Sport needs to look hard at fairness
Let’s learn more about that University of Otago study.
New Zealand researchers say trans athletes have an “unfair” advantage over other women and sport needs to fix binary gender categories.
The advantages trans athletes have over female competitors are considerably large and sport needs to look hard at fairness, along with their inclusion policies, Otago University Associate professor of physiology Lynley Anderson says.
The issue became hot because of Laurel Hubbard.
Male to female trans athletes have been allowed to compete in women’s divisions since 2015 provided their testosterone level does not exceed 10 nanomoles per litre.
However, the average amount of testosterone for a cis female (born female) ranges from .870nmol/L. to 1.7nmol/L – nearly ten times less than that limit.
So it’s kind of like saying we’ll give this group of competitors only a five minute head start.
In a paper published in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, Anderson and fellow Otago University researchers, Alison Heather and Taryn Knox, found the 10nmol/L level permitted by the International Olympic Committee was “significantly higher than that of cis-gender women, whose sex and gender align as female”.
Heather, also a professor of physiology, says the rule book needs to change.
“It is ten to 20 times higher than a cis female, so this is one of my major concerns.”
“At the moment we are really targeting inclusiveness for our trans females to compete in a female division and in that aspect we are not considering a fairness issue for cis females.”
“Inclusiveness” is such a manipulative buzzword. I know I’ve said it a billion times, but “inclusion” is not the goal in every circumstance, which ought to be blindingly obvious. Filters, criteria, qualifications are not always and everywhere arbitrary and discriminatory. Separate sports for women are a necessity given the sexual dimorphism of humans.
The New Zealand Olympic Committee stands by its policy around transgender athletes, but welcomes the research.
“The issue of transgender athletes in elite sport is extremely complicated as it requires a balance to be struck between protecting an individual’s human rights and ensuring the field of play remains fair,” a spokesperson told Stuff.
No it doesn’t. There is no “human right” for a male to compete against women, no matter how he identifies.
Heather said the advantages go well beyond a testosterone level test.
A trans athlete has prior exposure to testosterone, which develops larger muscle mass, muscle distribution and even the amount of oxygen the athlete can accumulate.
“All these factors are not considered. We just say your testosterone level is under 10mnol/L. It is still much higher than a cis female and none of the rest is being considered.
“It’s not just your here and now testosterone that matters, there is also prior exposure to testosterone. Testosterone even form a fetus is defining a males brain, a male’s bone structure and lung structure.”
“They have a different bone structure so they are able to put more power in their jumping and anything that involves having to lift something, they have more power in their legs through their knees to hip ratio.”
But inclusion blah blah human right blah blah transphobia blah blah.
I don’t see any changes in the near future.
Sports, schmorts. I’m just sitting here glorying in the extreme advantage I have as a woman in science over the poor men. At least, that’s what I was just told by a male colleague. Women dominate the field of science, or so I was told. And since he is male, he would certainly know, right?
So now that we own science, we should just let them have sports. It’s only fair.
/s
I’mma be pedantic here. Filters, criteria, and qualifications must be discriminatory—that is, being discriminatory is constitutive of filters, criteria, and qualifications.
And that’s okay.
Discrimination is value neutral. There can be both unjust and just discrimination. Even arbitrary discrimination can be okay. (For example, the particular weight classes in contact sports are arbitrary.)
But where does postmodernism fit in with all this? Surely its theoreticians must have something to say.
” . . . trans athletes have an “unfair” advantage over other women . . . .”
WTF do you mean “OTHER” women? The trans athletes in question are not women. Trans athletes have unfair advantages (not merely *an* unfair advantage, as if there were only one) over WOMEN. Not “other” women. Just “women.”
NiV @ 3 – hmm – I take your point but I think discriminatory means in an unjust way. That is, I think it’s not just the adjectival form of the root “discriminate,” so you wouldn’t say for instance “she’s very discriminatory in her choice of fabrics.”
Googles
Confirmed.
I’m not sure what the problem is. Trans women ARE women, I know that because I’ve been told over and over at the other blog. So it must be true.
But that leaves me wondering – if trans women ARE women, why do we have trans women? Maybe the existence trans women is just a myth, a story sold to the gullible.
/sarc
Pretty pissed off this wasn’t around in my younger days – I was a pretty good 10 pin bowler, but could have been better if only I’d been a woman
There are huge swathes of competitive sports from which I am excluded, namely all of them. I have no particular talent or skill at any sport at all. With training and application, I might have, when I was younger. I might have been able to develop a skill or talent if I had had the desire to. I might have been able to meet the requirements to be on some team or other at one skill level or another. Even then, I still would have failed to meet the base level of skill for acceptance in some sports at all and would have been limited to lower levels of competition in others. It’s not unfair; it’s just the way it is. It’s justified exclusion; nobody would want me on their team for anything, and rightly so.
Being a woman isn’t a skill or talent. It’s not something you can train for or something you can practice and perfect. You are or you aren’t. Trans identified males are not. Women’s sports are exclusionary for the sake of fairness of competition for and among women. The rules lawyering around the narrow confines of the allowable amount of testosterone in the blood (and it looks like from the above even that’s been royally fucked up), as if that was the only criterion worth examining, is disingenuous at best, a complete smokescreen and con job at worst. I don’t think the current trans “inclusive” regime is going to play well amongst the general masses of people outside the insular, hothouse bubble of fashionably activist woke circles. I think the world is in for some major doses of peak transing once men show up on Olympic podiums in women’s events. At least I hope so…(I’ll bet we’ll see some real screaming amongst the unwoke masses when American women start losing to foreign trans identified males. )
Trans “women” are not women and never will be. I really don’t give a damn about how people want to dress, what names they want to call themselves or how they want to “present.” But you can’t bend physical reality, and I will not agree to its bending to the detriment of girls and women. I note above maddog1129’s anger at the use of “other” in reference to trans “women” as women. Another thin edge of the wedge that I will no longer go along with. “Trans Identified Males” is my preferred terminology, as it better reflects reality.
