantages given to athletes who have access to more resources for training? More money for coaches, equipment, TIME to train? All of these things are used to sculpt the body too, but I never see any bellyaching about the distribution of resources to athletes due to their wealth (or wealth of their representative institutes).
Ryn@NecroTechno Or people like Michael Phelps who just happen to produce an abnormally low amount of lactic acid in their muscles.