The 'Trans' Issue.

[wrighty]

The whole situation with biological XY males transitioning post-puberty and then competing as females is ridiculous.  For strength/endurance events the difference in performance is such that an averagely good male can out-perform a leading female.  I've just checked - on the concept 2 rower for my age category I could beat the women's world record.  So if next week I call myself Janice and take a couple of testosterone suppressors I could be a world record holder.

[The Phantom]

17 hours ago, The Voice of Reason said:

I offer no comment on the article I am posting below. I dont think it needs any. 
People can make their own minds up.

 

Authorities must act swiftly before women are, once again, victims of male privilege on biggest stages of all – Olympics and Tour de France

OLIVER BROWN

CHIEF SPORTS WRITER

2 May 2023 • 1:34pm

 

The spectacle of Austin Killips, a biological male, winning the women’s Tour of the Gila is the latest expression of a conspiracy of silence that reaches to the summit of global sport. The prevailing view within cycling is that Killips, who at 27 only took up the sport in 2019 before embarking on hormone replacement therapy, should have been nowhere near the peloton in New Mexico, never mind the podium. And yet it happened because, quite simply, nobody at any level had either the gumption or the inclination to stop it.

Tempting as it might be to lambast the Tour of the Gila for allowing Killips to compete, the organisers’ hands were tied. Their event is sanctioned by USA Cycling, who are in turn answerable to the International Cycling Union (UCI), the sport’s world governing body, who have decreed that transgender riders are eligible to enter women’s races so long as they reduce their testosterone beneath 2.5 nanomoles per litre over a two-year period. It is a ludicrous rule, not least because the one perspective it conspicuously neglects is that of the women who lose out.

Last summer, Marion Clignet, France’s former world champion on both the track and the road, presented a survey to the UCI showing that 92 per cent of female riders were opposed to racing against trans women under any circumstances. Still it was not enough for the majority-male UCI committee, who alighted on testosterone suppression as a convenient fudge. And lo and behold, along comes Killips, who has documented hormone treatment in an online blog entitled “Oestro Junkie”, and who now claims an £8,000 prize for winning in the female category, not to mention a bonus as “Queen of the Mountains”.

Killips’ tilt at Tour and Olympics may be next 

A straight line can be drawn between this race in the wilderness of New Mexico and next summer’s Paris Olympics. For few who have followed Killips’ rise have any expectation that the story ends here. Inga Thompson, a three-time Olympic cyclist, considers Killips the favourite for this month’s Joe Martin Stage Race in Arkansas, from where a tilt could begin for both the Tour de France Femmes and a place on the US team at the 2024 Games.

Surely, you might assume, the authorities will step in before then. Surely, the injustice of young Mexican woman Marcela Prieto finishing second at the Tour of the Gila to Killips, a post-puberty male, is so stark and indefensible that it cannot possibly be repeated, least of all on the Olympic stage. But if you thought the UCI were useless on the trans issue, just wait until you meet their colleagues at the International Olympic Committee.

The suits in Lausanne are so asleep at the wheel that at the height of the controversy involving Laurel Hubbard, the New Zealand weightlifter born male and taking the place of a biological female at the Tokyo Games at the age of 43, Dr Richard Budgett, the IOC’s medical director, said: “Everyone agrees that trans women are women.”

Naturally, a great many women agree nothing of the sort. Almost two years on, the reminder of Budgett’s remark still boils Thompson’s blood. “If you’re willing to lie to me about basic biology,” she says, “then you’re willing to lie to me about anything.” With the IOC so rudderless, the question arises as to how many more prizes and how much more money female athletes have to lose before president Thomas Bach intervenes on their behalf.

‘Sport will move from ‘moment’ to ‘moment’ until enough people respect women’s rights’

Killips’ victory has already been framed as a “Lia Thomas moment” for cycling, mirroring the scandal that erupted when Thomas, born male and ranked 554th in men’s 200-yard freestyle swimming in the US, transferred to the female event and won the national collegiate final. As Ross Tucker, the South African sports scientist who played a pivotal role in persuading World Rugby to ban transgender athletes from female competition, put it: “Thanks to the abdication of its leaders, sport will move from ‘moment’ to ‘moment’ until enough people respect women’s rights. Swimming then, cycling now. The only question is whether cycling realises it this time, or does it need more moments?”

