Nov 9, 2019 05:55 AM
https://www.wired.com/story/the-glorious...up-sports/
EXCERPT: At all levels of sport [...transgender athletes are...] stepping onto the podium and into the headlines. ... These recent performances are inherently praiseworthy—shining examples of what humans can accomplish with training and effort. But as more transgender athletes rise to the top of their fields, some vocal opponents are also expressing outrage at what they see as transgender athletes ruining sports for cisgendered girls and women.
These issues have come to a head in Connecticut [...] In Connecticut, as in more than a dozen other states, high school athletes are allowed to compete in the category that matches their gender identity. According to ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb, two transgender athletes—Miller and another runner, Andraya Yearwood—“have amassed 15 different state championship titles that were once held by nine different girls across the state.”
[...] Nowhere are the debates around transgender rights as stark as they are in sports, where the temptation to draw a hard biological line has run up against the limits of what science can offer. The outcome, at least so far, is an inconsistent mix of rules that leaves almost nothing resolved.
[...] Transgender women’s performances generally decline as their testosterone does. But not every male advantage ... Some advantages, such as their bigger bone structure, greater lung capacity, and larger heart size remain, says Alison Heather, a physiologist ... Testosterone also promotes muscle memory—an ability to regain muscle mass after a period of detraining—by increasing the number of nuclei in muscles, and these added nuclei don’t go away. So transgender women have a heightened ability to build strength even after they transition, Heather says.
[...] One way to address these issues, Heather and her colleagues wrote in an essay ... would be to create a handicap system that uses an algorithm to account for physiological parameters ... Another approach would be to create a third category for people who don’t fit neatly into the male/female dichotomy (including intersex people, who are born with a mix of male and female traits). ...
[...] For all the hand-wringing about transgender women ruining women’s sport, so far there’s little evidence of that happening. ... Helen Carroll is a LGBTQ sports advocate ... she estimates there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 transgender athletes currently competing in NCAA sports. Most of them “you don’t hear a thing about,” she says, because their participation hasn’t caused controversy. Sport can be a life-saver for transgender people, who are at high risk of suicide, Carroll says.
[...] Even basic notions of a level playing field aren’t easy to codify. Which means that at some point the question of who is a woman becomes a cultural inquiry: How athletically outstanding can a girl or woman be before we no longer see her as female? (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: At all levels of sport [...transgender athletes are...] stepping onto the podium and into the headlines. ... These recent performances are inherently praiseworthy—shining examples of what humans can accomplish with training and effort. But as more transgender athletes rise to the top of their fields, some vocal opponents are also expressing outrage at what they see as transgender athletes ruining sports for cisgendered girls and women.
These issues have come to a head in Connecticut [...] In Connecticut, as in more than a dozen other states, high school athletes are allowed to compete in the category that matches their gender identity. According to ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb, two transgender athletes—Miller and another runner, Andraya Yearwood—“have amassed 15 different state championship titles that were once held by nine different girls across the state.”
[...] Nowhere are the debates around transgender rights as stark as they are in sports, where the temptation to draw a hard biological line has run up against the limits of what science can offer. The outcome, at least so far, is an inconsistent mix of rules that leaves almost nothing resolved.
[...] Transgender women’s performances generally decline as their testosterone does. But not every male advantage ... Some advantages, such as their bigger bone structure, greater lung capacity, and larger heart size remain, says Alison Heather, a physiologist ... Testosterone also promotes muscle memory—an ability to regain muscle mass after a period of detraining—by increasing the number of nuclei in muscles, and these added nuclei don’t go away. So transgender women have a heightened ability to build strength even after they transition, Heather says.
[...] One way to address these issues, Heather and her colleagues wrote in an essay ... would be to create a handicap system that uses an algorithm to account for physiological parameters ... Another approach would be to create a third category for people who don’t fit neatly into the male/female dichotomy (including intersex people, who are born with a mix of male and female traits). ...
[...] For all the hand-wringing about transgender women ruining women’s sport, so far there’s little evidence of that happening. ... Helen Carroll is a LGBTQ sports advocate ... she estimates there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 transgender athletes currently competing in NCAA sports. Most of them “you don’t hear a thing about,” she says, because their participation hasn’t caused controversy. Sport can be a life-saver for transgender people, who are at high risk of suicide, Carroll says.
[...] Even basic notions of a level playing field aren’t easy to codify. Which means that at some point the question of who is a woman becomes a cultural inquiry: How athletically outstanding can a girl or woman be before we no longer see her as female? (MORE - details)
