• retrospectology@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      If a 5ft trans woman who started transitioning when she was a teen faces off against a 6ft cis volleyball player, should the cis woman be not allowed to compete?

      What about cis olympians? They all have natural advantages that make their ability to compete at high levels possible, why are you not calling for them to be banned? Britney Griner is a giant at nearly 7ft, surely she shouldn’t be allowed to compete when she has such a innate advantage over your average cis woman, right?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Didn’t you read what they wrote? The men would always win. I’m a 5’9" 180-pound cishet man and if I play basketball against Britney Griner, I will definitely win. For sure.

        Oh, they meant professional sports? Well I guarantee you that there’s literally no possibility that Britney Griner could beat the worst player out of the ~550 men in the NBA. No possibility. Britney Griner is definitely worse than all of those 550 men. Because she has a vagina.

        Edit: The blatant sarcasm in my post was undermined by a mod deleting the post I was replying to. Oh well.

        • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It kind of borders on delusion if I’m being honest.

          Remember when everyone was completely losing their shit about Laurel Hubbard, the trans powerlifter who had qualified for the olympics? Remember how everyone was claiming she was going to smash records and take the gold etc.?

          Now, what did we see in reality? Laurel Hubbard didn’t even place. She got beat out by her cis competitors, she broke no records, she fell within the same range of ability as cis women.

          Where does this fact leave people’s theory about “the men will always win”?

          Edit: I see now you were being sarcastic. In any case I’ll leave the response as is, since people do think like that. Changed it to be a less pointy, lol.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Yes, very much sarcastic. I am always annoyed by this ‘men will always beat women in sports’ talking point.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              The problem with sarcasm here is that most men believe they can play tennis on par with the Williams sisters. At least according to some survey I saw years ago.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                I don’t think I can play tennis on par with the Williams brothers. 92-year-old John Williams and his brother Jerry, who may or may not be alive, but who is apparently younger than him. And even if he was dead, he’d still probably beat me at tennis.

                I assume Serena or Venus Williams would just serve the ball at such a speed that, when I fail to hit it back and accidentally stand in its way, it will go straight through my skull and embed itself into the wall behind me and she’d just win by automatic forfeit.

        • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Yes, the rules that have been in place about transition time have served fine since even before right-wingers politicized trans people’s existence.

          The irrational part is to try and create blanket bans based solely on the fact that an athlete is trans.

          It completely ignores the fact that trans biology falls on a very wide spectrum and is dependent on numerous factors. It doesn’t make sense to treat trans athletes as their assigned at birth sex because their biology is literally no longer that of their birth gender. It varies by degrees, but it is no more fair to ban a cis woman for being tall than it is to ban a trans woman for being the same height.

          So no, it is not transphobic to have rules and regulations specific to trans athletes when it comes to competitive level sports (whatever experts and committees decide is fair based on actual data) it is transphobic to just outright ban trans people based solely on that status and ignore the biological reality of the individual and whether or not they fall within the range of cis competitors (spoiler, most do).

          It’s really stupid for people to get this outraged about a tiny percentage of the population, an even smaller percentage of which actually compete at high levels.

    • dodgy_bagel
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      6 months ago

      Cis women and trans women have been found to have comparable performance in sports. Generally, cis women have an advantage over trans women.

      I’m sure that you’ll be objective and apply the same reasoning against cis women now that you know they have a physical advantage over other women.

        • dodgy_bagel
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          6 months ago

          What the hell are you on about?

          You know what, go ahead and list these record settings. I want to see them.

          Omit “school record” or any regional / divisional / age related records. Those get set and broke constantly. Show me ACTUAL records. World records. Professional league records.

          • Stern@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Insofar as I know, there’s been two trans folk to make it to the Olympics. One is Quinn, AFAB soccer midfielder who is nb. Their team won gold in the 2020 Olympics.

            The other is Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, who was competing in weightlifting, which I think we can agree is either the most ideal or close to the most ideal situation for conservatives and TERF’s to push their nonsense takes wrt trans folks in sports. Laurel failed her three lift attempts and placed last in her group.

            I think anyone would be hard pressed to say in either of those two cases the trans person was malicious or “cheating” somehow.

            • dodgy_bagel
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              6 months ago

              Thanks. It was a genuine question. I’ve never heard of a single trans person who has set such a record.

              Every time I hear stuff on the news it’s “Trans girl shatters high school record”. Given that there are basically thousands of possible records per grade per school, I would absolutely expect a few records to be set by trans girls. The thousands of records set per year by cis girls goes unrecognized and unreported.

              Whenever cis girls succeed, they’re ignored. Whenever transgender people succeed, they’re punished. Whenever they fail, they’re still punished.

              • Stern@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Wikipedia ID’s them as trans, so they’re on the very short list of trans olympic athletes.

                • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  That may be but since they haven’t done any chemical transition it’s entirely irrelevant. What all these shitlords get up up in arms about is MTF.

                  • Stern@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    I was listing “trans athlete in the Olympics” though, not “trans athlete in the Olympics who has done chemical transition”.

                    I thought my wording was fairly clear. Sorry if you got confused somehow.

        • ImADifferentBird
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          6 months ago

          That must be why we’ve repeatedly seen instances where trans women set records within the women’s category of their respective sport! Because it’s all equal and impossible for a trans woman to have an advantage.

          Name three.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      “The entire reason for women’s sports is…”

      …is actually because they were banned from playing sports until 1974, and then when allowed starting beating some men’s teams and the men bellyached about it.