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Trans athletes in women's sports: Is this fair?
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- Опубліковано 12 сер 2024
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How much of an advantage to trans women have over cis women? How much does hormone therapy do about it? In this video we look at what the scientific literature says about this.
The paper I mention at 1 mins 20 seconds is here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
(Beware: graphic content.)
Estimates for the frequency of disorders of sex development that I quote at 1 minutes 50 seconds are from here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23045...
The paper about serum androgen levels I discuss at 2 minutes 50 seconds is here:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25137...
The paper about testosterone levels I mention at 4 minutes 20 seconds is this:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24593...
The paper about hormone treatment I discuss at 7 mins 10 seconds is here:
ec.bioscientifica.com/view/jo...
The paper I mention at 7 mins 55 seconds is this:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31794...
The meta-analysis at 8 mins 48 seconds is here: bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/15/865
The paper about the long-term effects of hormone therapy that I mention at 9 mins 35 seconds is this: academic.oup.com/jes/article/...
The study about ultra-running among casual athletes that I mention at 13 mins 10 seconds is here: runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-...
Estimates for the number of transgender people in the USA are from here: ajph.aphapublications.org/doi...
And Estimates for the number of transgender people in Brazil are from here:
www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video jordibusque.com/
You can support us on Patreon: / sabine
We now have a newsletter with weekly science updates! It's completely free and you can unsubscribe at any time. Subscribe here: sabinehossenfelder.com/
0:00 Intro
0:26 Intersex Conditions
3:17 Testosterone Levels
5:02 Trans Athletes
7:08 The Effects of Hormonal Treatment
9:51 The Question of Fairness
11:23 The Relevance of Entertainment
13:49 The Actual Problem
14:54 Sponsor Message
Trans mtf here. I transitioned 20 years ago and have had all the surgeries and I live stealth amongst you. Even though I have lost most of my male body mass, I can still out do most cis women. IMO it is not fair. Id love to see a trans category.
You mean women. Cis nonsense is made up and normal born women dont want to be called that. How far have come, that we have to call women cis women. This is braindead nonsense.
What about stop using cis for us, it's insulting we're not responsible for your madness.
It suits you. From your thumbnail, I would have never in a million years guessed.
@@andym4695 Thank you, I had Facial Feminization Surgery 3 years ago which made the difference in my transition.
Thank you!
There was a comedian somewhere that suggested we should have one "normal" person off the street compete as a "control"... just to up the entertainment value.
i saw the suggestion yesterday that the olympics should have a random public draft - that it's just random people who are called up and you just have to do it. i'd watch.
That's actually a really good idea.
@@eeeaten You would have a bunch of broken necks in olympic gymnastics.
@@Alkis05 party pooper
@@eeeaten Hey, I didn't object. It would be the olympic version of jackass movies.
I live in Seoul, Korea, where in 1988 Griffith Joyner set a women's 100-meter dash record of 10.49 seconds that remain unbroken to this day. But that same 10.49 seconds, which no other woman has been able to match for 36 years, would rank Joyner at around 3000th in the world as a male athlete. The athletic gap between men and women, especially when it comes to muscular strength, is quite substantial. World's best female tennis couldn't beat the world's best 300th best male player, etc.
Sabine picked a one off study. The results are nonsense. We know that even low tesosterone males stil have 5 times (!!!) more testosterone than a high T female. Read LARGE DIVERGENCE IN TESTOSTERONE CONCENTRATIONS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR ELITE ATHLETES IN SEX-SPECIFIC COMPETITION IN SPORT, A NARRATIVE REVIEW if you want to know more.
It’s not « couldn’t beat », it’s « was utterly crushed » after he has a beer and a smoke.
@@andyvirus2300 Yeah Karsten Braasch was not the best player. But he absolutely annihilated the Williams sister.