Thompson has witnessed enough spinelessness, and seen herself traduced as a transphobe enough times for daring to speak out, to anticipate any noble change of course. But after four years spent fighting the UCI’s policy, she does detect a shift in the atmosphere, a sense that female cyclists are deeply troubled by the Killips situation but dissuaded by both teams and sponsors from breaking cover. “It’s my understanding that just about all the women are unhappy about this, but are forced to go along and be quiet,” she says.

So far, the implicit assumption of cycling’s supine leaders is that women will just stand by and take it as biological males wrest away the glory in what is supposed to be a protected category. But there is a fightback stirring. The sight of Killips atop that podium in the desert could finally be the cue for sport to accept immutable biological reality, and to stop using women as unconsenting pawns in some shameful game of male privilege.

The UCI are notoriously backwards.  

Disc brakes have only recently been sanctioned in road racing, despite them clearly being better and safer.

Road racing bikes have to weigh 7kgs on the basis that anything lighter would not be strong enough.  Modern bikes can be way stronger than steel and be significantly below this.  It led to riders attaching lead weights to their bikes! Safer. 

 

[HeliX]

3 hours ago, wrighty said:

So if next week I call myself Janice and take a couple of testosterone suppressors I could be a world record holder.

Well, no, per World Rowing rules you'd still compete in the men's bracket unless you had a special exemption granted by the Executive Commitee and a testosterone level of less than 2.5nmol/L for 24 months.

Per Olympic/Paralympic/Youth Olympic rowing rules you'd need to have a testosterone level of 5nmol/L or lower for 12 months, and have "Female" be on your passport. You might find that those testosterone levels are rather detrimental to your performance.

[Roxanne]

3 hours ago, wrighty said:

 So if next week I call myself Janice and take a couple of testosterone suppressors I could be a world record holder.

 

9 minutes ago, HeliX said:

Well, no, per World Rowing rules you'd still compete in the men's bracket unless you had a special exemption granted by the Executive Commitee and a testosterone level of less than 2.5nmol/L for 24 months.

Per Olympic/Paralympic/Youth Olympic rowing rules you'd need to have a testosterone level of 5nmol/L or lower for 12 months, and have "Female" be on your passport. You might find that those testosterone levels are rather detrimental to your performance.

But he could still call himself Janice tho, right? 

[HeliX]

3 minutes ago, Roxanne said:

 

But he could still call himself Janice tho, right? 

I almost insist.

[The Voice of Reason]

3 hours ago, HeliX said:

Well, no, per World Rowing rules you'd still compete in the men's bracket unless you had a special exemption granted by the Executive Commitee and a testosterone level of less than 2.5nmol/L for 24 months.

Per Olympic/Paralympic/Youth Olympic rowing rules you'd need to have a testosterone level of 5nmol/L or lower for 12 months, and have "Female" be on your passport. You might find that those testosterone levels are rather detrimental to your performance.

Or you might find that they are not. That’s a ridiculous argument.

You can fuck about all you like with testerone levels, special exemptions,even what your passport says.
If you were born male you have an inbuilt advantage as a rower over those born female.

Its cheating pure and simple. It means that women rowers are cheated out of medals and any prize money that may be on offer.

I find it hard to understand how you can justify that.

If you were born a man but think you are a woman, yes dress as a woman, act like a woman, have surgery if you want ( nobody should have a problem with that) but don’t use that to cheat those who were born women and compete in that class.

[HeliX]

16 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Or you might find that they are not. That’s a ridiculous argument.

You can fuck about all you like with testerone levels, special exemptions,even what your passport says.
If you were born male you have an inbuilt advantage as a rower over those born female.

Its cheating pure and simple. It means that women rowers are cheated out of medals and any prize money that may be on offer.

I find it hard to understand how you can justify that.

If you were born a man but think you are a woman, yes dress as a woman, act like a woman, have surgery if you want ( nobody should have a problem with that) but don’t use that to cheat those who were born women and compete in that class.

The effects of testosterone suppression on athletic ability are pretty well documented.

Whether it's enough of a diminishing of ability to be "fair" is really not something I am qualified to state, so I'll leave it to the various athletic boards who's jobs it is to regulate the fairness of sports.

Though most sports are innately unfair.

[Passing Time]

[HeliX]

1 minute ago, Passing Time said:

Certainly if your goal is having the highest chance of your kid killing themselves this is probably the right approach.

https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/

[AcousticallyChallenged]

On 5/3/2023 at 10:38 PM, The Voice of Reason said:

Or you might find that they are not. That’s a ridiculous argument

A disproportionate number of elite female athletes have Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

One of the side effects of it is increased testosterone production.

