Treatments for trans children and politics, world-wide

[TrackerNeil]

35 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

When you speak of "social-justice, identity-focused, purity-over-pragmatism ideology," what do you mean exactly? How do you define "ideology" here? Who represents this movement and what do they say? Is the movement embodied by any specific organization? What have been the concrete real-life applications of the movement's principles? Has the movement had any legislative victories? Or are we merely talking about sociological trends, i.e., peer-pressure?

These are interesting questions, but I don't know they are appropriate for this thread, and I don't want to contribute to thread-drift. In addition, the last time someone opened a thread about these matters it went sideways fast, and I'd rather not spend my mental energy dealing with that. Feel free to DM me and I'll be happy to try to answer these questions, or else we can just leave this here.

Edited April 23 by TrackerNeil

[karaddin]

Tracker - for what it's worth I think there is a cultural issue with progressive groups that manifests in being overly aggressive and unforgiving. I don't think the way you're conceptualizing it is the best to think about it, and I think that's leading you to some faulty conclusions and that approach you're taking on pushing back on it is unlikely to succeed. That said I don't exactly have a solution to it either other than trying to avoid engaging in it myself.

Understand you not wanting to get into it, it's a very hard discussion to have in good faith, but it's worth acknowledging that there are problems - I'm not going to try gaslight you over that.

[TrackerNeil]

7 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Understand you not wanting to get into it, it's a very hard discussion to have in good faith, but it's worth acknowledging that there are problems - I'm not going to try gaslight you over that.

I appreciate that. I never mind disagreement--no matter how certain I am, I could always be wrong.

[mormont]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

I'm not sure one needs to do it just to win a medal. It's enough that the result is you might win a medal and you act on it.

Laurel Hubbard comes to mind. She's someone who, pre-transition, was a junior national competitor (never competed internationally) and stopped competing in 2001, and then nearly two decades later started again, entered international competition for the first time, and won a place to compete in the Olympics, bumping Samoa's Iuniarra Sipaia (she's qualified for the 2024 Olympics, it turns out, so good on her). She  didn't go through it all just to win a medal, but it's a pretty extraordinary journey for someone who had stopped competing entirely two decades earlier. (ETA: I should hasten to add that Hubbard did nothing wrong. She competed under the rules that existed at that time. The rules simply were wrong from a competitive fairness sense.)

Hubbard bombed out at the Olympics, but then again she was in her mid-40s at the time, a decade or two older than her competitors.

If there are monetary prizes, sponsorship money, endorsement money, and/or scholarships involved, sports that have traditionally divided the sexes should probably still do so, at least until such time as we come up with some alternative categorization of competition (.e.g handicap systems) to level the field. For things like youth sports (at lower levels, anyways) and intramural co-ed sports, safety should really be the only consideration.

As to those who say, well, does it really matter, it's just sports... By 2028, global sports are expected to be a $680 billion industry. People make careers out of it. In the US, young athletes can get scholarships that may change the courses of their lives. Unfair competition for these opportunities is, well, unfair, and does actually matter to those people.

This is... unconvincing, as an argument. Lacking any actual evidence that Hubbard, or anyone else, changed sex just to gain an advantage, we're left with the fact that trans athletes (in some sports) gain a natural advantage from their birth and upbringing - but so does everyone else competing at that level. And there's little evidence that the advantage trans athletes have, where they have any, is so disproportionate as to require direct bans to preserve the integrity of women's sport. (Indirect bans, of course, such as limits on testosterone levels, affect some AFAB competitors.)

More relevantly to the thread, like the puberty blockers argument, or trans criminals, this is a problem presented and treated out of all proportion because of the wider political context and it cannot be divorced from that context. It's a proxy, of sorts, for the discomfort we as a society feel about the existence of trans folks, a discomfort we have felt (and still do feel) about other minorities too. But in the case of trans folks, that discomfort is linked to deeper issues with our society's conflicted and difficult attitudes to gender, sex (in both senses) and privacy. We're unsettled when we're forced to think about those, and the existence of trans folks pushes those issues to the forefront.

In other words, when we argue about puberty blockers, or sports, etc. we're not solely arguing about that. We're working out some feelings about the existence of trans folks and their place in our society.