Can't wait to live in Seoul soon
And Joyner was doped obviously. She was the female Ben Johnson. Perhaps contributing to her early death (yes I know not according to the official version)
In the video you explain that the advantages decrease over time with the administration of hormone therapy. I think this situation is compounded by the fact that, for the most part, sports are a young persons game. Very few athletes stay relevant even in middle age. The average age of medal winning gymnasts at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics was 20.6 years old. Athletes don't have the time to wait for the playing field to level. I also guess, but don't know for certain, that the biological differences between the physical performance of men and women is most pronounced at younger ages, the age demographic where they athletes are competing.
Still you have body height and bone structure even without going through male puberty. It just isn't fair. Especially in stregnth based sports. She said that it is not so much the case with endurance but even there the difference is not as small as she made it look. It is still significant.
Laurel Hubbard is a good example of what you're speaking to. She competed in the Olympics at age 43 and was considered a serious medal contender having ranked 7th in the IWF's women's +87 kg division. The biological women she was competing against were 10 to 20 years younger than her.
She had a previous lifting career, then took more than a decade off and did not compete internationally for 16 years.
That is an eternity to be out of training for an Olympic level competitor. She had only been training again for 3 years when she was selected for the Olympics. That is a suspiciously small amount of training for that level of competition.
The fact that she took so much time off, but at age 43 was an Olympic contender after just 3 years training again demonstrates your point: even though her age has diminished her competitive abilities, as a biological male she continues to lift at the same standard as female competitors who have consistently trained and are in their prime.
@@XXXX-yc6wvhe*
Can't believe your grandmother gave birth to your mother for you to turn around and reduce womanhood to a costume a man can put on.
Get rid of your misogynistic views.
@@XXXX-yc6wv "as a biological male she..."
That's the problem right there.
🤡🌎
Gymnasts are particularly young, not a great event to choose
Congrats on taking on a ‘controversial’ topic and conveying the complexity of the science as opposed to taking a ‘stance’ as is often expected from commentators. I note that people on both sides of the conversation have a tendency to over-simplify and reach for easy answers, which sadly are not readily forthcoming. I use the same term to describe athletes btw - freaks! But the physics conference follow-up burn was perfectly on brand 🔥😂
We demand more videos with various poorly attempted accents, Rohin.
Both sides tends to over-simplify but it’s pretty obvious that ONE side is doing it on purpose and on repeat to further their hateful agenda, while the other side is simply trying to defend a marginalized group, sometimes in a clumsy manner. The dynamic is such that there is a clear aggressor in this discussion and I find it ironic to reduce this to “both sides are wrong”, because it’s an oversimplification.
@@AiguilleVoodoo sounds like steel man/strawman interpretation based on perspective. One could be just as uncharitable and say "one side is protecting a marginalized group (women) and the other is trying to set progress back by excluding women's achievements and purposefully misrepresenting the facts"
Like your statement, it's an incredibly unhelpful summary and not acknowledging that these divisive ways of talking about these issues aren't moving the needle for any dissenters
@@maverick9708 There's plenty of other evidence that the great majority of people screaming loudest about "save women's sports" (1) actually couldn't care less about women's sports and (2) hate any kind of gender nonconformity.
Nothing brings me more joy than seeing one of my favorite youtubers adding a well thought out comment to a video from another.
Another sport where females tend to do as well as, and even better than males at times, is rock climbing. I'm just adding this to the pot.. I love how someone actually addressed the complexity of what is "fair" in sports, and what is meaningful.
For the record I was a downhill mountain bike racer (I was much better at working with gravity than against it) I was also 35 when I started. This sport belongs to 19 year old males and I don't care.. I'm a HUGE fan of these wonderful freaks... my god they are fast and fearless. I love that.
I was proud to be a part of this sport and showing women, even older women, that it's do-able. I've even seen older male cancer survivors enter races and I love this too. There is a bond between all of us.
