Sport England report on transgender women

PaddyP17 said:

aliwibble said:

PaddyP17 said:

bigstemarra said:

It isn't about right/left; it's about the right of women to compete in a fair and, more importantly, safe environment.

There's a transgender MMA fighter who used to be a special forces soldier in the US army who has been beating the shit out of women in the ring.  No amount of hormone therapy can fix the physiological advantage here, or in any physical sport for that matter.

Look at the following example:  

https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-when-transgender-fighter-fallon-fox-broke-opponent-s-skull-mma-fight

Seriously, do you think that this fair or safe?

I think that it is nothing short of insane, quite frankly.

Here are a few of my viewpoints:

1) It's probably not safe, inherently;
2) Fallon Fox lost to Ashlee Evans-Smith, a cis woman, in one of her six fights;
3) A fractured orbital is a not-uncommon injury;
4) She hasn't fought since 2014, so it is potentially slightly disingenuous to bring up what appears to be a resolved thing.

I struggle immensely with the issue of trans women in sports but hysteria's not the way to combat it.

Given the most vocal opponents of including transwomen in female sport are women, calling their objections "hysteria" is at best a really poor choice of words.

This is very true, and I apologise unreservedly.

 I'll substitute in "disingenuous moral grandstanding from one of CL's chief pseudo-intellectual wind up merchants" for this particular instance.

Why, thank you very much. 

By 'wind up merchant' you mean 'someone who sometime disagrees with the self-proclaimed font of all knowledge and wisdom'? 

You consider yourself an ACTUAL intellectual, I assume?

I am generally of the opinion that self determination is the way forward in life and that people should be able to identify how they choose and that should not impact them on living a full life free from harassment and hindrance. However when it comes to elite level sport it does become more complicated, as anyone born male will have a different physiology to someone born female and this is not something that can be completely altered later.

Unfortunate as it may be for some people wanting to compete, I do think that in all elite sports where men and women compete separately the presence of a Y chromosome should exclude someone from competing in a Woman’s event. This may seem unfair to some, but it is not about excluding someone because of prejudice but maintaining a level playing field.

The alternative to this is to take the para sport approach and classify people according to their physical attributes, that’s certainly not something I think would be sensible.

Women’s sport for many years and in many disciplines has played second fiddle to men’s sport and is now starting to enjoy greater coverage. This can only be good for girls growing up interested in sport in seeing more role models they can identify with. A level playing field is needed to keep integrity of competition and continue the growth.

bigstemarra said:

PaddyP17 said:

aliwibble said:

PaddyP17 said:

bigstemarra said:

It isn't about right/left; it's about the right of women to compete in a fair and, more importantly, safe environment.

There's a transgender MMA fighter who used to be a special forces soldier in the US army who has been beating the shit out of women in the ring.  No amount of hormone therapy can fix the physiological advantage here, or in any physical sport for that matter.

Look at the following example:  

https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-when-transgender-fighter-fallon-fox-broke-opponent-s-skull-mma-fight

Seriously, do you think that this fair or safe?

I think that it is nothing short of insane, quite frankly.

Here are a few of my viewpoints:

1) It's probably not safe, inherently;
2) Fallon Fox lost to Ashlee Evans-Smith, a cis woman, in one of her six fights;
3) A fractured orbital is a not-uncommon injury;
4) She hasn't fought since 2014, so it is potentially slightly disingenuous to bring up what appears to be a resolved thing.

I struggle immensely with the issue of trans women in sports but hysteria's not the way to combat it.

Given the most vocal opponents of including transwomen in female sport are women, calling their objections "hysteria" is at best a really poor choice of words.

This is very true, and I apologise unreservedly.

 I'll substitute in "disingenuous moral grandstanding from one of CL's chief pseudo-intellectual wind up merchants" for this particular instance.

Why, thank you very much. 

By 'wind up merchant' you mean 'someone who sometime disagrees with the self-proclaimed font of all knowledge and wisdom'? 

You consider yourself an ACTUAL intellectual, I assume?

Find an instance in my comments where I proclaim myself the "font of all knowledge and wisdom". I look forward to you doing so.

Leuth's already covered it. You have misframed what I said, and you characterise me as a "principal bed-wetter" on any sort of social justice issue that I comment on, when I have perhaps contributed something like 10 comments on somewhere between six and a dozen threads in the last six months.

You do this thing, too, that really fucks me off, because it also happened to Seth to an extent. You - or in a thread from November, someone like [won't name the poster] or whatever - will dismiss whatever I'm saying as "typical" or "pot meet kettle" or "so predictable", without engaging with any of what I say, to try and caricature me as this weirdo rambly "ultra woke" or "social justice" or "PC gone mad" or "principal bed-wetter" type. In fact, the bulk of what I do on CL is just piss around on the NFL thread, the various comps, or post-match views etc.

---------------------

When it comes to trans issues, though, I feel it's something I just... have to speak up about. Trans people are orders of magnitude more likely to be murdered, abused/assaulted (sexually or otherwise), denied healthcare they need etc etc while they're just trying to live their lives. 

