[Other Sport] Transgender woman selected for NZ Olympic team

[Seagull58]

think you've missed the significant point of the story, Hubbard is now a woman.

A woman by some criteria ,as accepted by the IOC

 

[Superphil]

Japanese footballer, currently with Washington Spirit Kumi Yokoyama has come out as transgender. She's played at the top level of women's football in Japan and Europe for the last 8 years, wonder if she, now he/they, will be able to carry on in the NWSL?

 

[AmexRuislip]

[tweet]1406827619732107264[/tweet]

A view from the USA....

Maybe I'm being naive here, but at the moment we have the Olympics for able bodied people and there are the Paralympics for people with a range of disabilities.
So are there games for transgender participants?

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

Madness

 

[Tarpon]

Madness

One Step Beyond I’d say…

 

[jackanada]

A few hopefully non contentious points.

The advantage of going through puberty as a man never fully disappears, no matter what hormones, what surgeries or what time has elapsed.

In some sports while we may refer to them as men's and women's we actually have an open category and then a women's category. This does present the kernel of a way forward for other sports.
Transphobia is rife and a very emotive topic. My congratulations to all those who have been measured in their response. As a result it really needs to be emphasized that many of those (and hopefully the great majority) who disagree with this woman being allowed to compete have absolutely no problem with sports people below elite/professional level competing among the rest of their gender.

 

[A1X]

It’s hard to differentiate between the freedom of people to live as they choose in “real life” and in a sporting context, but I think this is a situation which isn’t tenable in picking transgender athletes for traditionally male or female events. It’s only really a medal consideration in weightlifting, but I can imagine in a sport like rugby involving physical contact things could get quite nasty.

 

[jackanada]

think you've missed the significant point of the story, Hubbard is now a woman.

As I have alluded to just now if instead at elite level there was an open category (replacing men's) and then a protected category, XX chromosome cis-gendered athletes (replacing women's) then none of Laurel's rights are infringed, though her chances of getting to the Olympics would be zero, which was exactly what they were some years before.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

It's very complicated...

This from the article I referenced earlier:

"The guidelines, which are employed by most sports federations, also established that trans female athletes must maintain testosterone levels below 10 nanomoles per liter. That’s on the far low end for most cisgender males but higher than average for cisgender women, whose testosterone typically falls between 0.3 and 2.4 nanomoles per liter.

But, Roberts points out, cisgender women with polycystic ovary syndrome and some other conditions can have levels three times that — or even higher. Nearly a third of elite adolescent female athletes have relatively elevated testosterone, compared to just 2 to 12 percent of the general female population. Female Olympians also tend to have higher levels than age-matched controls.​"

It isn't just about how much testosterone there is. It also depends on the genetic programming and the biological history - what has been bathing in the blood's testosterone, and for how long. She spent 32 years with the biological sex of a man with her XY programmed cells bathed in testosterone. This is bound to have left its mark, even if the testosterone superfusion has been reduced.

I am willing to bet a lot of money that we will never see, in a sport that requires physical strength, a female to male trans-sexual man competing in male sport.

Transgender athletes should compete according to their biological sex unless they can prove they are trans-sexual without biological agdvantage from biological sex, which will be hard to establish.

I note also that transgender can mean with or without surgical and hormonal intervention, but that if there has been surgical and hormonal intervention the correct term is trans-sexual.

The more I think about this decision, the more I object. Really unfair to get this woman's hopes up, too. Looks to me like the NZers have overstepped themselves in their rush to be accomodating.

 

[carlzeiss]

Good luck to her , I hope she does her nation proud

 

[Hamilton]

It isn't just about how much testosterone there is. It also depends on the genetic programming and the biological history - what has been bathing in the blood's testosterone, and for how long. She spent 32 years with the biological sex of a man with her XY programmed cells bathed in testosterone. This is bound to have left its mark, even if the testosterone superfusion has been reduced.

I am willing to bet a lot of money that we will never see, in a sport that requires physical strength, a female to male trans-sexual man competing in male sport.

Transgender athletes should compete according to their biological sex unless they can prove they are trans-sexual without biological agdvantage from biological sex, which will be hard to establish.

