A Canadian cyclist who made headlines around the world last year after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a world title in any sport has hit back at comments made about her by Sharron Davies – by posting a picture to Twitter of the former Olympic swimmer and saying that saying that nowadays, people would be “calling her a man.”
Dr Rachel McKinnon, who won the 200 metres world title in the 35-44 women’s sprint category at the UCI Masters Track World Championships last October, was responding to comments made by Davies in recent days that transgender women “have a male sex advantage” when competing in women’s sport.
Today, she tweeted a photo of Davies and asked how the two-time Commonwealth swimming champion and winner of an Olympic silver medal at Moscow in 1980 might be perceived nowadays.
I guarantee that if we posted this photo and asked, “Do you think it’s fair for this trans women to compete in women’s sport?” a LOT of people would be screaming ‘NO’ and calling her a man. pic.twitter.com/3jriC71lre
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) March 5, 2019
Davies had shared her thoughts on Twitter last week about transgender athletes born as men competing against women, after Martina Navratilova said it was tantamount to “cheating” – with the 18-time tennis grand slam singles winner later apologising for her comments after being accused of transphobia.
I have nothing against anyone who wishes 2be transgender. However I believe there is a fundamental difference between the binary sex u r born with & the gender u may identify as. To protect women’s sport those with a male sex advantage should not be able 2compete in women’s sport
— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) March 1, 2019
It’s clearly an emotive subject that polarises opinion on both sides, and in recent days Davies has repeatedly defended her position on Twitter, as well as in the mainstream media.
A number of replies to her posts on the social network have highlighted transgender athletes competing in women’s sport and the unfair advantage some people believe they have.
Meanwhile, other women’s sports stars have also shared their thoughts on the issue, such as Marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe saying that she believes tougher rules are needed regarding transgender athletes.
A tweet from McKinnon last October after she won her UCI women’s Masters title sparked a heated online debate about whether it was fair for someone born as a man to compete in the event.
An assistant professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, McKinnon defended her right to participate, pointing out that she did not qualify fastest in the event and that she finished fourth in the time trial.
She also highlighted that in order to compete, she was “forced to have an unhealthily endogenous testosterone value,” adding that she is “an internationally recognized expert on the science and ethics of transgender inclusion in sport.”
88 thoughts on “People would be “calling her a man” – Transgender cycling champ in online row with Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies”
Unfortunately the good doctor
Unfortunately the good doctor has lost any moral high ground with this purile comment. Sharron Davies is a woman and no-one has ever suggested otherwise. It is a known fact that in ‘1980’ or earlier male Eastern Bloc athletes were masquerading as female. It is a lame throwback and a very poor excuse for her activities and not comparable at all. It is great to see ex-athletes speaking out knowing that current competitors might not risk doing so for fear of being labelled Transphobic. I am with Martina and Sharron on this one. The integrity of women’s sport is at risk if we don’t have clear guidelines. If I were to choose to do so I could go onto Strava right now and swap my gender to female at the click of a button and appear at the top of numerous leaderboard; I am sure the local female riders might think that unfair whether I was on hormones or not. 30+years of testosterone and the physical development it brings does not disappear.
Organon wrote:
Is it? Or have you confused the high level of drug taking, including anabolic sterioids like testosterone, that created body changes for female Eastern Bloc athletes. Some of those body changes were reported to be characteristics that are generally considered to be ‘male’.
Agree with much of the post though.
Sniffer wrote:
Yes it is… the IOC started testing for Male athletes competing as female in 1968, it was classed as cheating which if course it was, however the situation here is completely different in that Rachel isn’t hiding the fact she was once a man.
Sniffer wrote:
It happened, I’m suprised you never heard about it.
Not an exact example of what was stated, but this was waaay earlier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Ratjen
The whole issue makes you think why the male and female categories exist… there was no male category to begin with because it was simply about competing to be the best, adding a female category was always going to lead to complications.
If sport is about fairness then you really need to remove the arbitrary and vaguely defined groups. It won’t stop anyone competing, but it will many from unfairly winning.
ChrisB200SX wrote:
An interesting article. As you say it is way earlier and hence nothing to do with Eastern Bloc athletes.
Any links to the original claim?
There was much more of this going on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_East_Germany
ChrisB200SX wrote:
Edit, not as funny as I thought it’d be.
Organon wrote:
But it does. Once your hormones get into the female range, you lose the male advantage in muscle strength and power. Then, all that those years of testosterone give you is a bulky frame to cart around.
The research is clear, even if there is not yet much of it.
If it were any other way, wouldn’t those nations with less scruples (was USSR/eastern bloc, now China) be filling the field with transwomen?
And in any case, this is a non-problem. It’s the bathroom controversy, moved onto a new topic. Transphobia dressed up.
clayfit wrote:
Does the height advantage disappear? The larger lung capacity? The larger heart? Does the pelvis magically change shape?
Obviously not. To pretend that there is no residual advantage is ridiculous. To throw around the term transphobia just undermines your argument further.
clayfit]
A bulky frame you can smash into someone with in a rugby match, boxing match, MMA fight etc. There *is* a problem here if we’re concerned not only about competetiveness but with safety. Don’t just point and say “transphobes” when people bring up concerns, most people here aren’t being transphobic, but love sport to be fair and safe.
clayfit wrote:
If we were to reverse your assertion, do you seriously think that if an female athlete raised their testosterone levels into the acceptable male range that they would be able to compete against male athletes?
