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Again, not looking to start a fight and not looking to debate anything other than the subject at hand. Just saying that science shows the whole idea of a physical advantage is a myth.
I didn't see much science in your post, but I'm willing to be persuaded. The best way to do that would be to offer some links to science that supports the claims you're making. The images above don't make me think that Janae is anything other than an absolute specimen, well beyond the development a cis woman could achieve without hormones. There may be bigger women, but I don't think any of them did it on a standard "female hormone" regimen.
There are some people who seem to think that "any trans woman can beat any cis woman at sports". That's an extreme argument that's easily debunked. I think we agree that's a myth.
But.
1) Are there permanent advantages to early development with male-oriented hormones such as generally larger size, bone mass, etc.?
2) Are the athletes in these cases "trans girls who have already been on HRT for years", or more recently transitioned to HRT, or not using HRT at all? Should we treat these cases differently? And if so, what's a consistent, fair, kind way to differentiate?
I'm in favor of girls and women participating in sports and providing opportunity for them to do so, including laws like Title IX that make it TRULY possible, not just theoretical. I believe trans women are women. I support trans rights. Even so, I see that we have a fundamental collision right now in these important areas.
My phone doesn't let me paste links, but all you have to do is Google "transgender estrogen and muscle mass loss." It will give you MANY articles about muscle loss and body fat increase being an extremely common side effect of HRT. There IS one study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine that concludes physical strength may be maintained up to three years after starting estrogen, but considering transgender kids are often transitioning before puberty nowadays, it doesn't often give them the chance to develop a male physique before going on hormones.
To answer your questions:
1) Besides reach, larger size isn't generally an advantage in female sports. As for bone mass, estrogen also decreases bone DENSITY, meaning any kind of advantage is negated by the chance of injury.
2) yes, the cases DO need to be treated differently, and need to be judged on a case-by-case basis instead of blanket laws that discriminate against all trans players. Like I said, a trans player not using hormones shouldn't be allowed in female sports, just like a cis female on PEDs shouldn't. The Olympics already have a standard in place that a trans woman's testosterone levels need to be at a minimal level before she can be allowed to compete. That standard needs to be adopted by schools instead of discriminating.
Trans woman here, being on HRT for a little over a year has halved my muscle mass, but because of male puberty, I am still quite tall. However, I've met cis women as tall or taller than me, so I don't think that the "larger size" argument is relevant. Trans women already get regular blood tests (to ensure that things are going well) so I think the best option here is to allow trans women in women's sports as long as hormone levels are within cis female range.
Thanks for your input FitTGirl (and congratulations on your development :) I'm sticking to the minimal dose of estrogen with a T-blocker, and even after only two months I feel a decrease in strength.
Just saying that science shows the whole idea of a physical advantage is a myth.
The science tells us very little. There is no consensus in medicine as to what factors precisely determine athletic performance. Nobody in the world can take a baby, and say "if I train and feed them this certain way, they will bench xxx lbs by yyy age."
That said, the complete lack of controversy over FtM people competing in men's sports says quite enough, all despite that process requiring testosterone.
There is clearly more to it than hormones. Current technology is simply inadequate at transitioning people in a complete manner.
Edit: Also, too many examples of male athletes unremarkable in their leagues who then dominate after transitioning exist.
See:
Man. That Twitter thread is so fucking transphobic I felt a need to bathe after. But, after some research:
Cece Telfer: Fails to qualify for the Olympics after being unable to prove she follows hormone guidelines.
Laurel Hubbard: placed last in her group at the 2020 Olympics.
Hannah Mouncey: team finishes 5th in qualifying matches for World Women's Handball Championship, and isn't selected to compete for championship.
Hailey Davidson: me own personal opinion, but golf doesn't seem a sport that relies on strength and muscle mass so much as dexterity and finesse. I mean, Trump plays it and he's built like the Penguin in Batman Returns.
Mary Gregory: doesn't fit the supposed pattern of "failed male athlete pretends to be female and suddenly dominates." Took up weightlifting later in life, and was stripped of her world records when her bio gender became public knowledge.
Fallon Fox: the Twitter feed cites her Naval service as her pre-transition male sport for some reason. As of 2020, there were 69,629 total women on active duty in the US Navy, with 11,076 serving as officers, and 58,553 enlisted. Her fight record only includes 6 matches total, and when Angela Magana breaks an opponent's leg, Amanda Nunes leaves Ronda Rousey's face looking like a Canadian sunrise, or a Southampton mma fighter dies from traumatic brain injury she sustained in the ring, nobody seems to consider it "controversial."
Veronica Ivy: also doesn't fit the "pattern"; she was a badminton player before she took up cycling, and winning one championship in the ages 35-44 bracket of a competition ONE TIME doesn't exactly scream dominance.
Maxine Blythin: ... seems to be a good cricket player. Knowing nothing of either the sport or her medical situation, I'll abstain from commenting either way.