I note also that transgender can mean with or without surgical and hormonal intervention, but that if there has been surgical and hormonal intervention the correct term is trans-sexual.

The more I think about this decision, the more I object. Really unfair to get this woman's hopes up, too. Looks to me like the NZers have overstepped themselves in their rush to be accomodating.

If sit-ups was a sport we would. It appears that those tracking this data noted that trans men were able to do more sit-ups than cisgender men.

I’m not an expert in all this stuff and I admit I was about to write a post saying that I thought it unfair etc. and then I read this article.

Lots for us all to understand. I’m still thinking it through.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Blue Valkyrie]

They should just categorise it on the number of Y chromosomes.

I know it is not just XX and XY, so we could have Zero-Y, One-Y and multi-Y groupings.

 

[Baker lite]

think you've missed the significant point of the story, Hubbard is now a woman.

She’ll probably never live in a cupboard...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Mr Putdown]

It’s hard to differentiate between the freedom of people to live as they choose in “real life” and in a sporting context, but I think this is a situation which isn’t tenable in picking transgender athletes for traditionally male or female events. It’s only really a medal consideration in weightlifting, but I can imagine in a sport like rugby involving physical contact things could get quite nasty.

You couldn’t be more wrong, it’s a medal consideration in every single track and field event as well as pretty much every other event that women compete in as individuals.

[im assuming that the ribbon waving gymnastic floor event, isn’t an Olympic event obviously.]

 

[schmunk]

You couldn’t be more wrong, it’s a medal consideration in every single track and field event as well as pretty much every other event that women compete in as individuals.

[im assuming that the ribbon waving gymnastic floor event, isn’t an Olympic event obviously.]

I think you've misread that - he meant "in weightlifting the only consideration for the female competitors is the medal; in other sports there is also a potential physical danger to the female competitors"

 

[dsr-burnley]

I think a vital point is being missed on all sides.

Most of this transgender activism, whether we're in favour or agin, is a societal thing. Should a boy be able to take tablets and pills, and for that matter be castrated I believe, and then count as a woman? Or vice versa for a girl? Or for that matter can an uncastrated boy (in old money) be considered a girl (in new money) without any change at all? All sorts of issues.

But none of these issues are relevant to sport. The reason for separate women's and men's sports is nothing to do with societal issues. It's because possession of a Y chromosome gives such a significant competitive advantage, that separate events for people without a Y chromosome are essential if those people are to be able to play competitive sport at all. And with that, nothing has changed. If you have a Y chromosome, you cannot in all fairness compete with those who haven't.

 

[dsr-burnley]

I think you've misread that - he meant "in weightlifting the only consideration for the female competitors is the medal; in other sports there is also a potential physical danger to the female competitors"

That's a fact. A friend of mine played hockey, boys' rugby team v girls' hockey team. One of the boys whacked the ball and one of the girls put her foot out to stop it like she would with a girl's match; result, one broken ankle. The ball was just travelling too fast.

No sort of sex change opeations will turn an average-sized man into an average-sized woman, and muscles built up over testosterone-fuelled maleness does not just disappear if the newly-female athlete keeps working on it.

If sex change is done before puberty, it might. But the creation of castrati opera singers by castrating small boys with beautiful treble voices was outlawed as barbaric several centuries ago, and I sincerely hope they aren't going to bring those days back.

 

[wellquickwoody]

One thing is for sure this is an issue that is only going to be more prevalent in the future, so the debate needs to be started

Perhaps the debate should have been stifled at the start?

Give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile so to speak.

Or not in the circumstances.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

In 2021 you're expected to suspend disbelief in real life as you would in a fictitious movie.

No longer can you believe your eyes and say what you see before you, you have to pretend it's something else just to appease a vocal minority.

 

[Live by the sea]

There’s always been a small number of very confused people sexually. I remember the early 90’s some of the duds hanging round Times Square at night ..even then it was hard to tell who was male and who was female sometimes .

The difference in 2021 is mainly social media has given terms like Binary a much higher profile . You have so called celebrities like Sam Smith ( who is apparently a singer although sounds like a cat being strangled to me ) using his binary status as something to be proud of . I’m not sure about that , I think for me it’s more I feel sad for him and people like him that clearly have ‘issues ‘ going on inside their head .