Girls 800 National High School Champ Speaks Out About Transgenders in Sports

Armstronglivs wrote:

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/04/us/lia-thomas-ncaa-transgender-policy-letter/index.html

(CNN)A letter written on behalf of 16 members of the University of Pennsylvania's swim team was sent to the university and the Ivy League on Thursday asking that they not pursue legal action to challenge the NCAA's new transgender athlete participation policies.

The letter was written by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, CEO of Champion Women and an Olympic champion in swimming, on behalf of 16 members of swim team.

"We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman. Lia has every right to live her life authentically," the letter says. "However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone's gender identity. Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women's category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female."

dumbassMF wrote:

Lenny Leonard wrote:

No, it doesn’t.

Also, stop bringing up age and weight.

Age - Every changes ages yearly. Unlike gender, which is socially and psychologically seen as being something that a person CAN change, you can’t change age. If you don’t think transgenderism is a reality, then you haven’t even gotten to the start line of the conversation.

Weight - I can change my weight month to month! This is actually an argument FOR trans inclusion. Just like trans athletes, one doesn’t wake up and say “today, I’ll run as a man” or “today, I will be 20 lbs. lighter.” They undergo a transformative process and that new gender/weight becomes a reality for them. Would you deny a boxer who was 160lbs. to compete in the 160 weight class if they were at one time 200 lbs.? No? Then you are okay with athletes switching between these sacred, holy classifications.

Good lord, your line of reasoning is absurd. If you aren't simply trolling then your IQ has to be 80-85 at best. I'm curious what if any employment you can maintain?

wanted to direct everyone's attention to... wrote:

https://twitter.com/davidmellyruns/status/1490380953797148672?s=20&t=G-4dzTzNhK29nzJNu_2KZA

This tweet.

Here's the thing. I'm not some right wing troll. I believe trans people are people and trans kids, especially deserve equal opportunity to play sports. I believe especially where youth sports are concerned, we take them to seriously anyways and kids should be able to be themselves, have fun, learn a sport, learn sportsmanship, make friends, and engage. It's okay if a trans girl plays on your 8 year old daughter's softball team. Your daughter even might make a friend! Think of that!

I do think that fairness matters more and more the higher up the echelon you go. I have to remind everyone for example that Lia Thomas is NOT a kid. She's an adult on an NCAA D1 team--and D1 sports aren't something that all 18-22 year olds are entitled to. Changing the rules mid way through the season is such a clear attack on one athlete that it's hard for me to not see that as wildly unfair for Lia, but the rules should change to ensure fairness for cisgender women, who matter too.

Now for the problem with David's tweet.

David wants to protect trans kids. Congratulations so do I. But at the expense of....another...kid? Ainsley is a kid. He may disagree with her but she's a high school kid! David, an adult, a member of the running media, thinks that because he has the moral high ground he can use his platform to attack....other kids. But that's not how this works. If you're an adult who attacks trans kids--by naming them the way so many did with the two high school girls in CT, I'm sorry but you're a freaking bully. If you're an adult who attacks cis kids the way David just did, by cryptically sending out this mean tweet, I'm sorry but you're a bully too.

Surely there is a way that David, an adult, a member of the running media, can speak up and speak loudly on behalf of trans children without dragging other teenage girls through the mud? Teenagers change their minds and evolve on so many issues. Maybe Ainsley will or maybe she won't. But attacking a kid just makes David look like a scold at best and a bad person at worst.

So TLDR: members of the running media please don't attack kids, trans or cis. and go Nikki. Iike their message here. Trans kids get attacked a lot and shouldn't be.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

This whole issue for me has a simple solution. When these basic, rational and common sensical conditions are met I have no problems with transgender people competing in either of the gender categories that may potentially differ from their biological gender at birth.

1. First condition and the most important one - we need to see transgender males/boys competing with similar parity against cisgender males/boys. Right now this is only working one way - transgender females (humans born with male sex organs) have transitioned to compete with prominent and highly successful results vs cisgender women/girls, but not the other way around. I don't even want to get into the obvious reasons why this is because we all know them, so let's take that out of it. When we see evidence of transgender males having the same level of success as transgender females that's the first step.

2) Second condition, the transgender athletes in terms of competitive level need to be represented across the spectrum of abilities and performance in their new chosen gender category. So, we can't have a case where all transgender females instantly are all right at the top of their new gender category (case in point Lia Thomas, Andraya Yearwood) or conversely right at the bottom (no evidence/cases of this as yet) as I would hypothesize would have if a transgender male wanted to compete in a competitive realm vs cisgender males.

I actually thought a lot about this while running yesterday and tried to find a way that the above would be unfair, discriminatory etc etc - I couldn't. If someone can then I'm all for hearing it. End of the day if the underlying narrative here is equality, then to me basic conditions of equality must be seen to exist in both directions involving all transgender athletes.

Currently this isn't transgender rights issue, it's been highjacked to leverage an odd quasi female rights issue. The front is "transgender discrimination", the actual is "women are free to do what they choose - even transgender women, and that includes competitive sport too". Ironically though, it's backfired because it's completely infringed on the the vast majority of cisgender girls/women and their rights to compete equitably in competitive sports. But of course supporters of this don't really care because for them it actually never was about equality or rights to begin with anyway.

Anyway. back to the first points because I could easily have missed a connection - what would be unfair or discriminatory about establishing this first before this becomes a non-issue status quo?

Vinny wrote:

Sports have never been about biological fairness. If they were, we would have different divisions for people with longer legs, different heights, broader builds, etc.

There is also a misconception that’s trans women are transitioning for the sole purpose of winning titles in women's sports. This simply does not happen.

