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Trans issues 2 - TG Women in Competitive Sport

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Fiend:
It seems it's okay to discuss sensitive gender issues on this forum so far, and this is a topic I've been wanting to post for a while to see what ideas people can explore, so here we go. This is meant to be separate from the general trans issues thread, and hopefully it will work to keep general TG issues there.

This topic about the question: Should what degree should trans-gender women be able to compete in biological women's sport events? And of course on here it can apply very much to climbing competitions.

A couple of assumptions (this is based on my understanding, not extensive research):
1. There is a consistent difference between biological males and biological females in most physical aspects of most sports (presumably including muscle mass, strength, speed, endurance etc), and this leads to a consistent difference in competitive sport performance, hence almost universal segregation of men's and women's competitive sports to provide a more equal playing field within the genders.
2. Since the difference is usually manifest as biological males having an advantage over biological females, the main TG-related issue would seem to be that TG women could have a possible advantage over biological women, and that the other way around, TG men are less likely to have a possible advantage over biological men, hence the focus of the question.

So back to the question:

 Should what degree should trans-gender women be able to compete in biological women's sport events, given that they could have an advantage over biological women due to having been born biological men had having gone through some advantageous physical development as biological men?

From chatting to a few friends, male and female, there seems to be a few "solutions":

1. Yes they should be allowed, subject to mild regulations such as hormone levels, as that's most fair to TG women - but this is then possibly unfair to biological women athletes due the possible advantage above.

2. No they should not be allowed as that's most fair to biological women - but this is then possibly unfair to TG women who are wanting to treated fully as female and thus express themselves as female athletes.

3. Yes BUT subject to strict regulations about when the TG women have started hormone therapy and started transitioning, to prevent excess advantageous development as biological males (this has been proposed in some sports bodies, sorry no citations I'll leave that slab_happy), as this will have the closest possible result of being a level playing field as the TG women will be as close as possible physically as biological women - but this seems to have a whole lot of complexities as to what is suitably stringent and also what could be dangerous or premature for TG women.

4. No BUT there should be a separate category for TG athletes, as this would bypass the physical advantage issue - but there's unlikely to be nearly enough TG athletes for this to be feasible.


It seems to me there is no right answer, only "least wrong" ones. Having said that, in a very small sample size, it seems to be 2. i.e. No, that is the least wrong. My transphobic friends jump on that straight away with militant dogmatism that precludes any form of discussion or acknowledgement of it being a grey area and other answers being worth considering, but my open-minded friends, and myself, also conclude 2. (or maybe 2.5!) after some pondering and discussion, if only on the basis of ethical principles of the most happiness / least harm to the greater number of people.

However I would be interested to read other ideas!!

P.S. This can very obviously be viewed in the context: What would one feel ethically about the issue, as a spectator, interested follower, or indeed female climber, in terms of the IFSC climbing competitions (which I'm now back watching with interest)??

petejh:
I’ll kick off by saying you’re asking the wrong question to get to a sensible answer.

A better question to ask would be:
What is ‘sport’ and what is sport’s purpose? To what extent should ‘sport’ be regulated (or not regulated) to provide as level a playing field as possible for all sporting participants? To what extent does amateur versus professional status in sport change the answer?

Figure that out, and the gender/transgender status of participants in ‘sport’ naturally follows.

But my knee-jerk answer would be ‘4’. Not enough participants? Well-done you got a silver for being second out of 3. Used to be the same for some age groups/genders in climbing comps but numbers grow over time to reflect increased prevalence in the population. That seems ‘fair’.

sdm:
The separate female category exists because males are bigger, faster, stronger, and have a greater percentage of lean muscle mass. In most sports, this gives males a significant advantage that cannot be overcome by greater talent or work.

The separate female category allows females to compete where it would otherwise be impossible for them to compete at the top level. In contact/combat sports, it allows females to compete without the added safety risk of competing with bigger, faster, stronger people.

Once someone has gone through male puberty, they will always retain much of that advantage over someone who went through female puberty. Hormone treatment reduces the size of the advantage, but it does not remove it, a significant advantage remains for life.

So I can't see any way that someone who has been through male puberty can be accommodated in competitive female sport.

That then leaves us with the question of how best to accommodate transgender athletes within competitive sport. I don't have a satisfactory answer to this:
1) They cannot compete fairly and safely in women's sport, regardless of hormone treatment.
2) They cannot compete fairly and safely with men or they'll be subject to the same disadvantages.
3) Having a separate transgender category (or 2 categories?) seems exclusionary. In niche sports, there would be very few people to compete against. This still feels like the least bad option to me.

Wellsy:
3

Especially as its not like athletes aren't already subjected to strict hormonal regulations anyway (which a lot of them circumvent)

Will Hunt:
None of the above.
There should be a balance struck between the rights of non-trans people to fair competition and the rights of trans people to inclusion, but you're not going to achieve that with a one-size-fits-all approach. There is far too much variation between sports and within the population of competing trans people to apply one pan-sport rule. Much better would be for a sport's governing body to have a panel of experts who know the sport and its science to make decisions on an individual basis. This body can hand down a guidance policy to the grass roots and, if they cannot make a decision or if there is an appeal, it can be referred up the chain.

There's probably practical issues within that model but that's my "in an ideal world" scenario.

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