Treatments for trans children and politics, world-wide

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Height and length of reach matters in a lot of sporting events. Transwomen will on average have advantages there, and in other areas, and it has to do with their natal sex.

I’m not convinced this is true, but I think the gulf here is on different conceptualizations of “fairness.”  If the difference in mean runtime is only 9%, that doesn’t seem like a huge difference to me.  There are going to be differences in means if you split up groups in a host of demos.  I strongly suspect African American athletes are going to register significantly faster mean run times than white athletes, but we stopped splitting those up for very good reason.

[BigFatCoward]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

I’m not convinced this is true, but I think the gulf here is on different conceptualizations of “fairness.”  If the difference in mean runtime is only 9%, that doesn’t seem like a huge difference to me. 

that's pretty huge.  

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

I’m not convinced this is true, but I think the gulf here is on different conceptualizations of “fairness.”  If the difference in mean runtime is only 9%, that doesn’t seem like a huge difference to me.

Most elite competitive athletics events are decided by 1% margins or less. 9% is huge. I believe the general view is that males have between a 10% and a 30% percent advantage in athletics, depending on the sport. Hormone suppression only removes some of that advantage.

Per one biomechanics of sports resarch, the advantage of black elite athletes in sprinting is perhaps estimated to being 1.5% (and, similarly, the advantage of white elite athletes in swimming is estimated to being about 1.5% as well -- apparently Asian swimmers may in theory be even better, but they are not as tall on average, a significant disadvantage).

Edited April 24 by Ran

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

that's pretty huge.

It’s really not.

[Week]

What's also being missed in this discussion is the entire support system of athletes and teams. To suggest that it'll become widespread for a significant number of men to cynically transition solely for an advantage is absurd. Further, each league has its own governing body for fairness and safety. It makes no sense for any blanket rulings banning participation and it only fuels, and is mostly driven by, transphobia.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

Most elite competitive athletics events are decided by 1% margins or less. 9% is huge.

You’re changing your unit of analysis.  Per you, the 9% difference was based on soldiers.  Presumably all are in shape, but that’s not the same as comparing elite athletes.

[BigFatCoward]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

It’s really not.

its 70m in an 800m race, its enormous at the top level. 

It is worth noting however, that the worlds second most famous (or at least 2nd greatest) trans athlete - Phillipa York, has a transition story much more in line with what Karaddin describes with regards to the physical effects, than that of some of the other more successful athletes that have transitioned. 

There is such a huge disparity in this regard that i don't know how there can ever be a 'one size fits all' approach to this issue. 

[Ran]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

You’re changing your unit of analysis.  Per you, the 9% difference was based on soldiers.  Presumably all are in shape, but that’s not the same as comparing elite athletes.

No, but they give us evidence of what happens to physically fit transwomen who go on hormones. If anything, I'd suspect at the absolute elite level, the margins would be higher after hormone regimens.

Your typical boy's state high school champion in various athletics would take the Olympic gold medal in the women's category, by as much as a 10% margin in some events. And they're 17 and 18 year olds, still not fully developed and without world-class level training, facilities, support, etc.

It may be that blocking puberty at 14 or 15 may well be enough, and that the current ruling of no natal puberty at all is unnecessary, really, but we'll need more time to figure it out.

  

14 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Phillipa York, has a transition story much more in line with what Karaddin describes with regards to the physical effects

Do you know where I'd look up information about that? Cycling is one sport I don't really follow. Wikipedia has some information but it seems to suggest she stopped competing well before she transitioned.

Edited April 24 by Ran

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

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. 

Respect.

[karaddin]

8 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

There is such a huge disparity in this regard that i don't know how there can ever be a 'one size fits all' approach to this issue. 

That's where you get across to outcome based metrics rather than category based ones.

Even that's complicated though, you can run with things like height and weight divisions - if you get good at this you can potentially do away with gendered sports completely although obviously that requires far better measurements than simply x cm = x cm or y kg = y kg. We absolutely do not have that level of precision at the moment.

The other alternative is stuff like testosterone measurements which I've already made it clear I think is a can of worms that will fuck over cis women and intersex women as collateral. There aren't enough trans women to warrant that risk.

