It’s almost time to delete my account so I am sticking my neck out to potentially getting blasted.
I will preface by stating that gender identity is not an issue for me. Be who you want, use whatever bathroom you want. Just wash your hands/paws/tentacles.
My ignorant question is: for transgender athletes in competitive sports, should records be categorized differently or asterisked? Isn’t it kind of like using performance-enhancing drugs?
I don’t mind about actually competing, however if someone had 5-10 years of hormonal growth advantage during puberty, even if they no longer have that advantage, it seems like a big gray area. Yes, someone could naturally have that chemical makeup. Similarly, some exceptionally elite athletes have genetic variations that give them natural physical advantage.
When I was in school I was decent at swimming, in the top 5% of men. If I competed against women I would be like top 0.01% and making a career out of it. Though, if I started setting records I don’t know how I’d feel about it, given my advantage.
Honestly, writing these thoughts down is giving me some existential dread. What does it mean to be human, and why? Does anything even really matter?
I hope everyone has a nice day and is kind to each other.
No, we absolutely should not mark the records of known transgender athletes in any way. Because once you start down that road you wind up asterisking cisgender athletes whose development is outside the norm.
We could get into a long discussion of transgender persons who do or do not undergo HRT, or how there are already rules against transgender women competing professionally if they aren’t on HRT, or whether or not such rules or gendered sports at all are justifiable.
But all of that is just a distraction. The elite in any competitive sport are ALREADY several orders of magnitude beyond the norm, to the point where any advantage a trans woman might have for going through male puberty is essentially a wash with “are you just naturally well-formed for this sport”.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that there ISNT broadly an athletic benefit to having gone through wrong-gender puberty before medically transitioning. Plenty of athletes have done exactly that, and as far as I know exactly none of them wound up being relatively better among their true gender peers post-HRT than their standing among birth-gendeR peers pre-HRT.
And there have been more instances of cisgender women being wrongly accused of being trans than there are transgender women athletes at all.
I tend to agree but it’s an interesting angle.
Like, were not about to tell NASCAR fans that Dale Earnheart Jr needs asterisks because, you know, his dad. He had quite the leg up!
Two
indyDaytona 500 wins is no joke. Daddy’s help or not.I’m not trying to shit on Dale Jr by any means, the man is a legend. But he did not win two Indy 500s, he won two Daytona 500s. Indycar racing is a completely different sport, it’s like comparing hockey and fútbol.
Oops! Fixed.
And yeah I’m not a big NASCAR fan (can you tell)? But recognize a feat is a feat.
But it’s not different in that we’re talking about athletes with unfair advantages. Trans athletes have never shown their ‘leg up’ helped the dominate the field. The same cannot be said for Dale. That’s why I tease, do we take that accomplishment (that I got wrong 😳) away with an asterisk?
Of course not. Same goes for a trans athlete.