If we truly accepted the existence of trans folks, these arguments would be minor, or non-existent, and regarded as fixable problems or ones we can live with, instead of how we currently treat them.

[karaddin]

ToL - Ok here goes. There's quite a few aspects to it so I think bullet points is probably the best approach.

• Its not immediately transphobic to be concerned about the issue when its brought up. The usefulness of trans people in sport as a wedge issue relies on fairness in sport being something a lot of people are sincerely concerned about and it also relies on the effects of hormone therapy on the body being a poorly understood subject.
• A personal disclaimer here, obviously I have first hand experience of switching from a testosterone endocrine system to an estrogen one. The outcome in my case has left me as one of the physically weakest women I know, the idea of me having an unfair advantage is laughable to me and I sometimes struggle to set that aside and talk in the general case rather than my specific one. If I seem impatient/frustrated at times I'd ask you to keep this in mind and give me the benefit of the doubt.
• Also worth noting that the argument here is exclusively for trans people who were assigned male at birth (AMAB), there's no question of fairness towards other athletes that comes into the picture for trans men participating in men's sport so I'm not going to discuss their situation at all. It's also not the situation you're asking about.
• Unfair advantage: Obviously even from a maximally trans-inclusive perspective this is going to be a spectrum. Someone who has not had any medical intervention and is running on a testosterone endocrine system is going to have some advantages in many sports as a result. This completely sucks for any trans people that are happy with just social transition, but there really isn't a universally fair way to resolve this one so most people (including me) accept that there will be a requirement to undergo medical intervention prior to being allowed to compete in women's sport. This can lead to a few positions
  • No amount of medical intervention is sufficient or trustworthy so AMAB can never be allowed to compete in women's sport. This perspective does not align well with the science I'm familiar with and am inclined to trust, and obviously my own personal experience, and chooses to throw a tiny minority group under the bus in the name of the majority. Yes there are some disputes around the research, there are some permanent changes from a testosterone puberty that will persist even after hormone therapy - most obvious being height - but their existence isn't necessarily of sufficient significance to declare it an unfair advantage. There are tall cis women as well and their height isn't treated as an unfair advantage so why should the same height from a trans woman be a problem? The primary advantages relate to muscle/strength and those are changed with medical treatment.
  • You must undergo x treatments for y years to be allowed to compete in women's sport. The main one here is hormone therapy and the standard timeframe I've seen for that is 2 years. The research that indicates this is sufficient to eliminate significant unfair advantages is what aligns with my own personal experience and there has not been a sudden avalanche of trans women winning in sports which implement this policy. It attempts to balance the rights of the minority with fairness towards the majority and is the option I favour, and it has the variables of what treatment is required and how long they need to be maintained which can be tweaked if future research requires updates to the criteria.
  • Testosterone is actually the problem so rather than requiring specific treatments which may be insufficient for some individuals, require treatment and test testosterone levels. This one sounds good in theory, and personally would favour me significantly - I have far less testosterone than any average cis woman, let alone those in sport...which actually highlights one of the major issues with it. If you only apply this standard to AMAB trans people in sport then its a major double standard, but applying it to cis women as well winds up gross and also unfair. I'd argue this winds up far more harmful to cis women, enabling sports organizations dominated by men to control what women's bodies are acceptable in a sport and excluding those they deem unacceptable and at the end of the day there are ~50-100x more cis women than there are AMAB trans people to be impacted by it. Its a can of worm and opening it is a bad idea.
• I'm not sure these bullet points are actually making up a logical structure but I've got no better idea for how to break this up so I'm rolling with it
