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.
Fuck this. Sports are games, they shouldn’t be taken this seriously. Like, for example, Micheal Phelps has webbed feet and freaky monster lungs but nobody’s banned him from swimming events for that. Every human is different, people need to fucking accept that sports can never be totally fair and realize that’s not what this is about.
By this logic, we should all go back to open division sports, which is what historically led to a de facto exclusion of women from all sports because, unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them were unable to be competitive in divisions that had men in them.
Most sports actually have an open division. People tend to just call it the men’s division since, as you point out, women get completely zoned out by men in sports. High school boys dominate leader boards when compared to Olympian women.
While I won’t deny there is a biological difference that impacts performance there’s also a systemic societal difference that doesn’t help.
In general women are not given the same support, whether from family, schools, coaches, research or funding, to become top athletes.
It’s certainly much better that it has been in the past now days and it’s getting better, but even just people saying “women aren’t as good as men” is something that sinks into the psyche of women who want to compete.
It’s akin to men from poorer nations who can’t afford resources, time and training, having a hard time competing against “richer” nations who invest more into it
How about adding a third category instead: a free for all category where all genders are welcome to compete and can use as much steroid as they want.
While I think people should be allowed to do anything they want with their bodies, I understand that sports leagues don’t want the athletes to push boundaries and destroy their bodies with stupid amounts of steroids.
I think that gender specific leagues need to go the way of the dodo but while they’re here they’re essentially weight/strength classes and most transwomen are more fairly matched against AMAB men than AFAB women.
Ideally, we could just realize that having multiple league levels based on body type would be much more equitable.
Source?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289906/
And backing up your claim, thank you!
I just want you to know that the study that was posted is trash. Here’s link to a comment on that same study by 3 professors from the same journal https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-023-01928-8
And here’s a quick TL;DR from the conclusion of the comment on the study is that the original study’s scientific basis is dubious at best, it hasn’t been properly peer reviewed, despite not being properly peer reviewed this article is being shared and used as a basis for shaping policies.
That doesn’t surprise me, but I wasn’t aware of that. Thanks!
No worries at all. I know this is a really sensitive subject and it’ll basically require a change in how we view sports leagues and gender to resolve.
Not only do I think this study is complete non-sense, but 3 other professors at the same journal published their comments and concerns with this study and how it’s being spread around as though it’s fact when in truth, the “science” in it is rubbish.
Here’s a link to the article in PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37726582/
PubMed unfortunately doesn’t have a transcript, but you can read the transcript here (or click on the link next to DOI in PubMed that I linked above): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-023-01928-8
Here’s TL;DR from the conclusion of the comment on the study is that the original study’s scientific basis is dubious at best, it hasn’t been properly peer reviewed, despite not being properly peer reviewed this article is being shared and used as a basis for shaping policies.
And besides, even if the original study were true, wouldn’t transgender athletes would be winning at a rate higher than their prevalence in sports? Considering about 1% of people are transgender, they should win 1% of the time, but that doesn’t happen, because any advantage is entirely fictitious.
And even if there was an advantage, there are lots of people who have a biological advantage. That’s just a part of sports that’s impossible to eliminate because we’re not all robots running on the exact same hardware and software.
You aren’t factoring in how many people win as a %. Only like .01% of people compete at the top level of sports, if 1% of people are Trans it’s going to take a while to actually hit someone that is both talented enough to be relevant and trans.
It really depends on the sport imo. Trans women may retain some more muscle and some parts of the skeleton are largely unaffected, but muscle elasticity, hip rotation, flexibility, and endurance all end up being more dependent on hormones than birth sex in the long term. How much these things matter varies a lot from sport to sport, and the current system is not sufficient to balance these traits even among people of the same sex. Multiple leagues based on broad body types sounds reasonable, but I have no idea how complicated the rules would have to be to make it completely fair, given we already accept a great deal of unfairness currently.
I’d look to wrestling as an example - it manages to have several leagues of weight classes that participate… but yea, it’d be a pretty big change.
As a trans woman who works out but doesn’t really do sports because people make them suck, I have to say that I don’t think that study is correct based of my experiences. Trans women often have lower testosterone than cis women after being on hrt for a while (2 years max typically, but it can be sooner). When I started hrt, literally only about 2 weeks later I noticed massive muscle atrophy and I literally couldn’t even help my father move heavy furniture that I doubt I would have had a problem with before. After that I decided to start lifting and it’s been a few months since then I am still not as strong as I used to be.
