So, I've had moments in the past where I might have spent 30 seconds thinking about this subject but ultimately I don't give a fuck about competitive sports so my analysis usually ends up being, all competitive sports should be banned because competitive sports are dumb. Which is admittedly a neanderthal take.
But yeah, now the global athletic showdown is going down and seemingly everyone in my immediate vicinity keeps clutching their pearls and I guess I'm sick of not being able to advocate for trans comrades appropriately and articulate a proper response.
So what's a better response besides, "who cares?" Am I missing something? Like, if all things were equitable, what would or should competitions look like?
Help me out. I honestly have no idea.
Ban Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt for having an unnatural advantage.
It's obviously all concern trolling to justify transmisogyny.
Totally agree. I just don't know or care enough about sports to have decently formulated arguments. It looks like there were some shitheads in this thread but that's not me. I'm actually understanding a lot of what folks are saying and glad that more or less I'm starting get it.
Granted, I still hate competitive sports.
If the problem with trans people competing is that the hormones give them an advantage, then we're discussing the wrong issue entirely. Why is it the women's category and not the x hormones above y level category? Because hormones are vastly varied by individual, and sex/gender only correlate to those hormone levels.
But trans women are going to be taller on average than cis women! they say. Oh, you mean we should be segregating the sport by height categories, not by sex/gender? So a 5'7" man and a 5'7" woman can compete against one another fairly and that's the end of it?
Nooo, they say, because something something lung capacity. Heart size. Bone density. And on and on they go, listing all kinds of physical characteristics by which the sexes generally but do not necessarily differ. And at each characteristic I ask the same question. So that's the one that matters, that's the category by which we should segregate sports, yes?
I've never heard a satisfying response to this line of questioning.
Why are we punishing women who produce more testosterone? It makes no sense
Not only that but there is this inherit argument of "fairness". But there are a number of natural genetic conditions that give people an edge. I think in one study they found that women who compete in the Olympics in some sports had a particular genetic trait that was associated with larger muscle growth and higher testosterone and were over represented in sports at a rate of 140x the normal distribution in the general population. Is that fair for women who don't have this genetic trait? Should we bar women with this trait? The Olympics has said "no".
Lastly, we are probably a generation or two away from genetically modified human beings in some capacity. This will be a whole other can of worms that will make the trans debate seem tame.
Zero. China has modified twins to be immune to HIV.
Edit: the scientist responsible spent three years in prison for it, so it's misleading to imply there was state backing. Still, it happened. CRISPR is one hell of a drug.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a42790400/crispr-babies-where-are-they-now-first-gene-edited-children/
Why is it the women's category and not the x hormones above y level category?
Cisnormative dogma
There are no trans athletes in the Olympics this year, I don't get why anyone's talking about it
(While holding a flashlight under my chin and speaking in a spooky voice) "But what if there weeeeerrrrreeeee?"
Isn't there a boxer from the Philippines who's a trans guy? Thought i saw something about him on Twitter. If I'm right I'm guessing chuds aren't up in arms bc of other transphobia (seeing trans men as women and therefore inferior, especially at Sport) and bc racism and anglocentrism
Isn't there a boxer from the Philippines who's a trans guy?
Yeah, Hergie Bacyadan. The IOC is having him compete in the women's 75kg division as he's not on T yet.
The Olympics has abdicated all responsibility on ensuring transgender athletes can play and instead has federations decide (please inform me if I'm mistaken with this case). The IBA does not have specific transgender regulations, but the IBA Technical Competition Rules (March 3, 2024) appears to be the most reactionary, unscientific one I've seen yet (I've looked at like a dozen sports federations). Maybe tied with World Aquatics which at least tries to cover its own transmisogynistic tracks with pseudoscience.
“Men/Male/Boy” means an individual with chromosome XY. For this purpose, the Boxers can be submitted to a random and/or targeted gender test to confirm the above, which will serve for the gender eligibility criteria for the IBA Competitions;
“Women/Female/Girl” means an individual with chromosome XX. For this purpose, the Boxers can be submitted to a random and/or targeted gender test to confirm the above, which will serve for the gender eligibility criteria for the IBA Competitions.
4.2. Eligibility on Gender
4.2.2. To determine the gender, the Boxers can be submitted to a random and/or targeted gender test which will be conducted by IBA in cooperation with the selected laboratory personnel.
