One of my high school students came in ranting/raving about Biden allowing trans people to participate in the sports event of the gender they identify as (rural Iowa hellworld). I wanted to challenge him in a way that would make him think about it but I have to admit I'm not educated in the topic. Any tips on handling this?
Thanks in advance!
This "debate" is usually framed in the context of "biological advantage" because it is true that top male athletes have an advantage over top female athletes so they believe that trans women (who are assigned male at birth) will have an advantage over cis women. However most top competitive sports (like the Olympics) have rules requiring the trans person to be on hrt for some time. Trans women who have been on hrt for a few years really have no biological advantage over cis women. Now some might resort to arguing that hrt does nothing to bone length (which is mostly true for trans women who started hrt after puberty) but then you don't see them complaining that a cis person is being unfair because they were born with longer legs or anything like that. Furthermore the concern trolls seem to only come out whenever a trans person wins any event and they forget the times that trans athletes finish in 4th, 5th, etc. so they seem to only think it's "fair" when a trans person loses.
You can also ask them to name a top female athlete. Chances are they will be a cis woman (or they can't do it because none of them give a shit about women's sports unless they can use it to hate trans people.) If trans women really were dominating then they should have disproportionate representation which is not the case.
Outside the top competitive events it gets really silly, like are you going to foam at the mouth because some local recreational league lets people of all genders participate? While it is true that top male athletes outperform top female athletes, there is a lot more variation in an "average" person so it's really dumb to assume that a trans woman always has a "biological" advantage over a cis woman.
At the end of the day, if you care about "biological advantage" so much, then you should be advocating for more resources for young trans people (like puberty blockers) so they never have to go through the wrong puberty to begin with (and suffer a lot less dysphoria) but these people who yell about biological advantage never cared about trans people to begin with.
Plus in elite sports the best are biological freaks anyway. Michael Phelps wouldn't be Phelps if his lung capacity wasn't 7 liters instead of the average of 5l.
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Phelps has those too. Plus freakishly large hands, freakishly large wingspan, freakishly flexible ankles. Human variability is something amazing when you think about it.
This is extremely helpful, thank you!!
Do you know a good resource for learning more about this kind of physiology as it pertains to gender and hormones and all that. It sounds interesting and I know one particularly shitty guy who is one of these "oh yeah prove it" types
The other person posted some good links to get started with
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1091417/ioc-guidelines-transgender-tokyo-2020 https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/Transgender_Handbook_2011_Final.pdf https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/race-times-for-transgender-athletes?category_id=common-ground-publishing https://www.amazon.com/Sporting-Gender-Transgender-Intersex-Athletes/dp/1538112965?ascsubtag=[]vx[e]21096726[t]w[d]D.
But keep in mind most of the people who debate this are concern trolls because this issue looks "debateable" on the surface.
Thank you. And yeah the most I engage with dicks like him is to either call him out on shit or at most shoot him a text with a link or something. You get to a point where you develop a pretty good bullshit detector for if someone is worth your time.
A big one these people bring up is that one UFC fighter that Joe Rogan made a big fuss about. Any thoughts about that specific case?
I don't know too much about that to comment but I did see it mentioned elsewhere in this thread.