quantumloverTransgender women athletes banned from women’s Olympic events by new IOC policy
ZozanoI’m of two minds about this:
First, let people compete in comparative tier skill events. We have different weight classes for boxing, why should other sports be any different?
Second, who fucking cares? Sports are literally just physical games which have become the victim of capitalism, and the Olympics added nationalism and implicit racial perspectives.
You will never see a Japanese woman winning the 100m sprint. Should we have another category for Asian sprinters? Maybe? But at some point you need to realise:
NONE OF THIS SHIT MATTERS.
Most of these athletes are doing drugs anyway lol.
qevlarrIt matters exactly for the reason why it’s banned. Sports is a pretext for hurting trans people. Sex assigned at birth should not matter at all. The bigots know this, but it’s acceptable as long as it’s dressed up as an intellectually honest debate about fairness in sports. Fairness in sports is a fool’s errand, like you point out. Having that discussion at all is letting the bigots win.
Sex assigned at birth should not matter at all.
It shouldn’t, but it does. As a matter of what is statistically relevant about the dichotomy between males and females.
dandelionis that true, though? What I’ve read is that the science is showing the opposite, that sex is mostly plastic and that after a couple years on hormones, trans women have similar fitness and athletic ability as cis women:
bjsm.bmj.com/content/…/bjsports-2025-110239
While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable.
transgender women’s VO₂ max, when adjusted for weight, aligns with cisgender women,4 further supporting parity in endurance capabilities
the absence of strength disparities between transgender women and cisgender women found in the current review was consistent and contradicts narratives framing male puberty as conferring irreversible athletic advantages despite [gender-affirming hormone therapy].
transgender women’s pretherapy advantages in push-ups and sit-ups disappeared after 2 years of feminising hormones among 46 individuals who started [gender-affirming hormone therapy] while in the US Air Force.
Body composition and physical fitness in transgender versus cisgender individuals: a systematic review with meta-analysis
Objective To compare body composition and physical fitness between transgender and cisgender individuals. Design Systematic review with meta-analysis. Data sources PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and SportDiscus. Eligibility criteria Inclusion criteria comprised studies of transgender individuals comparing body composition or physical fitness pre-to-post gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) or versus cisgender controls. Results 52 studies (n=6485) were included. Transgender women had similar relative fat mass (standardised mean difference (SMD) −0.33, 95% CI −0.72 to 0.05, Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE): very low), relative lean mass (SMD 0.19, 95% CI −0.14 to 0.53, GRADE: low), upper-body strength (SMD 0.54, 95% CI −0.95 to 2.02, GRADE: very low), lower-body strength (SMD 0.05, 95% CI −1.31 to 1.40, GRADE: very low) and maximal oxygen consumption (SMD −0.28, 95% CI −0.81 to 0.25, GRADE: very low) in comparison to cisgender women. Transgender men exhibited higher relative fat mass (SMD 0.96, 95% CI 0.28 to 1.64, GRADE: moderate), lower relative lean mass (SMD −6.42, 95% CI −12.26 to −0.58, GRADE: moderate) and lower upper-body strength (SMD −1.46, 95% CI −2.52 to −0.40, GRADE: moderate) than cisgender men. In transgender women, GAHT was associated with increased fat mass and reduced lean mass and upper-body strength over 1–3 years. Transgender men demonstrated reduced fat mass and increased lean mass and strength following GAHT. Conclusion While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender. PROSPERO registration number CRD42024562210. Data are available upon reasonable request.
I’m going to plagiarise myself:
This systematic review aligns with previous ones in highlighting critical research limitations. This includes the typically short study durations (<3 years) and a lack of data on elite athletes.
So we aren’t talking about Olympic tier athletes.
Also, the authors themselves acknowledge the evidence quality sits between very low and low
For what it’s worth, I don’t give a shit about “fairness” in sports. What I am pushing back on is the insinuation that people are either malicious or manipulated if they don’t accept the assertion that trans women do not have a competitive advantage.
At best, it’s uncharitable, and at worst, it a litmus test.
For decades the Olympics committee has enabled trans and intersex athletes to compete without issue, using regulations on hormones to ensure fairness; it is only because the new IOC president is committed to excluding trans and intersex participation in sports that we have seen this reversal - there has been no change in the science to support the IOC’s new position.
The quality of evidence is often low to very low for many important guidelines, both clinical and social, and yet those guidelines are not tossed out as not sufficiently backed by evidence. Meanwhile, the evidence we do have is clear that there is no meaningful advantage granted to trans women over cis women in physical fitness or athletic ability - and this fact is corroborated by decades of failure of trans female athletes to dominate against cis female competitors.
Furthermore, the majority of trans athletic bans are state laws in the US that bar both trans men and trans women from participating in sports primarily in K-12 schools - the impact of the anti-trans movement’s push for the exclusion of trans participation in sports has not been primarily about creating fairness, but opening the door to senseless discrimination, often against a handful of children.
In Kentucky, they passed a law and overrode the governor’s veto to pass a trans sports ban that only impacted a single girl who was actually the founder of her field hockey team, and all the people she played with wanted her to be able to play. But now she isn’t allowed to play because she’s trans.
Whether you intend to or not, you are supporting a hate movement without the actual evidence to show that trans participation in sports is a problem on any level of competition, let alone for children playing with their friends.
