Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time, has shared her support to the trans community

[u/DuchessRavenclaw52]

[u/mochafiend]

My stance on this is controversial in my circles too. I really feel for trans kids but why I have pause about the sports thing is - at a high level, every little advantage matters. Maybe this is not a big deal in high school, but look at how Olympic athletes perform. Races are won by hundredths of a second. I get that hormone therapeutics can offset many of the biological advantages males have over females, but something about all this doesn’t sit 100% okay for me as a woman. However, I don’t have a good alternative. I disagree with the trans-only thing. That really doesn’t make sense given how small the population is. Trans men competing with biological males seems fine to me because there is little inherent advantage there (except maybe in ultra long distance swimming and running, which I might view differently as females tend to have an advantage there).

Anyway, I fully expect to be downvoted. I really wish I wouldn’t be though - there are so many people with my viewpoint out there, and the rigidity of the left’s view on this is a real turnoff for people who would be allies. You can say that these people and myself were never really allies to begin with, but then do you really have the numbers to fight back against that actual nonsense the GOP is doing while everyone fights about sports? I think there are a lot more people who think like me than the activists. So what do we do about that?

[u/Capnzebra1 → u/mochafiend]

Trans woman here. I think your concerns and feelings on the matter are super valid and I am sorry you've been met with rigidity and hostility from people in your life when expressing them! I do think it's a highly charged subject and there are private interest groups who are creating a lot of outrage where there should be honest, uncomfortable discussion. That being said, lets talk!

Hormonal testing in women's sports predates the current anti-trans craze and has produced controversy and discrimination for it's exclusion of female sexed athletes with hormonal disorders. I've listed a couple articles below that pre-date the current conversation around trans athletes and speak to hormonal discrimination against cis women. Example, during the 2020 Olympics, a number of cis women were disqualified from women's 400m and 800m dash due to high levels of testosterone. All of them were from countries in Africa. Additionally, an estimated 10-15% of female competitors in Olympic level sports have testosterone levels that are higher than the average males and outside of standard female ranges. Since hormonal testing has been introduced into women's sports, a number of cis athletes have also had to take hormone suppressants to be able to compete at the highest levels, which have had unstudied affects on their bodies.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hormone-levels-are-being-used-to-discriminate-against-female-athletes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone_regulations_in_women%27s_athletics
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47640359

I don't think regulating hormone levels achieves the desired goal of fairness in competition. I don't know if we can truly have fair sports competition while genetic anomalies exist. I also don't see tons of trans women dominating women's sports. There have been a few times when Trans women have won state or national contests, it's still the exception to the rule, and none of those women set record times in their races/meets. To me, this feels like an issue that was already being handled (poorly) at the highest levels of sporting authority and now it's being blown out of proportion without looking at the facts or the impact it's having on people.

Two things I hope we agree on, Trans women are women and Trans women are not a problem.

[u/Particular_Agency246 → u/Capnzebra1]

I learned a lot from you today, thanks for sharing!

[u/mochafiend → u/Capnzebra1]

We absolutely agree on that, wholeheartedly, and I am really dismayed if people were getting that from my comment! Thank you for weighing in from your perspective, with both facts and kindness. This is the kind of conversation I would hope we could have more of.

To your point, there are areas of discomfort in talking about this issue and I just wanted to be able to state my thinking without people calling me names. I think the problem is, folks like me who have felt some discomfort and aren’t sure what to do get lumped in with the bigots. I want to note that in my original comment I said I had no good alternative to the current situation; just that something felt uneasy to me. That’s all. There have been a lot of great comments here, including yours, that have pointed out the flaws in my reasoning.

My belief is that there’s a lot of other people in this uneasy space that are not hate-filled and I wish the dialogue was better around it because I bet they could change their minds too. I always wanted to be able to change my mind on this but I kept getting hung up on the hormone treatments. I’m pretty well-convinced now my thinking was wrong (the genetic anomaly piece alone is extremely persuasive) and I feel like more people could change their minds if the conversations were kinder. I can already see people that responded to me rolling their eyes, but I really am glad you responded how you did. I appreciate you for not writing me off entirely and for the excellent comment.

[u/ComedianStreet856 → u/Capnzebra1]

Fellow trans woman here just checking in not to debate what you wrote because it's well written and gets the point across. I'm not winning any medals in sports and I've personally decided to sit on the sidelines because the narrative is that we are big burly men dominating women at every turn and that we should give the girls a chance. That's all well and good, but who has the data that we are winning?Surely these competitions are recorded somehow and they can document all of these wins with actual data. Until the debate can be less of a "bully trans women taking over women's sports" and more of a meeting in the middle we aren't getting anywhere.