• Sport is inherently unfair. It's already selecting for the genetic freaks to rise to the top, Michael Phelps dominated mens swimming due to physiological advantages that are absolutely "unfair" but he won the genetic lottery and that's OK. So its a question of which advantages are not just significant but also unreasonable. There are many ways you can look at that, in a team sport the most obvious is whether the advantage compromises the safety of other participants. Once you've eliminated any strength advantage I don't think you're seeing anything major in this category that is fundamentally different to competing against someone that was just more physically blessed than you from their genetics. If a taller trans woman would be such a major problem, then the sport should be segregated by height categories as that's the relevant metric - its not at all fair to tell a 5'6" trans woman she can't play women's basketball because 6'4" trans women exist while there are 6'4" cis women competing. When the research indicates a significant advantage that exceeds the variability within cis women, ie even average trans women are going to rate higher than the top tier of cis women in that category then I think you've got your argument to punt it up to my above bullet points. If treatment eliminates or minimizes the advantage then you can require treatment, if the advantage cannot be eliminated then you've got a complex job of weighing up multiple unfair options but none of the advantages which outlast treatment rise to that level of significance in my opinion. This does have a significant interplay with my below point as well however...
• The numbers of trans women are very low. The people that make a lot of noise about this on the public stage are massively overinflating the size of the issue. To go back to the UK example from which this thread spun off, even after the major increase in referrals to the NHS that's less than 1% of the population. I don't have the numbers on hand to know what percentage of that <1% are AMAB and would pick women's sport if attempting to compete so lets just split that upper limit in half and say 0.5%. I'm going to continue focusing on height - even if every trans woman was as tall as the top 10% of cis women then in a group of 100 women you're increasing the "tall" numbers from 10 to 11. Its just not going to be that impactful on the sport, hence my above point about it needing to be a larger advantage than a "lucky" cis woman gets. If there were a lot more trans people, then the advantage would look more significant than genetic luck so you'd have an argument for adjusting that equation. Nothing we've seen in sports so far shows any advantage retained by trans women after treatment to be outshining the hard work, skill and genetic gifts of the cis women they're competing against in terms of getting to the top. You've got a handful of individuals that can be pointed to as competing at the top level but even then they're not dominating in a way that points to a major unfair advantage - Fallon Fox was never the champion of her division even in UFC, Lia Thomas can't hold a candle to Katie Ledecky, Laurel Hubbard* has won a single gold medal from a single appearance but that doesn't prove unfair dominance on its own.
• The risk of men claiming to be trans to win sporting events. I think there are multiple aspects here that make this a non-issue
  • The kind of man who is competitive enough to think about going to these lengths is likely to devalue women's sport as the lesser prize anyway.
  • If you're requiring an extended period of treatment then there's a lot more hoops to jump through than simply claiming to be trans, they're taking on all the social stigma and physical impacts of transition - its not an "easy" path to winning
  • By far the biggest item for me is that they'd be subjecting themselves to gender dysphoria. I don't expect anyone that's cis to truly understand what they'd be doing to themselves but I've seen multiple cases of cis people socially transitioning (so not even going through the medican interventions) that have found themselves suicidal within a year or so. It's huge and phenomenally unpleasant and anyone stupid enough to claim to be trans just to win sport is signing up for a world of hurt that they'll regret. The number of men that might successfully go through with this is such an astronomically low number that I don't think its worth considering how they might abuse the process when deciding what a fair process is for a minority group.
  • If they are undergoing all the requisite treatment then they're also losing the advantage that they had. If they didn't have the gifts and determination to win as men, I'd bet they're going to wind up unable to win as women as well and they'll have ruined their lives for nothing. And I'll bet you that anyone who transitions for sport and then detransitions afterwards (regardless of winning or not) will be punished with more social stigma than pretty much anyone. It's going to be a major deterrent for anyone choosing to follow their footsteps.

