Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[d4m10n]

Never mind the offence and hurt all this causes to women, obviously, the main thing is that people like the poster with the handle "Boudicca90" should never suffer offence or hurt.

Come now. It shouldn't be all that hard to discuss these (admittedly fraught) issues without having to worry about offending radical feminists on the one side and trans activists on the other, especially considering how restrictive the ROEs already are on ISF.

 

[Meadmaker]

There isn't some great rush of trans athletes beating cis ones, that is just overblown propaganda.

Unless you happen to be a woman holding a silver medal.


As I said earlier my bigger problem is with high school sports. Those Connecticut kids shattering records aren't being tested for hormone levels.

As for professionals and elite/Olympic level athletes and competitions, my big problem with using hormone levels as a means of allowing competition is that it ends up picking winners. If you set the level at X, and there is a transwoman in the race, the transwoman will win. If you set the level at Y, the cis-woman will win. It's predictable. So, the various committees making the decision can decide whether they want transwomen or regular women to win the competition.

Meanwhile, there will be a group of people adjusting medication levels to meet eligibility requirements. That can't be good.

 

[Rolfe]

Delurking for a moment. I don't believe there is any hormone concentration at which a male will not have an inherent advantage over a female. Such is the advantage of the masculine physique excluding any effect of testosterone that CAIS women are vastly over-represented among elite female athletes, and they're merely androgynous, they don't have a fully masculine build. And their effective bioavailable testosterone concentration is zero.

An elite female athlete at peak fitness will certainly have a good shout at beating a flabby, out-of-condition male, but even there it can be close, look at Rachel McKinnon who just waltzed up as a middle-aged hobby cyclist, carrying a spare tyre (and not for the bike) and started coming very close to and sometimes beating women who had trained for years and were at the top of their game. The people who know women's cycling say it takes several years hard training for a new entrant to break into the elite bracket but McKinnon, spare tyre, flab and all, just appeared and started winning. And because he didn't win every time against these hard-as-nails elite women he bleats that this shows it's perfectly fair.

Martina Navratilova had a transwoman coach, Renee Richards, who was a fully surgically transitioned transsexual, which means that he was castrated. No testosterone at all bar the trace from the adrenals, just like women. Martina played him once when she was world no 1 and he was in his mid-forties and barely scraped a victory after a very hard-fought match. Richards has said himself that if he'd transitioned earlier (and I presume he means full surgical castration) and had been competing with the women when he was in his 20s or 30s, none of them would have stood a chance.

If you were to castrate one of the top male tennis players right now and wait a few years, allowing him to maintain full fitness during that time, does anyone seriously think he couldn't see off any of the women even without testoterone?

There is no hormone cut-off you can set which will allow women to beat a male who has training and aptitude in the sport. Zero is still too high.

 

[Joe Random]

And outside of the sport angle, take a biological male who identifies as a woman (with or without HRT). Do they qualify for some/any of the female-only STEM scholarships out there? Do they get to go into a nail/waxing salon and demand to be serviced? How about car/life insurance rates?

 

[theprestige]

There isn't some great rush of trans athletes beating cis ones, that is just overblown propaganda.

"Overblown propaganda" that nobody in this discussion is pushing. On the other hand, if you're dismissing it because it's not a big thing and doesn't hurt a lot of people, then that opens the door to dismissing trans demands for access to gendered spaces on the same grounds.

On the other other hand, if you're minimizing a problem that implies that you really do think there's a problem to be minimized. Whether that problem exists and how to solve it, not the "propaganda" is what we're trying to discuss in this thread.

(To be fair, Rolfe is pushing quite a bit of propaganda. If countering propaganda is your bag, feel free to address her specific arguments directly, instead of inventing "propaganda" that nobody is actually pushing here.)

 

[Ziggurat]

How about car/life insurance rates?

Yes, they do.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

There is no hormone cut-off you can set which will allow women to beat a male who has training and aptitude in the sport. Zero is still too high.

Fallon Fox, the favorite boogeywoman of the "trans in sports" debate, lost to a cis-woman in the 3rd round by TKO. The ref had to stop the fight because she was no longer able to meaningfully defend herself from being punched in the face while pinned to the ground. She got manhandled, if you forgive the pun.

Despite all the scare mongering about this woman fighter, her pro career was quite short, with only 6 matches. Most of her matchups were against other newly pro fighters. Two had come in to the match with 0-1 losing records. She lost the tournament final to a cis-woman.

https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/fighter/Fallon-Fox:8EE8EE2C62CA09BF

I'm not seeing an unstoppable killing machine that cis-women can't compete with.

Fallon Fox was never a high level fighter. She fought some people with losing records, and lost the only tournament final she ever fought to another minor league fighter.

The truth is, the only reason anyone beyond the most hardcore fans in Florida have ever heard of Fox is because of the controversy surrounding her transformation.

She was one of the opening acts on the regional level. Now 38 years old, with delusions of grandeur shattered by Ashlee Evans-Smith, it's likely that's all she'll ever be.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2038764-transgender-fighter-fallon-fox-and-her-slowly-fading-fifteen-minutes-of-fame

I don't see why Fallon Fox is the poster child for why trans women have an unfair advantage. If it wasn't for the fact that she was trans, she would have been totally unnoticed among the sea of other fighters that never made it big.

