[ED] Discussion: Trans Women Are not Women (Part 6)

[Emily's Cat]

There was one aspect of AGG's post that I didn't address in my last effort.



That's true. We shouldn't exaggerate the risk here. It affects a small number of people, which are transgender males (i.e. transgirls) and the people who compete against them. To carry on with the previous example, it affects Terry Miller and Selina Soule.

Perhaps we are making too big of a fuss about something that affects only two people, but if it is too big of a fuss to be made about two people, then surely it is too big of a fuss to be made about one.


And of course it affects more than those two. It affects all transgenders and all those who compete against them. I was just using two names as a simplification. The point is that all of the people affected are significant. All of the transgirls are significant. All of the people who compete against the transgirls are significant.

I agree that we shouldn't exaggerate the risk, but I also think it's not limited to just CT either.

There've been several transwomen in sports over the last couple of years, winning competitions, and setting significant records. Laurel Hubbard and Rachel McKinnon come to mind, but there are several others out there.

The thing that keeps being apparent is that these winning transgender athletes are repeatedly older than their female counterparts, and in worse shape... but are easily beating the females and setting records on top of it.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And it's not a hypothetical ... it happens... women get accused of being men because they look 'manly' or are bigger and stronger looking than their teammates and opponents. And it's not just Caster Semanya type anomalies but 100% no doubts about it bonafide even TERFs would agree that's a woman like Korean football Park Eun Son.

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/08/sport/football/south-korea-gender-boycott-football/index.html

Because she's 5'11 and 165 pounds she gets branded a man and opponents refuse to play against her. I'd like to think that EVERYONE on this thread would say that 1. Park should be allowed to play women's football and 2. Park should not be subjected to the humiliation of having to prove she's a woman to meet other people's standards.

Cases like this one were the kind of thing I was trying to get at in the replies above to Meadmaker and Paul2. Park is above average height and weight for a South Korean MALE and far above the averages for a female.

Just for a comparison I looked at the 2013 Male National Team that played for South Korea in the East Asian Cup. They only scored one goal in that game and the player that scored it was Yun Il-Rok who is smaller and lighter than Park. Had Yun been a transwoman would 'her' presence in the team really be an order of magnitude different to Park competing?

I don't think it's *only* because they are tall and densely muscled. I'd say it's because they're exceptionally tall for a Korean (especially a female Korean), far more densely muscled than other female Korean soccer players, has no breasts, extremely narrow hips, thigh musculature and gait normally associated with a male, a masculine facial structure, strong jaw, and essentially NO female secondary or tertiary characteristics.

It suggests that Park may be either intersex or transgender. Possibly taking steroids. It's very unfortunate for Park, but everything about that person's build and look is male.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Edited by Darat: 

Moderated thread.

Well, I specifically said it could happen, but I said I can't see it happening that way to a US high school student. In other words I couldn't imagine press conferences and the like, as appear to have happened in this dispute involving professional players. I would expect it to be much more discreet.

But, all sorts of things are at least possible. Yes, it could happen, and, by the way, it could happen with or without a law that mandates sex based segregation. If trans girls are allowed to compete on girls' teams, there won't be demands for gender (sic) testing, but in discussing team losses of girls' teams, coaches will inevitably include, among the reasons, that the girls on her team fought hard, but they just couldn't overcome the advantage of the trans player. We already see that today. That, certainly, will happen, and will happen more frequently and more publicly than the challenges that will happen if sex-based segregation is mandated by law.

If coaches are coming out and blaming losses on trans opponents then I think that only reflects badly on those coaches rather than the trans people or lawmakers.

As time progresses we will see the reality of the situation and if it's true that transpeople present an insurmountable advantage in a team then we might have to revisit it and if it happens that they don't then any coach claiming it is going to look like a bad loser and a bigot.

In any case that's quite a different thing than publicly insisting that a woman isn't a woman because she doesn't meet their prejudices on what a woman is

 

[Roboramma]

I don't know why I even bother trying to post in this thread, but I would like to affirm for the record that I am a female who is fully in favor of trans rights. It seems that some people think only men are supporting them in this thread.

