This is common sense. The only reason it didn’t happen sooner was folks being bullied to do things out of false claims of “inclusion” that resulted in deep discrimination against, mostly female, athletes.
The segregation of sports was always about sex and not gender. There are simply physical differences between across sexes that makes mixed-sex competition grossly inequitable in most sports. “Gender expression” doesn’t change that and mixing up “gender” and “sex” in sports was a trainwreck that is thankfully now being undone.
This is the right decision.
Exactly. It's impossible to have both inclusion and fair play. We have to pick one, and as a parent of daughters who compete at fairly high levels it's more important to preserve the integrity of women's sports.
Is there not an option to have inclusion at grassroots level and fair play as the level of competition gets higher?
Sure, I guess that's an option for youth sports in the prepubescent age groups. As a practical matter most youth sports leagues and schools aren't going to hassle with sex screening tests for little kids.
But once puberty hits everything changes. My teenage daughter played travel club volleyball on a pretty good team, and during practice they would occasionally run drills with the boys team. Even at that age the difference in hitting power and vertical was enormous, and those differences only grow larger with age. Men and women are literally playing different games. Beyond just fairness, forcing girls to compete against biological males becomes a safety risk due to concussions from taking a ball to the head.
males competing against males are also at risk by taking a ball to the head :).
I think male female trans etc . can compete if analysed by sports branch basis. Male x female in contact sports like karate boxing taekwondo is not fair. However i think the difference is negligible in shooting, archerty, curling etc.
You believe that women are genetically more susceptible to concussions than men are?
https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/2024/09/uneven-playin...
“Women tend to have thinner skulls than men, along with smaller neck muscles, which can predispose female athletes to getting a concussion,” says Sarah Menacho, MD, a neurosurgeon and neurocritical care specialist at University of Utah Health. “Data shows that women are also more likely than men to report concussion-related symptoms, and these symptoms can persist for a longer time period prior to recovery than in male athletes.”
Huh, didn't know that.
Yes. It's not a matter of belief, sex differences in concussion risk have been extensively studied.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sports-concus...
In my experience competing in different things, that's typical: Local organizations are free to set their own local rules, but once you cross over into events that make you eligible for higher level competition they have to strictly abide by the national level rules. I couldn't use my results from grassroots competitions to qualify for national level events, generally.
It’s not even a level thing[0]. I think the physical advantages that come with male puberty are significant even at 14-15.
https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-b...
So, where are the scores and scores of trans athletes dominating women's sports? If this is the sort of problem all the people crowing about it think it to be, we should have women with poorly fitting athletic gear and facial hair all over the place taking golds from ciswomen. We don't.
Like this is literally just fucking with transpeople for nothing and I am wide open for correction on this if anybody can find an actual incident of something of note happening, but until then, it's just weird reactionaries screaming into the void as far as I'm concerned, and the outcomes will be largely the same: more invasive procedures for ciswomen to endure, and excluded athletes who did nothing wrong apart from be who they are.
This is a matter of principle, fair play, and safety. Whether it's a tiny number or "scores and scores" is irrelevant.
If you're looking for specific incidents then start with this site. I can't vouch for it being completely accurate but you can use it as a starting point for further research to educate yourself about the issue.
https://www.shewon.org/
FYI - shewon is entirely self reported and does no verification. It includes events such as local town fair bean bag throwing competitions.
It also classifies a trans person winning anything as ~3 losses since "a non-trans person may have shifted the entire bracket" moving 2nd -> 1st, 3rd -> 2nd etc... The entire site is hypebole and should not be used as a serious reference lol.
> This is a matter of principle, fair play, and safety. Whether it's a tiny number or "scores and scores" is irrelevant.
What if it's 0?
> If you're looking for specific incidents then start with this site.
A deeply unbiased source, I'm sure.
Anyway I'd love to but all their archive links are the same. Looks like someone wrote a for loop incorrectly. But to be blunt, this is the exact same sort of nonsense as VAERS and deserves exactly the same dismissal: Compiled data assembled from the public with no verification, by people with no credentials, with a clear axe to grind.
Edit: Also, a SHIT LOAD of these are for second/third/whatever place, not even for wins. If reality backed the assertions made, transwomen should be DESTROYING women in sports.
There actually does have to be a lot of them, frankly, because otherwise it is just a nothingburger. Just a burger with a whole lot of nothing.
Cmon guy, you can't ask for a source and then dismiss the one provided without critically examining it.