Kenzie Statz: the single article about her is clearly biased, giving no information on when she transitioned and not interviewing her to gain her perspective. Additionally, their source placed 3rd in the competition Statz won; not competing against a transwoman wouldn't have magically given her 1st place.
I could keep going but I'm too tired of reading bullshit. The point is, 30 cases of above-average play among 222,920 female athletes in the US alone only proves that yes, these players need to be scrutinized and tested. There is not a secret wave of men pretending to be women so they can take advantage of poor, defenseless female players (and if there is, restyling your entire wardrobe, going through HRT and having confirmation surgery is a pretty damn impressive show of dedication to a scam).
In the meantime, Google "Mack Beggs wrestling" if you think FTM athletes are without controversy. He was forced to compete against girls despite begging to compete in the male division.
The nature of sports is competition. And so anything that can give a competitive edge will be severely scrutinized, even in the smallest degree. Having said that, as long as we continue to separate competition by gender there will always be the question and debate of where to place trans athletes. Yes, there is a clear distinction between biologically male and female athletes in terms of speed, strength, performance, etc.
Ideally, I believe there should be a trans division where trans athletes could compete against each other. It wouldn't be meant to take away from their identity, and it wouldn't cause friction with the other competitors. It would be a level playing field and trans competitors would be under just as much pressure as anyone else when it comes to testing for PED's.
You can handpick specific examples where trans women underperformed in their division, but for each of those any of us could come back with an example of a trans athlete who shattered the competition by a world record margin. It's hit and miss, and depends on how the individual chooses to train. If you want to see the pinnacle of what trans athletes are capable of, then let them compete against each other. They will push themselves to the brink of excellence.
Ah. So segregation is the answer.
Often times the simple solution is just wrong, and I disagree with Cgsweat on this one. All said, this topic will be controversial since nobody has proof that current technology is capable of perfectly equalizing athletic performance between the sexes.
In my opinion (and it's just that, an opinion, but the problem is enough people believe it), it definitely can't - there are just too many complex differences between men and women to resolve.
Unfortunately we currently lack the ability to give trans women a lot of the biological characteristics of cis women possess - chromosomes, the ability to get pregnant, and to be guaranteed to pass. That part is indisputable.
What I believe is that society needs to recognize our deficient technology, and use that to be sympathetic whilst also facing reality. Until it can be thoroughly established that the transitioning process is sufficient to prevent an athletic advantage, I believe it's best for all parties for trans women to compete against men only.
Why? Because the controversy about whether or not trans women should be allowed to compete in women's athletics is just degrading and unfair. It always ends up with people saying "those achievements weren't made by a REAL woman". If we instead take a solid stance - solely out of acknowledgement that our technology isn't good enough yet - we give society a way to recognize transgendered people's identity, and focus on the real problem.
There's a reason why major professional coed sports don't exist. The ones that are based around power, size and speed like NFL, baseball, soccor, rugby, basketball, powerlifting, bodybuilding etc.
The bodybuilding ?
Ronnie Coleman competing against iris Kyle In their prime So yes,the bodybuilding
I came across a profile of a UK trans escort.
I was surprised to see that she has competed in an FBB contest, I don't know what federation or category - it's just that this picture on her escorting profile is clearly from a contest.
I think it's ridiculous to allow someone born male to compete against those born female in a sport that's based on sculpting musculature.
https://www.adultwork.com/6549743
Disclaimer: If you are trans please consider who I'm writing this for and what I'm trying to do. I'm sure I've gotten a lot wrong and this is probably going to be triggering. I am not an authority on trans issues but I do have experience as a cis male who continues to confront my own transphobia as I try to minimize it to the smallest possible extent that our society will allow.
Also Disclaimer: real quick before you complain about how I've "written an essay" or am "trying to sound smart" like some posters like to do in order to dismiss any actual points made, look at the text below this. Also look at my user name. I'm kind of a pretentious douchebag, or I realize that I can come off as one. So either read in good faith or move on. I truly don't care one way or the other because I'm turning off notifications for this anyways.
If you didn't follow regional girls sports before this became a topic of debate and you have suddenly decided that this is a topic you care even a little bit about in terms of "protecting the sanctity of girls sports" you are falling for a rhetorical trap set for you by people whose end goal is to deny the existence of people who are trans. Anyone who is spouting off the stats of a trans female athlete should also be able to give us a list of the greatest female athletes in that sport from the past 5 years who were born female. If you can't, it's the trans part that you care about.
Also having this argument is an amazing waste of time considering that sports are really just entertainment. If we didn't fundamentally think this was true we wouldn't try to call bodybuilding a sport since it features absolutely no features of a traditional sport. None of this matters. And at the end of the day we're spinning our wheels over a percentage of a percentage of cases. Yes, sometimes in those statistical blips a person might have an advantage up front. But then they need to learn new ways to train in order to maintain even an iota of that advantage. More often than not underperforms as this advantage, combined with the new physiology and their lack of familiarity with it, becomes completely irrelevant. Because, guess what, it's not about what you see as an advantage to them. It's about actually having your outward appearance confirm your internal reality. They just continue doing the sport they love because it's something they love and a part of their identity as well.