---

Not to BFC - another aspect people should bear in mind when reading all this and assessing if it's transphobic is just some good old fashioned misogyny as well, and not at all the way the TERF argument would have you think. Reading some of the commentary in the article about men's vs women's brains you'd think it's saying women are unable to compete with men in a bunch of intellectual fields that just aren't backed up by reality. Exaggerating the difference between men and women can serve multiple goals on this "debate".

[BigFatCoward]

17 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

Do you know where I'd look up information about that? Cycling is one sport I don't really follow. Wikipedia has some information but it seems to suggest she stopped competing well before she transitioned.

She did. But she's been very candid about the physical toil it took on her. 

Here is her perspective, I'm guessing if anyone should be listened to it's her.  I can't find the article currently when she talks about her own transition in quite some detail. I'll keep looking. 

https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/philippa-york-cycling-needs-transgender-education-not-exclusion/

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

How do I see them? Say it plainly, please. You're allowed to call me a transphobe, if you feel that fits the bill.

Yes, Ran. I suspect transphobia. At the very least, I think that it makes you a "useful idiot" for transphobes and their talking points, because a lot of what you are posting here are the sort of things that anti-trans people will and do regularly subject trans people to as evidence for invalidating their gender identity. That may not be your intention but it's what your words enable. Likewise, I've seen far too many people who on the one hand claim that they are pro-LGBTQ+ issues out of one side of their mouth while making anti-LGBTQ+ remarks out of the other side of their mouth, much in the same way that someone can claim to be pro-feminism while also making sexist remarks. You are welcome, of course, to believe that transphobia does not apply to you, much as JK Rowling does not believe that the term applies to her. She believes that she's protecting women from dangerous men. 

However, I also know that my trans partner and many of their trans friends are regularly made to feel like second class citizens of their gender because of comments like yours and others in this thread. I know this because they have complained and distressed about many of your talking points before. I know that comments like what you make do trigger their dysphoria and social anxieties. I know that that comments like yours often serve to remind them that they are not "real men" or "real women" in the eyes of many people when it comes to equal status or recognition.

And when you procede to basically sidestep karradin's length post about trans athletes and then gaslight karradin with your bit about how she must view the special olympics poorly, then yeah, I think that transphobia potentially fits the bill or at least gives me some reason to suspect as much. Okay. Maybe you didn't mean to be transphobic in that instance, but I don't think that gaslighting her makes anyone view things better. 

Do you think that your comments are making karaddin and other trans posters in this forum feel welcome or that you genuinely believe their gender identities are valid? That they are equally female or equally male as cisgendered females and males? What do you think that your comments here are communicating to trans people on this forum? Would your posts here give reason for them to believe that you are their ally, especially when you talk over their experiences or gaslight them? 

 

14 minutes ago, Ran said:

People are fooling themselves into thinking that hormone suppression is all you need to level the playing field between transwomen and ciswomen, in many sports. Per the study I noted earlier, hormone suppression and estrogen therapy for transwomen soldiers lowered their run time advantage over ciswomen from 12% to ... 9%. Because length of stride, narrowness of hips and angle of motion, etc., all play a factor in these things, and they don't go away due to hormones.

Height and length of reach matters in a lot of sporting events. Transwomen will on average have advantages there. 

There was an article recenting on the NYTimes that talks about this very issue based on a study by the Olympics themselves. While transwomen may have some advantages in some aspects, those aspects were overblown, not least because trans women were frequently disadvantaged in other areas when compared to cis women: 

Quote

All of the participants played competitive sports or underwent physical training at least three times a week. And all of the trans female athletes had undergone at least a year of treatment suppressing their testosterone levels and taking estrogen supplementation, the researchers said. None of the participants were athletes competing at the national or international level.

The study found that transgender female participants showed greater handgrip strength than cisgender female participants but lower lung function and relative VO2 max, the amount of oxygen used when exercising. Transgender female athletes also scored below cisgender women and men on a jumping test that measured lower-body power.

... 

Athletes who grow taller and heavier after going through puberty as males must “carry this big skeleton with a smaller engine” after transitioning, he said. He cited volleyball as an example, saying that, for transgender female athletes, “the jumping and blocking will not be to the same height as they were doing before. And they may find that, overall, their performance is less good.”

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Yeah, even though i don't think trans women should compete at the highest level - Olmpics/WC's etc, at the fun/fitness level I have no problem.  