I think I had another point or two but at this point I've forgotten what they were and this post is already enormous so I'll leave it there for now. 

To illustrate the way in which certain groups try to whip up concern about this issue among regular people I want to close off with an example from last year. There was a large beat up from conservative and gender critical groups about how a trans woman competed in the London Marathon last year and "beat 14,000 women" in it. They neglected to mention that she came 6159th, so barely in the top third. That's a single trans woman out of almost 20 thousand competitors who finished in the middle of the pack being treated like it was grossly unfair and ruined the performance for 14k other women - the overwhelming majority of whom didn't give a fuck. But if all you saw was coverage of the outrage, you'd think that this was indeed a major issue - that's not on you, the reader that isn't seeing anything else, its on the dishonest bigots trying to manufacture outrage.

TL:DR - I argue that the advantages that remain after hormone treatment are not of a significant nature compared to genetic luck within the group of cis women, and that the tiny numbers of trans women involved are insufficient to be of concern to cis women getting a fair crack at competing.

ETA: Damn, forgot to follow up on the *.

*I had managed to not even hear of Laurel Hubbard until Ran raised her in this thread, it seems either misinformed or phenomenally uncharitable to accuse someone of transitioning for the purpose of winning a spot when she commenced hormone therapy in 2012 and didn't even start weight lifting again until 2017. According to comments cited on her wiki page she quit lifting completely in 2001 due to her mental state around gender dysphoria and didn't resume until that point in 2017.

Edited April 24 by karaddin

[Which Tyler]

49 minutes ago, karaddin said:

ToL - Ok here goes. There's quite a few aspects to it so I think bullet points is probably the best approach.

Thank you writing all of this. Great food for thought.

Though I didn't know we were allowed informed and nuanced answers, not when knee-jerks are available

Edited April 24 by Which Tyler

[DMC]

16 hours ago, Ran said:

As to those who say, well, does it really matter, it's just sports... By 2028, global sports are expected to be a $680 billion industry.

Gotta say, this is an incredibly misleading and rather perplexing statistic to use in the context of this discussion.  Obviously, the concern here is only women’s sports.  And - indeed - it’s great that the global revenues in 2024 are estimated to increase 300% compared to 2021!  What does that increase result in?  $1.3 billion.

In other words, 0.2 percent of that $680 billion figure - albeit four years earlier.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Gotta say, this is an incredibly misleading and rather perplexing statistic to use in the context of this discussion.  Obviously, the concern here is only women’s sports.  And - indeed - it’s great that the global revenues in 2024 are estimated to increase 300% compared to 2021!  What does that increase result in?  $1.3 billion.

In other words, 0.2 percent of that $680 billion figure - albeit four years earlier.

Well, yes.

Women have far more limited financial opportunities in sports, as you so smartly point out.  Which makes fairness all that much more important, for those who want to make careers or go to schools in athletic scholarships.

 

[Ran]

10 hours ago, mormont said:

This is... unconvincing, as an argument. Lacking any actual evidence that Hubbard, or anyone else, changed sex just to gain an advantage, we're left with the fact that trans athletes (in some sports) gain a natural advantage from their birth and upbringing - but so does everyone else competing at that level.

Transwomen athletes retain sizable physical advantages over ciswomen (the Air Force data is particularly interesting), and their "advantage" comes from having been born in the 50% who are the opposite sex. This isn't like Michael Phelps, a freak of nature with half a dozen weird genetic traits that all combine to make him the best competitive swimmer ever -- the vast majority of his advantage versus female swimmers comes simply from having been born male and having undergone puberty, the rest is just the gravy that put him over the top of other elite male competitors. Hormonalization does not reduce transwomens' elite athletic performance sufficiently to put them on an even playing field with their ciswomen sisters in many sports according to the way sports work now. 

 

10 hours ago, mormont said:

And there's little evidence that the advantage trans athletes have, where they have any, is so disproportionate as to require direct bans to preserve the integrity of women's sport. (Indirect bans, of course, such as limits on testosterone levels, affect some AFAB competitors.)

I agree, a one-size-fits-all ban is inappropriate. Different sports will see different variations in advantage, or even none at all -- I follow competitive horse jumping (Henrik von Eckermann won the world cup final again, second year in a row!) and no one would care about a transwoman competitor. Hell, they probably already exist. But then, there's no gender divisions because it doesn't actually matter to performance. But in the sports where it does matter, and there are many, well, it does matter to competitors in those sports, and they have a right to be treated fairly.

10 hours ago, mormont said:

More relevantly to the thread, like the puberty blockers argument, or trans criminals, this is a problem presented and treated out of all proportion because of the wider political context and it cannot be divorced from that context.

In the US and UK, yes, but I have to say that the Nordics, Germany, etc. are much less affected by the politics of the Anglosphere. But who says we can't look at these aspects separately?

10 hours ago, mormont said:

It's a proxy, of sorts, for the discomfort we as a society feel about the existence of trans folks, a discomfort we have felt (and still do feel) about other minorities too. But in the case of trans folks, that discomfort is linked to deeper issues with our society's conflicted and difficult attitudes to gender, sex (in both senses) and privacy. We're unsettled when we're forced to think about those, and the existence of trans folks pushes those issues to the forefront.