 

[Boudicca90]

And outside of the sport angle, take a biological male who identifies as a woman (with or without HRT). Do they qualify for some/any of the female-only STEM scholarships out there? Do they get to go into a nail/waxing salon and demand to be serviced? How about car/life insurance rates?

Yes we do. As women, we qualify for all of the same things that cisgender women do.

Although in the case of car insurance, I saw mine increase quite a bit after I changed my gender markers, so it didn't help me any. And there will always be crooks that try to game the system like Ziggurat brought up. Trying to slander us by bringing them up like he did won't work.

 

[Rolfe]

Fallon Fox, the favorite boogeywoman of the "trans in sports" debate, lost to a cis-woman in the 3rd round by TKO. The ref had to stop the fight because she was no longer able to meaningfully defend herself from being punched in the face while pinned to the ground. She got manhandled, if you forgive the pun.

Despite all the scare mongering about this woman fighter, her pro career was quite short, with only 6 matches. Most of her matchups were against other newly pro fighters. Two had come in to the match with 0-1 losing records. She lost the tournament final to a cis-woman.

https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/fighter/Fallon-Fox:8EE8EE2C62CA09BF

I'm not seeing an unstoppable killing machine that cis-women can't compete with.

Fallon Fox was never a high level fighter. She fought some people with losing records, and lost the only tournament final she ever fought to another minor league fighter.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles...and-her-slowly-fading-fifteen-minutes-of-fame

I don't see why Fallon Fox is the poster child for why trans women have an unfair advantage. If it wasn't for the fact that she was trans, she would have been totally unnoticed among the sea of other fighters that never made it big.

Perhaps boasting about how enjoyable it was to break a woman's skull contributed to the notoriety.

Fallon Fox, Rachel McKinnon, same thing really. Not-very-good, out of condition men aren't necessarily going to sweep all before them against elite women. They'll do a lot better than not-very-good, out of condition women would though.

Sports statistics show that elite schoolboys start breaking the women's world records in almost all athletics categories around the age of 13 or 14. So far we haven't seen elite boys or men transitioning into women's events, what we've seen is mediocre boys and men transitioning and going from way way down the rankings to being in contention for the medals and the top spots.

Keep males out of women's events, irrespective of surgical status, hormone concentrations or self-described lady feelz. Choices have consequences, and if a male chooses to transition one of the consequences needs to be, no competitive sports.

I will bow out again and leave you to lionise and pander to the new entrant.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I see gender identity as having more to do with the brain and how it is structured rather than genetics. So gender is primarily mental and psychological, but with a biological basis behind it. If you talk purely genetics then yes, we aren't the same there, but gender dysphoria is when the brain and body don't align properly. I think for all the things that matter, I should be treated the same as a cisgender woman like you.

When I first started transitioning, I used the restroom that best fit my presentation at the time. I was afraid to use the women's room until I felt like my presence wouldn't cause a problem anymore. So I do agree with that, to use the restroom that best fits your gender expression. But I also think we should be equal in sports and prisons as well.

Research has been showing that with long enough on HRT, the physical differences between trans and cis women become minimal. I can personally attest to that after having been on HRT for 3 years. I wanted to post a link to some research but I don't have enough posts apparently, so the researchers name is Joanna Harper.

So I agree with IOC regs on trans players. And we shouldn't be segregated in prisons unless we can be shown to be a danger to the rest of the population (like with sex offenders and rapists).

For the most part, I agree. No material differences in perspective really.

If you're willing, I really do want a better understanding of what you mean about gender being psychological. It's something that I've heard said several times, but there's no connection there for me. It's a case of "yellow" wandering across my brain looking for something to connect with...

If you'd rather engage by PM, I'm happy with that. I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but I do want to understand. My niece came out as transgender a year ago... and while I'd love to talk to her more, she's incredibly defensive and aggressive about it (which makes no sense since our entire family is very supportive), and she's also bi-polar.

 

[Boudicca90]

Fallon Fox, the favorite boogeywoman of the "trans in sports" debate, lost to a cis-woman in the 3rd round by TKO. The ref had to stop the fight because she was no longer able to meaningfully defend herself from being punched in the face while pinned to the ground. She got manhandled, if you forgive the pun.

Despite all the scare mongering about this woman fighter, her pro career was quite short, with only 6 matches. Most of her matchups were against other newly pro fighters. Two had come in to the match with 0-1 losing records. She lost the tournament final to a cis-woman.

I'm not seeing an unstoppable killing machine that cis-women can't compete with.

Fallon Fox was never a high level fighter. She fought some people with losing records, and lost the only tournament final she ever fought to another minor league fighter.

I don't see why Fallon Fox is the poster child for why trans women have an unfair advantage. If it wasn't for the fact that she was trans, she would have been totally unnoticed among the sea of other fighters that never made it big.

Exactly. In these kinds of discussions it's the same few people who are brought up every time. The vast majority of transpeople in sports go pretty unnoticed (at least until we start winning, then it's "unfair".)