I am female enough to have given birth to three children, which means I now have their blood cells in my circulation as well as my own, so depending on the form of DNA testing I could conceivably test as intersex or chimeric (which both turn out to be far more common than thought). Also, I no longer have a uterus or cervix, and have passed menopause, so by some people's standards I'm not female at all.
And quite honestly, I'd rather share restrooms, changing facilities and sports with any number of transgender people than with a bunch of gatekeepers sizing me up because of my deep voice or the length of my hair.

TL/DR: I'm not and never will be on your side, just because I'm female.

With respect to the highlighted: evidence?

If anyone has actually made a statement consistent with that highlighted remark, it should be easy to quote it.

 

[Meadmaker]

I do detect a distinct lack of empathy/sympathy in some of these arguments.

I think there is a distinct lack of empathy in all of these arguments.

The people who say sport should be segregated by sex appear to show a lack of empathy for Terry Miller. The people who say they should be segregated by gender appear to show a lack of empathy for Selina Soule.



In truth, I'm sure that lots of people on all sides have empathy for each of the above named people, and for all others in similar situations. However, it's impossible to give both of them what they want. It cannot be done. At some point, there has to be a decision.

 

[Meadmaker]

Objecting to that is being a spoilt brat. If that's all you meant by her identity then I think she's the one at fault for hanging her identity on something that was always open to be taken away from her.

I think you would find an awful lot of people who hang their identity on something no more significant.

Of course, significance is in the eye of the beholder.

So it's at least possible that a transwoman could have earned their place as woman's champion too?

As a woman's champion? Yes. As a female champion? No.

Ok fair enough. Wasn't sure if I had missed something. For clarity then I am not saying we SHOULD segregate by gender or by sex or by anything specifically. I'm saying we CAN segregate by whatever we want and we don't need a one size fits all strategy we can identify what works best in any given situation.

Great. Glad we cleared that up. Personally, I think it is a positive benefit to society to encourage athleticism among females, and I think having female sports leagues is the best way to do that. In other words, I am saying we SHOULD have female sports leagues.

My suspicion is that you are flat out wrong to say gender does not influence sporting performance. I'm almost sure it does but I don't have data at hand so I can't provide it to you at this time. I can give you a couple of examples that come to mind though - women are not encouraged generally to be hugely muscled as it's seen as unattractive and unladylike therefore it is unlikely that a woman is going to pursue the extremes of strength and size that a man might and this will affect performance in strength and size sports to some extent.

This is the exact sort of gender stereotyping that so many people object to and wish to destroy. This emphasis of gender over sex plays into reinforcement of the negative stereotypes.

Gender itself has no effect on athletic performance, but it is true that if societies, collectively, continue to spout the harmful opinions that you are referring to, it will.

In my opinion, allowing males to compete against females reinforces the very stereotypes that many of us would like to see discarded.

That's simply not true and you haven't thought about it then if you believe this. For a start gender is highly correlated with biological sex (almost 100% so)

Yes. There is a statistical correlation between gender and athletic performance, because most women are female. However, as we all know, correlation is not causation. The causal factor is sex.

There is also a statistical correlation between hair length and athletic performance, although the correlation is slightly less strong than the one between gender and athletic performance. However, neither hair length nor gender actually has an impact on athletic performance. (Well, hair length has a tiny impact, so I guess there is slightly more justification to segregate based on hair length than there is on gender, but I don't think anyone would take the suggestion seriously, for reasons that don't have to be explained.)

so if your position is that biological sex is the best first cut divider then gender cannot be anywhere near useless.

I would say it is actually worse than useless. It is close enough to a useful category that people might not notice the places where it creates a misclassification. It actually creates situations that destroy the benefit of segregation.

it must be pretty damn good. Whether you segregate by gender or sex you are going to get pretty much the same division of individuals save a small number of edge cases.

Yes. Gold medals are edge cases. Since most people don't win gold medals, the impact will be small.