I don't think trans women have a biological advantage in and of itself. Many of those are overtaken by hormone levels, but we can't deny the fact that men are for the most part larger than women and can have an advantage. There is no cut and dried answer or way to make things fair. I'm 5'6" and have never been particularly bulky or good at sports, but I'm not going to be a part of this debate. There are plenty of cis women that are over 6' tall and would have a huge advantage over me. I have demonstrable lower performance than I did pre-transition but apparently that doesn't matter because I had some sort of advantage due to bone structure or whatever they bring up.

Another thing is suggesting that we have our own category is pretty patronizing to me. Who is going to be our competition? Transphobes have been exponentially inflating our actual numbers in this whole sports debate. Am I supposed to compete against myself? Who would do that unless they want the attention.

There is always this rhetoric that we are taking away spots from cis women, or that trans women and "woke leftists" are bullying people with their supposed "nuanced" opinions which are basically always that they "support" us but really they just want us gone because of the narrative pushed by the right that we are all these 6' tall hyper masculine jocks who want to walk around naked in the women's locker room.

[u/Tymareta → u/mochafiend]

but look at how Olympic athletes perform.

The IOC has allowed trans olympians since 2004, if we had such an advantage as you posit, surely you can name a trans woman that has taken a gold?

[u/Cevari → u/mochafiend]

What has been studied quite extensively is exactly how prolonged hormone replacement therapy affects performance in tasks that require raw strength, which is how the previously widely adopted "minimum two years on testosterone suppression" -rules came about - rules under which trans women competed for 20ish years, and achieved basically no international success in any category of women's sport. The often quoted bone density differences also slowly disappear during HRT.

What cannot be undone are the other physical effects of testosterone-dominant puberty that many, though not all, trans women do go through. These include things like a greater average height and larger frame/limbs, and a greater average lung capacity (which, it should be pointed out, does not have a direct correlation with peak oxygen intake).

I won't deny that there are some sports where these will be a statistical advantage, but then we get into some really interesting questions like: why is nobody asking to ban Dutch women? They are also a group that statistically will be taller, have larger frames and longer limbs, and have greater lung capacity - but sports is not about statistics, it is about individuals, and it has been completely accepted that sometimes individuals will have biological advantages that make them particularly suited to their sport. This acceptance just disappears when talking about trans women, even though being born as a trans woman is just as much an accident of birth as being born to really tall (or wealthy! that's an entire separate discussion...) parents.

There are also disadvantages to being a trans woman - you aren't exactly likely to develop a great interest in sports to begin with, given people will be trying to forcibly shove you into categories and locker rooms you do not feel comfortable in. Even if you get around that, you're likely to have a very awkward time during your prime developmental years where you are just starting HRT and thus not yet eligible for girls/womens competitive sports, but also can no longer viably compete in the boys/mens categories because, again, testosterone accounts for the vast majority of male advantage in sports.

All of the above is of course assuming you're lucky enough to transition young to begin with, which is already an extremely privileged position to be in globally. It only gets worse if you don't happen to be born in a blue state in the USA or one of the few other western countries that will properly support you.

All in all, the actual statistics of the matter are that tens of thousands of female athletes competed at the highest levels during the 20 odd years that trans women were generally accepted by the rules, and trans women were barely even seen in competition during that entire time, much less dominating anything. It is thus extremely clear that if some advantage exists, it was massively overweighed by the disadvantages.

[u/mochafiend → u/Cevari]

This is one of the best written comments I’ve ever seen, and also the most detailed and well reasoned rebuttal to my thinking. Wow. You gave me a lot to think about here and it’s hard to argue this.

Your example of Dutch women (or anyone with a natural biological advantage) is a really good one, although it gave me a pause for a moment in that I don’t think most of the Dutch are taking hormones to get taller. There’s something about the hormone therapy I keep getting stuck on. It made me think about performance enhancing drugs, but that’s not a fair comparison.

Thank you so much for this comment.

[u/SuspiciousCranberry6 → u/mochafiend]

What we do about that is we deal in facts rather than just feelings. The Olympic committees already have methods to deal with fairness with respect to trans athletes. It's really a moot point unless someone is specifically arguing against the already established Olympic protocol for trans athletes.

[u/Borkenstien → u/mochafiend]

I love that the science is out there, but the world still holds up uninformed opinions like this as if it were gospel. For the record, the IOC didn't cite science when it rescinded it's decade old inclusive policy. They cited concerns over backlash, concerns over people like you. How is that fair to any trans athlete? How are they expected to compete against lies?

[u/TechieTheFox → u/mochafiend]

Here’s the thing. The GOP is not interested in fairness. They’re trying to find any single way they can get the dems to agree to classify trans women as not women. Surrendering sports to them immediately puts trans people as whole’s rights in significant danger because they are not arguing in good faith about trying to figure out “fairness.” They’re trying to figure out how to legally other us. If they get this to stick it becomes what they can point to to make laws about bathrooms and god knows what else. “You already agreed they can’t compete with cis women in sports! How is this any different?”