Age is definitely a huge factor. There were no age classes in women's DH mountain biking. I was competing with women half my age who lived in the resorts I was racing at. (They also had a training advantage)
There was a controversy as well, with the first trans woman competing with the women in this sport. I wasn't at the pro level, so I had no problem with it. In fact, she was cheering all of us women in sport class at the end of the course, This was something I'll always remember.
If I were at the pro level, I don't know what I would think, to be honest.
One problem I have is when those with any kind of advantage stick around in beginner, sport, or expert classes when they should be competing in the sport, expert, or pro levels. (sandbagging)
It's also true that some advantages may be because of funding.. I was lucky to be sponsored and had a great bike and mechanics in my corner. Sometimes it's about funding and access to resources...and now we can talk about Formula One and Nascar racing.. (Danica) and get into an entirely new discussion.
Most of all, as a former competitive athlete, there has to be some meaning and entertainment value. For me, I was happy to just be on the race circuit. I was more of an ambassador to the sport. The primary entertainment value belongs to males in their late teens and early 20's. And I'm there for that.
At the same time, this sport taught me so much and is accessible to women and older athletes as well. We all hung out together. I'll never forget that.
Sponsorships can also happen for more reasons that being biologically exceptional. I was obviously not sponsored because of my great speed or technical abilities, but to be an ambassador for the sport.
The point: It's complicated. LOVE this video. Thank you, Sabine!!
they do well yes, they dont do better than males.. all the ones doing the craziest and hardest tracks are always men...
I feel this only ever goes one way. Like how many ftm are being represented in the Olympics?
I never got the fairness argument. If we are to say, “Sports is unfair anyways, why try to make it fair now?” then why not remove the division between men and women’s sports completely? The reason for the separation in the first place is because we acknowledge the physical advantages men have over women. But if you’re going to accept these and still go on with it, then why limit it to trans athletes?
I mean there’s no reason to keep a division. Sure there will be a lopsided representation of men over women but since it’s purely competition, no reason not to allocate athletes to divisions purely by performance. Un-ironically many sports SHOULD remove gender divison
@@woolfie8766 There is no gender division. There is no such thing as a men's sports. Leagues that are mostly or all men are open to women. The problem is that women can rarely compete at the level men do, so the leagues appear to be men's leagues. Women's leagues were started because women wanted to play and compete in sports too. Allowing men to compete in women's leagues takes us back to a time when women will simply not do sports. That is unacceptable.
@@woolfie8766 I don't think you appreciate just how lopsided such representation would be. Sports would be *dominated* by men. Many elite female athletes will lose against teenage boys. Celebration of female athletic excellence would be almost impossible. Women and girls who love sports would have to accept they would likely never be able to properly compete. What a tragic, misogynistic world that would be.
@@boredom2go Dude. thats called gender division. you said yourself..."The problem is that women can rarely compete at the level men do, so the leagues appear to be men's leagues." if gender division is not a thing, women and men can compete in the same match. I still dont get what you are trying to say. From what i understand is that you dont see the "division" because 'hey, women can play that sports too. just like the men. so there really is no gender *division*'. I think what you are trying to prove is the fact there is a *representation* of women in the sport that is "fair". not about the gender division topic..
@@hanjoyitsu1414 I'm saying that the leagues that men compete in are already open to any gender. There's no need to create some combined leagues because they already exist. Women's leagues were created because either women compete only with other biological females or they don't compete at all. Women's sports should be off limits to transgender women (biological males).
I'm a dressage trainer and therapeutic horseback riding instructor, and equestrian sports stand out as not being segregated by sex, even at the elite level. On the other hand, there's one big unfair advantage that determines a person's high level success at these sports, and that's money. There are exceptions, of course, but starting out wealthy is a big indicator of whether you can ascend to the top level. Competitive sports are not fair in many ways, and I love the concept of meaningful competition instead.
I feel like the horse is the one doing all the work, if we're being honest....
lol
Are male horses stronger than female horses? I have no idea
Can we really call this a sport? You do less work than a race car driver.