To be honest, I don't really care too much about sports to begin with. I think our society venerates athletes far too much. But the justifications people have been using to try to segregate us from other women are all flimsy and don't hide the underlying hatred they have of us.

 

[Emily's Cat]

They don't have the same hormone profile and certainly wouldn't after just a year.

She didn't say they would have the same profile after a year. She said "having the same profile for at least a year". Which is in line with her previous statement about wanting around 3 years of HRT.

 

[Emily's Cat]

There isn't some great rush of trans athletes beating cis ones, that is just overblown propaganda. The reality is it often doesn't make much of a difference, despite all the hatred of us that happens if we win. Someone who was at the top of their ranking before transitioning will most likely still be after doing so, but for the most part, most trans athletes are just as average as anybody else.

Yes... and no. An average male-bodied athlete will generally outperform a female athlete at the top ranking. The averages of the sexes are different. Some of that can be managed with hormone therapy.

I will say after looking over the IOC's regulations more closely that the testosterone levels are way too high. Current standard is under 10 nmol/L with the recommendation of 5 nmol/L instead in the future, but I still think that is too high and it's not within the range of ciswomen. My level is kept under 1.5 nmol/L, which is in the range of what it should be imo.

I agree that it's too high... but I'm also willing to start at 5nmol/L and evaluate as we go. I don't want to exclude transwomen from sports, I just want to avoid disadvantaging cis-women in sports.

 

[Emily's Cat]

well, I'm out. Here's a newbie who could be telling the truth or who could be making up the best story he or she can think of in order to "win" this thread for the trans lobby. In either case, discussion will be strangled so as not to give "offence" or "hurt".

Never mind the offence and hurt all this causes to women, obviously, the main thing is that people like the poster with the handle "Boudicca90" should never suffer offence or hurt. So everyone starts tiptoeing round this poster, oh please tell me how it is from your perspective, and all the replies have to be filtered through a prism of "could this upset this new poster who claims to be a transwoman?"

Not playing that game. Carry on.

Or... you know... simply trying to be a decent person and not inadvertently offend anyone. Boudicca seems reasonable and open, and I'd like to keep that channel of communication open.

 

[Ziggurat]

Yes we do. As women, we qualify for all of the same things that cisgender women do.

Although in the case of car insurance, I saw mine increase quite a bit after I changed my gender markers, so it didn't help me any. And there will always be crooks that try to game the system like Ziggurat brought up. Trying to slander us by bringing them up like he did won't work.

I didn't slander anyone. First off, slander requires falsehood, and I didn't say anything false. Accusing me of slander when I didn't say anything false is itself slander. And the person who did this isn't a crook. They did it legally. If you think that's gaming the system, well, the system has now been set up to be gamed. Don't blame me for that. If you think there's something wrong with someone changing their legal gender to get a lower car insurance rate, you'll have to explain where you think the problem is.

Is the problem that men and women have different rates for car insurance? If so, I can respect that position, but that's not really a trans-specific problem and again, I'm not responsible for it.

Is the problem that biological males can get access to rates normally reserved for biological females? Given your previously stated position, I suspect that's unlikely, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Is the problem that someone could be legally recognized as trans without actually being trans? If so, that's kind of my point. A lot of trans activists oppose any gatekeeping of what constitutes trans identity. But if there's no gatekeeping, then this sort of exploitation of the system is inevitable. Again, don't blame me for pointing out a problem that I'm not responsible for.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Perhaps boasting about how enjoyable it was to break a woman's skull contributed to the notoriety.

Professional fighters aren't exactly known for their timidity around violence. Trash talking and out of the ring squabbles are extremely common in this world.

 

[d4m10n]

Fallon Fox, the favorite boogeywoman of the "trans in sports" debate, lost to a cis-woman in the 3rd round by TKO.

For a favorite boogeywoman, it sure took her a long time to show up in this thread.

 

[Manger Douse]

Patriarchy? Whats that?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

For a favorite boogeywoman, it sure took her a long time to show up in this thread.

The Fallon Fox case has been repeated in the original, and now both continuations version of this same thread. Use the search feature, it's very often mentioned when the discussion turns towards transwomen in sports.

 

[Meadmaker]

When it comes to sporting events and transwoman participation in the same, what's in it for society anyway? In other words, we aren't talking about the pickup league at the local Y, where there might be issues, but those issues certainly aren't going to be resolved with hormone tests. We are talking about spectator sports with tickets, admissions, fan bases, etc.

If a transwoman wins a woman's event, isn't the reaction, "Well, duh. What did you expect?"

What are we cheering on in such a case?

When this subject comes up on forums, there are always at least some voices that say, "I hate sports anyway, so who cares?" I think that among the people who are strong advocates of trans-participation in women's sports there are very few sports fans, and very, very, few women's sports fans. I think the supporters of Andraya Yearwood (one of the Connecticut track transgirls) there are an awful lot of people who are inspired by these young people making a tough decision to come out and be recognized, in the face of widespread societal disapproval, but there aren't a lot of people who really think highly of women's track and field as a competitive endeavor.