New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard to be first transgender athlete to compete at Olympics

I've spoken about this for months, it's so wrong.

I get why people have a negative reaction to trans people competing in sports. Superficially, a negative reaction makes sense. But upon further research, I think trans women competing with cis women is fine as long as they fall within the regulations.

Care to elaborate why you think it's fine?

Oh you support it??? Fuck off then. It's not even a debate in my eyes this is fucking wrong. 

Sure. I believe that trans-women who are on HRT (hormone replacement therapy), and have testosterone levels similar to or lower than that of what is allowed/expected for cis women, should be allowed to compete. I think that’s fair.

It’s important to point out: Most professional sports have very strong regulations that target hormones, there are cis women who have been kept out of competitions for having higher than allowed testosterone levels (that they produced naturally). Some might say that the regulations are too strict, but that’s another conversation and not one I’ve looked too deeply into.

A common argument against trans-women competing in women’s sports is in-regards to bone density. The idea being that the bone-density gains obtained pre-HRT don’t go away post-HRT. It’s a bit of a weird argument, because bone-density varies greatly through-out many different demographics not necessarily always aligned with gender/sex. For example, the average bone-density of African-American women is comparable to that of white males (http://courses.washington.edu/bonephys/opbmd.html). 

Multiple studies show that trans women have a high prevalence of low bone mass compared to men:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12018-019-09261-3

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230706285_Long-Term_Evaluation_of_Cross-Sex_Hormone_Treatment_in_Transsexual_Persons

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1094695008005015

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cen.13607?casa_token=7FEI23bFTPgAAAAA%3A0wOlgCmTEeIWlpQcDsqyN3cucpW5Iet6AbZVj3nOFSw2sl-GjycLMR5h5eJaAxvqG9wlwtQSXeqRnRRE

Another useful finding:

This study concludes that trans athletes maintain their skill level relative to the gender they competed against. For example, if a trans-woman competed against men before they transitioned, and performed excellently. They would also perform excellently post-transition against women. But if they were at the 50% mark pre-transition against men, then they would be at the 50% mark post-transition against women: http://xpuz.sportsci.org/2016/WCPASabstracts/ID-1699.pdf

I’ll stop there for now. I’m open to opposing arguments, but I do think this is a discussion that requires a lot of nuance and less generalizations. The stance that no trans-women being allowed to compete makes less sense to me than certain trans-women should be allowed to compete as long as they meet the right criteria.

Love you too, bro.

Grown man competing against women. Sad. 

I wonder why it’s never the other way around? It’s just like USA Women’s Soccer Team. Can’t even beat a bunch of 15 year old dudes while demanding higher pay.

You’re not considering bone structures that are different for men and women. No amount of hormones can change your birth bone structures without affecting the rest of your body. The pelvis is the biggest of these bone structures which inherently gives males advantages in most sports.

not to mention raw muscle mass size of everything, toughness of joints etc

raw biological pain resistance (increased with testosterone but doesn't disappear just because it's reduced)

Essentially:

A bloke competing against women?

Or a bloke that thinks it's a women competing against blokes?....Or vice versa?

Saw a picture, and the receding hair line, makes them look like a bloke.

If this is the inevitable way forwards for human evolution. Wouldn't it perhaps be sensible and fairer to introduce two new trans-categories.

And presumably there's an awful lot of hormone therapy a play here....So how does this sit with doping rules?

Um... do you have any sources to back up the claims in regards to those biological components in women? 

And if muscle mass and pain tolerence is the same and not affected by hormones, how come athletes that tend to compete in the 50th percentile and less against men, also compete at that level among women? You are dodging points, and unable to actually make any solid arguments, instead you rely on others to make your points (not that they do much better), after specifically making the claim yourself. 

This is the height of intellectual dishonesty. And it's not just an accusation, I could list every action I accused you of right now, would you like that? 

