cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/66087691
The International Olympic Committee will prohibit transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports, starting at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
The new policy, approved by the IOC’s executive committee Thursday, requires all athletes to undergo a genetic test to compete in women’s sporting events at the Olympics.



Is this even controversial? There’s a reason men and women sports were separated to begin with.
Trans women aren’t men.
They used to be, and that’s the issue at hand.
And you used to be a child, does that mean you still have to play in peewee football? Bodies change after being exposed to hormones, that’s literally what puberty is. Some changes are permanent, but the vast majority aren’t, and I can tell you that the trans dudes I know look nothing like women anymore after a couple years on HRT, and the same goes for the trans women I know.
Would I have been comfortable competing in any competitive women’s leagues in the first 3 months of HRT? Absolutely not, and I fully recognize that would have been bullshit and akin to a cis woman on PEDs. Literally every women’s team org that I’ve been on has not had a single issue with me joining the team or competing against them; it’s literally always men who never gave a fuck about women’s softball or roller derby until trans people became an easy punching bag.
I 100% understand the concern that people have, but I’d much rather us take a scientific approach to things rather than this stupid fear mongering of acting like a male powerlifter is throwing on a wig and destroying all the women’s categories. There are proper ways to handle this rather than blanket bans, and it’s just another way to distract people by scapegoating a minority and infantalizing women at the same time.
Hi trans woman here! HRT will make your muscle mass the same or even worse than cis women (meaning cis women are typically stronger than trans women.) Even still trans people participated in the Olympics for a very long time, since it was founded actually! It’s a relatively new rule to disallow trans people in the Olympics and you want to know why? Nazis! That’s right! If you support trans people not participating in the Olympics: you’re sympathizing with fucking Nazis!
TLDR: There’s no proof of trans people being stronger than cis people, boycott Olympics till they did their shit, Transphobic policies were made and enforced by Nazis.
Muscle mass is just one of the potential advantages that were considered in enacting this ban, and I think you know that.
Since you seem to be arguing this point in genuine good faith, and that’s increasingly rare, I wonder what your opinion would be of a woman with a genetic mutation which causes her to produce elevated testosterone, wanting to participate in women’s sports.
Keep in mind, this genetic mutation, which does happen to cisgender women, has a measurable effect on these women’s athletic performance.
This is not a gotcha question, and I’m not trying to trick you. Just genuinely curious
The whole point of the Olympics is people who are the absolute pinnacle of human ability competing against each other. If they were genuinely born like that, then that’s just how things go, just like how some people are taller or stronger than others.
So, with that being said a trans man, who is superior to cis men, should be allowed to participate or no? If they are at the pinnacle, why not?
So you don’t actually give a shit about being fair or logical, just targeting trans women
I’d ask a question as well, if most strength dominated women’s sports end up being won by trans men would you be surprised?
Assuming Nike is throwing money at them for sponsorships and the like do you not assume men will be attracted to that, and top level women’s sports leaders will end up being entirely trans men?
Yeah the main and real reason is political bull shit, there’s no physical or mental advantage. If you really want to be “fair” in physical sense then make a weight class not a gender separation. Only mentioned muscle mass as that’s the main “argument” people can come up with to cope with the rule even though it’s fucking pointless.
I’ve said it before and say it again, it’s a Nazi imposed rule and those who agree/abide are Nazi sympathizing transphobes or transphobic dumb asses who don’t know basic biology or history.
Let’s not go the route of calling everyone who disagrees with you a nazi, it devalues the term.
And having weight classes for something like track and field events is absurd, especially at the Olympics, which is supposed to be the best in the world doing what they do.
