sundin13 said:
First of all, I think when having this discussion we have to first acknowledge that the question doesn't really matter. There's such a tiny portion of athletes who are both trans and top tier at their sport. You are talking about an issue that maybe impacts two people in the world, and the extent of it actually mattering is pretty low relative to other concerns. That said, personally I think the issue revolves around the central unfairness of sports, because at the end of the day, sports aren't fair. It isn't fair to be almost 8ft tall and playing basketball next to other players who are under six feet. It isn't fair that some cis women have higher natural testosterone levels than other cis women. I agree that in some circumstances, being a trans woman competing against cis women gives you an unfair advantage, but at the end of the day, fairness shouldn't be the deciding factor, and without that argument I don't really see any objective footing to object from, but I'll gladly hear you make an argument if you would like to present one. |
If you feel the question doesn't matter then i guess there is no need to discuss it. My argument is quite simple and I already mentioned it - there are certain cases where it does not make sense for people to identify as any gender.
Your opinion on sport also seems uninformed, you are referencing top tier athletes, yet that is not where the real issue lies. Professional sport is highly regulated and transgender woman are actually put through a host of tests and therapies to normalize their competitiveness. As we clearly saw with Caster Semenya. These are just easy to use as references and perhaps ultimately can lead to the most extreme differences. Still very relevant though.
Also, fairness is the bedrock of competitive sport. Sports go out of its way to ensure relative conformity, whether its a bowling action guideline for cricket bowlers, weight classes in all combat sports, etc. What they cant regulate though is natural athleticism as you mentioned. But i would argue that males and females compete within a band of physical performance (as we can see from perhaps a spread of male and female places in a marathon). And maybe there is some small overlap, but to equate a tall basket ball player to a male beating up a female is ridiculous for obvious reasons. There are multiple strategies to a game like basketball that doesn't rely on height. Steph curry was MVP for 2 seasons in a row and he was constantly the shortest, and probably weakest player on the court. If what you are saying has any real world application then we should simply allow men and woman to compete as they are now. There is no difference. We dont, because everyone wants to compete on a relatively equal footing.
As a sidenote I've watched first hand how a single transgender woman absolutely demolished a semi pro womans volleyball team. The lady was not the biggest or tallest player. But the power, speed, accuracy and i think perhaps most importantly hand-eye co-ordination was clearly on another level. This can happen at any level of competition be it in school, pre-school, uni, club etc.
I guess its easy to say that sport doesn't matter, and perhaps any host of other topics i guess we can just exclude from the discourse. But these are the obvious impacts of gender identity within these areas of life. And to simply say they don't matter perhaps because its unimportant to you is disingenuous.