YES COMRADE!!!❤
Money is a huge advantage in every single sport. I'm glad you agree that it's an *unfair* advantage.
sense of fairness is important to competition. for certain contact sports such as wrestling, boxing or karate, weight is used to level the playing field. a 50kg player will be disadvantaged against someone who is 100kg.
The algerian Boxer Imane Khelif, that sparked this discussion at the olympics (or rather was misused by russian circles to spark hate) is in fact a biological cis woman. She was born as a girl, and identifies with the gender she was born with, female. The rumour that she is transgender and is a biological male was set into the world by a russian oligarch and well known friend of W. Putin. Imane is from Algeria, an islamic country where gender transitions are forbidden as well as homosexuality. Also she had to fight and overcome the rigid rules for girls in her country to actually even become a boxer. The one and only (of many) boxing associations that supported the claims of the russian oligarch is the IBA, a boxing federation with massive corruption scandals an ties to russian oligarch money. It became so bad the IBA was expelled from the IOC a while ago already and is not recognized by all other boxing associations. Just for context.
"Athletes are biological extremes. Fairness has never been the point of these completions. They are really more like freak shows! Kind of like Physics Conferences." LOL - I love it.
This is a complete misunderstanding of professional sports and athletes. Athletes aren't biological extremes, they are just people that have decided to focus their efforts on improving themselves in their chosen sport like almost anyone can. They aren't special. And fairness has been a VERY important point when it comes to competitive sports where people are playing as a career. Otherwise things like using steroids would be permitted, or really ANY other kind of cheating. To say that "Fairness has never been the point" Is either totally ignorant or willing disingenuous.
@@GiRR007 athletes aren't biological extremes? how many 5'8" basketball players are you seeing succeed in the NBA?
effort is absolutely a major part of the equation, but it's disingenuous to act as though biology has nothing to do with top athletes' success. you need both to succeed.
@@xynix1549 no you need both to be one of the best, you only need 1 to succeed.
@@GiRR007 okay, how many successful 5'8" basketball players are there in the NBA?
@@xynix1549 quite a few, actually theres one guy who was in the NBA at 5,3
I find the story of Tom Dempsey really illustrative here, especially when compared with Michael Phelps. Tom Dempsey was a kicker in American Football who, in 1970, kicked a successful field goal from 63 yards (57.6 meters) out. This record stood for over 40 years, only being beat in 2013 by a single yard. Tom Dempsey also only had half a kicking foot.
He was born with no toes on his right foot (and no fingers on his right hand). This mild disability gave him the ability to kick a football straight-on rather than needing to use the side of his foot. The advantages that would give are obvious. He had a custom shoe made to fit his foot, but investigation by ESPN sports science determined that that hadn't given him any more advantage than a normal shoe would a normal kicker.
Even so, people were pissed. Noted union-busting piece of shit, Tex Schramm, openly said that he thought there should be an asterisk by Dempsey's record. And in 1977, a rule was made specifically saying that anyone kicking had to wear a normal shoe, no matter how much of a foot they did or didn't have. Tom Dempsey had a unique body that let him do something incredible, and people really didn't like that.
Contrast this with Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps is a mutant who was genetically engineered to swim really fucking good. He has a huge torso and short legs (relatively speaking, he is 6'4"), a wingspan longer than he is tall, hyperextended joints that let him move like a mermaid, huge paddle feet, and he even produces half as much lactic acid (the thing that makes your muscles hurt when you work them hard) as his competitors.
Michael Phelps and Tom Dempsey both worked incredibly hard and pushed their unique bodies to the peak of athletic ability. But one of them is celebrated, and one of them had the guy who invented the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and their hotpants say that his record didn't count.
This is not random and it makes sense. Phelps is still using his own body whereas Dempsey is relying on specialized external apparatus to enhance his performance.
This is like if a boxer lost his arms in an accident and replaced them with metal prosthetics. We would not cheer for him either.
