transgender
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Ignorant passerby here, and genuinely want to change my mind, but how exactly is it fair for a trans person to compete against a biologically female person?
If we go back to the original reason for this sexist devide, it stems from a fundamental biological difference between two genders. How we identify ourselves has little impact on these biological differences no?
Furthermore I was listening to a podcast recently and they were talking about how the greatest female tennisplayer to have ever lived is would be ranked 2 or 3 thousand in a unisex world ranking. Seeing a worldrecord being set by someone working within the confines of the female body is impressive, seeing that same record broken by someone without the same constraints just devalues the other persons achievement.
Two points:
Top-level sports isn't fair. Most famous athletes are outliers in terms of height, weight, muscle mass, etc. Some, like Phelps, have genetic or developmental differences that give them a pretty significant advantage.
I must admit that the legal definition of 'transwoman' varies from country to country. In India, where I live, a person can legally change their gender without any medical intervention, and such people might have a physical advantage over cis-women. But in the vast majority of countries, they have to take hormones and / or do surgical procedures that reshape their body to be more 'feminine'. Once they do that, they have no significant advantage over cis-women.
Equating transgender women with cisgender men is biologically inaccurate.
Biological and genetic differences are always contributing to why some athletes are better than others. Also: the science on trans athlete performance is mixed and unclear.
It's a complicated issue, but I'd sooner reevaluate our attitudes and culture around competitive sports before resorting to creating a lower class of person. Maybe we take these things too seriously.
To expand on this, maybe we just have tiers of competition regardless of gender (like leagues) and people play where the competition is kept even. It might stratify so that there is more mixing of genders in the mid range and trans athletes may also fall into that range (but again: science isn't clear).
The broader issue is discrimination, and if one class of people should be allowed to be singled out and discriminated against.
Isn't that the whole point of women's sports though? To exclude a class of people (men) so that others (women) have a chance to compete on their own?
But maybe that idea itself is flawed. Most high performing long distance runners come from Ethiopia and Kenya, do we create a whites only league?
There are physiological differences contributing to these things too. Why does gender have to be special?
Conversely: why do we segregate men and women for things like chess? There's no difference in ability there.
Maybe those ideas are what's outdated and wrong, and we don't need to erase a certain kind of person. Ignoring that trans people exist isn't as helpful as finding ways to include them