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Trans issues 2 - TG Women in Competitive Sport

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Fiend:
Pete: I'll kick it right back at you with the riposte that the question I've posted is the question people are actually asking (and is more interesting and of more practical concern than whether Rowling should be crucified upside down or boiled in acid (whynotboth?)), from what I see in the media and social media. I don't see as many people asking questions about the existential nature of sport - BUT I do think yours are very good questions too (along with the value of competition too).

Will: Washing one's hands of it and passing the buck is definitely a valid answer. But if it's done on a sport-by-sport basis, what would be an optimum answer for competitive climbing?? (Given we're all armchair experts on that)


Incidentally I just remembered that I came up with another likely wrong answer whilst discussing this before:

5. Yes but without any placing, i.e. allowed TG women to compete in women's sport for their own personal challenge / satisfaction, but they don't get positioned within any rankings, don't get medals etc - the sort of compromise that will probably be unappealing for both sides.

Will Hunt:
It's not washing your hands of it to defer the decision-making to people who actually know what they're talking about. Nobody ever gave me the buck to pass.

I'm not even an armchair expert on competitive climbing. For instance, I don't know whether there are any climbing-specific developments that occur during puberty which would confer a lifelong unfair competitive advantage.
One thing I do know about climbing is that it's possible to do well at it by being good at different elements of it. Was it Margo Hayes who flexibilitied her way up La Rambla with a less burly sequence than the men who were trying it? That might not be so applicable to comp climbing and I don't know to what extent hormone therapies will make things more fair. I think Taylor Parsons might have touched upon it in the podcast but I can't remember the specifics.

abarro81:
2 or 4 seems best to me. I dislike Will's idea - if there happens to be a sport where sex doesnt matter then just remove the categories full stop

jwi:

--- Quote from: abarro81 on May 07, 2023, 06:35:54 pm ---2 or 4 seems best to me. I dislike Will's idea - if there happens to be a sport where sex doesnt matter then just remove the categories full stop

--- End quote ---

Show jumping comes to mind as a sport where gender does not seem to predict performance. There are a few more.

For most sports, anyone who has taken steroids has an unfair advantage over other athletes as the improvements to muscle cells are permanent. That is why I think that there should be lifetime bans after testing positive for steroids, regardless of circumstances. If someone who has taken steroids still see themselves as a competitive athlete, well tough luck. (This is quite a lot more common situation than trans athletes, and I do feel a lot stronger about this than the original topic.)

JulieM:
We've discussed this in person so I guess you know my views on this. I think we have to go back to the fundamental question of the purpose of sex segregation in sport. It allows women to compete on a level playing field, allows the best women to succeed and recognises female excellence and without it the Olympics etc would be a total sausagefest. This is because men have natural physical advantages in strength, power, muscle mass, height, body composition that mean that in the vast majority of cases they'll be able to run/ride/swim faster, throw further, press more weight etc than a woman of equivalent ability. I think this this is fairly uncontroversial so the question then becomes; to what extent can this be mitigated by interventions (e.g. hormone treatment)?

From what I've read and listened to, it seems clear that no amount of hormone regulation can completely remove the male advantage gained through undergoing male puberty. If adult T suppression fully worked then you'd expect to see trans women performing at the same level relative to women as they did to their male peers before they transitioned but that doesn't seem to be the case - instead they go from good performances to winning medals, breaking records etc. The Science of Sport podcast has done several very good episodes going through the data that are worth seeking out.

The second question then is how much unfairness are we prepared to tolerate in the name of inclusion? The argument here seems to be that there aren't that many trans women so what does is matter if a few women are denied podium positions, sports scholarships, sponsorship deals, olympic places etc because the principle of inclusion is more important. And that not upsetting or disadvantaging trans women by making them compete with men in an open category is more important than not disadvantaging cis women. This is a value judgment that sports bodies are entitled to make but they should be honest that they're making that trade off instead of pretending there's a way to balance safety, fairness and inclusion with no losers. Personally my preference is for either a trans category or for the men's category to become 'open' as the best way forward in most cases, but I do accept that this does come with some psychological/emotional drawbacks for the trans athlete community.

As to climbing specifically, I do feel like there's less of a male advantage than in other sports. As a few points of anecdata, I used to be very into ju jitsu but sadly, there were few women at my university club at a similar level. So I'd often be paired up with men and even when weight matched, could be easily overpowered if we were at the same sort of skill level. In fact I've done a fair few male dominated sports (road cycling and MTB) and invariably, comparing my results in sportives or enduros, I place considerably higher against women than against men. But at my level I've never really felt disadvantaged in climbing vs my male peers, probably because climbing is so much more complicated with head factors, technique, flexibility, route choice etc all playing into it. But at the top end the men are better, they do harder problems in comps etc, so my suspicion is that the weight of evidence would suggest that trans inclusion in women's comp climbing should probably not be allowed.

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