Furthermore I should note that Phelps genetic mutation (Marfan Syndrome) is less obvious and well understood by the general public than the idea of having half a foot. So it makes sense that one would generate more ire than the other. They are simply not aware of Phelps' advantage.
@@yessum15 I said in the original post that an investigation determined the shoe hadn't given him any particular advantage. But even so, he still had to have immense leg strength and incredible aim to make that kick. He didn't have a rocket boot attached to his foot. That said, I will grant you Phelps' mutations are significantly less obvious than Dempsey's. But that's honestly kind of my point.
@@elijeschke You did say that the investigation determined the shoe gave no advantage. And I ignored that. Just like the people in your story. Want to know why?
Because that is likely nonsense and people intuitively know it.
People know that the likelihood the man with this rare physical abnormality and specialized equipment also just happens to be the best kicker ever is too big a coincidence. They also know that such a dramatic change to the major variables present having no effect positive or negative on outcomes is basically 0.
This is like if every football player kicks a football but I throw a Frisbee and score dramatically different from the rest. It's gonna take more than a scientist simply declaring "the Frisbee made no difference" to convince people. We're going to need a mountain of high quality evidence here.
Now consider the problems with getting _any_ evidence at all.
Science is a slow process. It operates best when questions are narrowly defined and variables are limited. When sample sizes are large and research is conducted by disinterested neutral parties ashering to strict protocols.
The number of variables present here is insane and the physics is very complicated.
Having half a foot dramatically changes the muscle to weight ratio between his power generating hips, and the weight of the foot they have to lift. The swing is totally different. And the shape contacting the football is totally different. The traction on that shape is different. His body mechanics as a whole are different.
It would take a great deal of money and time to attempt to get a solid scientific answer to these questions.
On top of that their sample size is literally n=1
And the "investigation" is probably as far from scientific as one can imagine and is being organized by a non-scientific organization with a vested interest in a particular outcome.
This "investigation" probably has about as much scientific credibility as that ridiculous simulated fight between Rocky Marciano & Muhammad Ali. Which is to say it probably has less credibility than the the scripted fights of Rocky Balboa.
So given the extremely obvious nature of the deformity, its hugely intuitive likelihood of influencing outcomes, and the dearth of any real evidence to the contrary some skepticism is totally understandable.
@@yessum15 In case of all that, then what would you suggest Dempsey do? Should he not be allowed to play the game because he only has half a foot? Should he be forced to play with no shoe, disadvantaging him compared to every other player? Should he have to have an extra half-foot stuffed into a shoe, and if that's the case, wouldn't that also be a device that could potentially aid him? What's the solution here?
@@elijeschke No. Because everything I just described is good reason to _suspect_ an advantage but it is not by any stretch of the imagination proof of an advantage.
The best solution is to do what they did. Let him play and let the losers talk trash.
I was only pointing out that his detractors' talk wasn't entirely unreasonable. It is understandable why they would feel that way. But that doesn't mean we should act on their feelings.
would have been good to have a look at safety issues in contact sports. international rugby did quite comprehensive research into the safety of those who haven't gone through male puberty, playing with/against those who have, and there was about a 30% increase in injuries, including concussions. given that we are learning more and more about the very serious and long term affects of concussion, it seems extremely irresponsible to allow women who haven't undergone male puberty to be put at increased risk.
Sabine picked a one off study. The results are nonsense. We know that even low tesosterone males stil have 5 times (!!!) more testosterone than a high T female. Read LARGE DIVERGENCE IN TESTOSTERONE CONCENTRATIONS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR ELITE ATHLETES IN SEX-SPECIFIC COMPETITION IN SPORT, A NARRATIVE REVIEW if you want to know more.
Yes! Women are way more injury prone. There are also studies looing at the injury rate in the British Navy I think. It was even hihger than your numbers. Women have crazy high injury rates in these fields.
Don't you mean men who haven't gone through male puberty?