There are a hell of a lot of gender differences that are not solely mediated with testosterone. As an elite athelete they will have a life of training with male chromosomes as well.
In the sport of cycling the advantage of being male is massive, most cycling clubs will have several amateur men who could win the womens TT championship, how many races did Rachel McKinnon win as a male?
There is a very simple
There is a very simple solution to this – just base it on simple genetics – if you have a Y chromosome then you are in the “mens” category. You can identify as a woman, but you compete with all the other Y chromosome competitors.
MarsFlyer wrote:
Simple but wrong. As an expert pointed out in the Guardian today people are often assumed to have either XX or XY chromosomes, but some individuals are born with an extra X chromosome and others have a mosaic where each cell has one karyotype or the other.
Before parading their prejudices here lots of people would do well to read the article I lifted that quote from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/06/testosterone-biological-sex-sports-bodies?CMP=share_btn_tw
Rachel McKinnon’s point is well made; apparently it’s appalling to misgender Sharon Davies, but absolutely fine to misgender McKinnon. Oh the irony….
exilegareth wrote:
Those with unclear chromosomes make up a tiny percentage. On Radio 4’s More or Less it was reported to be a fraction of one per cent.
And we’re not even talking about these, we’re talking about males who decide to live their lives as women.
It’s simple; if you have unusual chromosomes that are neither make or female you should compete in the male category or have your own category. To compete against females is clearly unfair. If you were born with a set of male chromosomes you should have no right to compete against females.
exilegareth wrote:
No, it’s not well-made, because Sharron Davies has consistently referred to Rachel McKinnon as female; saying ‘some other people were mean to me’, doesn’t make it anything other than vile to suggest that a 56 year old woman looks like a man.
As far as that Guardian article goes it’s actually a fair bit simpler than they are trying to make out – you either have (or had) testes or you don’t. Your testes (or lack of them) is determined by the SRY gene (sex-determining region Y protein). The SRY gene as the name suggests is usually found on the Y chromosome, but it can be transposed in rare cases.
As far as testes goes, you might quote this ‘Take, for example, women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, who appear to be overrepresented among elite women athletes and for whom their tissues have no ability to respond to T at the cellular level. ‘
In fact that quote is misleading at best. Androgen insensitivity is a spectrum from ‘very mild’ along to complete. In terms of athletes with AIS, while complete androgen insensitivity is quite easy to diagnose, partial insensitivity is FAR more common among athletes. And what’s happening is “there are difficulties in ascertaining a specific percentage or degrees of androgen resistance and Dr Bermon says that the benefit of the doubt is given to the athlete.”
We know that androgen insensitivity is 140x more common among elite athletes than in the general population, and that you can be partially sensitive to androgens and still compete.
What does it mean to be partially sensitive? Well at the most mild end of AIS, we are talking about people who are unequivocally and uncontroversially male. Those on the complete end have a female phenotype (breasts, external genitals), BUT they are still taller on average than people with XX chromosomes, even though they are completely insensitive to testosterone. Why is that? Because of genes on the Y chromomsome determining height.
So you essentially have in that context:
* people with XY chromsomes and internal testes (though they may be removed surgically, this is no longer mandated by sporting bodies) who cannot use testosterone at all (likely 10% of the cases of athletes with XY chromosomes and internal testes). They are infertile.
* people with XY chromosomes and internal testes who are somewhat virilized (i.e. their bodies to process testosterone). They may have male fertility (no people with testes produce eggs, sex IS completely binary on the level of gametes) or maybe not. This is the majority of cases. These people will have been brought up as girls typically, and may or may not develop a male gender identity after puberty (it essentially depends on the extent to which you are sensitive to testosterone).
Both groups seem to have advantages over women who are missing the SRY gene. (There is another group of people (those with 5ARD) who are missing the minor androgen DHT, these are fully sensitive to testosterone, but may have female-appearing gentials and internal testes. A male gender identity is common after puberty.)
So while there are certainly variations in biology, the fundamental is testes (producing testosterone) vs the lack of the same.
In the case of transwomen we are talking about fully androgen-sensitive testes owners (either past or present) who have developed a male skeleton and muscle as a result of exposure to androgens, mostly during male puberty. Whereas girls’ ovaries produce oestrogen at puberty, which acts as a growth retardant, transwomen had testosterone which would have made them taller and stronger than girls (prior to puberty there is not much difference).
Castration or GnRH agonists (to suppress testosterone production) after puberty by a transwoman will not reverse the indelibly male skeleton, and moreover the respective consumption of testosterone by transmales and oestrogen by transfemales still produces an average higher lean muscle mass from the transfemales than the transmales. Obviously biological females who do not identify as transgender and therefore do not take testosterone supplements would have an even bigger penalty compared to transfemales.