Do you want to play a fun mental game to see if you really think this is a widespread problem? Try this: why is it not viable to create separate trans leagues? Come on. You know what the answer is. If you're really being honest you and I both know why. And I'm wording this specifically to bait your brain into thinking that it's one thing so that you'll see the absurdity of that and then land on what it really is. I'll help: there aren't enough trans female athletes at any level for this to be possible unless you have middle schoolers compete with pros to pad the numbers. In every division you'd have maybe 3 people. Ironically the only place this could work is bodybuilding but the very features that make it possible there are also the features that point out that bodybuilding isn't actually a sport in any meaningful capacity.
If we are going to apply a moral purity argument to this we need to be just as upset that some men take boner pills, work out past a certain capacity, take PEDs, and get hair plugs. Just like the accusations thrown at trans women, these are all "unnatural" and ways in which someone might want to confirm the gender that they identify as. We should be upset that any model or actor gets cosmetic surgery since they are giving themselves an unfair advantage.
I understand that this might come off as preachy or self-important or whatever but transphobia is a phenomenally normalized thing and kind of a default setting for most people. I've definitely worked, and continue to work on my own transphobia which about 3 years ago I would have 100% denied was there. Again, it's normal. But it's not helpful. And it makes people have dumb debates like this one. Trans female athletes are female athletes. It's ok if that breaks your brain a little bit but that's what we're doing now because trans women are women. If you have an issue with that I completely understand but I encourage you to confront the second part before trying to confront the first part.
If you don't think trans women are women there's no way you'll get around to thinking that trans women should compete with biological women. And it is dishonest to engage in one of those things when in reality what you are struggling with is the other. I can't say this enough: this doesn't make you a bad person. And we are living in a pretty confusing time for this but it's important that we take the time to get it right because in the long run denying that a type of person exists simply because you are uncomfortable is extremely dangerous.
I'm simply sharing a point of view and won't engage in argument about it beyond sharing a point of view. If you are in any good faith way curious about what I've shared I encourage you to look into the work of Contrapoints and Abigail Thorn (both trans YouTubers) and Hasanabi (cis het, former transphobe on YouTube). These sources, along with knowing and working with an atypically high number of trans and nonbinary people, have informed everything I've said and they all say it better anyways.
I’m a fbb with a few trans friends. I remember having a chat about ladies golf and ladies day at golf - my reaction at the time was why is it divisive like that and I was told that men just hit balls harder and therefore further. How ever what came to mind is that many female golfers are smarter and stronger than the average male. Much of the science has to do with muscle fibre types and yes that’s s fact however… a random guy would be weaker than me same as a male from that’s Chinese (built smaller) would probably have less ‘ muscle’ than the average Irish guy So if we’re going to start testing trans women than … who’s to say ( in s sport where gear is a part of it) that my test levels arnt lower than the trans woman
I’m a fbb with a few trans friends.
Is increased testosterone useful in bodybuilding if both women and trans are at the peak of their shape?
Past figure in untested shows yes
can i ask you how test is useful? AFAIK, in bodybuilding it's primarily symmetry, or does testosterone help to achieve this faster?
I came across a profile of a UK trans escort.
I was surprised to see that she has competed in an FBB contest, I don't know what federation or category - it's just that this picture on her escorting profile is clearly from a contest.
I think it's ridiculous to allow someone born male to compete against those born female in a sport that's based on sculpting musculature.
https://www.adultwork.com/6549743
Looking at the linked profile, that individual appears to be post-op.
This isn't meant to ignite a flame war, or to devolve into political fistfighting. This is purely about science and medicine.
The big debate these days is about the purported "physical advantage" trans females have over cisgender females, including in bodybuilding. A lot of false information is being spread on the subject, so here's some facts:
Janae Kroc is a former MASSIVE male bodybuilder, and following her transition managed to maintain her size... up until she got on hormone replacement therapy (usually a combination of estrogen in the form of estradiol or progesterone with a spironolactone chaser to lower testosterone). As is plainly visible, she's already lost a significant amount of muscle after only a few months on HRT. This particular side effect doesn't even reach its peak until almost a full year into treatment.
Consider then, trans girls who have already been on HRT for years, some of whom even prevented male puberty because of early intervention. They will have NOWHERE near the mass and physical strength of a cis male. This is a fact.
Should trans girls not on hormones play on girls' teams? No, any more than a cis girl taking steroids should be. This isn't even allowing for the fact that trans girls make up a tiny percentage of sports players in the first place, and don't have a sterling record of complete superiority on the playing field (look at the kerfuffle over the trans Olympic weightlifter. All the whining about her "physical advantages" and she didn't even come close to the bronze).
Again, not looking to start a fight and not looking to debate anything other than the subject at hand. Just saying that science shows the whole idea of a physical advantage is a myth.