@@thealrightygina5725 i actually mean people (cis women and girls, some transwomen and girls, and prebuscent boys) who haven't gone through male puberty are at risk playing with people (cismen, some transwomen) who have gone through male puberty.
its not that hard to use clear language and also not be an a-hole.
@@thealrightygina5725
They should, but i think they’re hiding bigotry behind concern trolling
@@trishna_6815 Oh, so you mean that you believe both that transmen shouldn't be allowed to play contact sports with cismen and that transwomen shouldn't be allowed to play contact sports with ciswomen because there's a purported 30% increase in injuries amongst transmen and ciswomen in such groupings? The way you put it didn't make a lot of sense to me but I think perhaps I've got it now.
Sports, bathrooms, and pronouns have always referred to biological sex, not gender or gender identity. So I don't understand why this is even an issue.
Of course a biological man shouldn't use a bathroom that is and has always been meant for biological women. Of course a biological woman shouldn't compete in men sports that are and have always been demarcated by biological sex.
Allowing a trans-woman to compete in a woman's sports league is just as nonsensical and unfair as an adult wanting to participate in a child's karate tournament.
Moreover, when the trans community refers to "gender" in sports, they are equivocating. What they are actually referring to is "gender identity", not gender, which, according to the trans community, are not the same (i.e., gender is formed, in part, by culture, whereas gender identity is simply how the person feels "on the inside"). I honestly don't think it's hard to understand that sports, bathrooms, etc are not demarcated based on how a person feels about themselves. How a given person identifies their own gender has absolutely nothing to do with sports, bathrooms, or how I use pronouns to describe other people.
Lastly, many sports are not demarcated on biological sex, which I think proves that the point was always about fairness. Chess, for example, is demarcated on skill, not biological sex, age, gender or gender identity.
"So maybe the solution is in the end we all just do eSports."
I CAN'T
Hey I've seen impressive things in evo
Too bad men dominate e-sports as well, and no amount of screaming about "patriarchy" is going to change it that much.
@@KhukuriGod
Its a joke calm dowm
@@KhukuriGod yeah but in many fighting games there are woman who consistencely in top 16. Its just that gaming events/ online evironment is generally toxic for woman so I think that I also why woman are less likely to participate in them
She legit had me waiting for her chuckle. It never came.
In martial arts it is axiomatic that a good, large fighter will defeat a good small fighter. There are exceptions, but this is exactly the reason there are weight classes in these sports-- they create a level of fairness. And I won't get into how the gambling aspect helps drive this system.
Yeah...trying to blunder the meaning of "fair" it wasn't a solid argument...first time I caught her on a slopy point though, usually solid as rock.
“create a level of fairness” that doesn’t mean it’s fair. It just means it’s more fair. Not to mention this same logic doesn’t apply to every sport.
@@amorfo9127 nah, it definitely was completely logical. It’s an undeniable fact that athletic competitions are heavily impacted by your genetic makeup. do you really think splitting competitions between male and female makes it fair? She already listed every variable and difference. feel free to try to argue against it 😂
@@arturintete2461 The same logic applies to all sports. It's not fun to watch a 2000 elo play against a 400 elo chess player past the first few rounds. It's not fun to watch the world's most athletic men compete against the world's most athletic women.
@@erseshe no, it doesn’t. Because not every sport separates people in the same way, lmao.
they should have their own class. not a perfect solution, but at least it would stop a small % of people ruining the competition for the majority.
Misses the point.
@@eeeaten the point is to stop mixing men and women, so that would be fair
here are categories like the paralympics, and in local events, for "veterans" (over 40, such as in cycling). A trans category seems like the right solution.
I disliked the drama in disc-golf where a mtf was winning competitions because Ryan could easily throw farther than the cis females and it faught for it's right to compete with them, despite having a glaringly obvious advantage. Women were starting to refuse to compete. And they were losing audience because people were turned off by the injustice from either point of view, or the drama itself. And sponsors were becoming uncomfortable and considering pulling out. All of which is detrimental to this (and any) sport. And with less sponsors and money, bad for all athletes and sports.