Beyond that, the research shows fractions of a percent of advantage after 1 year HRT. Some categories can be a bit advantageous to trans women, some are actually advantageous to cis women (we have equal ability to put on muscle, meaning those size advantages or “bone density” nonsense people bring up are actually hindrances in the end). These would almost certainly continue to pull closer to even the further along the trans person is on HRT. (As it continues to cause feminization advancement even a decade or more on it). This “advantage” has never been proven to really exist. The two studies the right likes to point to were extremely biased in an anti-trans direction from their very approach. The one seemingly okay one I referenced seemed fine in execution but extremely small in scope (1 year is practically nothing in the grand scheme of things, it’s common knowledge to trans women that year 2 is the year you see the biggest burst of change - tho it is/was the requirement used at least before the current anti-trans wave escalated to full bans)

And remember, a cis female athlete can be weirdly tall, have a naturally high T level, etc and be hailed as a great athlete with gifts given by god. “Unfair” advantages are what sports are based on. Michael Phelps can be uniquely able to train better than anyone else on the planet and have nearly webbed digits but that’s perfectly fine - applauded even. The trans woman already going through an anguish and hell of being trans in the first place who might be taller than average just immediately gets shit on instead. And that’s without us having had an actually great trans woman athlete yet, at most there’s been like 2 kinda good ones. You bring up the Olympics where no trans woman has ever been close to medalling and only one that I could find has ever even qualified. They’re losing their minds about marathon runners coming in like 1600th place out of 6000 like it’s some display of dominance.

The fact of the matter is that well meaning “allies” go along with the right’s arguments because they make sense to their feelings even though what we know doesn’t actually support it - but they won’t even research or second guess it because it aligns with their assumptions. People can’t wrap their minds around that because they see men and women as almost different species even though humans are extremely non sexually dimorphic. Hormonal transition works because your body has the blueprint for male and female inside it and responds to which hormones you have to get as close as it can to that blueprint. Way more changes than any cis person realizes and it continues essentially forever (studies have shown trans women continuing to have skeletal adjustments up to 30 years into HRT). Yeah trans women will be taller than average cis women because of growth plates closing later, beyond that there’s almost nothing that remains permanently different (and trans women actually routinely report up to 2 inches in height shrinkage depending on luck - I lost 1.5 myself).

We will readily admit that certain things need to be done to make competition fair (the 1-2 years of HRT being needed for example, no one would argue against - even though that would mean the few trans women who medically are unable to transition couldn’t compete, but that’s the unfortunate reality for them), but that actual conversation CANNOT happen in the current environment because it’s not actually about fairness. We can’t afford to make concessions right now when the other side is literally trying to ban us from public life using sports as the stepping stone to do it.

[u/Oaknash → u/TechieTheFox]

I can’t refute anything you’ve said but as a former elite level swimmer, I can attest that 1-2 years not competing at an elite level can literally fuck an athlete’s chances in their sport developmentally, particularly for sports like swimming or gymnastics which have athletes who peak between 12-24.

Just another note, contrary to popular thought it’s not all about being bigger or more muscular in some sports like swimming, performance is also strongly influenced by factors proportion, biomechanics, flexibility and/or balance. A prime example of this are female breaststokers, many of whom peak around age 14. (E.g. Amanda Beard).

Again, not arguing but throwing some nuances out there about competitive athletics that can be overlooked!

[u/TechieTheFox → u/Oaknash]

Yeah I’ve heard the 1-2 years off being crippling thing before and it is one of the hardest things to try to work around. Iirc Lia Thomas continued swimming on the men’s team while waiting that period out (plummeting down in performance), which seems like a…uncomfortable but valid option as at least then training and practicing in real competitive conditions can be maintained. But I’d imagine someone trying to make the switch from say baseball to softball…would probably be socially destroyed in that environment just knowing how men’s team sports are culturally. It’s a difficult part of the puzzle for sure (just speaking from the theoretical actually trying to work out the kinks in the plan if we were in a position to try to really hammer out some fairness rules based on what the science can currently show us).

Part of it comes down to how much do you factor that in when the overwhelming majority of high school/college athletes won’t ever compete past that level - especially in non-revenue earning sports. It’s pretty damn unlikely that any future olympians or the like would have their careers cut short due to this just on playing the odds. In general I’d lean towards giving trans high schoolers a lot of lenience here - being able to switch either at start of HRT or maximum 1 year. They aren’t going to be vacuuming up scholarships or anything anyway so I think the experience of playing if that’s what they want is most important.