Attributing opposition to unfair inclusion of some transgender athletes in some female sports to being a proxy for discomfort with the existence of trans individuals looks a lot like an ad hominem to me.

10 hours ago, mormont said:

If we truly accepted the existence of trans folks, these arguments would be minor, or non-existent, and regarded as fixable problems or ones we can live with, instead of how we currently treat them.

I happily accept their existence, for reasons both obvious and probably unobvious. I expect you, too, do so. But with increased visibility and acceptance, it is incumbent on society to actually figure out where fairness lies for everybody. Fairness in sport, in medical care, under the law, etc. 

Edited April 24 by Ran

[karaddin]

I've already spent far too much time on this so can't read through the studies being cited by that article to give it a fair read, but I can only assume the studies its referencing on testosterone levels post transition were looking at estrogen-only therapy in individuals that had not had reassignment surgery, because testosterone levels with androgen blockers and after surgery are absolutely within or lower than the range for cis women.

[Ran]

 @karaddin

My understanding is that the vast majority of transwomen do not have the surgery, and I'd guess this goes for transwomen athletes as well. But as I said, a one-size-fits-all policy doesn't seem right -- there's all kinds of transwomen, including those who do not take hormones, much less don't have gender-affirming surgeries. 

But the point of the research I linked is that even with well-controlled testosterone, there are physical advantages puberty gives that don't disappear at all. Skeletal structure isn't going to change, density of muscle nuclei is not changing or changing only very slowly, etc.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Attributing opposition to unfair inclusion of some transgender athletes in some female sports to being a proxy for discomfort with the existence of trans individuals looks a lot like an ad hominem to me.

That's not really what I'm saying: what I'm saying is that it's a best naive to pretend that our views on the former are not influenced by our views on the latter (which are in turn a product of wider issues we have as a society with gender, sex, sexual attraction, presentation, and so on). 

Any discussion of inclusion of trans athletes that doesn't reckon with those factors is incomplete. 

[TrackerNeil]

46 minutes ago, mormont said:

That's not really what I'm saying: what I'm saying is that it's a best naive to pretend that our views on the former are not influenced by our views on the latter (which are in turn a product of wider issues we have as a society with gender, sex, sexual attraction, presentation, and so on). 

Any discussion of inclusion of trans athletes that doesn't reckon with those factors is incomplete. 

I suppose one could say the same of those who are, say, supportive of the use of puberty blockers, or of the inclusion of trans women in women's sports, right? It's not just about medicine or science or sports; it's all a proxy for comfort with the existence of trans individuals. I just don't know where that view gets us.

Edited April 24 by TrackerNeil

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

I suppose one could say the same of those who are, say, supportive of the use of puberty blockers, or of the inclusion of trans women in women's sports, right? It's not just about medicine or science or sports; it's all a proxy for comfort with the existence of trans individuals. I just don't know where that view gets us.

Hopefully an admission or more forthright discussion that it's transphobia so we don't have to have proxy wars that it's actually about other issues. 

 

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Well, yes.

Women have far more limited financial opportunities in sports, as you so smartly point out.  Which makes fairness all that much more important, for those who want to make careers or go to schools in athletic scholarships.

And it leaves trans athletes out of options if they want to do the same. So much for fairness. 

 

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Transwomen athletes retain sizable physical advantages over ciswomen (the Air Force data is particularly interesting), and their "advantage" comes from having been born in the 50% who are the opposite sex. This isn't like Michael Phelps, a freak of nature with half a dozen weird genetic traits that all combine to make him the best competitive swimmer ever -- the vast majority of his advantage versus female swimmers comes simply from having been born male and having undergone puberty, the rest is just the gravy that put him over the top of other elite male competitors. Hormonalization does not reduce transwomens' elite athletic performance sufficiently to put them on an even playing field with their ciswomen sisters in many sports according to the way sports work now. 

I agree, a one-size-fits-all ban is inappropriate. Different sports will see different variations in advantage, or even none at all -- I follow competitive horse jumping (Henrik von Eckermann won the world cup final again, second year in a row!) and no one would care about a transwoman competitor. Hell, they probably already exist. But then, there's no gender divisions because it doesn't actually matter to performance. But in the sports where it does matter, and there are many, well, it does matter to competitors in those sports, and they have a right to be treated fairly.