"sports has never been about fairness, it's always been a freak show"
Golden quote.
"kind of like physics conferences" lol @ Sabine
There's a reason we don't have Gladiator arenas
Sure. So we should exclude biological women from the “freak show”?
If a heavy-weight boxer identifies as a lighter weight class, then he (or she, possibly...) should be allowed to knock around actual lighter boxers? Excluding them from competition would be cruel, and mis-weight-classing them is surely a ‘cancellable’ offence.
Maybe the well-meaning / clout-chasing people pushing for trans-gender inclusion in areas where physical reality suggests it isn’t justifiable should be thinking about why they’re willing to dive over this cliff. The point is that people should be ‘allowed’ to have a self-identification that they feel comfortable with, and others should acknowledge that they have this right by virtue of being a person. It shouldn’t become a niche fight over - in essence - massive drug-cheating being allowed because otherwise a very tiny minority will be sad.
@@boggisthecat "If a heavy-weight boxer identifies as a lighter weight class"
This is where your line of thinking fundamentally falls apart. Weight is not an indentity, its not something you can EXPRESS. Its a physical property
Sex, like weight,is a physical property that exists on a spectrum: male, intersex, and female. It is comprised of several components including hormones, chromosomes, genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics. Gender is the EXPRESSION of these physical properties. Someone who is trans, such as myself, does not identify with the gender expression that they were assigned at birth. My birth gender was man and my birth sex was male. I now identify as a woman.
Here's where it gets important: sex, like weight, can be CHANGED over time via biological conditioning. For weight its excercise and diet. Trans people often make efforts to change the components of sex that I mentioned above, specifcally hormones, secondary sex characteristics, and on occasion even genitalia. Sure its not everything, but the sex has CHANGED. A trans person who desires to and can make the change is biologically different from what they were born as, even if not in every single way. My sex is now changing to female.
The crux of the problem is two-fold.
FIRST: Sports are not a measure of identity but a measure of biological disparity, as Sabine made clear with the above quote. The best athletes are at the top of the mountain BECAUSE they are at a biological advantage. Even cis women who are higher in strength based sports are technically at an advantage because they have sex characteristics such as hormones or chromosomes of a different sex. They were born with that. That is the issue with sports as a whole, they are not fair and will likely not survive in their current segregated form as we acknowledge more and more the wide array of biological differences between all humans.
SECOND: The person you are describing is just a liar. They can identify as someone who is on a diet, but until that diet kicks in they will not have changed their weight from heavy to light. This is not how trans people think. Even in the video its acknowledged that any laws allowing for the inclusion of trans people would require that they be two years into their SEX CHANGE. A transition is never immediate. Its gradual and requires time before it properly sets in. Obv society becomes uncomfortanble during the transitory period (which is itself an issue) but many trans people have the self-awarness to wait until they are far enough along to start doing things like sports in their gender identity.
The ‘freak show’ argument doesn’t hold because at the highest competitive levels freak show males will still beat freak show females on average, so it isn’t fair to have them compete with one another.
Sabine seems to have no experience or empathy with athletes who work their asses off throughout their youth to reach the highest levels. Why should female athletes just make way for males, after all that work?
Thank you for offering such a fair and unbiased look at the issue. As a transperson I cannot tell you how sick I am of everything trans-related being political or pushed with an agenda one way or the other. Please keep making great content, bringing facts, and offering many angles; It is refreshing.
