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should male to female transgendered athletes be allowed to compete in women's sports

Should Male to female transgendered athletes be able to compete as women

  • Total voters
    75
I believe it's an unfair advantage. So I voted 'no'. I'm sure I'll get flack for it. C'est la vie!
 
TurtleDude said:
Or only in some events where strength or size does not'
matter

Transgender Cyclist Rachel McKinnon Keeps Smashing Women's Records

Female to male trans don't tend to win and are thus a non-issue
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Broad generalizations like this seldom present an accurate or fair view of the issue. Each human body is fundamentally different, so whatever advantages transgender competitors may or may not have need to be judged on a case by case basis, not with sweeping generalizations which ultimately amount to little more than discrimination.
 
Yes, but only if she takes hormone medication that stops her from having an unfair advantage over other female athletes. A maximum of male hormones should be set for all male to female athletes and female athletes with an abnormally high male hormone level. Sports should not be the victim of hormone "doping".
 
Praxas said:
No I don't think they should. While I have no problem with restrooms, jobs, etc. This is one area I don't think it is fair to females to have transgenders competing against them.
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some sports, men have no advantage competing against women. That is seen is sports like Dressage, Rifle Shooting (Major Margaret Murdock, USA Shooting Team almost won the 76 gold medal against Lanny Basham-She beat dozens of men in taking the silver), Skeet shooting (A Chinese lady skeet shooter won the 88 IIRC gold medal). So I would have no issues with a Male to female TG athlete competing in those sports (I believe Dressage is open anyway)./ But in sports where the Female Records are inferior to male records (swimming, track weight lifting, etc) or where a good HS male player will beat a world class female (tennis, wrestling, boxing, and team sports like basketball or volleyball) there should be a ban
 
I've said it many times already but i'll say it again: It's cheating.
 
This is one of those topics that doesn't have any easy answers. Honestly I'm not sure it has an answer at all. For some reason the discussion always focuses on transwomen and where they should compete, but I think that's masking some of the potential issues.

If you make a rule that everyone must compete with the gender they were born as, then you have transmen at a competitive advantage, and transwomen at a competitive disadvantage. If you make a rule that everyone can compete as the gender they identify as, you have the opposite, transmen at a disadvantage and transwomen at an advantage. It's the same problem either way, just with the genders swapped.

If you rule that only biological women get to compete with women and everyone else must compete as men, then any trans competitors would be at a major disadvantage.

If you rule that transwomen have to compete with men and transmen can't compete at all because they're taking performance enhancing drugs you're discriminating against them.

And if you rule that trans people should compete in their own grouping with other trans people, then in a lot of cases you're barring them from competing at all because there just wouldn't be enough trans people around to support a competition of only trans people.

I see a ton of people suggesting that transwomen shouldn't compete with biological women because they're at an advantage, which I tend to agree with, but I've yet to hear any solutions that don't come with lots of problems of their own.
 
Irredentist said:
Broad generalizations like this seldom present an accurate or fair view of the issue. Each human body is fundamentally different, so whatever advantages transgender competitors may or may not have need to be judged on a case by case basis, not with sweeping generalizations which ultimately amount to little more than discrimination.
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That is ridiculous. I was a state level CA athlete in a few sports, track one of them. I was not fast enough to compete against the elite high school males, like Quincy Watts, but I would have easily competed against successfully in most professional women's races and jumps. That was when I was in high school... if I kept training, as I got to be a man, I probably could have every women's world record in track. Tennis? I would have done great. Why should I not be able to compete against them then? My body should be judged case by case.... why would you discriminate against me?
 
Either men compete against men and women against women or everybody competes against each other.



Transgender males to females in women's sports is wrong, it is cheating... it is unfair.
 