In the US and UK, yes, but I have to say that the Nordics, Germany, etc. are much less affected by the politics of the Anglosphere. But who says we can't look at these aspects separately?

Attributing opposition to unfair inclusion of some transgender athletes in some female sports to being a proxy for discomfort with the existence of trans individuals looks a lot like an ad hominem to me.

I happily accept their existence, for reasons both obvious and probably unobvious. I expect you, too, do so. But with increased visibility and acceptance, it is incumbent on society to actually figure out where fairness lies for everybody. Fairness in sport, in medical care, under the law, etc. 

So what pragmatic solutions do you propose that permits the competition of trans professional/amateur athletes? Treating trans women like men and having them compete in men's sports and having trans men compete in women's sports perhaps? Or a complete non-competition clause for all trans and gender non-conforming individuals? 

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

And it leaves trans athletes out of options if they want to do the same. So much for fairness.

Many people are born who simply cannot compete in a sport they might like to compete in. Such is life.

As trans people become a larger part of the population, there's no great reason there can't be sports divisions for them specifically, not unlike how we see for various functional disabilities at the Paralympics.

Or alternatively we get good enough at the science of sport that we can handicap accurately and create new divisions that mix the sexes but remain fair to participants. 

Edited April 24 by Ran

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Many people are born who simply cannot compete in a sport they might like to compete in. Such is life.

So why do you only apply that here to trans athletes and not cis athletes who may not be good enough? Is that also not life? Or does your feigned concern for "fairness" not apply to trans athletes? 

 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

As trans people become a larger part of the population, there's no great reason there can't be sports divisions for them specifically, not unlike how we see for various functional handicaps at the Paralympics.

Or alternatively we get good enough at the science of sport that we can handicap accurately and create new divisions that mix the sexes but remain fair to participants.

There seems to be an underlying implication here and your earlier comments that trans women aren't real women or that trans women are stealing these more limited financial opportunities in sports from "real women." And when you are proposing that they be put in "separate but equal" divisions outside of cis sports, then it's hard not to get that impression. 

[BigFatCoward]

4 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

So why do you only apply that here to trans athletes and not cis athletes who may not be good enough? Is that also not life? Or does your feigned concern for "fairness" not apply to trans athletes? 

 

CIS Athletes that aren't good enough don't get to make it to the olympics/top level sport, I don't follow this argument. 

 

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

CIS Athletes that aren't good enough don't get to make it to the olympics/top level sport, I don't follow this argument. 

 

Indeed. The very nature of competitive sports creates a hierarchy.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

I suppose one could say the same of those who are, say, supportive of the use of puberty blockers, or of the inclusion of trans women in women's sports, right? It's not just about medicine or science or sports; it's all a proxy for comfort with the existence of trans individuals. I just don't know where that view gets us.

One could: I think I was pretty clear that this is not directed at any one view, but the discussion in general. I have strong feelings about these issues because I have trans friends, work with young trans adults, and have strong views about the rights of young adults in general to control their own lives and take their own decisions.

At the same time, I grew up in and live in the same society as everyone else: until I was an adult, trans folks were the butt of playground jokes and nothing else, gender roles were firmly defined and straying from them got mockery at best and made you a target for physical bullying more often than not, and not conforming to your gender assigned at birth was portrayed as inextricably linked to sexual perversion. These were prejudices literally beaten into me at times, and I've had to work to counter them - they still exist in me, at some level. If that's not the culture you grew up in, then I'm glad. A lot of the young adults I work with grew up questioning that culture, and I'm happy for them. 

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

Many people are born who simply cannot compete in a sport they might like to compete in. Such is life.

But those people generally lack the same genetic advantages that are being considered unfair when they arise as a result of being trans women. 

Edited April 24 by mormont
clarification

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

1 minute ago, BigFatCoward said:

CIS Athletes that aren't good enough don't get to make it to the olympics/top level sport, I don't follow this argument. 

It's true that many cis athletes who aren't good enough don't get to make it to the olympics/top level sports. However, IMHO, the "such is life" comment seems to be a snub that precludes trans women from competing in gender-appropriate athletics not on the basis of being good enough but simply because they are trans. There is a not so subtle implication that they are not real women or that they threaten to take the spots in these top levels from real women.