Petite women compete against tall women all the time though
That’s why I think weight/strength classes are the way to go - we arbitrarily divide sports in half by gender and it makes most body types uncompetitive.
The problem is that there’s too much money on the line. If certain performance enhancing drugs (like testosterone) are allowed, every athlete will be required to take them if they want to compete at the highest level. Athletes are known to favor short-term gains over long-term health consequences, and they’re pressured by their environment to do so as well.
Capitalism ruining good things, as always. In the case of trans men on testosterone, though, who cares? I feel like that just levels the playing field for them generally. And as a trans woman? Estrogen has fucked up my body’s ability to build muscle if anything. These arguments all boil down to excuses.
Even on estrogen, the power level is nowhere near equal to born women. I personally think that the only fair solution is to have separate trans divisions, but there’s the question whether there are enough contenders for that. Even women often have problems, I know a kickboxing slender woman who constantly complains about not being able to find competitors and always having to compete at a severe disadvantage.
Says who? Why segregate sports in the first place? Why can’t they just exist for the sole purpose of fun? Does it really matter if trans people have a advantage? Are you that afraid of trans people succeeding? Is any of this really enough to justify dehumanizing trans+intersex people and shunting them out of another public space?
Why is it dehumanizing to have a separate division? Is it dehumanizing for women to have a separate division?
You can do sports for fun, but not the one with the money behind it. The one without the money behind it is not the one you can see in broadcasts, it happens elsewhere. Because broadcasts cost money, and so those are interlinked.
So, the whole topic is only about the one with the money behind it, aka the one not done for fun.
Because trans people are their gender, and because intersex and nonbinary people exist too and we all deserve to have access to the same opportunities as others. That means the big, televised sports too. Gendered divisions don’t give cis women a fair chance at a national platform either, comparatively and oftentimes unduly sexualize the players. If you want any given game to be fair every single team should have a certain distribution among height/weight classes if not among genders as well. There is no reason I see most sports can’t be coed either if this is practiced. It’s almost like it was never about fairness in the first place… 🤔
I couldn’t agree more. The one thing “SPORTS” means is, everybody gets to particpate. EVERYBODY. That’s what the word “sports” means. It does not mean only the people are are “straight” get to play. Or only the people who are the physically strongest. It is about interest in participating and having opportunities for everyone to be able to play regardless of their sexual or gender identity.
I never said otherwise.
That works for a team sport, but what about sport for a single person, like kickboxing/grappling/tennis/etc?
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Oh I’m american I barely know what cricket is tbqh. I just hate how people like me are being discriminated against and excluded from healthy, mainstream pursuits like this especially. Pretty much the holy grail of trans representation because it’s the most dangerous-to-conservative-sensibilities kind of visibility we could have. Like, gods forbid fit trans people do something so normal on TV
Women should be allowed to compete in women’s leagues. There could be some argument if the sport gave heavy advantage to people who had high testosterone during their teens, but that is not the case in cricket. This shouldn’t be a discussion.
Not sure how familiar you are with the sport but the fastest bowled delivery in the men’s game is over 100mph. In the women’s game the fastest is just over 80mph.
Couple that with the fact that women have slower reaction times (men’s are faster although some may argue the difference is negligible), and men have greater muscle mass (to hit harder and further), the playing field isn’t exactly level.
Not sure if you’re familiar with transition as a concept? Because your uncritical comparing men to women without even considering that transition might have an effect implies you aren’t.
indeed, I think even the top transfem olympian did not rate compared to the top ‘natural’ (I use that word only to distinguish, not to disparage) women.
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Cricket isn’t on that list. What is the relevance? Genetic differences are significant somewhere else?
And “men who pretend to be women” are not what transgender is about. Saying so is very shitty.
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Damn straight the reason why people play sports is to have fun.
It’s makes me sick these commentators are their hiding transphobia in their “competitive arguments”.
We don’t need to have these invasive requirements to test someone’s hormones just let people play their gender identity. No human deserves to be excluded from having fun when they only got one life.
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