Trans athletes in women's sports: Is this fair?

I'm reminded of a scene in the Red Dwarf books where athletes were genetically modified to gain advantage, to the point where soccer goalkeepers were modified to fit exactly into the dimensions of the goal.

Trans mtf here. I transitioned 20 years ago and have had all the surgeries and I live stealth amongst you. Even though I have lost most of my male body mass, I can still out do most cis women. IMO it is not fair. Id love to see a trans category.

In the video you explain that the advantages decrease over time with the administration of hormone therapy. I think this situation is compounded by the fact that, for the most part, sports are a young persons game. Very few athletes stay relevant even in middle age. The average age of medal winning gymnasts at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics was 20.6 years old. Athletes don't have the time to wait for the playing field to level. I also guess, but don't know for certain, that the biological differences between the physical performance of men and women is most pronounced at younger ages, the age demographic where they athletes are competing.

would have been good to have a look at safety issues in contact sports. international rugby did quite comprehensive research into the safety of those who haven't gone through male puberty, playing with/against those who have, and there was about a 30% increase in injuries, including concussions. given that we are learning more and more about the very serious and long term affects of concussion, it seems extremely irresponsible to allow women who haven't undergone male puberty to be put at increased risk.

There was a comedian somewhere that suggested we should have one "normal" person off the street compete as a "control"... just to up the entertainment value.

"So maybe the solution is in the end we all just do eSports." I CAN'T

I live in Seoul, Korea, where in 1988 Griffith Joyner set a women's 100-meter dash record of 10.49 seconds that remain unbroken to this day. But that same 10.49 seconds, which no other woman has been able to match for 36 years, would rank Joyner at around 3000th in the world as a male athlete. The athletic gap between men and women, especially when it comes to muscular strength, is quite substantial. World's best female tennis couldn't beat the world's best 300th best male player, etc.

John McEnroe stated that Serena Williams would be maybe #700 in the world ranking of male tennis players and he is right. The physical advantages are simply overwhelming. Good example is also the famous mix team race where the Polish team decided to put men against women of the other teams on the 2. and 3. leg (if I remember correctly) and then had a woman as last runner who started with a huge lead and then was overrun by many men of the other teams. I only know of one transgender man who as a boxer is successful against male boxers. I see the following options:  1. we give up any gender separations and all humans compete together. That is fair (everybody has the same start) but only in the sense of integration, in the sense of inclusion it is of course not (since not everyone has a chance to arrive at the same outcome, i.e. #1), but then again no competitive sport is ever "fair" in that sense, since everybody is different and I can train as much as I like, Husain Bolt would still already be having a cappuccino while I would struggle to get out of the starting block. 2. We keep the current binary approach and then the only option would be to define for all sports a testosterone level that defines whether you are in one or the other category. 3. we follow the idea of paralympics and define more diverse categories in sports. But then you have at least 5: men, women, trans women, trans men, people with any disabilities/limitations. And probably a lot more depending on the development of the concept of identity in society. I somehow like #1 but my money would be on 2. imho.

I'm a dressage trainer and therapeutic horseback riding instructor, and equestrian sports stand out as not being segregated by sex, even at the elite level. On the other hand, there's one big unfair advantage that determines a person's high level success at these sports, and that's money. There are exceptions, of course, but starting out wealthy is a big indicator of whether you can ascend to the top level. Competitive sports are not fair in many ways, and I love the concept of meaningful competition instead.

"Athletes are biological extremes. Fairness has never been the point of these completions. They are really more like freak shows! Kind of like Physics Conferences." LOL - I love it.

Sabine, we don't and never have separated sports in gender and weight classes to make them less predictable. We separated them to increase representation. If you remove the women's division in basketball you won't suddenly get pro women's team getting predictably shit on by male teams, you just won't have any pro female basketball players. If you remove weight classes from boxing you won't see small fighters get beat up by big fighters, you'll just only see big fighters.

Severly disagree with the Fairness part of the video. It's one thing to be randomly seated somewhere on a Bell curve or to compare two entirely different bell curves. The tallness argument is the best proove for that. The exact same male teams will have similar differences between teams..but 10-20cm above their female counterparts....

I find the story of Tom Dempsey really illustrative here, especially when compared with Michael Phelps. Tom Dempsey was a kicker in American Football who, in 1970, kicked a successful field goal from 63 yards (57.6 meters) out. This record stood for over 40 years, only being beat in 2013 by a single yard. Tom Dempsey also only had half a kicking foot. He was born with no toes on his right foot (and no fingers on his right hand). This mild disability gave him the ability to kick a football straight-on rather than needing to use the side of his foot. The advantages that would give are obvious. He had a custom shoe made to fit his foot, but investigation by ESPN sports science determined that that hadn't given him any more advantage than a normal shoe would a normal kicker. Even so, people were pissed. Noted union-busting piece of shit, Tex Schramm, openly said that he thought there should be an asterisk by Dempsey's record. And in 1977, a rule was made specifically saying that anyone kicking had to wear a normal shoe, no matter how much of a foot they did or didn't have. Tom Dempsey had a unique body that let him do something incredible, and people really didn't like that. Contrast this with Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps is a mutant who was genetically engineered to swim really fucking good. He has a huge torso and short legs (relatively speaking, he is 6'4"), a wingspan longer than he is tall, hyperextended joints that let him move like a mermaid, huge paddle feet, and he even produces half as much lactic acid (the thing that makes your muscles hurt when you work them hard) as his competitors. Michael Phelps and Tom Dempsey both worked incredibly hard and pushed their unique bodies to the peak of athletic ability. But one of them is celebrated, and one of them had the guy who invented the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and their hotpants say that his record didn't count.

You had me laughing at, " They're really more like ... freak shows. Kind of like physics conferences."

Sabine. Thank you for your sincere research. I appreciate that you on the one hand show empiric data and on the other hand take the ethical aspects into account. Perfect mix.

The situation doesn’t seem confusing at all. If you want all the women’s gold medals to go to trans women. Let them compete as women. It’s clear as day that it’s unfair

In martial arts it is axiomatic that a good, large fighter will defeat a good small fighter. There are exceptions, but this is exactly the reason there are weight classes in these sports-- they create a level of fairness. And I won't get into how the gambling aspect helps drive this system.

"... too many opportunities for unethical behavior..." is exactly why pro sports will still exist.

Thank you Sabine. Your work is amazing. Your communication is very clear and the sprinkling of humour is refreshing.

It seems they’ve managed to sort out categories in disabled sport, why not in trans sport?