Chromosomes? Lmao. This is biology -101.
essence of thought is doing a series on the history of this crap. turns out closeted trans men were winning in the womens division a century ago, and in categories where women won mixed competitions they would add gendered divisions and change things so e.g. target shooting scores can't be compared.
Early Transphobia & Sexism in Sports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueGw_L7FVYM
Olympic Transphobia & The Red Scare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg0xv-BCF98
and she has some stuff from a few years ago refuting all the modern panic, relating to some atheist schism.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
if it were true that one can easily just transition and go play in the female league of a sport and immediately dominate, why aren't all of the worlds biggest and most successful athletes trans women? if experiencing a "male" puberty makes a trans woman inherently stronger than any cis woman out there, why has only one open trans woman competed in the olympics ever (where she unfortunately did not place in the top three)? if it were as easy as the right makes it sound, you'd think we'd dominate every category effortlessly but you just don't see that. the opposition to trans women in sports relies completely on a fantasy.
I think this is super helpful especially when responding to the dipshits. Definitely keeping these talking points in the chamber.
it's usually effective with these people because there's no argument for banning trans women from women's sports that's based in reality, its genuinely a make-believe issue.
estrogen also really weakens you! it's totally a thing. pre-transition, i was in the gym pretty frequently so i built up quite a lot of muscle mass. now i can't lift something more than like 10 pounds. even had to get a polymer stock for my rifle because it was too heavy.
the only thing that makes sense in sports leagues is probably weight classes like in boxing. and only in sports where that actually matters. it's not a magic bullet, but it's the bare minimum. continuing to divide competition on the false basis of the western european rendering of gender is as physically dangerous as it is empirically nonsensical. trans women are being used as a wedge solely because the gendered splitting of sports is already ideologically centered in a way that hides from most peoples consciousness, and trans women specifically as opposed to enbies or trans men because of misogynistic objectification.
What sports do you think dividing only on weight-class would 'work'? (And I guess what is your idea of that "working"?)
I agree with trans women in women's sport, but I don't agree with abolishing all gender in sport. Dividing team sports only on weight class would mean there'd be no professional women in sports, cis or trans. Testosterone is a performance enhancing drug for a reason.
In recreational sport it does and doesn't matter, since most recreational co-ed leagues have a minimum amount of women you have to have on the field at once to keep things balanced. Idk if a quota rule would make sense at the pro level, and that would still be using the western european rendering of gender.
In soccer, the testosterone that a cis man makes is a huge advantage that can't really be overcome only on weight class. Professional women's teams play male high-school teams and lose. And that's soccer, a sport where the best player in the world is a small Argentinian man.
Dividing team sports only on weight class would mean there'd be no professional women in sports, cis or trans. Testosterone is a performance enhancing drug for a reason.
what, you think being on testosterone at any weight regardless of training means that all professional sports at every weight would be dominated by men? i disagree with that. i think that's just an echo of the misogyny inherent to the way we currently organize sport.
In recreational sport it does and doesn't matter, since most recreational co-ed leagues have a minimum amount of women you have to have on the field at once to keep things balanced. Idk if a quota rule would make sense at the pro level, and that would still be using the western european rendering of gender.
this is already nonsense as a rule because of enbies and the broad set of possibilities that exist biologically among humans. there are no male and female, those are flattened abstractions. i recently watched an enby friend have to navigate this concept for a rec league; they had to decide whether to misgender themselves as a woman because of a quota rule. i think maybe that's not a good idea.
regardless, there are sports where it would make sense to divide by weight and sports where it wouldn't, as I said. but the important thing is that division by gender and/or sex is nonsense. otherwise, why aren't all women's sports leagues being dominated by AFAB enbies who inject T? by your reasoning, wouldn't that be an obvious and unfair accessible advantage in professional sport?
If you're injecting T I don't think pro sports leagues let you compete in the women's division.
You're also putting words in my mouth and creating ridiculous comparisons, I'm not arguing untrained cis man with testosterone vs trained woman with IOC defined woman levels of testosterone. You also didn't address the soccer example.
