There also never seems to be any situations of FTM people excelling at sports like is reported of MTF. Happy to accept that might be a media bias issue.
There are no cases of trans fem folk excelling either. At least not trans fem folk on hormone replacement for a decent period of time.
You’ll find studies talking about individual elements of physiology, and drawing extentions from that that. You’ll find studies that don’t take in to account the impacts of hormone replacement. And you’ll find studies written by transphobes with an agenda that outright lie.
But what you won’t find, no matter how hard you look, is any kind of evidence of systemic advantage. What you won’t find is any kind of study that looks at real world sporting outcomes, and shows evidence of trans folk winning more than they should. You’ll find plenty of examples of trans folk being accussed of having advantage for performing well, but unless your position is that trans folk can’t compete unless they are actively disadvantaged, you should expect to see trans folk win sometimes, and place highly sometimes. That only becomes an issue when it occurs more than you would expect given the participation numbers, and it’s at that point, the evidence evaporates.
I want to bring up Lia Thomas as a classic example of what the media portrayal looks like. She is portrayed as a mediocre swimmer, who became a great swimmer when she transitioned. But, there is bias at play in the way that story is told. In order to swim in the women’s category, she needed to be on hormone replacement for a period of time (2 years from memory). During that time, her performance was impacted, but she was still forced to swim with men. And those are the stats that the transphobes will bring up, to call her a mediocre swimmer. If you look at her stats from before she started hormones, her performance was at an elite level. And after the impact of hormones, her performance was elite by women’s standards too, but she set no world records, and she was soundly beat by many cis women. Yet the stories you hear, tell of a trans women breaking records, and magically becoming a contender. Because the stories are part of a wedge tactic, designed to normalise the idea of seperating trans women from cis women.
This research compares transgender male and transgender female athletes to their cisgender counterparts. Compared with cisgender women, transgender women have decreased lung function, increasing their work in breathing. Regardless of fat-free mass distribution, transgender women performed worse on the countermovement jump than cisgender women and CM. Although transgender women have comparable absolute V̇O2max values to cisgender women, when normalised for body weight, transgender women’s cardiovascular fitness is lower than CM and women. Therefore, this research shows the potential complexity of transgender athlete physiology and its effects on the laboratory measures of physical performance. A long-term longitudinal study is needed to confirm whether these findings are directly related to gender-affirming hormone therapy owing to the study’s shortcomings, particularly its cross-sectional design and limited sample size, which make confirming the causal effect of gender-affirmative care on sports performance problematic.
Now, it’s guilty of the very thing I pointed out earlier. It looks at a single attribute in isolation, and draws conclusions from it. But when you compare it with studies that find advantage in other areas, it becomes clear, that the answer will not be found in studies highlight individual areas. What does an advantage in height mean for example, if offset by cardiovascular disadvantage?
There is a reason we don’t see trans women dominating sports. And that’s because they don’t. Anything telling you otherwise, is pushing an agenda.
And of course, I’m pushing an agenda too. But my agenda is to not be excluded from the sports I love, and not to have sports used as an excuse to exclude me from other arease of society. My agenda is my safety.
I’ve posted things like this many times before, and rarely does it get anywhere, because people have already made up their mind. You claim to have not made up yours, but if you are reading this and your first instinct is to try and find rebuttals and arguments, then I’d suggest to you that maybe you have made up your mind already. If your first instinct wasn’t a defensive desire to argue and debate the topic, then well, you’re one of the rare ones…
Thank you for taking the time to reply in detail. That study makes for an interesting read although as you mention, it does highlight that there are statisticaly significant differences both positive and negative.
I’ll admit that I don’t like the way the conclusion is written in that it only covers negative or neutral aspects and ignores or ‘normalises’ the positive aspects behind body mass. Normalised performance is relevant for weight class sports but if trans men are generally bigger and therefore stronger overall then it becomes a bit moot.
The Absolute Average Power and peak power values in the reports correction are pretty significant.
This may very well be offset by the other negative impacts listed such as CV fitness etc
As you said, it’s a relatively narrow lens that makes it difficult to expand to a wider view.
You do make a very good point about performance vs participation and it does suggest a conclusion that any differences ballance each other out.
I’d like to see a study that could confirm that as it would be great evidence to show relative performance equality.
