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dodu_ 1 minutes ago [-]
The entire discourse about "trans in sports" has always been and will always be manufactured panic that is motivated by bigotry.
If one truly cared about (un)fairness in sports there are other issues that you'd address long before you ever even think of trans. So the only actual conclusion one can make is that that the people complaining about this don't actually care about fairness.
Instead, this "issue" only exists to serve as a vector to express bigotry in what they feel is a more socially acceptable way, mostly because they're too cowardly to actually own their bigotry.
The easiest test for this: If you were presented with a way to include transgender people in sports in a perfectly fair manner, would you be for it?
leevilux 34 seconds ago [-]
Given that there are so few trans athletes and assuming there is no advantage over women, it is very surprising that we have seen so many trans gold medalists.
One thing to note and I guess might be a bit of the puzzle is that the data clearly indicates that trans-gendered men have lower upper and lower body strength compared to cis-men, while the opposite scenario (transwomen compared to cisgender women) appears much less conclusive.
The trans-women vs cis-gender strength effects are heavily influenced by a single study. There are only 7 studies for upper body strength, 5 of which lean towards showing greater trans-women strength, 1 that leans towards reduced, and 1 (Alvares 2025) which clearly indicates reduced strength. Similarly for lower body strength there are only 4 studies with a similar pattern (once again, the Alvares 2025 producing the clearest TW weaker than CW effect).
The Alvares 2025 study compares amateur volleyball players. There are 7 trans women in that study versus 8 cis-gender women. Average hours per week of activity (or volleyball? Unclear, I'm working off the meta-review's summary table) is 4 for TW and 14 for CW. Average age is 30 (28-33) for TW and 26 (22-29) for CW.
I don't think that makes the Alvares study useless, but I do feel that it's deeply limited. 4 hours vs 14 hours a week is a pretty big difference in activity level.
catheter 32 minutes ago [-]
Excited to hear some very normal and nuanced opinions on this.
akramachamarei 6 hours ago [-]
Despite title, this study did not investigate the question of sports advantage, at least not directly. It looked at physical fitness, concluding:
> While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.
I don't find this study especially interesting or pertinent on the subject of sports advantage, as it only covers a small number of possible Whys, but doesn't touch Whats. It would be more useful for researchers to compare actual sports performance. For obvious reasons, these studies are probably not available for metaanalysis.
cogman10 41 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, it's just going to be pretty hard to really do any sort of good study here.
Like, for example, is the individual in question currently on HRT? When did they start HRT? What is their current testosterone levels? And when we dive into a specific sport, how do they actually perform?
The issue is that for any given sport there's like 1 or 2 transgender people participating in it.
bad_username 1 hours ago [-]
"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
jazz9k 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
PaulHoule 7 hours ago [-]
Prior to 1970 or so there wasn't an objective medical test used to tell men from women in sports and you had the problem of men who would participate in the Olympics as a women to win medals. And I think the frame was that, not "I am someone who lives as a woman"
My wife on the other hand thinks that gender-variant people are frequently alienated from their bodies and less inclined to participate in sports and other physical or nature-oriented things. I do photography for a running club in a very queer-friendly town which has me looking at the list of participants. We let people register as NB and have medals for the top 3 but frequently out of a few hundred entries we get 0 NBs even though running in a 5k on the flats would be an easy way to get a medal if you can pass for NB. On the other hand I've witnessed people set world records at more serious events and I can see people concerned about a record being set that natural women could never beat.
My strongly held view that seems to be profoundly unpopular is that I don't want the state settling the issue but rather it is a question for sports leagues to decide. Different leagues have different goals and different sports are different: I think transgender people should have a place where they can benefit from participating in sports and I think people have real concerns. We have a running gag about a male friend of our family who was one of the first players on an amateur women's hockey team because they were struggling to get a quorum -- he's not a big guy and not a great hockey player but he played a role in helping woman enjoy sports participation.
3 hours ago [-]
dodu_ 27 minutes ago [-]
"I don't know anything about this, but it's wrong"
HOLY BASED MY FEELINGS DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR FACTS GIGACHAD DETECTED
nunobrito 7 hours ago [-]
It is always a matter of looking who did the "study" and what are their affiliations.
If one truly cared about (un)fairness in sports there are other issues that you'd address long before you ever even think of trans. So the only actual conclusion one can make is that that the people complaining about this don't actually care about fairness.
Instead, this "issue" only exists to serve as a vector to express bigotry in what they feel is a more socially acceptable way, mostly because they're too cowardly to actually own their bigotry.
The easiest test for this: If you were presented with a way to include transgender people in sports in a perfectly fair manner, would you be for it?
One thing to note and I guess might be a bit of the puzzle is that the data clearly indicates that trans-gendered men have lower upper and lower body strength compared to cis-men, while the opposite scenario (transwomen compared to cisgender women) appears much less conclusive.
The trans-women vs cis-gender strength effects are heavily influenced by a single study. There are only 7 studies for upper body strength, 5 of which lean towards showing greater trans-women strength, 1 that leans towards reduced, and 1 (Alvares 2025) which clearly indicates reduced strength. Similarly for lower body strength there are only 4 studies with a similar pattern (once again, the Alvares 2025 producing the clearest TW weaker than CW effect).
The Alvares 2025 study compares amateur volleyball players. There are 7 trans women in that study versus 8 cis-gender women. Average hours per week of activity (or volleyball? Unclear, I'm working off the meta-review's summary table) is 4 for TW and 14 for CW. Average age is 30 (28-33) for TW and 26 (22-29) for CW.
I don't think that makes the Alvares study useless, but I do feel that it's deeply limited. 4 hours vs 14 hours a week is a pretty big difference in activity level.
> While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.
I don't find this study especially interesting or pertinent on the subject of sports advantage, as it only covers a small number of possible Whys, but doesn't touch Whats. It would be more useful for researchers to compare actual sports performance. For obvious reasons, these studies are probably not available for metaanalysis.
Like, for example, is the individual in question currently on HRT? When did they start HRT? What is their current testosterone levels? And when we dive into a specific sport, how do they actually perform?
The issue is that for any given sport there's like 1 or 2 transgender people participating in it.
My wife on the other hand thinks that gender-variant people are frequently alienated from their bodies and less inclined to participate in sports and other physical or nature-oriented things. I do photography for a running club in a very queer-friendly town which has me looking at the list of participants. We let people register as NB and have medals for the top 3 but frequently out of a few hundred entries we get 0 NBs even though running in a 5k on the flats would be an easy way to get a medal if you can pass for NB. On the other hand I've witnessed people set world records at more serious events and I can see people concerned about a record being set that natural women could never beat.
My strongly held view that seems to be profoundly unpopular is that I don't want the state settling the issue but rather it is a question for sports leagues to decide. Different leagues have different goals and different sports are different: I think transgender people should have a place where they can benefit from participating in sports and I think people have real concerns. We have a running gag about a male friend of our family who was one of the first players on an amateur women's hockey team because they were struggling to get a quorum -- he's not a big guy and not a great hockey player but he played a role in helping woman enjoy sports participation.
HOLY BASED MY FEELINGS DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR FACTS GIGACHAD DETECTED
There are also studies proving that the earth is flat: https://guides.loc.gov/flat-earth