Caster Semenya could be forced to undertake hormone therapy for future Olympics

It really is quite simple if common sense is used rather than political correctness gone mad. If you were ever a man, you can't compete in the women's sports. Simple as that. Transgender men who are now women are not biologically women and never will be no matter how many operations they have.
 
G-MAN2004 said:
Yeah, but where do you draw the line? In this day and age you can change your gender on the fly and everyone has to respect that otherwise they're 'intolerant'.

I've heard they're changing the prize money for women's tennis so that it is equal to the men's, so what is stopping a man claiming he is a woman just to have an easier time at winning the same amount of money?
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I guess i'm intolerant..
 
The more we progress in technology etc the less fair the Olympics etc seems. It's always going to be a grey area.

People naturally have advantages/disadvantages. Most people never have a chance.
You have to
-be within the rules
-be genetically up to scratch
-put in the training


Without any one of those you aren't going to win. Especially in some sports.

Like in f1, you can't win in f1 world being rich or your family supporting you when you are very young.

The more we become fussy with 'fair' the harder it gets to satisfy that term.

She (really a man by what I've read) shouldn't be allowed to compete with woman. But where ever you draw the line, the person who can get closest to the line (either genetically or supplemented) will have an advantage.
The lower you make the line, the more people you exclude.

As technology becomes able to define this line, I feel athletics will seem more biased, unfair or 'fixed' (why is this person not allowed when this one is, why shouldn't I be allowed to compete, I'm a human being) to most people. But there is no way out of it
 
413x said:
She (really a man by what I've read) shouldn't be allowed to compete with woman. But where ever you draw the line, the person who can get closest to the line (either genetically or supplemented) will have an advantage.
The lower you make the line, the more people you exclude.

As technology becomes able to define this line, I feel athletics will seem more biased, unfair or 'fixed' (why is this person not allowed when this one is, why shouldn't I be allowed to compete, I'm a human being) to most people. But there is no way out of it
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One option might be to remove gender as how you divide athletes - instead separate them into categories based on naturally occurring testosterone levels/muscle mass/whatever else is appropriate - more like how the paralympians classes work
 
this story popped up on Facebook today via the olympics page - here is the youtube video from a few weeks ago - a transgender athlete gets a spot in a female volleyball team (so presumably some girl who worked her ass off loses out on what would have otherwise been her place)

 
danlightbulb said:
It really is quite simple if common sense is used rather than political correctness gone mad. If you were ever a man, you can't compete in the women's sports. Simple as that. Transgender men who are now women are not biologically women and never will be no matter how many operations they have.
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So you're saying a woman who is a transgender male (female to male) should be able to compete in women's sports
 
Tefal said:
So you're saying a woman who is a transgender male (female to male) should be able to compete in women's sports
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In theory. But as she / he would be taking testosterone and hormone supplements, they would effectively be doping so it again wouldn't be fair. If someone is intersex, like Semenya, then they can be assigned a category. But for transgender who choose to change their sex, there isn't really a category because anyone who is taking treatment has excluded themselves. The world of athletics does not allow most ways of significantly changing your performance with drugs.
 
I'd LOVE to see a top 500 male tennis player change sex and get a WTA card. It would be crazy. Serena might have to admit she was wrong that female tennis players are simply nowhere even close to competitive.

Mind you how about a little bit of gene splicing to give a child webbed hands and size 20 feet. Lets see the world swimming records tumble.

There are no simple answers.
 
Tefal said:
So you're saying a woman who is a transgender male (female to male) should be able to compete in women's sports
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no, he's talking about transgender women (male to female) but has described them as transgender men, which has confused things

Hodders said:
There are no simple answers.
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well there are simple answers just not everyone likes them, just as not everyone likes the less simple ones too

I mean one simple answer is to just let anyone compete simply if they say they are male or female

another simple answer is to say that the female category is the protected one so anyone who isn't fully female (i.e. intersex or trans) doesn't get to compete in that category
 
h4rm0ny said:
In that video, she says it is a "myth" that transgender athletes (implied male to female) have an advantage. I'm pretty sure it's not a myth.
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Yep I really doubt this too, anyone with a shred of common sense would know this. Just because he identifies as a woman now doesn't undo all the years of testosterone coursing through his veins. Those advantages will still stay to some extent even if said individual uses hormone blockers....

Letting these individuals compete with woman is moronic.

Edit: However woman to man? go nuts, and try compete with men if that floats your boat.
 
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dowie said:
no, he's talking about transgender women (male to female) but has described them as transgender men, which has confused things
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yes I know he is

he's saying they should only be alowed to compete as thier birth gender.

So a trans man would under his rules be competing against women despite medically having the testosterone level of a man
 
but based on how uptight everyone is about anyone having an advantage i guess we need to racially segregate sports too then?
 
Tefal said:
he's saying they should only be alowed to compete as thier birth gender.

So a trans man would under his rules be competing against women despite medically having the testosterone level of a man
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he didn't say that though and it doesn't logically follow - if a trans man is taking testosterone then that would be doping and so shouldn't be allowed

however if a trans man isn't taking anything but just defining himself socially as a man while biologically being a woman then sure, why not...
 
shorttricky said:
One option might be to remove gender as how you divide athletes - instead separate them into categories based on naturally occurring testosterone levels/muscle mass/whatever else is appropriate - more like how the paralympians classes work
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So basically Men vs Woman? But with a lot of scientific study and faffing around. To just then put the extremely rare unisex athletes competing with men?

I get where you are coming from but that is just what the outcome will be.

You might get rare instances where women, like Serena possibly, who is more muscly than the average woman (I have no idea of her testosterone levels but it wouldn't surprise me if they were higher than average for a woman) being grouped as a highest percentile woman against the lowest percentile men...

If she started losing all these games she would be the first to moan...

Also this kind of testing doesn't lend itself well to knock out style tournaments. Who would Serena go and play if she won her first round? Go further into the men's bracket?
 
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balky12 said:
So basically Men vs Woman? But with a lot of scientific study and faffing around. To just then put the extremely rare unisex athletes competing with men?

I get where you are coming from but that is just what the outcome will be.

You might get rare instances where women, like Serena possibly, who is more muscly than the average woman (I have no idea of her testosterone levels but it wouldn't surprise me if they were higher than average for a woman) being group as the highest percentile woman against the lowest percentile men...

If she started losing all these games she would be the first to moan...

Also this kind of testing doesn't lend itself well to knock out style tournaments. Who would Serena go and play if she won her first round? Go further into the men's bracket?
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https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilear...he_203_ranked_male_tennis_player_beat_serena/

Also they lost to some dude who smoked and drank.
 
What you basically have is a Woman who has the advantages of someone who uses anabolic steroids competing against Women who aren't allowed to use anabolic steroids. The Women with normal levels of testosterone may as well not even bother running, they stand zero chance, they may as well jog backwards around the course.
 
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