When it comes to the issue of trans women in sport, obviously I struggle with it, as all of my comments in the past have shown. When it comes to combat sports then I don't really think it should be allowed, but I'm a cishet man, so I don't really like to express my opinion on issues I have no literal stake in.

But I do want to call you out on saying "male on female violence". Not only is that disingenuous, it is also subtle erasure of someone who's trans, and disrespects the fact that Fallon Fox is female. But I suspect you know EXACTLY what you are doing when you slip nasty comments like that in.

I think people think this issue is a far far bigger problem than it actually is. 

The 'highest profile' debate on the topic was Caster Samenya and she wasn't even a transgender athlete. 

Paddy, you called me 'psuedo-intellectual', so the implication is clear to see; that you consider yourself infallible and any contrary arguments are below you intellectually.  When I write considered arguments you condescendingly dismiss them as having been cut and pasted from other sources; as such, your sanctimony and sense of intellectual superiority appear to know no bounds.

You listed a number of reasons why the case regarding MMA cited wasn't so bad and then declared any concern regarding the issue as hysteria.  It's there in black and white.

You stated above that 'Trans people are orders of magnitude more likely to be murdered'.  This is simply not borne out by the statistics.  And you accused me of being hysterical.

From an article written by the mother of a trans-child:

'Looking at Transgender Europe’s list of cases, it became clear — to my relief — that  the total murders reported for the United Kingdom since 2008 amounted to 11. This translates as a murder rate of around 0.165%.

Now, that is still significantly higher than the murder rate for the UK as a whole: the ONS reports that the homicide rate in the UK for the year ending March 2020 was 11.7 per million people, rising to 17 per million among men. But look a bit closer at the list of trans murder victims, and that figure of 11 becomes increasingly suspect.

For instance, two of the listed victims, Vikki Thompson and Jacqueline Cowdry, appear to have been erroneously included. Thompson died by suicide while incarcerated in HMP Leeds, while Cowdry’s death was ultimately ruled as non-suspicious. This reduces the total to nine unlawful deaths, all of whom were born male. (By contrast, the number of homicides committed by transgender people between 2008 and 2017 was 12.) For context, the number of women killed by men during the same period was 1800. So much for our alleged “cis-privilege”.

Searching for more information led me to the work of Karen Ingala-Smith, who founded the Counting Dead Women project in 2012 after she realised that there was no central record of the extent of femicide here in the UK; thanks to her, a list of murdered women is read out in the House of Commons each year to imprint the rate of femicide on the minds our political class. Ingala-Smith’s tireless work focusses on female victims of, predominantly, male violence, though she made an exception to highlight the discrepancy between the mass hysteria about transgender victims of homicide compared to the treatment of woman-killing as mere background noise. (There is still no equivalent to the Trans Day of Remembrance for the much greater number of women killed by male violence.)

Crucially, her research sheds a vital spotlight on the nine remaining victims identified by the Trans Murder Monitoring report. Reading it, two things become clear. The first is that it is not entirely certain that all the victims themselves identified with the label “transgender”. The second is that the motives behind these crimes are more complex than straightforward “transphobia”.

Three of the nine victims were murdered by a violent punter while working as prostitutes; another was killed by their husband, who lived on her earnings from prostitution. Another of the victims died at the hands of someone who was also trans-identifying. Another was a gay man who cross-dressed occasionally, and the motive for the murder has been ascribed to both transphobia and homophobia. Two of the murders were linked to drug use.

In other words, despite the way their deaths are often framed in the media and by activists, the large majority of these trans victims were not killed simply for being trans. Almost half appear to involve prostitution — a fact that has been quietly brushed under the carpet.'

You are simply pushing a narrative, Paddy.

Trans-women aren't biologically women; they have a Y chromosome. Sex is real; If you haven't yet read a Biology book, now would be a good time - it might even help you to win a prize on another gameshow.  Significant differences are evident even during gestation, let alone during childhood and more crucially, puberty.  You may be able to change gender, but you cannot change sex - it is a biological impossibility.  This is why allowing trans-women to compete in women's sport is fundamentally unfair, and in many case, dangerous.  

I admit that gender is a more complex issue, but that to me is a matter of personal liberty.  If someone wants to self identify as a deep fat fryer, they are free to do so and I am free to laugh at them.  If someone wants to change gender, then good luck to them and I hope it makes them happy.  They have the right to a peaceful life and protection under the law like anyone else.  But to demand that we deny scientific reality is where I draw a line in the sand, and if you argue from an anti-science position, then you are no different from anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers.

You accuse me of erasing the identify of trans-women when you are doing the very same to actual women.  They are now seeing their hard won rights disappearing because of a fashionable cause relevant to a miniscule sanctified minority.  Some people think that women's right to be protected from male violence should be upheld and others don't.  We just stand on different sides of that argument, that is all; despite what you suggest, it is nothing to do with intellect, just different values and world views.