Our personal feelings in this matter isn’t in discussion, rather whether agreeing with a time that was originally imposed by the Nazi refine in Germany during the 1936 Olympics considers you a Nazi sympathizer or not. Realistically a Nazi sympathizer is someone who agrees and allows foothold of power towards yourself and/or your community. Since the organizers not only agreed with the Nazis about trans people but also allowing the imposed rule go on this long has given those with Nazi ideals recognition of power to even sway the long term peaceful competition. You can read more about this in the wonderful book: The Other Olympians - Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374609818/theotherolympians/ Or read this article by the Vox talking about the topic and the book itself: https://www.vox.com/culture/364032/trans-athletes-olympics-2024
You and others may not know (or realistically care) that the Nazi Regime didn’t just hate the Jews, they hated anyone that wasn’t pure blooded and true to their “perfect race” (putative Aryan race as noted in Hitler’s 1925 Nazi propaganda book Mein Kampf) so you can imagine they also persecuted Black people, LGB and only recently researched: Trans people. That last one is pretty important because: guess so wise discriminated against trans people for the longest time ever: fucking everyone. So the persecution of trans people, the destruction of trans research and books were destroyed and lost to time again and again and were used as a foothold of power along with everyone else. Hers a really interesting read on how it took a German court to find possibility and start research on the topic: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-reveals-how-the-nazis-targeted-transgender-people-180982931/ And here’s a wiki of Persecution of transgender people in Nazi Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_transgender_people_in_Nazi_Germany
You may wonder (is that even related): YES! Very much so as previously mentioned they used trans people (a commonly discriminated minority) to gain foothold of power in the international community. Now being transphobic doesn’t mean your a Nazi sympathizer (you would just be a horrify over used dirty douche bag, ig that is our opinion*, but again doesn’t mean your a Nazi/Nazi simp)
But, if you’re recognizing and allowing such a rule (or any other rule in that matter) imposed the Nazi regime specifically made to craft a foot hold for the ideals does indeed lead you to letting them take power from yourself and your community and hence forth making you at least a Nazi sympathizer. So no it’s not demeaning and we will not allow you to dismiss its meaning for protecting your own prejudice
As for the topic of classifying Olympians, they should be classified based on skill or merit that’s related to the sport, not social constructs like gender. Many sports in the Olympics don’t even have such classifications and those that do aren’t evenly classed. We said weight only because it’s a general idea, ideally it would be different for each sport to collaborate better sportsmanship not discriminate.
TLDR: nah we put work in that: one read it+sauce lol
PS: had to write this three times as Lenny on phone Kris deleting our fucking progress some getting links. Fml
It’s arguable whether that’s a good idea but even if you give it the benefit of the doubt trans women don’t have an advantage after hormone therapy at least not huge all evidence shows this also this plan also discriminates heavily against intersex people or even women with certain genetic conditions.
“At least not huge” or “don’t have an advantage”? Because those mean completely different things.
A colloquial “not huge” can be equivalent to a statistical “no advantage”. I don’t know if that’s what they meant though.
After a long time on hormone therapy the difference goes away.
It does not completely erase all pre existing differences. Differences in skeletal structure, such as bone size, hip width, and height, are generally not changed by HRT, especially if it is started after puberty, although the density of those bones can be significantly improved.
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4261347/
The reasons we separate sports by gender are and have always been stupid
This site is absolutely cooked sometimes.
In most sports, men have an advantage due to physical size, it’s why sports often have a women’s and an open category.
Creating meaningful competition is why we have these categories.
Advantage based on physical size is resolved by separating competitors based on size, not gender, fucking duh
Except that studies show that outof men and women of the same exact size women are 52% as strong as men in the upper body and 66% as strong as men in the lower body.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8477683/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37772882/
He’s from ML, poor chap. Facts just confuse them.
Oh yeah I love when they get all frustrated when you cite sources and then just tell you your sources are dogshit and then never provide one single source themselves.
Not even a half baked attempt at a source. Not even a source from someones personal blog or a YouTube video or a tiktok which of course are all terrible sources but they can’t even produce THAT! its wild to see.
No joke, after I typed this the person linked a YouTube clip from Jackass as their source. Lmfao
Edit: Now he’s accusing me of running your account as an alt. That’s like dangerous levels of delusion. This person is actually mentally unwell.
You’re losing and you know it
By you posting a YouTube video and telling me all scientificly cited sources are bullshit?
Oh yeah you showed me, that you are a dense person who doesn’t listen to science.
Learn to read
The link you posted doesn’t say anything you’re claiming, you’re bad at this
Thus, for athletic events and sports relying on endurance, muscle strength, speed, and power, males typically outperform females by 10%-30% depending on the requirements of the event.