It's just such a nonissue in my book. 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Its not because they are trans per se that they are being excluded, and I think you know that.  

In many cases, it is, though: it's specifically trans athletes that are banned. The exclusion is solely for those who have additional height, etc. because they are trans, and not for cis women who also happen to have that physiological advantage. (Indeed, those women are likely to be celebrated and sought after.)

That makes it a ban because they are trans per se:  the supposed advantage is an ostensible reason, which is not to say that it's necessarily a cynical pretence, but it is to say that it isn't the actual criterion on which those athletes are being excluded. As others have pointed out, a trans basketball player who is 5' tall would be banned in many places despite having no advantage. 

As for the rest of the thread, I think the posts here show what I was saying is true - we all have strong feelings about this, that go beyond what you'd expect for the scale of the actual issue. That's also a pretty good reason to reflect before posting: we want a civil discussion, and that's harder to have when emotions are high. 

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

However, I also know that my trans partner and many of their trans friends are regularly made to feel like second class citizens of their gender because of comments like yours and others in this thread.

You are hardly the only person who has trans friends and family and loved ones. I'm in the same club.  This doesn't really matter for anything, however. I have no responsibility for what other people want to think or say.

The IOC study, when you read it, has, sadly, a lot of substantial flaws, like the fact that the transwomen participants were substantially less fit than the rest of the group. But the biggest flaw is a self-own -- they correct for height and weight, so while the performance of transwomen may seem worse than that of ciswomen in relative terms, in absolute terms they are in fact still superior.  This is because height and weight (re: muscle density, fat vs lean) are two things that male puberty plays a big part in, and which hormone treatment only affects so much (or not at all). The absolute superior performance of transwomen in handgrip strength is particularly noteworthy, since handgrip strength is often used as a proxy for general strength.

Joanna Harper led a review of studies that's worth reading. She was behind the 2016 IOC policy that allowed Caster Semenya and others to participate, based on her research (including a study of sub-elite distance runners), but afterward she said that she now believed they were wrong on that policy, and that a new policy was needed. She is a transwoman athlete herself. 

 

 

[BigFatCoward]

10 minutes ago, mormont said:

As others have pointed out, a trans basketball player who is 5' tall would be banned in many places despite having no advantage. 

 

The 5ft basketball player would statistically still have a significant advantage over a 5ft CIS female. 

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[TrackerNeil]

25 minutes ago, mormont said:

As for the rest of the thread, I think the posts here show what I was saying is true - we all have strong feelings about this, that go beyond what you'd expect for the scale of the actual issue. That's also a pretty good reason to reflect before posting: we want a civil discussion, and that's harder to have when emotions are high. 

Agreed.

I'd like to see everyone here assume good faith from others, and cool it with accusations of bigotry, or with guilt-by-association conclusions. If we cannot assume we all honestly and genuinely mean what we say we mean, there's not much point in discussion. If someone says, "I hate X people", sure, ignore that person. If someone says, "I disagree with you on the facts", I think we need to hear that person out.

[mormont]

30 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

The 5ft basketball player would statistically still have a significant advantage over a 5ft CIS female. 

Well, not in height. And whether she in practice had any other advantage would depend on many other factors, some of which (but not all of which) are influenced by sex at birth. But the point is that regardless of which of them have the advantage, it's always the trans woman and never the cis woman who would be banned. So the ban is ban for being trans per se. 

[BigFatCoward]

22 minutes ago, mormont said:

Well, not in height. And whether she in practice had any other advantage would depend on many other factors, some of which (but not all of which) are influenced by sex at birth. But the point is that regardless of which of them have the advantage, it's always the trans woman and never the cis woman who would be banned. So the ban is ban for being trans per se. 

No. Its for having a likely statistical advantage over the cis woman, in a number of very important physiological areas affecting basketball performance.

If there was no advantage, no ban. Its for the advantage, not because they are trans.  

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[Conflicting Thought]

More important to the "fairness" of sport is the steroid use, trans people are such a non factor ( very low percentage of trans people in soports), so this focus on trans people in sports sounds like a dogwhistle to me. as mormont said, this isnt about sports or fairnes its about transphobia and misoginy. There are other things that have a much bigger impact in the fairness of sports than trans people