I don't think I'd beat Serena Williams at tennis. But if there's no gender in sport, the top 200 tennis players in the world who actually make a living off of tennis would be 99% men. I think even Serena Williams said something like that. The battle of the sexes in tennis was an old alcoholic vs a pro woman, and even that was pretty close. I think it's sexist to say "women, you can do sport for fun at the low levels, but men you can actually go pro and take it more seriously".
If you don't believe this then you don't believe in sexual dimorphism and we're not having a serious discussion. At that point there's no point of trans women lowering their T levels, or transmen going on T because clearly it has no effect. Why do you think baseball players roided up? It's not to have smaller testicals, it's to make ball go farther with the extra T.
Professional men and professional women both train at their sport for their job. Pro women soccer teams lose to U18 boys teams because of the testosterone, and those U18 have less training and experience.
In weightlifting the male and female records at every weight class differ by a lot. In athletics the records are all pretty different. The only completely equal events women can win at high levels are shooting and ultra-marathons. And idk maybe curling or breakdancing and not-as-directly-physical stuff like that.
I'm arguing currently professional equally fully trained pro men vs women. Or equally trained men and women at any level really. Abolishing gender in every league tomorrow would mean women wouldn't really have opportunity to compete. Every coed league has the quota rule because otherwise there's be a group of cis guys plus one woman taking games too seriously and crushing everyone, and that wouldn't be fun really.
You don't sound like you follow any professional sport or know much about performance.
If you're injecting T I don't think pro sports leagues let you compete in the women's division.
That is called doping (provided it's for non medical reasons) and you will not compete in either leauge.
That's only going to serve to remove women from professional sports, moreso than they already have been. Formula 1 does this already, with f1 being the highest skill class and then f2, f3 and f4 below it. The sport has always been de jure coed and there's no reason women can't succeed in motorsport. For example Michelle Mouton and Sabine Schmitz are two incredible drivers that have performed excellently, so motorsports would be a perfect testing ground for this idea, and they are already doing it. It's going terribly. Most women end up in f4 and occasionally make it to f3, two series that nobody watches and they hardly pay. This is because if you don't have women at the top competitive tier (the only one people will care about), you don't have inspiration for girls to enter the sport and then you're stuck in a loop of women only being in f4 and f3. There's so talent pool because girls aren't interested because there's no representation at the top tier because there's no talent pool. Keep in mind this is a sport that doesn't really depend on physical strength, so women don't have an advantage. The FIA needed to create a women's league to fix this (still in f4 machinery and with no progression path, but it's a start) and it's kind of working. Academy certainly has inspired more people than formula 4.
it's not a magic bullet, but it's the bare minimum. continuing to divide competition on the false basis of the western european rendering of gender is as physically dangerous as it is empirically nonsensical.
i don't disagree, but you're just addressing the overall misogyny of society at that point. as you note, the division in f1 is literally nonsense and still exists. if it were the case that interest in equalizing women and men in sport could be solved by simply having womens and mens leagues then it already would have been the case. the representation in sports argument i don't think makes sense because there are male dominated sports like boxing where there's still professional interest at weights other than heavyweight. i think you're ultimately correct about the issue being more to do with statistical interest across the population and then access to entry into the sport for formula 1.
For example Michelle Mouton and Sabine Schmitz are two incredible drivers
put another way, i guess my point would be to ask why they aren't just in F1 if they're incredible, and is the answer simply that teams have decided not to hire them? because if so, that's an issue of objectified hiring and a disinterest in correcting the historical wrong of inclusion. what it sounds like is needed is "reparations" for women in sport rather than the explicit segregation of women into their own, lesser class. similar to how making HBCUs and then never making up for the history of slavery didn't actually make formerly enslaved black people and their descendants equals to white settlers. separate and intentionally unequal.
if it were the case that interest in equalizing women and men in sport could be solved by simply having womens and mens leagues then it already would have been the case
It is the case. They recently made F1 Academy which is the women's league and it's certainly a step up above formula 4.
why they aren't just in F1 if they're incredible, and is the answer simply that teams have decided not to hire them
Mouton was a group b rally driver and the skills don't carry over. She was a strong performer in rally cars but going between the two is like putting Usain bolt in a 5k and hoping he wins. Schmitz also didn't have experience in single seaters and was more of a Porsche driver and really loved one track that wasn't on F1 (her name is now written all over the track surface in paint now to memorialize her). Teams would absolutely hire a woman if she was performing well on f2 because it's a hype driven sport. It's not that the teams are misogynist, it's that there aren't any female drivers who could perform in F1 right now because there isn't a talent pool. The concern with putting women into seats in f2 or F1 today is that they'd probably be backmarkers even in top machinery because they aren't quick enough yet. If would just be setting them up to fail.