MarsFlyer wrote:
Except apparently it isn’t as easy as X/XX/XY etc – the chromosomes don’t maketh the man (or woman, for that matter) and even *biological* gender is way more fuzzy/complicated than was previously thought.
brooksby wrote:
That’s just a typical minorityist attempt to pick on something vanishingly rare and pretend that it is far more common than it actually is in order to muddy the waters. The incidence of anything other than XX or XY is about 1 in 1,666 live births.
Eton Rifle wrote:
Not really. Was just saying that recent research is starting to ask *how* we’re defining man/woman when we can’t rely on chromosomes, or testosterone count, or (according to current transgender orthodoxy) what bits you have between your legs.
I’ll step out of this debate, because I’m too old to get my head around it, with my final comment that dr McKinnon looks about two feet taller and twice the size of the athletes with whom she shares the podium.
brooksby wrote:
There are arguments that it’s not necessary to define man/woman at all.
Why should it be in your passport, for instance? What purpose does it serve there?
Transphobes have found that hypothetical predators in bathrooms and the possibility of self-identifying people competing in women’s sport are safe ways to attack trans people. Don’t fall into the trap.
clayfit wrote:
But is it a trap?
My wife tells me that over on mumsnet there are people throwing the word ‘transphobic’ around in an attempt to stifle the debate, rather than to counter prejudice against trans women.
And apparently those predators in toilets and prisons are not all hypothetical. Even if they were hypothetical it says to me (a man) that women are uncomfortable, possibly afraid of other women in the same way as they are of men. That’s probably not their own fault and certainly not a nice position in which to find oneself.
Are you sure that the women complaining about fairness in sport are doing it purposely to attack trans people? Is it not possible to complain about what you perceive as unfair without being called names?
Eton Rifle wrote:
Though definitely a minority that is still 4.5 million people on the planet with other than XX or XY.
MarsFlyer wrote:
If it were a simple problem, perhaps simple genetics would fix it. But it’s not a simple problem, and genetics isn’t simple. Just because you have the genes of a female doesn’t mean you present as a female. And vise versa. Sharron Davies is also wrong. Male and female isn’t binary… like sexuality it’s a sliding scale.
Rachel has had the physical advantage of growing up with the developmental advantages of a (presumably) healthy testosterone boost, but probably with the disadvantages of a less agressive nature, and a lower reward displacement function (both typically ‘male characteristics’, but less represented in those with ‘female’ behavioural adaptations, both very important in elite athletes.)
It is a very difficult area, and personally I don’t think that those who developed and went through puberty as a male should race as a female. I think the most likely outcome if human rights are put to the fore is that we end up with classes based around gender, just as we do for age, often times weight, number of limbs etc etc etc.
madcarew]
If it were a simple problem, perhaps simple genetics would fix it. But it’s not a simple problem, and genetics isn’t simple. Just because you have the genes of a female doesn’t mean you present as a female. And vise versa. Sharron Davies is also wrong. Male and female isn’t binary… like sexuality it’s a sliding scale.
Male and female IS binary. Determined by your chromosomes. What isn’t binary is the gender. A male can live as a woman, but he can never become female as that would defy biology.
darrenleroy]
Fix what?
darrenleroy]
Male/female is way more complicated than binary/either/or.
Intersex is the term generally used for people with ambiguous genders and it’s not always down to their chromosomes, but a complex mixture of chromosomes, gene expressions and the conditions in the womb.
Also, you can have relatively “normal” appearing people who don’t even realise that they have unusual chromosomes until they get a medical test performed for an unrelated issues.
For more insight into the difficulties of sorting people into genders, have a look at Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome etc.
madcarew wrote:
The scary thing is that if it is repeated often enough, made part of the school curriculum, enacted as a hate crime if you deny it, written in to HR policies, eventually you have no choice but to agree.
That said, if that is a sincerely held belief amongst some, then let them compete without rancour within some ‘sliding scale’ handicap category of their own device, leaving the old-school binaries to carry on as before.
MarsFlyer wrote:
There is no such thing as a simple solution to a complex problem. If there was then the problem couldn’t have been complex! That this topic is once again discussed at great length – here and elsewhere – demonstrates that it is far from simple.
It is disappointing, but not surprising, to see that many people seem to have strongly-held views (and prejudices?) based on very little information. 🙁
I think limiting the comments might spare us some of the venom but it is possible to have an intelligent opinion without being an expert. And I have to say that I find it good to have my opinions challenged, and sometimes altered, and it doesn’t matter whether that person has an incomplete knowledge of a subject as long as it is enlightening.
Where would road.cc’s bike, wheel and clothing reviews if you had to be a framebuilder/pro rider, wind tunnel operator or garment technologist to comment? My sister trained and worked as a GT so could be termed a clothing ‘expert’ but she knows sod-all about cycling or appropriate clothing for different disciplines, climates and so on.
I’d also argue that allowing a comment free-for-all means people can show their true colours. It may not always be pretty but at least we get to see what they really think rather than a censored version to fit the morals of the environment.
To be an elite athlete you
To be an elite athlete you need a very rare combination of aptitudes, attitudes, money and genetic potential. Is that any rarer than being born into a gender you don’t recognise?
This whole episode seems like a storm in a teacup which is distracting from the greater problem of a fall in sports participation of any kind in the UK.