Why is this a pet peeve of yours? Notice I didn't say 'ban' I said exclude. I guess what you mean is that transwomen can still compete with the guys but if that is your point it's rather disingenuous I think.

That is, rather obviously, exactly what I meant, and there is nothing disingenuous about it.

So while excluding trans people from women's sport does not technically mean excluding them from sport the effect of such ruling effectively excludes them.

Their own choice excludes them.

Put yourself in the shoes of a 16 year old transgirl and try to reflect on the reasons why they might not WANT or CHOOSE to be on the boys wrestling team/track team/football team or whatever even if they are ALLOWED to. I do detect a distinct lack of empathy/sympathy in some of these arguments.

Put yourself in the shows of a 16 year old cisgirl and try to reflect on the reason why they might not WANT to wrestle against a male.

Once again, what you are doing is elevating the desires of the transgirl, a male, over the desires of the females.

 

[Aber]

The arguments for why transwomen are not going to compete in male sports leagues are unsurprisingly very similar to the arguments to why women have their own sports leagues in the first place and span biological, gender, psychology and social issues.

The arguments may be similar, but the evidence base is not.

The biological differences (and the impact on performance) between females and transwomen, is much much greater than between males and transwomen.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I think there is a distinct lack of empathy in all of these arguments.

The people who say sport should be segregated by sex appear to show a lack of empathy for Terry Miller. The people who say they should be segregated by gender appear to show a lack of empathy for Selina Soule.



In truth, I'm sure that lots of people on all sides have empathy for each of the above named people, and for all others in similar situations. However, it's impossible to give both of them what they want. It cannot be done. At some point, there has to be a decision.

showing empathy doesn't mean agreeing with someone and giving them what they want though. Bear in mind this was in response to your insistence that banning transwomen from competing with ciswomen wasn't excluding them from participating in sport. Which seemed to be a somewhat callous remark that ignored the reality of being a transwoman.

You will note that I did empathise was the position that it seems on the face of it unfair for Soule. But ultimately I concluded that in competitive sport you always run the risk of someone bigger and better coming along and that competing and finishing third seems less of an issue that not being able to compete and participate at all.

 

[Collin237]

Put yourself in the shows of a 16 year old cisgirl and try to reflect on the reason why they might not WANT to wrestle against a male.

Once again, what you are doing is elevating the desires of the transgirl, a male, over the desires of the females.

You're both elevating the inchoate concept of desires of categories, over the actual ability to discuss with individual people what their desires are.

 

[Meadmaker]

I agree that we shouldn't exaggerate the risk, but I also think it's not limited to just CT either.

There've been several transwomen in sports over the last couple of years, winning competitions, and setting significant records. Laurel Hubbard and Rachel McKinnon come to mind, but there are several others out there.

The thing that keeps being apparent is that these winning transgender athletes are repeatedly older than their female counterparts, and in worse shape... but are easily beating the females and setting records on top of it.

Yeah, my phrasing, saying "if it is too big of a fuss to be made about two people, then surely it is too big of a fuss to be made about one." was meant to call attention to the fact that when talking about Terry Miller and Selina Soule, TRAs tend to talk as if it's just one race and no one cares because it hardly matters......except to my side, because that's important.

In particular it was in response to a call to not exaggerate the issue. It's small numbers. It isn't a lot of cases, etc. And yet, an even smaller number are affected if you only consider the transgender people. If the number of people affected by transgender participation is too small to be of great concern when both cisgender and transgender people are considered, then surely the number of people affected is too small to worry about if we remove the cisgenders from the realm of concern.

To be fair, AGG might have been referring specifically to claims that allowing transgirls to participate in female divisions would "destroy girls' sports". That really is something that Republican politicians, and some others, are saying, and that's an exaggeration. On the other hand, I think this is where people might be guilty of ignoring "the little people". No, girls' sports haven't been destroyed, but the personal experience of females who had to participate against transgirls has been dramatically altered.