People who don't go through male puberty are at a massive competitive disadvantage in most athletics.
The landmark study reported that physically active transgender women performed worse in certain cardiovascular tests and had less lower-body strength than their cisgender females. Researchers at the University of Brighton also found that, contrary to previous claims, transgender women’s bone density was equivalent to cisgender females. Bone density is linked to muscle strength.
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Professional sports is about people who are physical outliers competing with other physical outliers. Even if your proposition were true for the general population (it's not; I used to fence and fencing has mixed gender competitions, there was no discernible difference between fencers based on gender) it's untrue for the statistical outliers.
Beyond that, serious citation needed on the "people who have gone through male puberty" claim. Everything I've read suggests trans athletes performance are indiscernible from cis athletes of the same gender once they've been on HRT for around 12-18 months
(it's not; I used to fence and fencing has mixed gender competitions, there was no discernible difference between fencers based on gender)
huh i didn't realize women's fencing was that advanced, i figured there'd be legacy cultural biases in athleticism or a toxic social situation like chess.
I agree that HRT makes 'skeletal differences' irrelevant, and that trans in sports is a non issue after the accepted window of HRT.
However, women's and men's sport is simply different. Fencing, well, perhaps there's less advantage for men, but it's still notable. I don't know much about fencing. I mean, I'm speaking anecdotally as you are but I knew a team GB fencer (I don't think she made international in the end, but still de facto one of the top womens fencers in the country/world), and the Chinese guys who also went to fencing all used to brag about beating her in straight sets (or whatever the scoring system is) Then there was a guy who was 6'6 by age 14 who would beat her too, but accounted for size difference there's not much anyone the size of the women's fencer could do in that scenario against the huge reach discrepancy.
Outside of fencing, in every other sport I've played, strength makes a huge difference. Any sport with a level of direct contact becomes unfeasible. Again, I have known multiple international rugby players of both genders. On the school fields at break time sometimes the girls would come and play touch rugby. At age 18, I, as a 3rd string player for my school team, could essentially score a limitless amount of tries against women who have since played at international level, in one of the best women's sides in the world. I was just faster, and able to switch directions a split second quicker due to strength. Of course, Portia Woodman would put me in the dirt, but then put Woodman against Alesana Tuilagi and see what happens.
Same goes for swimming. Up til age 12 this tall girl in my year would demolish everyone at breaststroke. I was level pegging in front crawl. By age 14, we both go to regional swimming competitions, having both trained for it equal amounts, and her times that she made podium with were not comparable even to anyone in my heats.
Testosterone is just a different animal. It's kind of insane.
The only sports, aside from events with a mental rather than physical focus, that women consistently compete and beat men in are ultra long distance marathons.
all competitive sports should be banned because competitive sports are dumb. Which is
admittedly a neanderthal take.a correct and good takeSo play sports with your friends for fun. This shit where people care about the outcome of strangers playing games is weird and bad.
This is a really lazy and dismissive argument so I'm not sure why I'm bothering to write a full response.
I watch sports for the community aspect and because it's enjoyable to watch anything performed on a high enough level.
When I watch a professional game I see the clash of competing styles within that sport, sometimes with radically different approaches to the game. Those styles have decades if not centuries of history that can be traced through different clubs, coaches and individuals.
There's also something fascinating about seeing individuals perform on a level that noone I know ever could and following their journeys across 20-30 year careers.
When it comes to playing sports with my friends for fun, I did, but then I got older and it would take a huge amount of organising to get us on the same field for two hours. We can all watch a match together online though.
I also played esports on a level that could be considered competitive, for money, even if admittedly my own skill level was very mid. Playing 4 day lan events where teams adapt and adjust to each other and a meta develops over each day and then coming out the winner at the end only increased my appreciation and enjoyment of watching people with 100x my ability go through the same process on a much bigger stage with far higher stakes.