Roadvirus said:
I've said it many times already but i'll say it again: It's cheating.
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Agreed... I coach our girls varsity soccer team. We went to a game this season and there was this 6'3" boy who obviously was gay or transitioning, or whatever on the other team. I went to their coach to ask if "she" was playing and he said that she had been cleared by the league. I thought, alright, lets just see how this goes before I make an objection (we were in first place and didn't want to lose even though their record was not good.) Turns out the boy was absolutely the ****tiest player on their team. Barely even touched the ball and we smoked them with a win. But I still don't think that it is right that the kid was allowed to play. I called the league and asked and they said that when they went to watch him play, they realized how bad he was and that nobody would ultimately object. I agreed and look forward to playing them next season. LOL
 
Bodhisattva said:
That is ridiculous. I was a state level CA athlete in a few sports, track one of them. I was not fast enough to compete against the elite high school males, like Quincy Watts, but I would have easily competed against successfully in most professional women's races and jumps. That was when I was in high school... if I kept training, as I got to be a man, I probably could have every women's world record in track. Tennis? I would have done great. Why should I not be able to compete against them then? My body should be judged case by case.... why would you discriminate against me?
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Chris Evert was one of the greatest female tennis players in history. When Martina was dominating, some idiots suggested Martina could beat the 100th ranked male pro even though she was not beating Chris every time they played and Chris won 37 of the 80 matches they played.

CE noted that her brother was a good college player (Vanderbilt IIRC) who never made it on the pro tour and was never ranked in the top 250 in the world. In other words, the 100th ranked man on the pro tour would beat him almost every time. Yet Evert noted she played her brother John all the time and she never ever beat him. One of my son's best friends in grade and middle school is ranked around 200 in the world now. His OSU teammate's sister-Caty McNally, took a set off of Serena Williams at the US Open. I asked this boy-who turned pro this summer, when he first could have beaten Serena Williams-he noted when he was in 8th or 9th grade.

The #2 women's squash player in the USA when I was in college, couldn't beat the top five men on her college team's JV. The #1 on the Varsity could beat her 15-1 in most games.

Even with hormones, in some sports, someone born male has an advantage. Men's pelvises are narrower than a female pelvis and that is an advantage in sprinting. Men's shoulders are wider-an advantage in serving tennis balls. Men tend to be several inches taller than women-an advantage in most sports
 
Bodhisattva said:
Either men compete against men and women against women or everybody competes against each other.

Transgender males to females in women's sports is wrong, it is cheating... it is unfair.
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The problem is that "men competing against men and women against women" (which I'm assuming means everyone competing against the gender they were born as) causes exactly the same problem, only now it's transmen competing against other women who have a huge advantage.
 
TurtleDude said:
Or only in some events where strength or size does not'
matter

Transgender Cyclist Rachel McKinnon Keeps Smashing Women's Records

Female to male trans don't tend to win and are thus a non-issue
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how feasible it is to quantify the degree to which a person's biology before switching genders effects their athletic ability.

And if we went down that rabbit hole would we start separating people by classes of athletic ability, specific chemical levels in their body, or some other parameter, rather than gender? I mean there was that story from a few months ago or so about this woman who was not allowed to compete because she naturally had/produced more testosterone than was allowed in some competition or other.

I'll say this, it'll be interesting to see how it all settles out in the end.
 
In sports where gender doesn't matter, like pool or shooting, why even have a men's and women's division? But in most sports it does matter. In all sports, I suspect women like having their own division. And that's why there has been no great clamor for combining the two. And letting what are essentially men competing in women's sports is an unfair advantage.
 
Waddy said:
In sports where gender doesn't matter, like pool or shooting, why even have a men's and women's division? But in most sports it does matter. In all sports, I suspect women like having their own division. And that's why there has been no great clamor for combining the two. And letting what are essentially men competing in women's sports is an unfair advantage.
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at one time rifle shooting, skeet shooting and dressage had no gender divisions in the Olympic games
 
My answer is "other", because the polling question is poorly structured/worded, with all due respect to the OP.

For starters, there's no such thing as "transgendered". Transgender means their biological sex and gender identity are opposite of each other. There's no "ed" necessary.

The OP mentions nothing about their present hormone estrogen levels, or whether or not they had bottom surgery, or if they transitioned before/during puberty.