Now if you think, as I do, that there should be women only spaces and that allowing transgender females into female prisons and domestic violence refuges is dangerous and wrong, then I am more than willing to apologize to you. 

SELR_addicks said:

PrincessFiona said:

SELR_addicks said:

I think people think this issue is a far far bigger problem than it actually is. 

The 'highest profile' debate on the topic was Caster Samenya and she wasn't even a transgender athlete. 

Similar issues though which give her an advantage.She was born inter-sex. So she's more both than either.

This thread is a about transgender women in sport and not about the issues of abuse, harassment and other things transgender people in general may suffer more than others. 

I can't think of an example immediately but it might be possible a transgender man may have advantages competing against men who have not transitioned.

No she's a female assigned at birth. 

Denying her own gender just to suit your point doesn't really work. 

I thought her test results were never published? But leaked results said she was inter sex with XY chromosomes as opposed to inter sex with XX. Being assigned at birth is more about living in one gender or the other as most people in society do.

I do feel immensely sorry for her with how it all played out in the public eye and the lack of respect payed to her dignity. However, having a Y chromosome does give a significant advantage to anyone competing in female sport. With blood passports now used in sport to help reduce drug cheating, this could be easily identified before it was questioned so publicly.

PrincessFiona said:

SELR_addicks said:

PrincessFiona said:

SELR_addicks said:

I think people think this issue is a far far bigger problem than it actually is. 

The 'highest profile' debate on the topic was Caster Samenya and she wasn't even a transgender athlete. 

Similar issues though which give her an advantage.She was born inter-sex. So she's more both than either.

This thread is a about transgender women in sport and not about the issues of abuse, harassment and other things transgender people in general may suffer more than others. 

I can't think of an example immediately but it might be possible a transgender man may have advantages competing against men who have not transitioned.

No she's a female assigned at birth. 

Denying her own gender just to suit your point doesn't really work. 

I am not denying her gender. And certainly not to suit my point.

They did not appreciate her condition at birth

Semenya is an intersex woman, with XY chromosomes and naturally elevated testosterone levels.

Not just testosterone also muscle development and body fat deposits and bone density to name just a few, are all connected to differences to XX and XY.

PrincessFiona said:

Gary Poole said:

PrincessFiona said:

SELR_addicks said:

PrincessFiona said:

SELR_addicks said:

I think people think this issue is a far far bigger problem than it actually is. 

The 'highest profile' debate on the topic was Caster Samenya and she wasn't even a transgender athlete. 

Similar issues though which give her an advantage.She was born inter-sex. So she's more both than either.

This thread is a about transgender women in sport and not about the issues of abuse, harassment and other things transgender people in general may suffer more than others. 

I can't think of an example immediately but it might be possible a transgender man may have advantages competing against men who have not transitioned.

No she's a female assigned at birth. 

Denying her own gender just to suit your point doesn't really work. 

I am not denying her gender. And certainly not to suit my point.

They did not appreciate her condition at birth

Semenya is an intersex woman, with XY chromosomes and naturally elevated testosterone levels.

Not just testosterone also muscle development and body fat deposits and bone density to name just a few, are all connected to differences to XX and XY.

Exactly. Maybe others are denying the facts. To make their point?

I do feel sorry for her; it is no fault of hers that she has an unfair advantage

Not denying the facts. 

Just saying the issue is more complicated than just saying ban all transgender people. 

The most high profile athlete for example was born a female. Never transitioned. 

Was treated like an animal and degraded because she wasn't born 'correctly'.

We either get rid of gender categories or assign a new one for transgender athletes.

SELR_addicks said:

hoof_it_up_to_benty said:

We either get rid of gender categories or assign a new one for transgender athletes.

The idea of a 'freak show' category isn't one I can really get behind. 

Testosterone limits is pretty much the only ruling you can do to make it 'fair'. However, like when athletes dope, there are ways of masking levels and bringing it back down in line ready for competition. 

It will never be 'fair' or objective. Trans women are not the same as biological women physiologically.

PrincessFiona said:

hoof_it_up_to_benty said:

SELR_addicks said:

hoof_it_up_to_benty said:

We either get rid of gender categories or assign a new one for transgender athletes.

The idea of a 'freak show' category isn't one I can really get behind. 

Testosterone limits is pretty much the only ruling you can do to make it 'fair'. However, like when athletes dope, there are ways of masking levels and bringing it back down in line ready for competition. 

It will never be 'fair' or objective. Trans women are not the same as biological women physiologically.

Exactly. It is not fair.

SELR_addicks why would it be a 'freak show'? You use the word 'freak'. Maybe a category for athletes who transition before puberty and one for those post.

Trans women are not the same as biological women and it is unfair to compete against

Because it is 'othering' trans people. Regarding them as lesser or separate from main society. 

Think about the reaction the mass public would have to a 'trans' category within the Olympics and whether that is beneficial to the athletes' mental health or not? 

Think of the abuse that women first received (and still receive) when the Women's Premier League was introduced and times it by a thousand.