You're complaining that it's using publicly available data? Would you rather private anecdotes?
> Also, a SHIT LOAD of these are for second/third/whatever place, not even for wins.
Not sure why this is relevant - is being cheated out of second place less of a misdeed than being cheated out of first?
Sorry part of my reply got cut off.
> What if it's 0?
It's not 0, and anyone engaging honestly knows it.
To make another vaccine analogy: claiming it's a small number and therefore it doesn't matter is identical to the people who said Covid vaccines weren't important because the disease didn't wipe out more than x% of the population.
In fact, it's because of the vaccines that this is the case.
And it's because of resistance to men in women's sports that the problem is not larger.
> Cmon guy, you can't ask for a source and then dismiss the one provided without critically examining it.
I did examine it. From the outset it looks like self-reported nonsense, hence the comparison to VAERS. Examining further, yes, it's self-reported nonsense, and also it's broken so I can't even really look into it in detail. The one example that is highlighted with sourcing is about a transwoman golfer who won ONE event. One. Looking through her win/loss record, she seems broadly pretty good, but hardly what one would expect if the narrative being pushed here is true.
> You're complaining that it's using publicly available data? Would you rather private anecdotes?
It's literally private anecdotes! Anyone can submit to that thing, the form is one click away from the homepage.
> Not sure why this is relevant - is being cheated out of second place less of a misdeed than being cheated out of first?
Of course not, but again, the narrative is that men are posing as women and competing in an unfair way based on genetic advantage. That's not a "win here and there" situation the way it's framed, that's a "women have no way to fairly compete." So why are so many transwomen still being beated by ciswomen competitors?
> It's not 0, and anyone engaging honestly knows it.
Then let's see a source! I asked for one two comments ago. Even the one on that shithoused website I can actually check the sources FOR is at best, speculative. What exactly in the male genome predisposes one in the context of GOLF for earth shattering victory?
> To make another vaccine analogy: claiming it's a small number and therefore it doesn't matter
I didn't claim it's a small number, I've claimed it's made up.
> is identical to the people who said Covid vaccines weren't important because the disease didn't wipe out more than x% of the population.
> And it's because of resistance to men in women's sports that the problem is not larger.
There are no men in women's sports, there are women in women's sports, and until you show me the source you're, respectfully, talking nonsense.
> the narrative is that men are posing as women and competing in an unfair way based on genetic advantage. That's not a "win here and there" situation the way it's framed, that's a "women have no way to fairly compete." So why are so many transwomen still being beated by ciswomen competitors?
Respectfully, you aren't ready to engage in legitimate discussion on this topic. Good faith would be steelmanning the other side, not continually referring to "the narrative" and then "defeating" it.
> There are no men in women's sports, there are women in women's sports, and until you show me the source you're, respectfully, talking nonsense.
Your consistent euphemization around this topic is another clue that you're really not engaging honestly. You should consider what you're looking to get out of this discussion.
A simple Google search will find you dozens of examples of XY individuals competing in spaces meant for XX individuals, at all levels of competition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Hubbard
I'm not here to spoon feed you this 101 level info. Again, my advice would be to consider why you're engaging here - is it with an open and curious mind, keen on learning; or a zealous propagandist spirit?
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> More important than national security and government integrity, I'm told.
Certainly seems that way for a certain subset of voters. They'd rather lose the election than let women compete against females only.
Is it just a coincidence that all of the people pushing bills regarding women’s sports are also pushing bills to ban healthcare for and visibility of trans people?
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> They'd rather lose the election than let women compete against females only.
Fascinating political analysis. It's weird how a small group of people are deeply driven by identity politics above literally anything else, especially when those people typically aren't even slightly affected (and generally have never watched a single women's event in their life).
I sometimes wonder if people like you scream at politicians because of the introduction of the pitch clock in baseball, too? Do you waste this much energy on the rulebooks other sports come up with? Or just like, when you think it's icky sex stuff?
If you can find me some politicians, I would gladly yell at them that the DH and the pitch clock are unnatural and immoral.
But but but it's about fairness
In high school sports!
You know, that thing where the school next door is twice the size and has ten times the budget but it's totally fair! They win the championship every year because they totally have genetically superior athletes every single year! They are definitely better and there are zero possible systemic issues that could affect such a situation!
If high school sports aren't fair, then the world will end! How will we go on if little billy loses to someone he shouldn't! What if he loses to a girl!
