Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.
Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.
I have pointed out to people before that trans women athletes in practice tend to not outperform all women in the sport. The data we have puts them as no more competitive as women with naturally high testosterone and depending on sport can actually be at a disadvantage…
But there’s another underlying assumption. You assume your athlete went through masculinizing puberty first and then a female puberty second. If you skip that first step then you don’t see major differences of frame, weight distribution or muscle mass.
Where this stings is that laws are forcing people to go through that first puberty regardless of the wishes of the paitent, the patients families, the paitents doctors and the concensus of the medical associations of those doctors… And then the government sits back and demonizes those people based on their physicality as a logistical social problem for the rest of their lives and ostracizes them based on this logic.
Athletes squew young. If you allowed through trans athletes who went through the transition process young enough or looked at sport with trans populations and statistically assessed whether any excessive advantage was afforded and allow in those instances where none was found you could solve for any statistical stand out issues within a decade…
But no, we are having this inane conversation because it suits some government parties to make people feel that trans people are a threat or a problem that must be stopped and that there is zero reasonable inclusion policies.
This is why my personal opinion is we should allow trans athletes if they didn’t go through male puberty. If they did, sorry you’re out. If they didn’t, it’s OK.
And you’re right not all mtf athletes are going to end up at the top echelon but given enough time statistically speaking they will be drastically overrepresented.
Edit: also the data is quite clear trans women are stronger, have more lung capacity, etc even 5+ years into hormone therapy. Iirc I even saw 10+ years on a paper once
But the ones that went through male puberty. I think this is why we should try and find gender dysphoria earlier and treat b4 puberty. It’s much more effective the younger you start
Of course issue is you don’t want to be too broad with diagnosis because of false positives and the conservatives going nuts. So it’s a difficult thing to do. Maybe we will identify what causes gender dysphoria some day and that will help
I think it’s a lot more black and white being trans than people realize and I have my own pet theories about what gender euphoria /dysphoria is that I observe as being two independent factors.
Half of the problem I think in reaching people is that the vast majority of cis people don’t have an observed internal gender preference. We are trying to build empathy with something we as trans people assume they have too - but maybe only a small minority of cis people experience it. I don’t think we actually understand cis people, we just assume a bunch of things about them using trans people as a false opposite.
Thing is… If I am correct, the assumed massive earth shaking regret of what would happen if a cis person went through gender reassignment… Is they might just adapt and be fine.