There are not enough trans athletes to create a trans sports league, and this gets at the “separate but equal” argument the Supreme Court has already decided upon. Separate is inherently unequal.

Hubbard, the trans New Zealand weightlifter did not even win a medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

This is analogous to the supershoe debate or why there the concentration of world-class distance runners is in very specific parts of East Africa.

If you are getting beat by a trans athlete, your mindset should be working harder to beat them, not complaining that they are trans. If someone beats you with vaporflys on and you have regualr trainers, put yourself in a situation where the shoes don't matter. I've been on the same team as kids who were born in Kenya and immigrated to the US. Whenever they beat me I wasn't worried about how they were born at altitude and had lower body fat and all these factors that may or may not predispose them to being a better runner, they were just another runner that I wanted to beat.

I also don't want to get into a plank in the eye kind of debate, but the way this athlete speaks about how she works hard and puts her faith in God makes it seems like trans athletes are incapable of doing the same, which I think is a bit silly.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

2) Second condition, the transgender athletes in terms of competitive level need to be represented across the spectrum of abilities and performance in their new chosen gender category. So, we can't have a case where all transgender females instantly are all right at the top of their new gender category (case in point Lia Thomas, Andraya Yearwood) or conversely right at the bottom (no evidence/cases of this as yet) as I would hypothesize would have if a transgender male wanted to compete in a competitive realm vs cisgender males..

Using your logic, there have only been about 4-5 total trans athletes who have competed in their new gender, all of whom were male-to-female, and all of whom are instantly at the top of the category.

I know of two transgender athletes just in my county's athletic district who don't fit either of these criteria. One is a boy who was born a girl, and the other is a girl who was born a boy that runs about a 6:20 mile.

Their stories aren't reported because the mainstream media only wants to jump on transathletes that win races. That's what is good for ratings.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

Vinny wrote:

Sports have never been about biological fairness. If they were, we would have different divisions for people with longer legs, different heights, broader builds, etc.

This is true, and yet as a society we have managed to agree or in the least not taken issue with it (for at least for the last 100 years) that even though biological "fairness" (though I suspect you mean equality) can never possibly exist, that using gender as a way of categorizing humans for the means of sport has by in large been pretty successful.

Because despite these biological differences/advantages even in amongst genders, we have seen that other factors and nuances not related purely to biology have actually created incredibly level playing fields. That we have major championship sprint races decided by 100ths of seconds (save for a few Usain Bolt years which in the grand scheme of time are fractional) and it's not just within one gender we see it, not within one sport.

The point is no it can never be totally equal - what would actually separate athletes in that case? But it's worked. And despite race, age, environmental, religious, ethical factors - the list can go on, we have remarkably level playing fields when we have categorized competitive sport by gender. On the flip side, had we never done this, women simply would have simply given up on competitive sport. You think this sounds dramatic but actually it's not - eventually there would have been zero incentive for them to bother with sport as a means to create a lifestyle for themselves. If next Olympics in Paris there was no separation of the genders, how many women athletes do you think would actually be there? I mean based on current qualification standards for men in sports like T&F, swimming etc there would be none. And even if you lessened the standards to the current women's qualification standards you would have an Olympics of god knows how many qualified athletes because even an average high school boy could qualify under those standards. That might sound controversial but it's not - it's factual.

So the answer is no it's not perfectly equal but it can't and shouldn't be. However the balance is remarkably good and fair as it is possible for both biological genders and that can't be disputed.

Wise Old Man wrote:

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

This is true, and yet as a society we have managed to agree or in the least not taken issue with it (for at least for the last 100 years) that even though biological "fairness" (though I suspect you mean equality) can never possibly exist, that using gender as a way of categorizing humans for the means of sport has by in large been pretty successful.

Because despite these biological differences/advantages even in amongst genders, we have seen that other factors and nuances not related purely to biology have actually created incredibly level playing fields. That we have major championship sprint races decided by 100ths of seconds (save for a few Usain Bolt years which in the grand scheme of time are fractional) and it's not just within one gender we see it, not within one sport.

The point is no it can never be totally equal - what would actually separate athletes in that case? But it's worked. And despite race, age, environmental, religious, ethical factors - the list can go on, we have remarkably level playing fields when we have categorized competitive sport by gender. On the flip side, had we never done this, women simply would have simply given up on competitive sport. You think this sounds dramatic but actually it's not - eventually there would have been zero incentive for them to bother with sport as a means to create a lifestyle for themselves. If next Olympics in Paris there was no separation of the genders, how many women athletes do you think would actually be there? I mean based on current qualification standards for men in sports like T&F, swimming etc there would be none. And even if you lessened the standards to the current women's qualification standards you would have an Olympics of god knows how many qualified athletes because even an average high school boy could qualify under those standards. That might sound controversial but it's not - it's factual.

So the answer is no it's not perfectly equal but it can't and shouldn't be. However the balance is remarkably good and fair as it is possible for both biological genders and that can't be disputed.

Just brainstorming, but what about a system where we moved past any gender or sex category, but had just an open category where the final ranking or result would be the product of the absolute time, distance, height x a conversion factor based on the most relevant biological parameters for that competition, like muscle mass and %body fat, etc. In such a system, if done well, a females/women would be just as likely to crowned Olympic or world champion as a man. For example, I suspect ETH would have defeated Jacobs and Kipyegon might have bested Jakob. Lia’s ranking would fall to its rightful place. This sort of system would work well for sprints in lanes and field events. Distance races would be harder. The incentive would not be on tactics to win the heat, but to always cover the distance as fast as possible. Heats could be grouped by absolute times, but the final results/rankings would be decided after the conversion.

Ok, I know this won’t happen, just trying to come up with a creative solution that moves us past the acrimony.