You can be born a woman and still be disqualified for your testosterone levels, as higher levels may confer an unfair advantage. It doesn’t just impact muscle mass or bone density, it even alters how your red blood cells carry oxygen around. 

What’s telling is you can order estrogen online and get it delivered in the post. I know trans women who resort to such means. 

Testosterone on the other hand is a class C controlled drug. So if you’re a trans man, you’d be risking prison to do the same. 

[The Phantom]

On 5/3/2023 at 3:15 PM, wrighty said:

So if next week I call myself Janice and take a couple of testosterone suppressors I could be a world record holder.

 

On 5/3/2023 at 6:38 PM, HeliX said:

Well, no, per World Rowing rules you'd still compete in the men's bracket

He could compete in Women's Powerlifting just by self determining. 

 

On 5/2/2023 at 12:34 AM, Ghost Ship said:

It doesn't need to be either "all" or "that many", does it?  (And it's irrelevant whether it sells papers or not).

The problem in the sporting arena remains the simple one of biological males competing in women's sports events and pretending that they do so on equal terms and that they do not have an unfair advantage over biological women:

Austin Killips: Transgender cyclist’s win prompts fresh criticism (thetimes.co.uk)

I believe that in the race in which they won the 40-44 age classification, Lingwood also finished 5th overall and Austin Killips finished 3rd overall.  So that's two biological males in the top five of the US women's cyclocross championships.

 

Don't actually know if this is correct or not, but if it is it highlights the downside that allowing biological men to compete against women discourages women from taking part...

Coach on Twitter: "This 👇🏻it’s already happening. Women have dropped out of indoor rowing competitions because they come up against males time and again. TEN British and THREE World Indoor Rowing Women’s records are held by males. @Telegraph @WomensSport" / Twitter

 

UCI have issued a statement that they are reviewing their policy.  Looks like something along the lines of if you went through male puberty, you'll not be allowed to race at elite women's level. 

[wrighty]

32 minutes ago, The Phantom said:

 

He could compete in Women's Powerlifting just by self determining. 

 

Yes, but I can't beat them though.  Getting closer, maybe next year 🙂

[The Phantom]

10 minutes ago, wrighty said:

Yes, but I can't beat them though.  Getting closer, maybe next year 🙂

Keep eating your veggis... 

[HeliX]

1 hour ago, The Phantom said:

He could compete in Women's Powerlifting just by self determining.

USA Powerlifting does not allow MtF to compete.

IPF has the following requirements:

The athlete has declared before competing that her gender identity is female and has
a valid passport bearing a female gender. The declaration cannot be changed, for
competition purposes, for a minimum of four years.
The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been equal
or below 2.4 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) and/or free testosterone equal or below 0.433
nmol/dL (or at or below the upper limit of normal of a particular laboratory reference) for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer
period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation by IPF Medical
Commission (MC), considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time
to minimize any advantage in women’s competition). Further information or laboratory
results may be requested for decision.
The athlete's total testosterone level in serum must remain at or below 2.4 nmol/litre
(nmol/L) and free testosterone at or below 0.433 nmol/L (or at or below the upper limit
of normal of the laboratory reference) throughout the period of desired eligibility to
compete in the female category.
Compliance with these conditions must be monitored by testing at interval as
determined by MC. In the event of non-compliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female
competition is suspended and reapplication for validity to compete in female category
is required.

 

The funniest one for me is the World Athletics rules that show how much of a farce the media storm about the issue is...

[The Phantom]

10 minutes ago, HeliX said:

USA Powerlifting does not allow MtF to compete.

IPF has the following requirements:

The athlete has declared before competing that her gender identity is female and has
a valid passport bearing a female gender. The declaration cannot be changed, for
competition purposes, for a minimum of four years.
The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been equal
or below 2.4 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) and/or free testosterone equal or below 0.433
nmol/dL (or at or below the upper limit of normal of a particular laboratory reference) for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer
period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation by IPF Medical
Commission (MC), considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time
to minimize any advantage in women’s competition). Further information or laboratory
results may be requested for decision.
The athlete's total testosterone level in serum must remain at or below 2.4 nmol/litre
(nmol/L) and free testosterone at or below 0.433 nmol/L (or at or below the upper limit
of normal of the laboratory reference) throughout the period of desired eligibility to
compete in the female category.
Compliance with these conditions must be monitored by testing at interval as
determined by MC. In the event of non-compliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female
competition is suspended and reapplication for validity to compete in female category
is required.

 

The funniest one for me is the World Athletics rules that show how much of a farce the media storm about the issue is...

Sorry, Canadian Powerlifting.