In fact, we should make the ref blowing a call a capital offense! It's only fair!
Christ, it's so stupid. If these people cared about "fairness" for women's sports, they would be legislating more funding and support for them, not attacking random high school age people for the horrific crime of not conforming and wanting to play a low stakes game.
The point of high school sports is to get kids active and teach them cooperation and provide exposure to new things.
Ensuring that nobody with the "wrong" life can play against Beth is not even in the right universe of goals.
Alright alright alright I got it. We can get perfect fairness! Every single child born in america will be taken from their parents and put in a government run home that raises them all identically, given identical food and education and entertainment and enrichment and every single one will be given identical sports training. They will be required to complete identical exercise regimens and will have constant surveillance to ensure they aren't doing anything unapproved at any time. There, now finally our high school sports are safe! Phew, crisis averted.
Hint: They don't care about fairness in high school sports.
Many people like to focus on the purely physical attributes, but there's a clear distinction even in realms like chess.
The highest ranked female chess player is right around #55 globally, wherein the top 50 all are dominated by men.
Some of this may have to do with men having more interest/higher propensity of starting young which is where most grandmasters begin their journey, but still an interesting thing to consider nonetheless.
It's largely because chess has historically been a boys-club type activity. Women were actively discouraged, if not barred, from playing on grounds of misogyny. So, even today, there's very little women taking it seriously.
Of course, we all know there's no difference in the level of intellect or strategy between men and women.
> Of course, we all know there's no difference in the level of intellect or strategy between men and women.
Do we?
I thought it was commonly accepted that the average and median are the same but that men have more outliers on both sides.
That’s the greater variability theory. The male median is also higher so when you combine the two the long tail to the right will be dominated by males, so will the long tail on the left but to a lesser extent.
Many IQ tests have been designed to minimize the difference between males and females, primarily by reducing g-loading. Males pull ahead after puberty, prior to this they have an IQ disadvantage. So you have to take these factors into account when trying to make a fair and proper assessment.
Males have better spatial abilities compared to females. Most probably as a evolutionary trait required for hunting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polgár
But has she ever passed a test to prove she doesn't have the SRY gene?
/s
I know of one person who was born physically a woman, but has XY chromosomes. It is only due to modern medicine that we know that there is anything "unusual" with her gender. Otherwise, she is physically a woman with no observable clues to her condition.
(IE, in the past, she would have been infertile, and probably died young due to her situation.)
I'm not comfortable with saying that people like her need to compete with men.
Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, I imagine? That's probably the one category of XY people who have undergone no hormonal masculinization throughout their lives, and the one case where I'd agree with them competing with women. Wikipedia says it's estimated to be "1 in 20,400 to 1 in 99,000".
What would do about someone like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhi_Soundarajan
That athlete was excluded from the women's competition on the basis of having male physiological advantage. Exactly what the Olympics are now doing.
Androgen insensitivity syndrome means that her cells do not react to testosterone. What male advantage is there if her cells don't react to testosterone?
Soundarajan's androgen insensitivity was reported as being partial (i.e. PAIS, and not CAIS), which implies some degree of testosterone-driven masculinization.
If you segregate by sex alone then trans men get a big advantage.
The rulings do not mean they now segregate by sex alone. Someone who was AFAB and does not have an SRY gene would was taking HRT would not qualify for the female division due to the HRT.
A trans man who was not taking HRT could compete, though.
The key distinction is that gender identity is not what's being tested.
Because they're taking testosterone?
Wouldn't they be barred based on using banned substances?
They're not all taking banned substances. Case in point, Hergie Bacyadan and Elis Lundholm competed in the last Summer and Winter Olympics respectively.
Both Hergie Bacyadan and Elis Lundholm has not undergone any hormone replacement therapy or surgery, and competes in the women's divisions. Their status as trans men has nothing to do with their eligibility to participate.
This would be like if two trans, who has not undergone any hormone replacement therapy or surgery, would compete in men's divisions.
I thought exactly the same thing until I had a politically agnostic fencing judge sit down and explain over the course of an hour and a half all of the steps national and international regulating organizations for that sport had taken to avoid issues with unfair competition. Whether similar field-leveling safeguards could be baked into the rules for other sports is left as an exercise, but this particular instance suggests there's more nuance here than your comment suggests.
You're assuming that people arguing for bans on trans athletes are making good faith arguments about competition in sports. You shouldn't.
