Oh, i'm sorry; I hadn't visited your profile !
Oh no, don't be sorry love! I loved it!
Two things; I agree with you totally on your first talking point. as I am similar. I have actually made jokes about me joining a team and then coming in last place everytime.
I agree also; everyone has the right to sport, no matter what group they are in. However, I still do disagree with you on not limiting transgender people's entry into the sport.
While I don't know if this is the case, I like to consider that it is likely true that most transgender women who are out as that definition also are on hormone therapy.
Considering the dramatic effect of estradiol on your body, especially with anti-androgens, I do agree that it is likely often the case that there are transgender women who would perform worse and have no advantages when participating.
This might be something we will have to come to our differences on, but I hope my side can at least be understood.
However, I think that there are still plenty of muscular " men" who finally decide to be themselves and transition into living as a woman. While an anecdotal case of a 140 pound 6'3" twig like me, or someone with your experiences is probably going to be the normal for the most part as far as transgender women getting into sport, this certainly would not be the case all of the time. That being said, I think that some simple parameters for transgender women could do some real good. Not only for eliminating the possibility of any descreptancy between the two, but also just to abolish the argument and the accompanying transphobic comparison between a transgender woman and some macho man.
To your last point, about how a small minority is ruining it for the larger majority; this is precisely the point of requiring a certain level of hormonal treatment. If you have been on estradiol and spirolactone for a year, then you don't have testosterone-fueled muscle mass, and in all honesty could have more estradiol in your body than the average female -- given you are taking a dosage on top of your body's natural production, while also eliminating the testosterone counter.
We have to acknowledge the difference between biological sex and gender here, because if not then we are definitely creating an unsafe and unfair environment for competition. It is hard to defend the point that the average male's body is not more capable of physical activity than a female's, because it is something that is objectively true. While the average transgender woman's body might not be this way, there will still exist transgender women who have not taken these hormones that reduce their muscle mass or do not have much muscle mass in general.
While I agree that the problem is minute, and pales in comparison to much larger transgender issues, I also do think that it is wiser to set this up now.
Really, we have aligned the definiton of our sport groups to sexes -- and thus, gender, as we aligned that to sex too (we seem to have a big problem with this,) which I don't believe is the correct at all. The real way to handle this issue would honestly be to tear the whole thing down and build it up again.
However, the NCAA, just as an example, is privately owned, so it would be pretty tough to force them to re-establish their brand and spend a ton of money for equality. While the ideal world focuses on such things, money doesn't, and to those people nothing matters more. That being said, my proposed mitigation is merely that; mitigation, doing the best that we can do with the current system we have.
It is not the right way to approach it, for certain. It is definitely a scary concept to have some " medication parameter" over your accessiblity to sport. Probably the best way to actually do this is to classify people by their weight and then have similar weights compete, similar to what they do in mixed martial arts.
I guess part of this comes from some subjective experiences -- I have met a bunch of different transgender women of all sorts of shapes and sizes, and one that really speaks out to me was the one who wanted to build herself into a muscular tomboy, essentially. I mean this girl had biceps the side of my skull. I continuously think back to her. While I think she should have the right to be whoever she wants, I understand that this is alien to a lot of people. This even felt alien to me as a transgender person, because I was always self-concious and felt " cursed" for being tall. However, I also really do not agree with saying " oh, this woman has masculine features, so she is a man," because if that is how it worked then every " stud" would be a transgender man. However, the idea of that woman competing against other women, at least in that state, presents an obvious advantage that testosterone provides. A man's hormonal system would be a lot like if a woman was taking steroids, thus I really do not consider it to be fair so long as
In a way we agree, and in a way we don't, and that is understandable. This is a subject that is going to be divisive, even in our own community, which is why hearing all of those voices is important, and I am happy to hear yours. Hopefully you can at least see my side of this, and perhaps we could even gain some common ground on a few of these ideas. Honestly when I saw that someone had responded and saw the name Christine I got a little scared. While there are a lot of great people on here, there are also a ton of trans-exclusionary women on here who think that all transgender people are hurting women. Everytime I get a response on one of my articles about transgender activisim and rights, I get anxiety about opening it for this reason, because I know I am sensitive and it would hurt my feelings. Thanks for writing me back ! :)