I have to ask - do you not enjoy anything that is popular, in a community or with your friends? Should people stop going to concerts because they can go play some instruments with their friends? What about people who love sports but aren't physically able to play? Or the sport is not popular where they live?
So, I enjoy being around my friends, but:
"I have to ask - do you not enjoy anything that is popular, in a community or with your friends"
Apparently not. My vibes are usually wishing I was at home with a few friends and drinks chatting about something inane. I go to concerts and theatre etc as a social activity to support my friends on stage, and I go to events to help with set up, but every time I watch people competitively play video games I think "why am I not playing this video game with my friends"? Also, concerts and public attendance events are loud.
I feel like I'm the odd one out though.
Why do you watch movies or listen to music instead of doing it yourself
It's not a neanderthal take because the neanderthals probably did competitive sports as well
So what's a better response besides, "who cares?"
Down with cis :3
Olympics famously bans people for having like high testosterone, specifically black and brown people. Its like old school racism and misogyny of course. Going by the whole oh "Man naturally strong, high testosterone woman weak low testosterone" is very ignorant and also pretty specifically discriminatory towards intersex folk too.
But yeah of course people might not even listen all the above stuff.
The bottomline is that its pretty much excluding people from sports or any other thing by some rigid eugenicist beliefs.
Other than all that I don't know. Anyone saying X sport used to be good until they allowed people who are gay or trans players is just trying be hateful. They want to target and push people to corners. Its not the sanctity of the game or whatever its plain hatred. When this gets to an international level it of course becomes exclusionary of any third world people as I mentioned above.
Its whites only with a different branding.
I hope someone adds to my comment, because I looked into the science part of this a while back and got no clearcut answer, and I'll explain why.
The key question is what is the point of anything. What is the point of a woman's division, and why do trans women threaten that point. Does it matter if trans women would do slightly better than if they competed as untransitioned men, even though trans women are less than 2% of women?
You can't really win with science against the pseudo-science, because it all depends on bigger societal questions for which there aren't objective metrics.
The main arguments they usually use is around trans athletes crowding out cis woman athletes. If an unremarkable male-presenting athlete can become the best woman in the world at a sport, then trans women would crowd out cis women from sport and maybe discourage cis women's participation in sport.
A common point is to imagine an epidemic of mediocre male athletes transitioning to women, where they then steal sponsorship money from cis women. This framing already presupposes a lot of things that are hard to dissect. Like why is it less legitimate for a trans woman to win, why is it stealing? If this is an issue, are there even enough trans women athletes to skew results that much? If it is okay, would it still be okay if every sport's record was held by a trans woman?
The IOC always had arbitrarily decided hormone ranges you needed to be within for at least a few years in order to compete. There hasn't been a transwoman who dominated in anything enough for anyone to have an undeniable argument around adjusting the IOC rules, but they'll pull up random trans people in random sports because there aren't that many trans people in sport.
In some measurements, trans woman lose basically all physical advantages, in others, they retain some advantage even if they aren't anywhere close to the ability they had while male-presenting. The main hypothesis they use is that male puberty is too big of an advantage in most sports even after transitioning later.
To make a definitive statement either way, you'd need to find enough athletes who transition as adults and compare performance percentiles, and maybe how far off the man vs woman records they are after transition. Or have a clearer case of an unremarkable male athlete becoming a remarkable woman athlete.
The most controversial case was that New Zealand weightlifter who used to weightlift as a male junior, quit for a few years, then came back competing as a woman at a pretty old age for weightlifting.
You can't really argue science because on the one hand she didn't win and dominate, and on the other she seems to have placed better as an old woman than as a man in the junior competition (I couldn't find exact records, but she only held the Jr Male New Zealand record, not the Commonwealth games overall Jr Male record).
It all comes down to values and judgment instead of "objectively all world records would be held by trans women" or "objectively every trans woman athlete would place the exact same on hormones that they did as a man".
