Sports leaders seek to protect women's sports while accommodating transgender girls and women
Source: USA Today
A group of high-profile women athletes and women’s sports advocates is taking on the contentious issue of transgender girls and women in sports by proposing federal legislation to exempt girls’ and women’s competitive sports from President Joe Biden’s recent executive order that mandates blanket inclusion for all transgender female athletes.
In the Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, signed on Inauguration Day, the Biden administration said that any school that receives federal funding must allow biological boys who self-identify as girls onto girls’ sports teams or face action from the federal government.
But the group of women’s sports leaders, including tennis legend Martina Navratilova, several Olympic gold medalists and five former presidents of the Women’s Sports Foundation, is asking Congress and the Biden administration to limit the participation of transgender girls and women who “have experienced all or part of male puberty (which is the scientific justification for separate sex sport),” while accommodating and honoring their sports participation in other ways. Options could include separate heats, additional events or divisions and/or the handicapping of results.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/02/01/group-protect-womens-sports-accommodate-transgender-athletes/4345854001/
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Frasier Balzov
(5,060 posts)It can't be done. Born females are just going to have to become faster and stronger.
pnwmom
(110,259 posts)and different musculature?
Not happening.
RobinA
(10,478 posts)It's biology. I have to admit, I'm hard line on this. Biogirls compete with biogirls only. Same for men. It's the only way it's fair to the most people. Transgender females can compete with men and vice versa. Sometimes you just have to decide what is important to you when two things you want are mutually exclusive.
RobinA
(10,478 posts)It's biology. I have to admit, I'm hard line on this. Biogirls compete with biogirls only. Same for men. It's the only way it's fair to the most people. Transgender females can compete with men and vice versa. Sometimes you just have to decide what is important to you when two things you want are mutually exclusive.
weissmam
(910 posts)every one needs to be protected but it also needs to be fare. I don't have any quick answers either. Maybe a case by case assessment ?
Whotheone
(20 posts)Two years ago I watched a friends 13 year old son take out a 13 year old girl with a single tackle with the result being a concussion and a few weeks off the field, he was so broken up about it that he refused to play again until she could and he hasn't been the same playing since. He'd been doing that tackle all year it's just she's was one of the few girls playing in the mixed team and he had only been tackling boys. That was their last year playing together as the teams broke up into boy and girl teams after that and based on what I saw that day I can understand why.
For perspective, even Serena and Venus Williams, two of the greatest female tennis player of all time struggled against men ranked outside the top 100 in their prime and Tennis is a sport that's historically been considered mostly skill based. In another example there have been national women's Soccer teams that have lost to underage boys teams. These women can overcome taller opponents, the can overcome bigger opponents but they can't overcome the natural advantage of someone who's gone through male puberty.
Even as an overweight lazy boy who never put any effort into exercise I had advantages over the girls when it came to sports. Could some outrun me, yes certainly because I was the worst boys runner in the entire school but even the best girls tennis player couldn't beat me because I hit the ball faster than she was used to.
I'll support transgender rights in every other way but I can't support this the way it currently is structured, it's not fair to either side in this situational and both sides could end up hurting over this.
I just want a path that doesn't hurt anyone, inclusion without disadvantaging others and creating a divide. Something where neither side is going to feel as though they've lost out.
RobinA
(10,478 posts)orders of magnitude stronger than girls, especially upper body. It's a fact.
whistler162
(11,155 posts)during a mixed league soccer game by a woman.
bucolic_frolic
(55,129 posts)Sports is about participation and health. When did it become competitive? Is money rearing its ugly head here too?
Whotheone
(20 posts)You realize there's such a thing as sports scholarships right?
For many people from lower income families doing well in sports is one of the only ways to go to a good University.
Pmc1962
(48 posts)We were cutthroat playing cards when I was growing up.
My dad would walk around the room, humming “Hail to the Chief” when he won at Hearts. (Which was often, he was great.)
whistler162
(11,155 posts)
hunter
(40,688 posts)It would all be friendly sports for physical education with mixed teams of boys and girls.
Definitely no U.S.A. tackle football.
Cross country running? Softball? Sure. Everyone plays. "Teams" are ephemeral.
People would hate Emperor Hunter but I'd be in the sky in my heavily armed space fortress blasting violators with puke rays.
Imagine an illegal high school football game broken up by puke rays.
Okay, it's true, my school sports experiences were frequently traumatic. I quit high school just as soon as I could.
I didn't learn to enjoy sports until later.
eggplant
(4,199 posts)There is no way you could have a "fair" competition between myself and an Olympic athlete of the same gender. Or any gender, for that matter.
We stopped doing this with race decades ago. And race, too, is the subject of "appearance" or passing. Nobody would complain that it would be unfair to cis women if a trans woman who looked small and thin were to want to compete. It's not about the gender. It's about bigotry against "look".
I don't hear anyone complaining that it would be unfair for a trans man to compete with cis men, despite the existence of physically large, strong trans men, often bigger and stronger than most cis men. Why is that?
Captain Stern
(2,253 posts)The trans man would be at the biological disadvantage in most power/speed sports.
Pmc1962
(48 posts)But elite sports weed out the lower 99%, so, yes, the top 1% of athletic men are stronger than the top 1% of athletic women, in each competitive sport.
There’s a reason that testosterone is considered a performance enhancing substance.
Male puberty results in not just stronger, larger and longer bones and muscles but increased cardiac output and oxygen carrying capacity. 1 year of hormones does not change that.
As a thought experiment, imagine Roger Federer and Serena Williams decided to transition. We can all see R. Federer be the top of the women’s game but nobody would imagine S. Williams being anywhere near the elite in the Men’s game. That is due to the basic characteristics of having testosterone driving your physiology for the first 2 decades of life.
I think this is an excellent compromise. If you’ve gone through male puberty, you can’t compete against those who haven’t.
And, yes, it’s not an issue for trans men competing in men’s sports, because they are at a physiologic disadvantage, due to the lack of those same testosterone driven changes in puberty.
RobinA
(10,478 posts)I think you are missing the point. This has nothing to do with how anything looks. And yes, I would complain if a cis women were being forced to compete against a small transgender woman. Size has nothing to do with it. Men, males, carriers of a Y chromosome, are significantly stronger than women. It's called testosterone.