“People would be calling her
“People would be calling her a man”
I don’t think so. I could fancy Sharron Davies, I don’t think I could ever fancy Rachel McKinnon.
FrankH wrote:
So what you find attractive is the decisive factor here? You do realise that there are many others who do fancy men and trans people?
I don’t exactly know where to stand on this subject. I think every effort shoud be made to make sports and society inclusive for all people, however I want to know more about the science behind this; what advantage trans atheletes have and how this compares to the various advantages that different women may have over each other due to their varying genetics. Then I may be able to make a better judgment.
What I do know is who I may fancy has nothing to do with it.
jasecd wrote:
He, sorry, of course I mean she, was the first to bring looks into it. If we have to choose who is male and who is female by that criteria, I choose Sharron Davies every time.
If you are born male and
If you are born male and develop as a male you have advantages over biological females unless you are bottom percentage type male that can’t punch their way out of a paper bag.
Having a reduction in testosterone won’t reduce your frame, heart and lungs etc.
What we have is ex-males with esteem problems and women’s sport is just one part of the esteem boost.
I feel for biologically female athletes as these are not ‘women’ no matter how pc you want to be.
Rick_Rude wrote:
You’re determined to live down to that user name aren’t you?
exilegareth wrote:
Which bit about having a physical advantage is wrong?
Trans females and biological females are not the same thing. This is nothing to do with accepting people as people. This is to do with sport and competition and rules.
Rick_Rude wrote:
Wow…. straight out the pages of the sun. You should change your profile pic to a photo of Graham LIneham.
Being a woman and people
Being a woman and people saying you look like a man is one thing but looking like a man because you were a man is another. Sharron Davies, as far as I know, was born female, grew up female and competed as a female. Unlike Dr Mckinnon…….
That one photo demonstrates
That one photo demonstrates whats wrong with allowing transgender to compete in womens sport.
Headline should be “Man wins womens race”
I have no problem with them competing, but it has to be fair, maybe what’s needed is mens, womens, and transgender categories
keirik wrote:
I’m still waiting for the ‘not very good at sport’ category. We are at an unfair disadvantage.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Good point!
Maybe this is showing that dividing people into different categories is always going to have “edge cases” where people don’t quite fit properly.
I hereby propose that we move over to a “handicap” system, so we can get males/females/intersex people all competing in the same event, but fairly. I’m not quite sure how that applies to cycle racing as the fastest racers will presumably be starting after their slower teammates and thus will need to sprint to reach the peloton.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
I understand that the prudes at the UCI are currently frowning on Porn Pedallers attempts at this…
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Me too.
Although, come to think of it, I still wouldn’t win.
keirik wrote:
Ah, but there’s the rub. They want to stand on the point of being real women, so a third category won’t cut it. Sadly, that can only ever be their fantasy, since reality’s a bitch – it can not be changed.
In twenty years, there will
In twenty years, there will be no non-trans women champions.
Just out of interest, does
Just out of interest, does anyone know if there are any athletes born female competeing in mens sport at any reasonable level? I’ve never heard of any, which would suggest they do not come close to winning if there are.
cbrndc wrote:
Apparently so..
fukawitribe wrote:
Do we know how Mack Beggs did once she’d fully transitioned and was competing against boys/men?
Tony Farrelly wrote:
Apparently so..
— fukawitribe Do we know how Mack Beggs did once she’d fully transitioned and was competing against boys/men?— cbrndc
Good point – no results, but apparently received a scholarship to compete at the collegiate level in the current year (which may mean bugger all).
cbrndc wrote:
Did you mean competing directly against men, not in ‘mens sport’ as aside from Decathlon I can’t think of any (Though there have been female decathlon’s they aren’t competed at at any of the major events)
Beryl Burton was the only one that I know of to compete successfully on a level playing field and at a high level, she was a physical freak of nature and driven, very, very driven as all greats are.
There are some absolutely incredible rare as rocking horse poop athletes that defy the odds, not just physically but mentally and oft that’s were a lot of the maximising of your potetnial comes from. I think Daley Thompson is one of those rare once in a generation athletes, like most multi event athletes they are trying to master all of them, compare him to the dioped up Eastern Europeans at the time and it seems incredible that a 5ft 11 bloke from Essex would not just see them off but destroy them time and time again!
Another was Kathy Cook (nee Smallwood), despite competing against women who were doped to the gills she still managed to grab medals on the biggest stage and was basically still an amateur as she worked as a PE teacher, cruelly robbed by ‘pseudo men’, the worst ones in athletics for me were kratochvilova (had muscles in places I didn’t know existed!) and Flo Jo, who changed radically in a very short time and ran ridiculous times!
McKinnon tries to
McKinnon tries to oversimplify the debate and focus it entirely on current testosterone levels.
This ignores the effect that testosterone has at puberty and the ongoing advantage that such changes in height, muscle density and skeletal structure confer.
IMHO we should abandon the male/female classification and instead have low testosterone exposure/high testosterone exposure groups.
McKinnon would be a female competing in the high testosterone group as would Castor Semenya. Athletes with rare chromosomal arrangements could also be easily accommodated by the new system.
No discrimination on gender and far fairer competition.
