I feel like not enough people know why we’re even hearing about this issue. In 2019, a conservative think tank did focus groups and figured out that trans women and girls competing in sports against cis women and girls would be the most upsetting social issue for middle class suburban women and conservative democrats. It did better at swaying votes than any economic issue, and tested well in local elections, so they took it to the national scale. It was never about the athletes.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/07/wedge-issue-dividing-trumpworld-392323
When Schilling considered the range of issues making centrist voters and suburban parents uncomfortable, the one that stood out to him was transgender rights: an issue that had largely been absorbed into the Democratic platform, but which he suspected many Americans were still processing themselves. But what was the right angle to take? Earlier that summer, American Principles Project had partnered with a behavioral science firm to assess whether focusing on transgender issues could turn educated suburbanites into Republican voters.
APP and its data partner, Evolving Strategies, analyzed how thousands of registered Kentucky voters reacted to different messages about what they described as Beshear’s “extreme” support for transgender rights. Should men be allowed to participate in sports events for women and girls? Andy Beshear thinks so. Should men be permitted to use women’s restrooms because they identify as transgender women? Andy Beshear thinks so.
“What we found was the sports issue got the most powerful response from people, specifically conservative Democrats and independents,” Schilling would explain to me later.
“We wanted Bevin to win, but more than anything, we wanted to test this out before trying it at a much larger scale. Now, donors understand that although we came up a few votes short in Kentucky, this can still work. This is persuasive,” Schilling said.
“Should men be allowed to participate in sports events for women and girls?”
Really the most appropriate response to this framing is that men aren’t participating in women’s sports.
We all have both sets of the genes that control whether our bodies express male or female secondary sex characteristics. We’re born with both male and female genetic code and it never goes away, it’s simply a matter of which are being expressed and which are not.
The reason HRT works is because tipping the hormone balance from majority male to majority female or vice versa is telling the trans persons body “express female/male genes now” which results in real biological change, the same changes that cis people experience, the same genes that would be active were the person born as their target sex. After transition, trans people are biologically closer to their target sex than their birth sex, the literal tissue of their body has changed.
This study just bears that truth out.
The language they use there would be hilarious if it wasn’t, you know, horrible. Men against girls. Like there’s a bunch of surly 35 year old men, absolutely dunking on a team of 5 year old girls just doing their best!
Worth highlighting this part of the article since I’ve seen a number of people falsely claiming the opposite on lemmy.world lately:
Transgender women’s bone density was found to be equivalent to that of cisgender women, which is linked to muscle strength.
And this is not the first study showing this same trend
Similar findings have been echoed in previous reporting. According to a recent report that generated an in-depth review of all English-language scientific literature (published between 2011-2021) about transgender (trans) women athlete participation in elite sport, several key conclusions coincide with findings from the IOC funded study
Fascinating. It doesn’t look like they controlled for height/weight so it’s not surprising that the grip strength of TW was so much higher than for CW. Agree with their conclusion that a larger cohort is needed for a longitudinal study rather than a cross-sectional one.
HRT doesnt level the playing field for benefits gained due to “doping” or “Y-chromosome” development.
Sports should have “XX-chromosome” category i.e. Female/Women sports. And “XY-chromosome” category i.e. Male/Men sports.
And if there are sufficient participants, an “All-Gender” category i.e. Open/Neutral sports.
There is no need to co-opt or include ambiguous situations. Sports should be fair, equal-opportunity and intensely competitive within their segments.
Did you read the original study here at all?
Very interesting
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The main problem with that is sports would then be like 95% played by males. Almost no woman can match a man in sports where physical endurance, strength or speed is involved.