What is the point of a woman's division
There are three reasons people will tell you:
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To allow people with endocrine systems not dominated by testosterone to play in a sport where testosterone has a large effect on one's capability (or, as the cis would word it: to let women play in a game where men are better)
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To allow women to play in a sport without getting harassed by men
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To foster female athletes in a sport where men have had decades or centuries of institutional advantage
OK so to the first point, the issue with this is cis people often don't know what they're talking about. For instance, the boxing federation insists on sex chromosomes which has next to nothing to do with secondary sex characteristics. But by now most sports realize it's the hormones that matter. Now, the point of professional sports it seems is to be really good at a sport and break records. People love it when athletes break records, and especially love it when they break the record a lot. Michael Phelps broke a nearly 50 year record on number of first-place finishes for example. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps still hold a couple records from 15 years ago. Both of their bodies have been studied and had documentaries made about them, and people love to say how genetically lucky they were. So people already accept athletes can be considerably better than anyone else in the world for quite some time. When concern trolling about hormones doesn't work, sports federations who want to ban trans women claim that all trans women athletes will basically instantly be Usain Bolts and Michael Phelps of women's sports. Unfortunately for them, the only female transgender athlete I know of sucked. Another tactic I've seen say World Aquatics use is claiming that sex hormones irreversibly change your bone structure, giving you an unnatural advantage. This is just completely ridiculous. I have seen plenty of cissexual women stockier than me who would be allowed to participate. The actual reason is cissexism: cissexual bodies are natural and allowed; transsexual bodies are unnatural and must be banned and ridiculed.
For the second point, this is plain sexism. Such federations would rather keep their money-making sex pests in rather than foster a safe atmosphere.
The third point is also blatantly incorrect. Skeet shooting used to be integrated. A Chinese woman named Zhang Shan won in 1992. After winning, women were banned from the sport for the 1996 Olympics. Since then it's been segregated. There is a similar story in baseball in the United States. During a minor league baseball game in 1931, female pitcher Jackie Mitchell struck out baseball legends Babe Routh and Lou Gehrig at the age of 17. The day after, the baseball commissioner banned women from the sport. So the actual reason is to obfuscate sex - to make it seem like there are sex differences when there are not. That is, to reinforce patriarchal logic. Interestingly, in their trans-inclusive transgender policy, the ISSF literally admits there is no real reason to segregate by sex. If this third argument was genuine, we would be seeing a move towards integration rather than segregation, and a focus in athletic sciences towards improving female fitness.
The main hypothesis they use is that male puberty is too big of an advantage in most sports even after transitioning later.
Did you know World Aquatics bans all trans women who have had testosterone-based puberty past Tanner 2 after the age of 12, but allows detransitioned women to have been on testosterone for 364 days? I call it the most TERF-coded sports federation.
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ultimately I don't give a fuck about competitive sports so my analysis usually ends up being, all competitive sports should be banned because competitive sports are dumb. Which is admittedly a neanderthal take.
I think this is one of the takes that would fit well in that eugenics IQ bell curve meme.
But following this thread out of a similar interest.
First question is going to be, for Professional Sports, when has this happened?
"When has an openly transgender athlete permanently sat at the number 1 spot with such a wide margin that they were unchallengable, making 100's of millions of dollars in winnings and endorsements as well as being known as worldwide celebrity? I'll wait while you look that up."
The I'd wait to die of old age.
For non-professional sports, I'd default to "Why care?"
Why would having a girl on a boys basketball team be a problem? Can she play? Can she make the cut? Pretty sure in middle/high school sports most places only have so many spots to fill with potential players so there's tryouts and anybody who can't meet some minimum standard doesn't get picked.
Shit, why is it that in middle/high school the girls were only allowed to play softball instead of baseball. Not even saying that the girls needed to be allowed on the boys team, just why the fuck do the girls not get to play baseball, even if its just among the girls?
I'd imagine that the girl who wants to play on the football team as a linebacker, isn't going to be some 110 pound waif. And I've seem some pretty tiny waif-like dudes play as quarterbacks in high school games that usually got at least one broken bone a year every year they played and nobody denied them that constant abuse because they were too physically "effeminate" to take a hit.
The only negative consequence here is people like you who continue to talk complete nonsense regarding trans people's bodies, while having no understanding what transitioning actually does to a person's biology. Trans women who are on HRT do not produce more testosterone than their cis counterpart, so this whole discussion surrounding "male hormones" is getting really tiring.
I was trying to bait the rabid transphobia to the surface for a report but it looks like our mods got it already.
ummm you mean sportsball?