Whilst I understand the
Whilst I understand the debate here around what classifies a Man or a Women (or not as the case maybe), lets not lose sight that in this example there is no debate, Rachel was a Man… so should she be allowed to compete against women, for me the answer is an absolute No.
I would also suggest this… forget politically motivated governing bodies about the rights or wrongs, ask the female athletes if it is fair… I think we will find an overwhelming No and that to me is the end of the debate, as we will just see people stopping competing and the sport wrecked
bigbiker101 wrote:
Well, that’s certainly one side of the debate. However, where does that leave transitioning/transitioned athletes? They wouldn’t compete in the male categories as they’re at a disadvantage due to less testosterone and they wouldn’t be allowed in the female categories.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
Take the emotive side out of it, and you effectively have an athlete who has elected to have major surgery.
If an elite athlete chooses to undergo a hip operation, they accept that there will be a period of recovery during which they will be unable to compete.
If an elite athlete chooses to undergo gender reassignment treatment, they accept that there will be a period of transition during which they will be unable to compete.
srchar wrote:
A temporary competition ban might be considered acceptable, but then what happens with fully transitioned athletes? You’d have just the same situation where someone may have had years of high testosterone exposure and then be competing against significantly smaller women.
There’s also the problem of XXY XYY XXX chromosomes whereby the owner can’t have surgery and yet other competitors would feel cheated.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
There is more to performance than just testosterone, otherwise the only winners would be people who had the highest level. I do not know how they would compete but that is a different issue, they shouldn’t compete against biological women (or however we wish to classify them as), however there should be some way for transgener folk to compete, perhaps their own category, after all the special olympics has loads of different categories depending on their disability… and I’m not classifing transgener folk as disabled, I’m just citing an example, there has to be a way of solving this without damaging the sport which is exactly what is happening now.
bigbiker101 wrote:
I don’t see why. They can still do whatever sport they want to do, no one is stopping them, but to insist they be allowed to compete in the women’s categories is PC entitlement gone mad. There are a million other hurdles for transgender folk to overcome, why hang your hat on this ludicrously contraversial peg.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
The fairly obvious one would be to compete against other trans athletes, though there is probably not enough in numbers to make it a compelling sport.
The likely solution would be for athletes to compete as their chosen gender up to the point at which they start earning serious money and winning championships.
The rights of trans women to be recognised as women in elite sports and the rights of (hate the word) cis women to compete on a level playing field are fundamentally incompatible. I would therefore make the argument that rights of the majority (by around 1000X) group must take precedence.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
They have every right to transition to a different outward gender, but they should realise that they are also giving up the ability to compete at such a high level as they should continue to compete in the Y chromosone / high testosterone at puberty classification. Sporting prowese has always been determined by a combination of genetics, training and conditioning, by transitioning they are making a deliberate decision to reduce their conditioning.
I’m sure that no men will object to trans-gender women taking part in their competitions.
massive4x4 wrote:
Totally agree.
Someone said above that sport is about determining the winner. It isn’t, it’s an entertainment. If we just want the find the fastest/strongest human we wouldn’t play so many games, nor would we allow drugs cheats to ever return, but we do. It is about drama; sport is the greatest natural drama after watching Planet Earth reruns. Some people find it boring, but fans are watching for the build up, the injuries, the comebacks, the last minute goals, the punctures and crashes. The team trades and politics. It is a soap-opera and as such we tolerate bad-guys. Perhaps they will be redeemed or perhaps they will be the villain in someone elses story. We love to moan about drugs and get on our high horses, but cheating is an important part of sport’s story. So the question is, is Dr McKinnon’s activites within the boundaries of what we will tolerate and still preserve sports integrity?
As far as I can see on a purely physical basis Rachel is a man taking drugs and competing in a Womens event. Whatever logical knots she needs to tie to convince herself that the playing field is level is all in her mind. If your natural sense of justice is offended looking at that podium then you are right to speak out. On International Womens Day we should be listening to these senior athletes. Road.cc is such a saugagefest after all we shouldn’t turn Womens sport into one as well.
In this equality, diversity
In this equality, diversity and fairness world if you apply something to a particular situation, in this case transgender equality in sport, eventually you run headlong into another policy; in this case transgender equality runs straight into clean-sport/cheating. Could you put a transgender category into the Para-Olympics? Labelling transgender as a disability? Can you imagine the ‘sh#t-storm’?
Shades wrote:
It’s not specific to gender issues or even to an “equality, diversity and fairness world”. It’s simply that justice and equality occasionally conflict.
There is no solution to this
There is no solution to this where everyone will be happy.
1) Everyone has to compete according to their sex at birth, with trans men and women feeling like they have no means to compete at a high level without denying who they feel they are and not really reflective of modern society’s movement to culturally accept trans men and women as their identifying gender.
2) Everyone competes as their identifying gender, with high performing trans men likely to come nowhere in atheltic (rather than skill-based) sports, and trans women who went through male puberty handed an unfair advantage, even to the detriment of safety in overtly physical and combat sports (rugby, boxing, judo), over women born as women.
3) Get the scientists involved to measure hormones, determine chromosomal characteristics, treatment history (hormone suppresants or full male puberty etc.), and whatever smorgasbord of characteristics constitutes where we appear on the male-female spectrum for all competitors before lumping each of them into a category a la the paralympics. Way too complicated to trickle down to beginner and intermediate level sports.