It also relates to discussion of "identity". I remember people in high school for whom sports was their life. They practiced for hours a day. They worked toward that grand, but elusive, goal of qualifying for state championships. They still talk about it at the reunions. We can look down our noses at those people and say they need to grow up and leave the past behind, that it wasn't all that important. Maybe that's true, but why is it only true for the females. Why can something that can be dismissed so easily for the female athletes be elevated to such significance for the transgirls?

 

[Aber]

seems less of an issue that not being able to compete and participate at all.

Edited by Darat: 

Moderated thread.

Under Meadmaker's approach transwomen could compete, but against males, not females.

They might not want to do that because they're being asked to compete against someone of a different gender identity (although with the same biological advantages), but they are not being excluded.

 

[Collin237]

It also relates to discussion of "identity". I remember people in high school for whom sports was their life. They practiced for hours a day. They worked toward that grand, but elusive, goal of qualifying for state championships. They still talk about it at the reunions. We can look down our noses at those people and say they need to grow up and leave the past behind, that it wasn't all that important. Maybe that's true, but why is it only true for the females. Why can something that can be dismissed so easily for the female athletes be elevated to such significance for the transgirls?

I don't recall anyone arguing that transgirls should aspire to be sports champions.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I think you would find an awful lot of people who hang their identity on something no more significant.

Of course, significance is in the eye of the beholder.

Edited by Darat: 

Moderated thread.

In any case if her identity can be destroyed by a bigger better ciswoman coming to town then it has NO relevance to transgender issues.

As a woman's champion? Yes. As a female champion? No.

Most (All?) women's sports are classified as women's rather than female sports. So whatever language nitpick you want to try here is pretty much irrelevant. You seem to have agreed that transwomen can compete (at least sometimes) and deserve to win titles in races with ciswomen.

Great. Glad we cleared that up. Personally, I think it is a positive benefit to society to encourage athleticism among females, and I think having female sports leagues is the best way to do that. In other words, I am saying we SHOULD have female sports leagues.

Using your terminology then I would say that female sports leagues encourage athleticism among females AND exclude transwomen from competing in sport. Women's sports league encourage athleticism among females AND do not exclude transwomen. On the face of it I would say the latter is better. Also on the face of it a lot of people who argue for the former seem to see EXCLUDING transwomen as a feature not a bug.

This is the exact sort of gender stereotyping that so many people object to and wish to destroy. This emphasis of gender over sex plays into reinforcement of the negative stereotypes.

Regardless of whether you agree with it or not it is what it is. And therefore gender apparently DOES play a role in sporting performance.

Gender itself has no effect on athletic performance, but it is true that if societies, collectively, continue to spout the harmful opinions that you are referring to, it will.

I've given examples of where gender DOES apparently play a role in athletic performance and rather than rebut them you have just reasserted that it doesn't. Can you see why that's not conducive to a productive discussion and gives the impression that your mind is already made up regardless?

In my opinion, allowing males to compete against females reinforces the very stereotypes that many of us would like to see discarded.

I don't see how you have got to there. And to be honest unless you allow it we are never going to know are we? It could have quite the opposite effect or no effect at all.

Yes. There is a statistical correlation between gender and athletic performance, because most women are female. However, as we all know, correlation is not causation. The causal factor is sex.

Statistical correlation is all we need for a useful first pass divider though.

There is also a statistical correlation between hair length and athletic performance, although the correlation is slightly less strong than the one between gender and athletic performance. However, neither hair length nor gender actually has an impact on athletic performance. (Well, hair length has a tiny impact, so I guess there is slightly more justification to segregate based on hair length than there is on gender, but I don't think anyone would take the suggestion seriously, for reasons that don't have to be explained.)

Again you assert gender has no impact on performance but that's not been established yet by yourself and seems to be at odds with reality given some of the examples i suggested.

As for hair length - well it would be correlated but not as much so as gender and if that was all we had to go on then it would be better than nothing but I think if we did segregate by hair length we would quickly see issues with it and it wouldn't take a genius to propose something better.

I would say it is actually worse than useless. It is close enough to a useful category that people might not notice the places where it creates a misclassification. It actually creates situations that destroy the benefit of segregation.

