The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
The ultimate reason it’s wrong to ban transgender people from competing in athletics competitions is that the implication is that testosterone can be considered a performance enhancing drug – even if the athlete in question is well within hormonal levels of any other cisgender athlete in the same sport.
If that’s the case, then it opens the door to banning other athletes for exceeding the testosterone limit, and guess what? Cisgender women with African heritage naturally produce more testosterone than the average woman world-wide. So banning transgender athletes leads to potentially banning African women which is obviously racist and wrong to do.
Also, poly cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that affects about 1 in 10 women and a very common side effect of PCOS is elevated testosterone levels. So 1 in 10 women would be banned for medical reasons outside of their control. And banning people for a medical condition is ableist and obviously wrong to do.
And, ultimately, sports aren’t fair. We try to make them equitable by making the rules universal, but biological advantages are just part of sports. If we start banning athletes for hormones, why not ban athletes for being taller than average? Why not ban athletes for having better vision than average? Or better peripheral vision? Or faster reflexes? If only the absolute average, or below average people were allowed to compete then nearly half of all people would be unable to compete.
Plus, the vast majority of athletes say that they don’t want transgender people to be banned from their respective sports.
And not to mention that it’s just rude to exclude transgender athletes, and if it were truly such an advantage to be transgender then why aren’t transgender people winning tournaments left and right? About 1% of people are transgender, so if transgender people are winning 1% of all tournaments then that would mean that they’re exactly on exactly equal footing with their competitors. But I suspect that less than 1% of tournament winners are transgender which means that transgender people are actually at a disadvantage, which again, is fine because sports are inherently unfair as I outlined above.
At the end of the day, transgender athlete bans hurt everyone, and anti-transgender jerks are just making a big stink about it because it sounds reasonable on it’s face to uninformed people and so it’s a good wedge issue to bring up. Anti-transgender people don’t care about the sports they’re “trying to save”, they just hate transgender people and want to see them suffer, and anyone who entertains their non-sense is complicit (probably unknowingly) in that suffering.
So please, those of you who are reasonable, shut down any discussion of transgender sports bans.
IMHO, if fairness is the goal, then categories should be based on performance history alone. People should be competing with others of their class in the sport being played.
If I’m the best at tennis, I want to compete against the other best players, not the other best players with (or without) a peen or some other stupid grouping.
Yeah, something like weight classes in boxing/wrestling/MMA. Brock Lesnar vs Uriah Faber (yes, I haven’t watched MMA in a while) isn’t a good match for multiple reasons: Brock has way more muscle so he can hit a lot harder, but his muscles also make him a lot slower than Uriah who can use quick moves and grapples to his favor.
Women are naturally weaker than men, it’s a fact. A man can change on the surface (physically appearance) after becoming a woman, but his bone structure and ability to build more muscle is still there.
Your language betrays you, I don’t argue with transphobes.
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That study is irrelevant and their findings don’t change anything about my answer. That study could say “African women have more lean muscle mass and are taller than the average athlete” and you wouldn’t be sharing that study around saying that African women shouldn’t be allowed to compete with other athletes because that’s racist and stupid.
And besides, taking an extreme example and comparing it to the average is dishonest. The best way to determine if transgender athletes are actually dominating in sports is their top level tournament wins. As I said, about 1% of people are transgender, so about 1% of tournament winners should be transgender if everything is even. Anything above, means an advantage and anything below means a disadvantage.
So where are all the transgender people absolutely dominating tournaments above the average of transgender prevalence?
You can’t show me that because it doesn’t happen, and even if it did happen, that’s just sports! You simply can’t ban people for a biological advantage in a hobby where biological advantages are literally everywhere. Height, vision, reflexes, agility, intelligence, etc.
Take a note on how the other user responded to my question. You instead responded with hostility, good luck convincing anyone if that’s how you engage with a genuine attempt to discuss the topic
I apologize if you’re not a transphobe, but you reposted a singular study whose findings are trash at best and outright bigotry at worst. I think it’s natural for me to assume you’re a transphobe trying to troll considering I specifically said:
Of course trying to continue the discourse would make me assume that you’re transphobic. You should have been more clear if that’s not the case. Regardless, it shouldn’t take away from my point. Again though, I apologize if you posted it from a perspective of honest discussion, but I hope you understand that this topic is often a target of trolls who seek to muddy the water by “just asking questions” in bad faith.
You don’t get to decide what people can and cannot discuss. And if someone replying was transphobic then maybe responding calmly and rationally would help change their mind. Just calling people transphobes does more to turn people away from your cause than just not replying
You’re just some person on the Internet arguing for the sake of arguing. For trans people these arguments are used to slowly erase our rights. Don’t demand civility from people you help oppres because you were board.
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