This will get worse before it gets better.
In everyday life this really
In everyday life this really is, or at least should be a non issue. How you dress, how you identify, whether you go the whole hog with gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy, whether you live as male, female, or non specific. It really should not matter and you should not suffer from discrimination for your circumstances.
However, I think it is fair to have the discussion within the confines of elite competitive sport. At least those sports where there are currently specific male and female categories for athletes. At the top level the difference between first and also ran can be ridiculously small. If I were an elite female athlete and made a living from my sport then I’d be pretty pissed if my ability to question the fairness of having transgender competitors was shouted down as being transphobia. I think it is a legitimate concern.
There was a successful
There was a successful transgender runner not that long ago :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Jeska
I’ve no problem with people changing gender but I do think we need to look further into whether an unfair advantage is given if they choose to compete in sport.
How about we all agree that
How about we all agree that if you aren’t a trans athlete yourself, or a genetics + sport science expert in this particular field, maybe you don’t get to comment?
I like to think of cyclists as mostly not being bigoted, and mostly open/inclusive folks. Maybe this is a topic I simply shouldn’t read the comments on.
KiwiMike wrote:
This says otherwise
KiwiMike wrote:
This sounds spot on to me. So my comments are not on whether there is a competitive advantage or anything like that. I simply don’t know.
What I do know is many of the comments make me feel very uncomfortable, not least Sharon Davies’ reference to people “wishing” to be transgender. Eerily similar to all the homophobic views about ‘lifestyle choice’.
TedBarnes wrote:
How is it spot on? Why shouldn’t female athletes comment? Why should KiwiMike, by his own values, seek to prescribe / proscribe whose comments are or are not of merit? Why might not sympathy / empathy / concern for others be useful values?
That said, it makes more sense to listen to those who have experience / knowledge / nouce — but that’s up to the audience?
McKinnon relies on Harper’s study, I think, ‘Race Times for Transgender Athletes’ which, as Harper said, is preliminary — based on the experiences of 8 runners. There’s an interesting BMJ article here: https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/naturally-produced-testosterone-gives-female-athletes-significant-competitive-edge/
KiwiMike wrote:
Or perhaps a female elite athlete? Like Sharron Davies.
srchar wrote:
Does an athlete have to be at elite level to be affected?
No.
Its easy to recite reports saying there is no advantage, however it appears real life experiences may beg to differ. The performances of the woman in question arguably demonstrate just that.— Jimmy Ray WillI agree, women have every right to start and contribute to a discussion. She won a race. How does this demonstrate an advantage to being trans? What position should she have finished in?
I think that is more than rude, I think it sounds quite offensive.
This was a Masters track sprint competition, not a week-long stage mountainous race. Rachel competed within the rules. It wouldn’t hurt to read her interview from October; she certainly has a better informed academic perspective on this, even before discussing her personal experience:
https://www.velonews.com/2018/10/news/qa-dr-rachel-mckinnon-masters-track-champion-and-transgender-athlete_480206
KiwiMike wrote:
Your criteria for who should (and by definition who shouldn’t) comment seems flawed to me in that it would also bar female athletes from having a say – which seems a tad unfair given that if anyone stands to lose out from any potential or actual unfair advantage enjoyed by transgender athletes* it’s women. This doesn’t seem to be an issue in men’s sport and I can’t help feeling that if transgender athletes who’d transitioned from being women were taking on and beating men we’d all know about it by now.
Reading the comments on here so far I’m not seeing much/any evidence of hate/bigotry (I’m sure someone will be on in a moment to tell me that makes me a bigot) towards transgender people in general or even the much smaller group of transgender athletes in particular.
This seems to me to be more a debate about what constitutes fairness and a level playing field in sport and particularly elite level women’s sport than about putting transgender people down as a group in wider society. Unless of course you believe that just by suggesting that a formerly male transgender athlete might enjoy an advantage when competing against women reveals an underlying intolerance of trans people in general. Seems a bit of a leap to me.
Surely the attitudes to the trans community of commenters on this article would be better judged on how they interact with the trans people they actually meet in the course of their everyday lives – with respect hopefully – not on whether they give the ‘correct’ answer in relation to sporting scenarios that statistically at least should be so vanishingly rare as to be bordering on the theoretical.
*By transgender athlete I mean someone who was born with a set of chromosomes that defined them as male or female but for whom those chromosomes didn’t add up to the whole story of who they are leading them to have their gender reassigned, not that even rarer group of individuals who were born as intersex and then went on to become elite level athletes.
Rachel McK would seem to have
Edit. Decided to save my 2p on this tricky issue…
First up, this is a
First up, this is a complicated subject that won’t be fixed on an internet forum.
Without wanting to dismiss the rights and needs of transgender people, my concern here is the seeming willingness to discredit the concerns, rights and needs, of the vast majority (biological women athletes in this case), to placate the tiny minority.
Women have every right to question the fairness of the situation of letting transgender athletes into regular competition.
Its easy to recite reports saying there is no advantage, however it appears real life experiences may beg to differ. The performances of the woman in question arguably demonstrate just that.
