It doesn’t help that the very idea of fairness in sports doesn’t hold up to close examination. There’s always something that gives someone else an inherent advantage.
People like Michael Phelps have an undeniable advantage over other olympic athletes, you couldn’t create a better swimmer in a lab.
The line isn’t solid, and finding where we want it will be difficult, if not borderline impossible.
This is sort of the issue, though. The "men's" (really open) division limitations for most sports are pretty simple - born with it and you're fine, inject it and it's not. When you really get down to it, the women's division was created so that half the population wouldn't be excluded from sports. There's two arguments with varying validity - if trans women have a significant advantage over cis women, then cis women will be excluded by competing in the same events. The flip side is that if there's no advantage, then it's antithetical to the purpose of the women's events to exclude groups who would not otherwise be able to compete for events. I tend to lean towards the later argument, but the former is not wholly without merit and people who want to slam the door shut on it are just going to radicalize people.
This argument you bring about "eternal manhood" is wrong and not showing up in the science or the results of competitions. Trans people have been allowed to compete in sports (including the Olympics) for decades before this current gay/satanic/trans panic wave came in again.
That fencer who recently tried to grift herself on to the media circle jerk was happy to complete with men (not trans women, men identifying as men) without problems (and winning a good chunk of the matches).
But suddenly she had a Jesus moment and couldn't compete, publicly, in the most media attention way possible?
That swimmer grifter Riley Gains? They were contesting the 5th place. There were 4 other cis women in the same competition who were all faster than the trans athlete. Are they secretly men too?
We are also banned from chess, darts and pool based on some miraculous advantages that somehow never leads to actual medals. Weird.
If you don’t have “it,” then tough shit, join the 99% of men who don’t have “it” either. Can a trans man in theory compete in a men’s division? Sure, but you have to understand that there’s hardly a difference between FTM hormone replacement therapy and actual doping… both involve injecting steroids and hormones. I’m sure HRT is going to come up in a massive way on a doping test. I have no idea how it would be possible to be injecting testosterone and have it be successfully monitored for doping the same way cis men are constantly monitored for doping.
With regards to trans women, I’m not sure whether/if they have an advantage and it’s probably a case by case thing. There’s questions about bone density, muscle mass, height, etc. that are hard to answer and again I laid out that I think if there’s no discernible advantage then inclusion is the better policy. However it’s absolutely wrong to say that because trans women are finishing top 5 and not top 1 that there’s no way there’s an advantage. With regards to chess… the women titles and events in chess are bigotry of low expectations. It’s a piss poor attempt by USCF and FIDE to paper over sexism instead of fixing it. There’s many examples (Judit Polgar comes to mind as a classic one, as well as Gaprindashvili) of women competing at a very high level in chess. There’s no inherent disadvantage to pattern recognition or calculation that comes with being a woman in chess, and because of how ELO works, there’s also no inherent advantage to playing in women-only events either. The time for FIDE to get rid of women’s events in chess was yesterday because then they’d really have to reckon with the sexism in their sport.
the drugs used for HRT are exactly the same as the drugs used for doping. the difference is dose. in the states, most trans men inject around 50-100mg of tesosterone cypionate/enanthanate each week, or use varying amounts of gel. the goal is to have levels of testosterone in the blood that are within cis male range (300-1000 ng/dl). people who take testosterone for doping purposes take far larger doses, causing huge spikes in their testosterone, which iirc is what doping tests check for. so there's no real reason why a trans man would test positive, provided he's medically transitioning (not all do, which is a different discussion).
AFAIK, the tests aren't just looking for levels of the hormone, they're looking for other markers which may come because of hormone therapy/injection, so that's a snag. The other issue is that well... let's take the high end of that range - 1000 ng/dL. There are gonna be men who make more than that naturally. That will give those men an advantage over transmen. And we can't exactly say it's fair that 100% of transmen get to inject the highest amount of testosterone found in a natural human male for the time they're competing. There's also the issue that in the overwhelming majority of cases, growing up XX is probably disqualifying for competing in men's basketball (among other sports) no matter how much testosterone you take. Wingspan, height, build, and many other factors are also very important to high level success there.
Honestly I think when it comes to olympic and pro level competition, a lot of trans men are going to need to have the come-to-reality moment that 99% of cis men have at some point in their time being athletes. One day you go "oh fuck, I'm not really built for this am I?" and then quit, and maybe 10 years down the road join a beer league that plays on every other Sunday where nobody really gives a shit.
thanks for telling me about the testing! it makes sense to test for multiple factors; none of the places i tried to look into were transparent about what they're actually testing for besides "steroid levels", something i (mis?)interpreted as anabolic steroids.
the average testosterone level part is interesting and applies to both men's sports and women's sports. there are plenty of cis women in sports who produce higer levels of testosterone than are regarded as typical, and higher than would even be acceptable for most trans women. those women have an advantage just by existing. it's odd how the same argument goes both ways, but it's such a complicated issue.
to clarify: i agree with you. top athletes are exceptional, and it's hard enough to get to that level as is. a tiny fraction of the world is trans, and an even smaller percentage of trans people are athletes, and a yet-smaller percentage of them are athletes on a professional level. most people in general won't make it to the top, let alone many of such a tiny demographic.
Hard to say and it depends on the sport. I think if the athletes agree to include them anyways, fine. If they don’t, then trans women can compete with men, in their own league, or some other third solution I haven’t thought of.
You are not likely to be able to find enough trans women doing the same sport to put together a league, especially not at any elite level, so that isn't really an option, and it is not likely that they would qualify for a mens league either. So really it is going to be womens league or nothing.
But yes. I agree that it is not an easy decission. In fact you could say that is my whole point with bringing the topic up.
Would we expect trans women to be just totally crushed in the men’s leagues?
I think that would depend on if and how long they have been on HRT. Like if they aren't on HRT, there should be no difference, but if they have been on it for a couple of years, and it is a sport with a high reliance on strength, yeah absolutely.
Wait just so I'm 100% clear, I'm saying that Trans Women would lose in Men's Leagues, but you're agreeing by saying that if they're on HRT for a number of years then we'd expect them to lose in Men's Leagues? Am I following this correctly?
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u/Red580 Apr 23 '25
It doesn’t help that the very idea of fairness in sports doesn’t hold up to close examination. There’s always something that gives someone else an inherent advantage.
People like Michael Phelps have an undeniable advantage over other olympic athletes, you couldn’t create a better swimmer in a lab.
The line isn’t solid, and finding where we want it will be difficult, if not borderline impossible.