Here in the US a significant part of antipathy towards trans people is the deeply held belief that being trans in public is a kind of sex abuse to the public. If you listen to what much of the debate has turned into here, it has little to do with competition, and far more with the obsession over what genitals people have in locker rooms and bathrooms.
At the end of the day the number of trans athletes is so vanishingly small it's not worth caring about the impacts on competition, when the debate itself is another framing of the conservative desire to make being trans illegal.
Depends on the time of the transition. So those who transitioned before puberty are disadvantaged
Walk me through how you think this is going to be enforced? Athletes will need to start dropping their pants? Disgusting invasion of privacy.
The article addresses that. Given all the testing already, this is a trivial addition:
“Under the new policy eligibility will be determined by a one-time gene test, according to the I.O.C. The test, which is already being used in track and field, requires screening via saliva, a cheek swab or a blood sample.“
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You think Olympic athletes have any expectation of privacy around drug testing already? They have to register their every move and piss while being visible on demand.
You think the only way to medically test for male vs female is to visually id genitals?
Well the article says a cheek swab or blood test.
The article already covered it: It's minimally invasive (cheek swab) testing typically for the SRY gene - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determining_region_Y_prote...
This is less invasive than all of the other doping tests that athletes already go through, which require blood draws.
Doesn’t really work though - and given athletes are on the edge of performance there’s probably more people that fall in between than you might expect
From the Wikipedia article:
While the presence or absence of SRY has generally determined whether or not testis development occurs, it has been suggested that there are other factors that affect the functionality of SRY.[25] Therefore, there are individuals who have the SRY gene, but still develop as females, either because the gene itself is defective or mutated, or because one of the contributing factors is defective.[26] This can happen in individuals exhibiting a XY, XXY, or XX SRY-positive[27] karyotype[better source needed] Additionally, other sex determining systems that rely on SRY beyond XY are the processes that come after SRY is present or absent in the development of an embryo. In a normal system, if SRY is present for XY, SRY will activate the medulla to develop gonads into testes. Testosterone will then be produced and initiate the development of other male sexual characteristics. Comparably, if SRY is not present for XX, there will be a lack of the SRY based on no Y chromosome. The lack of SRY will allow the cortex of embryonic gonads to develop into ovaries, which will then produce estrogen, and lead to the development of other female sexual characteristics.[28]
The IOC included exceptions for certain DSDs.
Please read the linked articles first before jumping to Wikipedia to try to counter them. The decision is more nuanced than you assume
The Yahoo article linked says that exceptions will be made for people with conditions like that:
“Athletes diagnosed with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) ‘or other rare differences/disorders in sex development (DSDs), who do not benefit from the anabolic and/or performance-enhancing effects of testosterone’ may still be allowed to participate in the women’s category.”
In a word: so? Intersex people exist, you have to draw the line somewhere, the presence of SRY seems as good as any.
The test is used for initial screening only.
Presence of SRY in an athlete registered as female means further tests must be undertaken, with permission of the athlete, to determine eligibility.
Absence of SRY means the screening is passed and the athlete is eligible to compete.
Transition changes biology. We don't yet have the technology to fully reverse the effects of male puberty, so there can be reasonable debate about trans women who transitioned after puberty, but early transitioners have no meaningful advantage. Their bodies, in an athletic context, are female.
This is also true for many cisgender intersex women with XY chromosomes. Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth. Drawing the line at having a Y chromosome makes no sense.
> Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth
People with androgen insensitivity syndrom (AIS) have XY chromosomes but no uterus. So, no, they cannot give birth.
People with a diagnosis for that syndrome are specifically allowed by the new rules
There are athletic sex differences even amongst prepubescent children, mostly caused by the testosterone surge in utero.
See https://womenssportspolicy.org/pre-puberty-male-female-child....
Quite a biased source, no? This doesn't provide evidence that these differences are biological. Boys are much more likely to exercise than girls due to social norms: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10478357/.
> Their bodies, in an athletic context, are female.
I'm sorry, but this is not true. "Puberty blockers" do not complete suppress the effects of male genetics. They only attempt to block certain hormonal effects.
It is not possible to completely block the effects of having male genes by simple hormone modulation.
> Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth
We do not determine eligibility for sports classes based on ability to give birth for good reason. It's not a proxy for the genetic athletic differences being addressed by these classes.
Individuals with androgen insensitivity typically cannot give birth. This an extremely rare possibility, not a typical feature of the condition.