A trans female treated with testosterone suppression medication may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment.
this is from the NCAA transgender policy
1 Like
Maybe one issue here is the pressure on young swimmers and other athletes, tied to admission and scholarships. Very few benefit but it seems many young people spend many hours a week in order to get those few fractions of a second.
Of course, violinists spend hours practicing every day, so this isn’t limited to sports. But only sports makes for a specific admission category at, say, Harvard, and athletes with the highest ratings have high admission rates. Does this need to change? Should sports go in the general EC category along with music, newspaper editor, and volunteering?
1 Like
Blockquote
The unintended consequences of height and weight, especially in woman’s sports
Blockquote
I don’t understand.
She’s not, but should she be more important? Do non-trans women have a right to compete against those of their “sex” or must they compete against those of their “gender?”
Why separate athletic competitions by sex or gender at all? The obvious answer is that individuals born with what was traditionally considered to be female bodies would have no chance at all if forced to compete at the highest levels against individuals who were born with what was traditionally considered to be male bodies.
It comes down to fairness.
10 Likes
How does the equation change for a sport like rugby/wrestling? Now the records aren’t in danger, but the safety of the players when there are biological/physical differences. It’s one thing for the women to miss a spot on a DIV 1 team, or to see their records fall, it’s another to have to compete in a physical match of strength and size.
5 Likes
The practice of “cutting weight” for sports is a physically demanding and dangerous process, made more difficult for women due to monthly cycles that include water retention. Women can not simply “sweat it out” in the same way that men can. As noted across this thread, there are physical differences.
The last thing we need to add to a teenager attempting to compete in sports is the establishment of “zones” where they can gain (or lose) competitiveness based on eating healthy and building strength…versus starving themselves and risking their health. Ask any high-school wrestler about weight cutting…it’s no fun.
There are also the psychological issues…and lord knows we don’t need to add any more optics to body image, weight, and appearance. We need to find ways to lessen the pressure on kids…not create more in the name of “fairness”.
2 Likes
USA rugby follows the IOC standard, so trans women must have had and maintain testosterone levels in-line with normal female testosterone levels to be eligible to play. This practice generally cuts their body mass and strength down significantly. World Rugby bars trans women, but their reasoning is quite controversial. Here is an interview that discusses it:
As for wrestling, it is by weight class, and there have been female wrestlers who have been pretty successful against boys, so I am not sure that a trans female would have much of an advantage, particularly if there was a IOC style testosterone protocol in place.
Time to redefine the sport.
Outdated. Not keeping up with societal changes.
2 Likes
Running has existed as a sport for over 5000 years. Why would it, or swimming, be redefined if they work for 99.9% of the population?
5 Likes
Running and swimming will probably survive. As for the rules about who could participate, those have been repeatedly redefined over the years. For just a few examples . . .
- There was no Women’s Olympic Marathon event until 1984.
- There was no Women’s Olympic Track and Field until 1928.
- Women’s Olympic Swimming was added in 1912, but there were no women from the United States, because they were not allowed to compete in events in which they could not wear a long skirt.
2 Likes
But I was talking of height.
You can’t really grow or shrink your height, right?
It seems to me someone who is taller has an advantage in swimming, in a way age or school (middle v. High) doesn’t necessarily reflect. And it doesn’t distinguish between girls or women based on gender status.
"NCAA1 swimming under 6’ “and NCAA1 swimming over 6’”, for instance (or whatever cut off makes sense to swimming experts).
I wasnt aware of “weight cutting” in wrestling. It sounds dreadful. Why isn’t there a small margin of tolerance for teens on the threshold between 2 levels?
Thanks for that information.
On the teen level in a sport such as wrestling, there are over a dozen weight classes, commonly at around eight pounds of separation. If each of these classes had an added tolerance, then wrestlers who are tempted to reduce weight to reach a lower class would continue to do so. In some cases, this then would be to the next lower weight class than they realistically would have been able to consider previously.
Thanks for the explanation. 
It sounds terrible to me.
Back in October, I competed in a weightlifting event which has weight classes. One of the competitors, who I know quite well, went through a big weight cut, including a stint in the sauna the morning of the event, just to get under the weight limit of next lower weight class.
He wanted to set a national record for that particular (lower) weight class, since those same lift numbers wouldn’t have set any records at his typical competitive weight class. He “made weight,” but the only problem was that he looked deathly ill the day of the event, a shell of himself really, and couldn’t perform to his usual standard.
I wouldn’t wish that process on anyone, let alone a school-aged youth.
Spending hours jumping rope while wearing a rubber suit in the “hot box” wrestling room in HS was not a lot of fun.
1 Like
The last comment noticeably veering off course… Google MMA and Cutting Weight. People are dying from this, yet mixed in with the deaths are programs telling athletes how to do it . The weight cutting is as brutal as the fighting.
I’m sorry. I was going to stay out of this, but you’re doubling down on one argument and bringing in another. In each case, you are working way too hard, which is usually a sign that you should revisit your argument.
One, it’s not up to you to decide what should motivate people to compete. And, in fact, I for one, and pretty much anybody else I know, would vehemently disagree with your stated version of the proper motivation. Winning, achieving, scholarships, records, why not? Did Jesse Owens not compete “for the right reasons” when he broke or equaled several world records in one day? That was a long time ago and we all still know about it. I just think this is way off base.
But the analogy to racists not wanting black athletes to compete is even more concerning. The reason that black men were limited from competing with whites in sports was segregation and racism. That there were also concerns about them being too competitive is tied closely to the racism that was at the heart of the issue: those people thought black men were something “other”. That they weren’t the same.
Of course, they were wrong. And perhaps the most important distinction is that those black men were black men, and they were who they were by accident of birth, not by choice.
Sorry guys. I have three girls, all athletes. Testosterone is a game changer. That’s why Ben Johnson, with just a little more of it in his system, went from a bronze medalist at best to a guy who moved the evolutionary need in terms of 100 meter times. Most people in the track world where I come from firmly believe Flo Jo was juicing, and her 10.4+ 100 meter time wouldn’t get her to the NCAAs in division 1, much less win, much less compete at all on the world circuit or Olympics. A man who runs 10.4 in the 100 meters is fast but you’ll never know who he is because they’re a dime a dozen. Come on.
11 Likes
Change “black men” to “trans women” and the statement does a pretty good job of describing the current discussion, doesn’t it?
So why not classify athletes by testosterone levels instead of sticking with the current system?
Classifying by current testosterone levels alone doesn’t address all the physical advantages decades of testosterone confer to trans women athletes. There are advantages that hormone tinkering can’t undo. Sports organizations may like the idea of guidelines or rules based on testosterone levels because it’s a specific number and therefore “easy” to monitor but it doesn’t address the real issues.
6 Likes