My belief here is that High School sports should be open to everybody. As long as their estrogen levels are at biological female levels, they should be permitted to join the girls team. High School sports are not really about winning. They are about education and participation. It's about developing friendships, and learning about hard work, discipline, and being a team player. A greater sin is depriving people of that education simply because they have a neurological condition.

For college, I think the current NCAA rules are fine and have experienced pretty much zero problems. They require the trans female to be on estrogen for at least 2 years straight, and their estrogen level must be at a certain level to play. I have no problem if they tighten or loosen the currently restrictions. It's up to them.

Without asking about the female's current hormone levels, the poll question makes less sense to me.

My answer is YES, they should be permitted to play on female teams as long as they get doctor approval and have taken hormones for a given time period.

The problem here is when we start banning transgender females from sports (which is a very small sample btw), then we will eventually start to go down a slippery slope. Does this mean Caster Semenya can't play in the female leagues? She was born with a vagina, but has XY chromosomes and produces high level of testosterone. Does this mean a 6'7 female basketball can't play basketball because she's too tall? Back when Jackie Robinson played baseball, many people didn't want him to play because he was black and black people were seen to have a genetic advantage in sports.

My other problem here is we only pick on the transgender females which are actually good, and train extremely hard. The ones which are not, get ignored.
 
molten_dragon said:
The problem is that "men competing against men and women against women" (which I'm assuming means everyone competing against the gender they were born as) causes exactly the same problem, only now it's transmen competing against other women who have a huge advantage.
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I want to compete against women... it is discrimination that I am not allowed to.
 
TurtleDude said:
some sports, men have no advantage competing against women. That is seen is sports like Dressage, Rifle Shooting
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Gender always matters... women might be on their period during the competition, thus giving unfair advantage to the men.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Gender always matters... women might be on their period during the competition, thus giving unfair advantage to the men.
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LOL, which is why most professional women athletes are on the pill etc to smooth that out. and women have advantages too in mixed sex competitions. a male swimmer-who is aroused by a female competitor, is going to have a significant issue trying to swim the fifty free!
 
TurtleDude said:
at one time rifle shooting, skeet shooting and dressage had no gender divisions in the Olympic games
Click to expand...

There are quite a few sports where gender is of no advantage. Even still, IF you are going to have separate divisions in these sports, keep them separate, meaning biological differences should be observed. Maybe an "Open" class where anyone can compete. Of course, straight males would dominate in most such open divisions, which ruins the whole motivation for trans to compete in women's sports now. They count on that advantage to pile up the "wins". If it was really about "competition", trans would continue to compete against other men. But they don't because they never could compete against other men. That's why many of them "switched". It gives them a way to win.
 
TurtleDude said:
LOL, which is why most professional women athletes are on the pill etc to smooth that out. and women have advantages too in mixed sex competitions. a male swimmer-who is aroused by a female competitor, is going to have a significant issue trying to swim the fifty free!
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That rudder become be a benefit... and then there is the fact that women are emotionally all over the place. And think how that would adversely effect their already suspect driving skills in NASCAR?
 
Waddy said:
There are quite a few sports where gender is of no advantage. Even still, IF you are going to have separate divisions in these sports, keep them separate, meaning biological differences should be observed. Maybe an "Open" class where anyone can compete. Of course, straight males would dominate in most such open divisions, which ruins the whole motivation for trans to compete in women's sports now. They count on that advantage to pile up the "wins". If it was really about "competition", trans would continue to compete against other men. But they don't because they never could compete against other men. That's why many of them "switched". It gives them a way to win.
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the most lucrative archery event in the world is the Las Vegas Shoot. The winner of the open division, makes at least 50K and with contingency payments, 200K is possible. There are two divisions in the big-money class-Ladies and OPEN. why? because some top women-such as former world Champion Mary Zorn (Hamm) and Sarah Lopez, are capable of shooting 900/900 and making it into the shoot off. So the top women choose between winning the easier women's class (with far less money) or stepping up and having to go toe to toe with the top men in the world.
 
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