You seem to be using an odd definition of the word useless that includes 'close to useful'. I don't find it helpful to the discussion. If your argument is that gender segregation is worse than sex then fine. We can discuss that. But it doesn't make anything 'not quite as good' useless.

Yes. Gold medals are edge cases. Since most people don't win gold medals, the impact will be small.

This might be a point if there were a demonstrated pattern of transwomen winning all the gold medals. But as far as I can see there isn't. It also doesn't mean that gender segregation is useless.

That is, rather obviously, exactly what I meant, and there is nothing disingenuous about it.

Well actually it wasn't obvious. And it certainly seems disingenuous to suggest that all that matters is the wording of a law rather than the effect of the law.

Their own choice excludes them.

It is not a CHOICE to be transgender though.

Put yourself in the shows of a 16 year old cisgirl and try to reflect on the reason why they might not WANT to wrestle against a male.

Indeed and that might be a discussion worth having for wrestling. But it doesn't necessarily apply to athletics for example. But that doesn't change the fact that NOT allowing a transgirl to wrestle with cisgirls IS excluding the transgirls from competing.

Once again, what you are doing is elevating the desires of the transgirl, a male, over the desires of the females.

Actually no such thing. This is a completely different point of discussion. What you are arguing is that the laws don't EXCLUDE transgirls from participating and that's not the case as far as I can see. If you want to argue that their exclusion is justified that again that's a discussion we can have but again don't try to be disingenuous and move the goalposts halfway through.

And please be careful with your wording for accuracy the example you give is not about elevating a transgirl over all females but at worst elevating the desires of A transgirl over those of A cisgirl.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The arguments may be similar, but the evidence base is not.

The biological differences (and the impact on performance) between females and transwomen, is much much greater than between males and transwomen.

The evidence base that I am using is the fact that transwomen have been competing for a while in many places with ciswomen and they haven't been dominating in the way that proponents of excluding them seem to argue they should.

For your point to be true we would have to go further and I would expect to see a) That transwomen outperform ciswomen in sport significantly b) That cismen outperform transwomen in sport but less significantly. That seems to be the logical conclusion of the gaps you are arguing for

I don't see this happening in reality. This suggests that the evidence base they are relying on is missing something.

But I'd love to learn more about your point. What evidence base are you using here?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The arguments may be similar, but the evidence base is not.

The biological differences (and the impact on performance) between females and transwomen, is much much greater than between males and transwomen.

This is really an ETA on the previous post but it's not up yet so I'm making a new post. I just thought I would do a little bit of googling to get a first pass at whether your argument makes sense.

I looked at Rachel McKinnon's performance in the Women's Masters Cycling in 2019 as it was the first thing that popped up.

The winning time in the men's race was just about 11s. McKinnon's winning time in the female race was about 12.5 seconds.

I can't find the 2nd place time but the 3rd place woman's time was about 12.8 seconds.

I appreciate this is only 1 example but I chose it at random to see what the evidence suggested and it definitely shows that in that race the leading transwoman's times were much more comparable to the leading ciswoman than to the leading cisman.

McKinnon's times were more comparable to those of the very slowest cismen in the contest. Oliver Jenner for example finished last in qualifying with a time of 12.5 seconds.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Edited by Darat: 

Moderated thread.

Under Meadmaker's approach transwomen could compete, but against males, not females.

They might not want to do that because they're being asked to compete against someone of a different gender identity (although with the same biological advantages), but they are not being excluded.

And what would the ACTUAL EFFECT be? That transgirls wouldn't participate and wouldn't be competitive.

Transgirls on hormones don't have the same biological advantages as cisboys. That's part of (but not the whole) the point.

I also think that given my experience of high school age athletes the experience of a transwoman competing with cismen is going to be pretty unpleasant. I can already imagine the comments from spectators, opponents and even teammates, etc.

So yes they are being and would be excluded by these laws.