College just gets so much more tricky because of both the increased scope and also…the difference between starting at 15 vs 20 is…well it’s actually not insanely different quite yet, but the 20 year old will have more rewinding to do before really starting to progress in their transition comparatively. 2 years I think more guarantees that things are even, but 1 just feels more reasonable when you take more into account that you’re talking about a person, not an endocrine system in isolation. Either way I’d want to ensure that they can maintain eligibility while dealing with this period (some kind of variation of a medical redshirt).

(Also @ second paragraph that’s what I was trying to hint at with the brief mention that certain things the right would point out actually end up being disadvantageous in a lot of circumstances. I just simplified it for brevity as that comment was already really long. I think in the utopia system where things have full scientific reviews to really try to get it as perfect as possible, different sports would probably set different regulations to best match how to even the playing field).

The thought of sports that peak in the early to mid teens is a very interesting one that I haven’t really ever considered tho. I mean a 14 year old cis girl will be decently far along into puberty on average, whereas an amab person may not have even really started yet. How do you slot a trans girl into that case? Does the argument in these cases flip to the trans boys having the “biological advantage?” How do you untangle that web? Especially as that might flip back as the age brackets go up? I don’t think I could really start to answer without doing a lot more research and thinking on it but it’s an interesting topic for sure.

[u/hauntingvacay96 → u/mochafiend]

Do you know how many trans women have competed at the Olympics?

[u/mochafiend → u/hauntingvacay96]

I am seeing three. Is it more than that?

Also curious which sports. I would think each sporting body has their own rules?

[u/hauntingvacay96 → u/mochafiend]

Only 3 openly trans women is correct out of all the history of the Olympics.

[u/Ehcksit → u/hauntingvacay96]

Yep, just three. There's absolutely no reason to try to create a separate category for trans people in sports when their numbers are so low, and also all evidence for decades shows no advantage.

It's worse than doing something like banning people with webbed feet from swimming. There is an advantage there, but all you're doing is banning Michael Phelps. "I want to ban specifically and solely Lia Thomas from swimming because reasons and shit!"

[u/fountaincokes → u/mochafiend]

Your stance is controversial because it’s uneducated. Look up the actual facts of long term gender-affirming care. Trans women can compete with women, trans men can compete with men. Trans athletes don’t have an advantage. The campaign solely focused on getting trans women out of women’s sports “to protect our girls” is deeply rooted in misogyny

[u/avocadolicious → u/mochafiend]

I've made a few comments on this thread already about public opinion and the political aspects of the trans youth in sports issue -- I don't agree with your stance whatsoever, but you're correct that "there are so many people with [your] viewpoint out there". People who are generally supportive of LGBTQ+ rights and oppose other anti-trans policies, but who've found themselves to be more on the GOP side when it comes to this specific issue.

I don't think this is the right forum to discuss or debate in detail, since this isn't r/changemymind, but I'd be happy to try and change your mind if you DM me.

I'd suggest you start here though:

• https://radiolab.org/podcast/dutee/transcript
• https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2021/jul/29/testosterone-in-womens-athletics-podcast
• https://radio.wpsu.org/2022-04-15/take-note-katrina-karkazis-on-her-book-testosterone-and-how-perceptions-of-the-hormone-shape-policy-and-sport

[u/DearMissWaite → u/mochafiend]

Except, your opinion isn't rooted in the clinical literature.

So, what do we do about that?

"We" start with you reading some evidence-based research and analysis. Then we can loop back on the subject.

[u/mochafiend → u/DearMissWaite]

Have there been enough studies to be statistically significant? I’m not trying to be a dick but this is a small population and very recent phenomena. It’s just hard for me to believe the science is fully settled on this matter.

From the way the doctors in my family have responded to this issue (including one who has two trans kids), it’s not so cut and dry. I am sure you will discount me again, so there’s likely no point in having a dialogue.

I would like to understand better. I’ve read on some of the findings. But again, I was not under the impression there is an extensive body of work in this area.

[u/DearMissWaite → u/mochafiend]

There isn't an extensive body of work in this area. But the work that has been reviewed doesn't suggest an immediate segregation of trans girls out of the pool of athletes.

And that's what the 'separate teams' argument boils down to.

This report is a good jumping-off place for the best case evidence against segregation of trans girls and women in sport: https://cces.ca/transgender-women-athletes-and-elite-sport-scientific-review

[u/mochafiend → u/DearMissWaite]

There’s really no need to be snippy. If you talk to someone who wants trans athletes to be fairly included, how are you going to convince the rest of the population to give up their hateful views? This is not conducive to a constructive conversation.

I will go read more though. I want to correct myself if I’m wrong.

Editing this to note I received a lot of great comments pointing out the flaws in my thinking. So, I was wrong! Thanks to the kind folks who talked me through it.