I don’t want to be rude, but I accept this is, but in the podium photo, our champion does not look very athletic. I’m not talking about a bit of extra bark, but more of a fundamental lack of any signs of athletic conditioning. The fact that without this, she still managed to beat her competition, suggests that there may be an advantage somewhere.
Mitigated by testosterone depletion maybe, but its still there. As she says herself, she is hardly the best rider.
I believe women athletes have every right to question this, and our sporting bodies have every need to take this situation seriously and establish a way forward that meets both the needs of the majority without excluding the minority… good luck with that.
First up, this is a
First up, this is a complicated subject that won’t be fixed on an internet forum.
Without wanting to dismiss the rights and needs of transgender people, my concern here is the seeming willingness to discredit the concerns, rights and needs, of the vast majority (biological women athletes in this case), to placate the tiny minority.
Women have every right to question the fairness of the situation of letting transgender athletes into regular competition.
Its easy to recite reports saying there is no advantage, however it appears real life experiences may beg to differ. The performances of the woman in question arguably demonstrate just that.
I don’t want to be rude, but I accept this is, but in the podium photo, our champion does not look very athletic. I’m not talking about a bit of extra bark, but more of a fundamental lack of any signs of athletic conditioning. The fact that without this, she still managed to beat her competition, suggests that there may be an advantage somewhere.
Mitigated by testosterone depletion maybe, but its still there. As she says herself, she is hardly the best rider.
I believe women athletes have every right to question this, and our sporting bodies have every need to take this situation seriously and establish a way forward that meets both the needs of the majority without excluding the minority… good luck with that.
They had the science bit on
They had the science bit on the Today programme this morning, two experts in the subject discussed it, both professors. Anyway, science says that if an elite athlete has gone through puberty as a man then they have many advantages that cannot be removed, as Sharon Davies said. Lowering testosterone makes little or no difference, especially as the current required level for transgender athletes is 10 units whereas women’s testosterone level has an upper range of 3.
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0002zzl) 2hours 33 mins in.
Anthony.C wrote:
“These transphobic scientists must be no-platformed immediately!”
Take the time to read through
Take the time to read through this: https://medium.com/@transphilosophr/why-its-fair-for-trans-athletes-to-compete-against-women-bb7a45ef1b42
Hot take:
…And besides, trans women have been technically allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2003 and no trans woman has won a medal of any kind (that we know of). Why is that? If you buy into the right-wing narrative, trans women would be jumping at the chance to insert ourselves into woman-only spaces so why hasn’t a trans woman won a gold medal yet?
Maybe because it takes incredible work and dedication to be a world champion athlete. It’s not just something anyone can do. Dr. McKinnon is the first trans world champion but don’t expect that trans women are suddenly going to start dominating all elite sports all of a sudden.
KiwiMike wrote:
And therein lies the stupidity of that article. As if people’s view on former men competing in women’s sport has anything to do with where they are on the political spectrum. This simply isn’t a political issue, no matter how much people with a political agenda want to make it one.
KiwiMike wrote:
The argument here is basically everything is ok because it hasn’t happened yet.
Until Rachel McKinnon won something athletic prowess probably wasn’t on the minds of most transgender people particularly as winning would draw attention and start this very debate with them at the centre of it.
However as this story has been widely spread I expect that we will over the course of the next few years see more people emulate Rachel McKinnon and if they start as a teenager it is quite likely that they will be able to successfully compete in sports where athletic ability is the determining factor.
Bmblbzzz wrote:
I’d go further. In my opinion this row, and the similar rows that crop up over who competes with who in the paraolympics, are symptoms of the fact that there’s a contradiction at the centre of the whole issue. Sport is intrisically ‘unfair’. It’s never a level playing field.
Inventing sub-categories of competition doesn’t go very far to solving that, as there are vast numbers of disadvantages and advantages that don’t get covered by those categories (the paraolympics only covers a very narrow range of disabilities that can be easily defined and claimed to be able to compete with each other within those defined categories, you can easily have a disability, or chronic illness, that is not severe enough for the paraolympics but will still ensure you are unlikelly to ever be a high-level competitor in mainstream sport)
Now you could argue that _nothing_ is ever strictly ‘fair’, that no activity is really a level-playing field. Which is perfectly true, but things other than sport don’t really pretend to be entirely about ‘fair competition’.
Other areas in which people compete on unequal terms (e.g. the job market or the arts) are different because the competition isn’t the sole point of the activity. Everyone can recognise it’s not a level playing field, but the competition that there is, is unavoidable, it’s not artificially-created.
Sport runs into the biggest problems because it has no other purpose than determining ‘the winner’.
That’s why I find arguments like this, or about doping, or about how male and female tennis champions should be paid, to be kind-of irritating, because it’s an argument about a problem that is inherent to the nature of the activity. You can’t resolve it without throwing out the whole business of serious competitive sport and admitting that it’s based on a bit of a lie – that the winner is somehow ‘the best’ in some objective sense, that who wins is down solely to their efforts and intrinsic virtues.
Yet those who engage in the argument usually will never countenance doing that, so the argument can never ever be resolved. It just goes on, back-and-forth, forever.