The low number of trans athletes (yes I’m aware of the irony/difficulty) would make such a study difficult.
Maybe the default position should be to let all trans people compete to allow for such studies.
On a personal note I hope you get to play the sports you love and that the world becomes more accepting. I wouldn’t hesitate to play (im too old and unfit to compete at anything!) with you or have my child compete against/with a trans person.
There are no cases of trans fem folk excelling either. At least not trans fem folk on hormone replacement for a decent period of time.
You’ll find studies talking about individual elements of physiology, and drawing extentions from that that. You’ll find studies that don’t take in to account the impacts of hormone replacement. And you’ll find studies written by transphobes with an agenda that outright lie.
But what you won’t find, no matter how hard you look, is any kind of evidence of systemic advantage. What you won’t find is any kind of study that looks at real world sporting outcomes, and shows evidence of trans folk winning more than they should. You’ll find plenty of examples of trans folk being accussed of having advantage for performing well, but unless your position is that trans folk can’t compete unless they are actively disadvantaged, you should expect to see trans folk win sometimes, and place highly sometimes. That only becomes an issue when it occurs more than you would expect given the participation numbers, and it’s at that point, the evidence evaporates.
I want to bring up Lia Thomas as a classic example of what the media portrayal looks like. She is portrayed as a mediocre swimmer, who became a great swimmer when she transitioned. But, there is bias at play in the way that story is told. In order to swim in the women’s category, she needed to be on hormone replacement for a period of time (2 years from memory). During that time, her performance was impacted, but she was still forced to swim with men. And those are the stats that the transphobes will bring up, to call her a mediocre swimmer. If you look at her stats from before she started hormones, her performance was at an elite level. And after the impact of hormones, her performance was elite by women’s standards too, but she set no world records, and she was soundly beat by many cis women. Yet the stories you hear, tell of a trans women breaking records, and magically becoming a contender. Because the stories are part of a wedge tactic, designed to normalise the idea of seperating trans women from cis women.
I’ll also point you at this study…
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/58/11/586.full
Now, it’s guilty of the very thing I pointed out earlier. It looks at a single attribute in isolation, and draws conclusions from it. But when you compare it with studies that find advantage in other areas, it becomes clear, that the answer will not be found in studies highlight individual areas. What does an advantage in height mean for example, if offset by cardiovascular disadvantage?
There is a reason we don’t see trans women dominating sports. And that’s because they don’t. Anything telling you otherwise, is pushing an agenda.
And of course, I’m pushing an agenda too. But my agenda is to not be excluded from the sports I love, and not to have sports used as an excuse to exclude me from other arease of society. My agenda is my safety.
I’ve posted things like this many times before, and rarely does it get anywhere, because people have already made up their mind. You claim to have not made up yours, but if you are reading this and your first instinct is to try and find rebuttals and arguments, then I’d suggest to you that maybe you have made up your mind already. If your first instinct wasn’t a defensive desire to argue and debate the topic, then well, you’re one of the rare ones…
Thank you for taking the time to reply in detail. That study makes for an interesting read although as you mention, it does highlight that there are statisticaly significant differences both positive and negative. I’ll admit that I don’t like the way the conclusion is written in that it only covers negative or neutral aspects and ignores or ‘normalises’ the positive aspects behind body mass. Normalised performance is relevant for weight class sports but if trans men are generally bigger and therefore stronger overall then it becomes a bit moot. The Absolute Average Power and peak power values in the reports correction are pretty significant. This may very well be offset by the other negative impacts listed such as CV fitness etc
As you said, it’s a relatively narrow lens that makes it difficult to expand to a wider view.
You do make a very good point about performance vs participation and it does suggest a conclusion that any differences ballance each other out.
I’d like to see a study that could confirm that as it would be great evidence to show relative performance equality.
The low number of trans athletes (yes I’m aware of the irony/difficulty) would make such a study difficult. Maybe the default position should be to let all trans people compete to allow for such studies.
On a personal note I hope you get to play the sports you love and that the world becomes more accepting. I wouldn’t hesitate to play (im too old and unfit to compete at anything!) with you or have my child compete against/with a trans person.
To be fair, I am too! I still run, but lets just say, my halcyon days are behind me :P