United States | News & Politics

Go fuck yourself.

And the conservatives scaremongering about this are definitely good faith actors who aren't just scaremongering and harassing a tiny minority of trans athletes who do not in fact represent some massive social problem that requires national level obsession with targeting and identifying trans people to harass, with Gavin Newsom hanging around with a fascist saying "yassss besty" as he literally directly refers to a specific trans athlete to target and harass them.

Another example of misplaced blame would be concerns that trans women have too much testosterone or that trans men are gaining an unfairly advantage by taking testosterone (8, 11, 56, 127). Herein lies the myth that cis men, not on gender affirming hormone therapy, will claim to be a trans women to win at female sporting events. However, trans individuals use gender affirming hormone therapy to better match their gender identity, not to gain unfair sporting advantages (132). While it is true that certain morphological changes that occur during puberty may be irreversible, trans individuals on gender affirming hormone therapy clearly do not retain the same physiologic parameters as their pre-transition counterparts (12, 15, 16, 54–56, 129). It is unclear to what extent, or for how long, any hormone mediated advantages may persist once a trans individual begins regular gender affirming hormone therapy (12, 15, 53, 56, 129). It has been shown that parameters affecting aerobic performance transition more quickly than those affecting strength performance (16, 127, 129). However, excluding trans individuals does not prevent cases of athletes having hormonal advantages. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found 93 of the 4,422 athletes tested (2.1%) to have “adverse analytical finding” for steroid use (105). WADA does not report how many of those athletes were cis or trans, however, as transgender individuals are underrepresented in athletics, it is likely that these are cis athletes (60). Besides use of exogenous hormones, cisgender individuals naturally vary in their hormonal profiles (40, 59, 66, 133). Thus, restricting trans individuals is unlikely to prevent issues of ergogenic hormonal advantages in sports.

Finally, it is well known that within sports and athletics, competitive advantage is in large part influenced by genetic predisposition (121, 134, 135). It is accepted that some individuals are born with natural advantages, however, the suggestion that trans individuals may enjoy some advantage in certain cases is regarded as unacceptable. Yet there does not seem to be a domination of sports by trans athletes if their advantage is so great. When examining issues that allegedly arise by trans athletes' participation in sports and athletics, the solutions are more driven by a political/cultural divide rather than an honest attempt to actually mitigate inequities or risk of injuries that are occurring (1, 136).

[...]

Individuals should not have to make a choice between being their authentic selves or being athletes (138). While trans athletes competing in various sports and athletic events raises interesting considerations of how certain morphologic and physiologic factors affect performance, these questions are not exclusive to trans individuals. There are wide variations within cisgender populations, even when excluding individuals with differences in sexual development (121, 139). It is expected that about 2.3% of a normally distributed population is likely to fall above two standard deviations from a population mean. These exceptional individuals may be those who are gifted and excel at some sport or athletic performance (121, 135, 140). In contrast only 0.5%–0.6% of the population identify as trans (60). There is no concern for restricting individuals who are exceptionally large or small, those who are genetically gifted, or those with differing hormone concentrations or muscle mass, so long as their gender and biologic sex align (120, 121). The disproportionate focus on the relatively small portion of the population who are trans seems based on the belief that cis men, who cannot succeed in sports among other cis men, would choose to misidentify as trans women to gain an advantage in sports against cis women. However, there are no legitimate cases of this occurring. An individual's sex does not determine their success or failure at any athletic event despite the high level of competition. This can be demonstrated when looking at not average outcomes, but the level of overlap among outcomes. The exclusion of trans individuals also insults the skill and athleticism of both cis and trans athletes. While sex differences do develop following puberty, many of the sex differences are reduced, if not erased, over time by gender affirming hormone therapy. Finally, if it is found that trans individuals have advantages in certain athletic events or sports; in those cases, there will still be a question of whether this should be considered unfair, or accepted as another instance of naturally occurring variability seen in athletes already participating in these events.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10641525/

Right. You'd rather progressives be more like democrats and shirk every possible fight.

Why do we think this is the right’s favorite talking point?

It's like I said, it's their foot in the door.

If trans women can't be allowed in women's sports (we're too big, or too strong, or to aggressive, or whatever other lie), the same logic leads directly to banning us from bathrooms and locker rooms and other women's spaces. These issues are intertwined, they can use sport as a wedge to split the coalition.

Critiquing the concept of fair sports undercuts the ability for the right to use this issue in the first place. By giving ground here, it only cedes further ground and opens us to attack.

The right attacks this wedge issue because liberals don't have a critique of sports, because they're fucking cowards that wouldn't dare criticize the US civic religion.