Seems to me, if a guy wants to be a woman, and vice versa, the sex change operation ought to include not just the genitals, but natural hormone balancing features, bone density and muscle-mass alignment, and, for good measure, full DNA manipulation. I don't think anything less will accomplish the task. Now we're talking an even playing field by gender, sis, or chosen.

Gender, and even sex, isn't determined by chromosomal composition. As things such as intersex people and people with Swyer Syndrome demonstrate. Your classification of "gender" and "sex" is ruefully outdated. 

Yeah, according to your other favorite reference, the APA, which I do not recognize as a qualified source on the matter. They change with societal winds. Sorry.

Yes, gold and silver medals robbed from cis women in top of brutal MMA injuries.

Oh and any doctor and biologist who isn't a liar.

You are the one dodging points, not me.

These are career defining medals robbed from women by a male who conveniently transitioned before robbing them of medals.

You use words, I talk reality. You play the transphobe card, I play the career-defining medals card.

This is an abomination to feminism.

You want me to call Laurel 'she/her' absolutely, okay. That level of sympathising is fine.

You want me to let a male-sex individual rob female-sex individuals of medals because she is in denial of her biological unfair advantage that no other male-sex person is entitled to rob the females off medals while having in his (or 'her') biology? This is entire careers and achievements being ruined. 

Wait actually this is hilarious, you're denying basic science rn so all I have to do is give sources stating the blatant right?

Okay.

I'll give one each.

Pain - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00895-3

Explanation of non-testosterone raw vody structure advantage males have over females in almost all sports: https://www.livestrong.com/article/509536-muscular-strength-in-women-compared-to-men/

A battle between women and men (it ties them in results but concedes a huge amount of irrefutable physical advantage to males, this is a psychology article so it's more than just raw strength in what's discussed):

You can't accuse a single ine of corrupt agenda, each concedes blatant facts 

I know who's taking home the gold this year

Exactly, even so, it's not even about the genetic structure, it's about the market value for each team. I hate the argument of equal pay when the market for the WNBA is significantly lower than the NBA, look..

The WNBA as a league's net worth is about $1.6B total

The New Orleans Pelicans are worth $1.35B dollars. They are the least wealthiest team in the NBA

The Knicks franchise nearly triples the total amount for the WNBA's net worth.

Even if they tried raising the pay, they would never be able to pay as much as what the NBA pays due to the fact that they don't make enough money the WNBA. That's simple economics.

The WNBA isn't interesting. If I wanted to see people do layups and shoot 3's, I'd go to a local highschool game. Cheaper and tbh a better atmosphere.

This article only explains the differences between cis men and cis women (which no one is contesting). It's does not explain the differences between trans women on HRT and cis women.

Again, no one is contesting the difference between men and women this way. What we're trying to find is what are the differences between trans-women on HRT and cis women. Are those differences significant? Does it depend on the individuals? Should it be a case by case basis? 

I appreciate your thoughtfulness. It sounds like your hang up with it starts with the idea of transgenderism in and of itself. Which would be a separate, probably much longer conversation.

Do you have any resources I could look at that would explain the significance of the advantages of bone structure when paired with the effects of HRT?

Alright, so you develop your strength and bone density as well as ligament tenacity and muscle mass for many years as a man.

Then poof, you're a woman.

Only thing that changed was hormone levels after all those years of development. All you need to do is maintain, not massively improve.

That's exactly how Laurel has the muscle she has and is going to breaj olympic world records for women.

Women

Cis Women

Females, the SEX not GENDER.

Regarding bone density being higher in males and almost permanently so post-puberty. Plenty, I linked to two that both admit it. It's a well known fact in all mammals.

Imagine the woman who would earn bronze and won't even get a medal due to this cheat.

I linked to multiple studies that explain how HRT effects bone density. Trans-women have a much lower bone mass than cis males. One of the studies I linked also highlights that trans-women are considered high risk for osteoporosis because of the impact that HRT has on bone density/health.