Trans activists use the examples of tall women, black women, infertile women and postmenopausal women as gotchas to claim that trans “women” are women in just the same way. No, they’re not. Being tall doesn’t bar one from womanhood. Having whatever colour of skin does not make one any less of an adult, human female. Having a reproductive system that is no longer capable of procreating (or having one which, for whatever reason, never had the option of conceiving and brining a baby to term) does not result in no longer being female. Trans “women” were born male. They couldn’t be trans otherwise. But however much makeup they apply, however they dress, whatever surgey they may undergo, and whatever drugs and hormones they pump into their bodies, they will never be women. They will always be men. The above “gotchas” work both ways. Because just like with being a woman, one does not cease being a male adult human through difference in stature, skin colour, impotence, or surgery and/or inury to the genitals.
The use of “transwomen are women” in discussions of women’s safe spaces, women’s services and women’s sports is childish and circular, an attempt to avoid end argument rather than engage and answer it. It’s as mature and useful as “I know you are, but what am I?” in discussing these issues. The dangers of self ID that feminists warned would happen are happening and the failure of extreme trans activists to even acknowledge this, let alone enter into discussions on how to better protect girls and women, is infuriating and dangerous. It leads to real, actual, broken bones and bloodshed violence and death that no amount of “misgendering” ever will.
Right now I have no snark left for this bullshit. The tide can turn any second now, please.
Not Bruce, I, too, have no snark left right now. I have suffered through having to deal with men in every walk of life, and now hearing one of my colleagues refer to someone as a “dumb woman”. His comments have made it obvious in the past that he believes women to have less skill and less brains. I am not comfortable working with him, I am exhausted dealing with him, and yet he is being treated like royalty while I am mostly ignored. It is the story of women. If I told anyone (other than here) that I was uncomfortable with this situation, the answer would be “Fine. Work somewhere else.” The man is never to be inconvenienced, and the woman always.
This whole trans sports is just more of the same shit. Men are not being booted out of their sports to make room for transmen. I haven’t even heard of any real flak around jockeys or other areas that require smaller size. No, it’s the women. Always the women. I am to sit down and shut up at work; all women are to sit down and shut up about trans.
I for one have had it. And yet…there seems to be no way out. If I say anything, I am a complainer, I am shrill, I am not a team player. If I don’t say anything, I’m seen as okay with it. No problems here.
It’s the same with trans sports. The women are not to speak out about their unhappiness with losing their championship, their records, their trophies, their accolades, to a male-bodied person who has no business on the stage. They are required to smile and be nice. And then? Everyone says – well, all the women are fine with it. Look, they’re smiling.
I hope I can keep my head from exploding. My poor therapist will get a work out next week.
@Ophelia: You can’t out-pedant me! I am the ur-pedant! There are multiple definitions in the various dictionaries accessible online. Most list a non-pejorative sense for discriminatory. (… wait, I’m supposed to stop pedanting … shite …)
Of course, in vernacular contexts, people often talk about discrimination as intrinsically negative. It’s just another linguistic trick, though, like, “we want the Bill to break down barriers and not create them.” Just like they hear “theory of evolution” and think it’s a mere guess or something. “Exclusion” gets the same sort of bad rhetorical juju.
But exclusion isn’t intrinsically bad, either. Definitions only work in virtue of exclusion. Triangle excludes figures with four sides (in addition to Particle Man and Person Man). Female excludes people with penises. Arguing that we’re not “excluding” transwomen from female-only sports is a losing game, rhetorically speaking, because the framing implicitly accepts that exclusion—the very thing we need do—is per se wrong.
I know, that’s what I’m saying, I’m just also saying that the adjective “discriminatory” has become more exclusively about the invidious kind of discrimination than the noun “discrimination” has and that’s why I used it that way.
YNnB #8 wrote:
This reminds me of the way theists sometimes try to shut down the case for atheism by proclaiming that “it all comes down to faith.” Belief = Faith. Set the stage with the definition so that epistemic certainty is on one side — and everything else on the other. The debate is now moot. If reason and evidence don’t really provide support in the Big Picture, then what are atheists trying to do? The term “faith” is inserted so it can level the field like a pancake.
A lot of energy can go into setting those definitions.
:-)
@Ophelia: Ah, yes, I see. I just wish we could escape the opposition’s linguistic framing. (Like what Sastra mentions in #12.) Activists are able to use inclusion as a cudgel in sports because it forms a Manichean binary with exclusion. It’d be double-plus-helpful if we could reclaim discrimination and exclusion as value-neutral concepts—and thereby inclusion, too.
@iknklast: Caught that, did you? :D
Yep. I spend much of my time struggling to wrench the opposition’s linguistic framing back onto a more reasonable track.
I have to thank you for it; you got that song in my head, and it displaced the awful Sunday School song the church bells played yesterday morning, getting it caught in my head and playing on endless loop. I won’t mention which awful Sunday School song, because I don’t want to condemn anyone in here to getting that loop in their head.