Here’s the source that has the exact measurements for upper and lower body differences which is the one I referenced in the original comment
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8477683/
Its ok to disagree with the reality to that if you want to. But it isn’t ok to accuse others of “making shit up” when it is you who is making shit up. I haven’t seen you cite one single source
Sample size of 16 lol, you fucking moron
So if those results are apparent even from as low as 8 men and 8 women what makes you think that gives it any less weight or makes it any less true?
Also, the other sources have a larger sample size and all say the same thing.
Man as long as it took you to type out “you fucking moron” in response to me you could have already cited a source!
We are in the interest of not “making shit up” after all aren’t we?
Probably will be downvoted into oblivion but I’m going to disagree with you. The trans argument is a separate one but having some sex separated sports absolutely makes sense. There are undeniable biological differences physically between biological males and females. Height and weight class would make 0 sense because bone and muscle density is still different, and distributed differently as an aggregate. I think most people who say this stuff don’t actually play sports.
I think people who say things like this don’t actually know any post- or even mid-transition people.
I don’t think you actually read my comment fully or you would know that I wasn’t talking about trans athletes at all really. Respectfully read carefully before having a knee jerk reaction. Also for the record (although the I have {insert marginalized group here} friends card is stupid) one of my closest friends in college who was alsomy roommate was trans…
“Biological males and females” are words that, right or wrong, have flown forth along with a great deal of spittle from the mouth of a transphobe in an effort to strip even more rights from trans people. After all, are trans people not biological? Biological women and synthetic women?
Dumb
You’re gonna be downvoted because you’ve put zero thought or effort into your argument. There are undeniable physical differences between humans regardless of dominant sex hormone, separating sports by gender necessarily forces members of both groups to compete against people that they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating. Tall women have a massive advantage over short men and short women, the smart thing to do is let people compete with other people that are actually physically comparable. Tiny men vs tiny women is fair, giant women vs giant men is fair. The bone/muscle density thing is bullshit, simple as.
Do you have a source about the bone/muscle density thing being bullshit?
I noticed you told another commentor “anything is possible when you make shit up” so we really should be backing things we say up with sources in that case, right?
Do you have a source for it being true? Nobody else here does
Yes in provided you multiple sources in other comments.
I notice you haven’t provided a SINGLE ONE.
You want a source proving that women can compete with comparably sized men? Here, cry about it
Ah yes a highly trained professional athlete beating up a guy who drinks and does drugs for the entire series.
This makes all the scientific papers cited not true?
Also I love how “that study is only 16 people you MORON! Here’s a source form a show called jackass with TWO people”
The second half of that really sounds like a kink thing.
Weird thing to say/think
You’d think it’d be by weight or some other performance metric with women dominating at the lighter end of the spectrum.
They do exactly this in boxing, and probably other fighting sports.
The thing is, people tend to take up sports their body type is suited to, so short people don’t tend to play a sport where being tall is an advantage for long.
Short people don’t generally play basketball because nobody organizes leagues into separate categories by height, if you did they would
Sure bud.
Good one
There are smaller amd lighter men. They will be stronger and faster than equally sized or even slightly larger women of similar body sizes. The body simply grows differently.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
What’s your source that its made up?
Because the same exact medical science that gives you HRT is supporting what he is saying.
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3189615/
Nothing in this agrees with what you’re saying, you are either genuinely illiterate or a profoundly incompetent liar, embarassing either way
Then they have successfully found where they rank in a mixed field.
Height & weight would make more sense, yeah
People tend to take up sports they’re suited to though, and nobody wants to watch a bunch of shortasses doing a sport badly. At least not at the Olympics.
Being built suboptimally for a sport doesn’t mean that you’d be bad at the sport. The skills you develop would still be there and be equally impressive on anyone.
One of the things I find so fascinating about powerlifting is how the technique varies as you go across weight classes. It becomes a whole different game for people with different bodies. I’d love to see all the different ways that other sports can be played too.
Basing the rules of competetive sports on what the audience wants is fucking moronic, make the rules fair and logical and if the viewers don’t like it they can get off the couch and go play sports about it
You do understand that professional sport relies on sponsorship, which in turn relies on people watching?
People will watch it either way, sponsors will pay either way, you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about
You’re making a lot of outlandish claims with no proof bud.
There’s a lot of competition for watch time these days.