Almost nobody ever agrees with me, admittedly, but I maintain that ‘sport’ should just be for fun and exercise, and should never involve money and status and glory or any sort of serious stakes.
I’m amazed no one has used
I’m amazed no one has used this yet.
STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me ‘Loretta’.
REG: What?!
LORETTA: It’s my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But… you can’t have babies.
LORETTA: Don’t you oppress me.
REG: I’m not oppressing you, Stan. You haven’t got a womb! Where’s the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: crying
JUDITH: Here! I– I’ve got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’, but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What’s the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.
I think there is a ridiculous
I think there is a ridiculous entitlement in believing you should be allowed to compete after transitioning. I think male athletes who take testosterone illegally should be banned for life. It’s just one of those things, but women who used to be men fall unfortunately fall into that same category of having the advantage of loads of male hormones. They cannot compete fairly, and to insist that they should under threat of the “transphobic” label is preposterous. The argument that some women naturally are outliers, bigger and stronger than a lot of transgender women is just stupid. And Rachel McKinnon’s “ooh, aren’t I more feminine than big manly Sharon Davies?” strikes me as just plain spiteful and nasty.
You don’t have to be transphobic to believe trans women shouldn’t compete in a women’s category.
Some facts to help form
Some facts to help form opinions:
Prior to 2015, the IOC only allowed transgendered athletes who had had full sex reassignment surgery take part. Now all that’s required is keeping testosterone below 10nmol/L for one year (women).
Men have no restrictions except for not going higher than allowable testosterone levels which are not specifically laid out in the WADA document but presumably are monitored on an individual basis. How they decide what amount is right or too much is unclear, except to say that “FtM athletes require hormonal treatment with testosterone, for which there is no non-prohibited alternative.”
https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/wada-tpg-medical-info-female-to-male-transsexual-athletes_1.3_en.pdf
Chris Mosier (successful triathlete, born female, transitioned post-puberty to become a man) takes exogenous testosterone. This is a banned substance in biological male athletes, of course.
Rachel McKinnon argues elsewhere that there should be no limit on testosterone for transgender women, as it harms her health to have to take testosterone-reducing drugs and isn’t fair on her to have to do that to compete.
smaryka wrote:
And if this is true then feeling like a lady is the only requirement for competing in Womens sport then there is still hope for David Walliams to win an olympic gold.
I have a trans friend –
I have a trans friend – transitioned male to female in her 20s. Competes in female sport. She’s around 5 foot 3 and probably 10st – in terms of height and weight she’s no different to how she was before she transitioned. Male born to female transitioned athletes don’t all benefit from a physical advantage – she certainly doesn’t there are “bigger” women in her chosen sport – not least because in some cases such as hers there is a wide degree in variation of “maleness”.
I’m sorry some of you, but to
I’m sorry some of you, but to have a guy compete on womens sports should be outlawed, it’s unfair for the women to have a man always beating them. What some of this boils down to is that the man can’t beat a man in men sports, so he decides he could win if claims to be a transgender person and beat women. All of those pictures that other comments showed they all show a man not a woman standing next to other women, the size difference is readily apparent. I don’t care about the blah blah science, a man, or a woman, needs to compete in the proper gender sport based on what male or female parts they were born with unenhanced by drugs, thus if they were born with male parts then they compete against men. Nothing else needs to be added into the equation.
And the poster that said “The IOC decided in 2003 that trans people did not have an unfair advantage”, is not true, this is all fake science and fake news to appease the transgender crowd. Read this: https://www.wnd.com/2017/03/female-athletes-crushed-by-women-who-were-once-men/
Underlying it all – are we at
Underlying it all – are we at risk of killing-off women’s sport because they can’t compete against transgender athletes?
Maybe there should be a third category …
RMurphy195 wrote:
This is the point, but not just individual -vs-individual, there will always be a McKinnon-type activist screaming “unfair” just as there are now activists screaming about any issue, seeing gain for their field of interest through confrontation and polarization. People just don’t want to be bothered.
The real issue is the whole of fairness for women in sports in general when sports have historically been male-dominated. In the States theres a little thing called Title 9, for example.
Do any women’s cyclists think this cycling transgender madness will say, provide for a return of the Tour de France Feminin?
Is the irony of MTF trans winning womens events in male-dominated sports lost upon us?
–shrug–
Think how handy it would be
Think how handy it would be if you were a mediocre male athlete, of any discipline, if you were to suddenly decide you were really a ‘woman’! You don’t have to have actual gender dysphoria to ‘identify as a woman’ these days. all you have to do is make the statement. Yes, you will have to undergo some ‘treatment’ to reduce testosterone levels to compete, but as someone who had hormone therapy associated with radiotherapy for prostate cancer to do just that, I can safely say that it didn’t completely eradicate all my hard earned strangth & muscles. And this despite having had surgery for a fractured hip at the same time!
Since Rachel McKinnon is
Since Rachel McKinnon is ‘technically’ in a different category, how about awarding two golds, one to the winning female born a female and one to the winning transgender athlete?….with silver and bronze awarded accordingly….in the record books Rachel’s gold could have a little ‘T’ to denote the difference. It circumvents what many would see as an unresolvable issue.