Edited by Darat: 

Moderated thread.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Yeah, my phrasing, saying "if it is too big of a fuss to be made about two people, then surely it is too big of a fuss to be made about one." was meant to call attention to the fact that when talking about Terry Miller and Selina Soule, TRAs tend to talk as if it's just one race and no one cares because it hardly matters......except to my side, because that's important.

My comment specifically about exaggerating the problem did relate to the idea that allowing transwomen into women's sport is going to ruin women's sport. Because that is the argument that is made broadly not just by the odd utter but for example repeatedly on this thread. And yet it does not seem to be borne out by reality.

Perhaps we need to define what would 'ruining women's sport look like' but to me it would mean that transwomen were actively dominating women's sport in a way that was so significant it couldn't be ignored. I appreciate there is going to be a subjective element to that but if say for example all three places on the 100m women's Olympic final went to transwomen that is something that would make me say 'that doesn't look right'

The problem with looking at your individual cases is that surely if we are going to allow transwomen to compete with ciswomen then they have to be allowed to win sometimes? I mean even if they had no advantage whatsoever then they would win once in a while, right?

So I guess my question to you is what would a world where transwomen and ciswomen were able to compete with each other in an acceptable way look like to you? Would 1 gold medal in 20 be OK? Or is any gold medal too much?

In particular it was in response to a call to not exaggerate the issue. It's small numbers. It isn't a lot of cases, etc. And yet, an even smaller number are affected if you only consider the transgender people. If the number of people affected by transgender participation is too small to be of great concern when both cisgender and transgender people are considered, then surely the number of people affected is too small to worry about if we remove the cisgenders from the realm of concern.

I think you might have mixed up two different points here if this is referring to me. One about exaggerating the impact on women's sport (see above) and one about being factually mathematically wrong about saying that 'gender is useless as a first pass method of segregating sports'

I think you might also be mixing up the 'right' of transwomen to participate in and compete within sport with the 'right' of any given ciswoman to win. I don't think these are comparable and I think you need to acknowledge the difference. If the presence of transwomen in the sport was denying the opportunity for ciswomen to participate and compete in a sport then I think that's definitely a matter of concern.

And that's why I think each sport might be different in the optimal solution because I can see an argument where for example ciswomen might not want to compete in MMA if they think there is a real chance of getting killed by a 300lb wall of muscle transwoman (to give an extreme example) whereas I don't think that someone finishing 3rd in the championship is anywhere near the same category of thing or indeed the same category thing of what I see as the rather demeaning and degrading option of telling transgirls they have to compete with the men.

To be fair, AGG might have been referring specifically to claims that allowing transgirls to participate in female divisions would "destroy girls' sports". That really is something that Republican politicians, and some others, are saying, and that's an exaggeration. On the other hand, I think this is where people might be guilty of ignoring "the little people". No, girls' sports haven't been destroyed, but the personal experience of females who had to participate against transgirls has been dramatically altered.

And to be clear I think if the argument is that 'for a small number of girls the experience of competing in sports will be dramatically altered' then that's a statement I can agree with. But it isn't one that is commonly made. Most arguments about trans people in sports are much more akin to the 'destroying all womens sport' ones.

Taking the unexaggerated point i can then weigh that up and say 'well on one hand we have a slightly diminished experience for a small number of girls vs a fairly significant barrier to participating in sport at all for an entire category of person.' I would also weigh up that for those small number of girls the same problem would occur if a faster/better cisgirl moved to their town and knocked them down from their perch as 'the best'. When I consider that, I start to weigh up that while that diminishment is real, it's not a particularly weighty consideration in my opinion.

It also relates to discussion of "identity". I remember people in high school for whom sports was their life. They practiced for hours a day. They worked toward that grand, but elusive, goal of qualifying for state championships. They still talk about it at the reunions. We can look down our noses at those people and say they need to grow up and leave the past behind, that it wasn't all that important. Maybe that's true, but why is it only true for the females. Why can something that can be dismissed so easily for the female athletes be elevated to such significance for the transgirls?

It's not only true for the females. For ever person/team that worked towards that grand but elusive goal of qualifying for or winning the state championships there are at least 10(100? 1000?) who did the same things and didn't win. And that's regardless of trans people competing or not and regardless of whether they are male or female or anything in between.

Winning and losing is part of sport. There is always someone bigger/better/stronger than you. That's what sport is about.

And I think you are getting tied down in trans issues with these examples in a way that comes across to me as having an element of prejudice which is why I am keen to know what your answer is to my question on what would 'fair' competition between transgirls and cisgirls look like. Because at the moment it seems to be coming across as you just flat out denying that such a thing could ever exist or suggesting that transgirls could compete as long as they always came last and therefore never impacted the experience of any cisgirl.

 

[Meadmaker]

Taking the unexaggerated point i can then weigh that up and say 'well on one hand we have a slightly diminished experience for a small number of girls vs a fairly significant barrier to participating in sport at all for an entire category of person.'

I think the actual people affected may object to the phrase "slightly diminished".

In general, I think that applies to pretty much every aspect of this debate. The actual concerns of people affected are consistently relegated to insignificance.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Most (All?) women's sports are classified as women's rather than female sports. So whatever language nitpick you want to try here is pretty much irrelevant. You seem to have agreed that transwomen can compete (at least sometimes) and deserve to win titles in races with ciswomen.



Using your terminology then I would say that female sports leagues encourage athleticism among females AND exclude transwomen from competing in sport. Women's sports league encourage athleticism among females AND do not exclude transwomen.

This is a linguistic bait and switch. At the time when the leagues were named "women's" and "men's", those terms did NOT indicate an internal identity based on social constructs. Those terms indicated sex and species. In the context in which they were initially applied, "women" meant "adult human females". You're substituting a new definition and pretending that it's what was intended all along... which is fallacious reasoning at best. The very new meaning of "women" as "anyone who says they feel like a woman" was never what was meant in the context of sex-segregated sports.

Statistical correlation is all we need for a useful first pass divider though.

We already have a prior pass divider that has significantly stronger correlation and has been investigated and identified as a causal factor. You seem to be trying to throw out a known causal factor and replace it with a weaker correlate. That's profoundly anti-science.

It is not a CHOICE to be transgender though.

I'm not certain this assertion is true. I would accept "it's not a CHOICE for a person to experience extreme gender dysphoria". Definitely, I'll give you that. But at present "being transgender" is a matter of self-declaration. And that declaration is certainly a choice. Which clothing one wears, what make-up one uses, what affectations one presents - those are all choices. Undergoing hormone therapy is a choice.

Furthermore, taking part in sports is a choice. A male-bodied person participating against female-bodied athletes is definitely a choice.

I have a serious question: Why do you view the choice of a male-bodied person to compete against female-bodied people to be inviolable and sacrosanct... but the choice of female-bodied athletes to NOT participate against a male-bodied athlete is of no account?

But that doesn't change the fact that NOT allowing a transgirl to wrestle with cisgirls IS excluding the transgirls from competing.

No it isn't. No more so than NOT allowing a cisboy from wrestling with cisgirls is excluding them from competing. Both the cisboy and the transgirl are perfectly free to compete against other males.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The evidence base that I am using is the fact that transwomen have been competing for a while in many places with ciswomen and they haven't been dominating in the way that proponents of excluding them seem to argue they should.

The proportion of transwomen competing who earn titles and places exceeds the proportion of ciswomen competing who earn titles. As a percentage of competitors, transwomen *are* dominating female sports.

For your point to be true we would have to go further and I would expect to see a) That transwomen outperform ciswomen in sport significantly b) That cismen outperform transwomen in sport but less significantly. That seems to be the logical conclusion of the gaps you are arguing for

I don't see this happening in reality. This suggests that the evidence base they are relying on is missing something.

Why do you think you're not seeing this happen in reality? We have repeatedly seen transwomen set records in women's sports that are significantly higher than the records set by ciswomen... but which are also considerably lower than the records set by cismen. We've repeatedly seen male-bodied competitors of mediocre athletic ability beat female competitors with no effort.