I know what you mean. It's also really condescending to be told to not talk about politics as much or to watch less news as a trans person when everyone is out here making our very existence political -_-
Edit: Not trying to make, /are/ making *
it's really not an issue either You're a man or you're a woman It's pretty simple
I think we’re all sick of the politics. I personally feel like we could have had a reasonable discussion about this as a society, taking into account the challenges of natural advantage balanced against the feeling of the individuals. There’s probably no perfect solution, but we could keep trying to make it better with time. Instead, it has been politicized with one side saying you must accept it without question and the other side predictably reacting to try and prevent all of it under concerns like unfair advantage. Both sides are ignoring the science, resulting is a lot of improper transitions (causing serious harm in society) while further stigmatizing those with actual physiological needs from the other end. It really is the extremes that are killing us.
@@michaelturner7641 pretty sure you mean people have either male or female genitals but can express themselves externally in a large amount of ways that don't conform to your backwards worldviews
@@michaelturner7641 It's actually not that simple unfortunately. Some people don't identify as male OR female. They're known as "Non-Binary" and might prefer an "X" gender marker on their ID. They don't generally look like boys or girls, but something in between. They feel uncomfortable using men's AND women's restrooms, and probably wouldn't feel comfortable competing on Men's OR Women's sports teams. They're the only reason we need a third bathroom or a third sports league; for the nonbinary individuals who don't want to be viewed as male or female. 🙃
Of course some people have athletic advantages over others. The goal of sport is to see who is best. Categories exist to allow similar types of people to compete against each other, to make it fair. Fairness is a goal of sport. That is why we have so many different events. This allows the opportunity for those with many different body types and skill sets, to participate in sport. I think you are incorrect to say you could never be an athlete. Have you ever trained enough to find out what your athletic abilities are? It is motivation which is a major factor in ability, however whatever sport you competed in it is highly likely a man (who also trained for that sport) of same age and size would beat you.
You had me laughing at, " They're really more like ... freak shows. Kind of like physics conferences."
She recovered from the 'freak show' comment with the 'physics conferences' comparison. I wonder why athletic competitions are more interesting freak shows? Hmm...
It's not fair, at every physics conference I've been to there's someone smarter than me and at every basketball game, many people way taller and somehow they're hardly ever trans. (though not always, that said, my basketball, swimming, and running careers were not derailed by trans people.)
That line of Sabine's got a spontaneous fist-pump from me! Then I had an urge to check the physics conference photo to she whether she was in it…😜
I loved the Meghan trainor “all the right junk in all the right places” line
@@bcwbcw3741 So what you’re saying is… the true question is why aren’t we segregating physics conferences by sex???
Science as it should be. Not just throwing numbers and studies at the viewer, but actually understanding the method used, number of subjects tested and context of the study to weight the real compatibility of the resulta with the whole population. Keep up with the great content!
as well as contextualizing the dry facts into the real world with societal nuances!
Really, this is the most neutral yet extremely informative piece of video essay material on a touchy societal/social subject I've seen
That being said, the numbers in these studies are quite small. Too small by most standards (11-12). Also, who funded the studies? Unfortunately, science is rarely unbiassed as there is always an incentive to satisfy the stakeholders (funders) with results they want or expect. After all, The tobacco industry funded peer reviewed studies that determined cigarettes are good for you and Coca-Cola funded peer reviewed studies that concluded that sugary beverages have no adverse health effects.
I am trans myself and heartily support the LGBTQ community, but prior to viewing this wonderful thoughtful educational video, I was also of the opinion that this was an unfair practice. Bless you for your no-nonsense fact based analysis that presented all sides without bias or sensationalism.
Knowledge is power. I just wish more people sought after wisdom and acquiring knowledge rather than having knee-jerk reactions by listening to social media disinformation, their feelings or unquestioningly following the crowd.
What a wonderful world it would be.
@@seth7745 Not all studies follow american practices that can lobby and pay off results to their liking. There is an international scientific community where this kind of practice simply doesn't work. We also have far more transparency with the scientific community today, so while your extremely common knowledge examples from over 50 years ago are examples of one kind of practice that does not mean that practice is a universal concern in an internet age where peer reviews, conflicts of interest, money trails, credibility of scholars, universities and institutions, are under constant scrutiny from anyone with an internet connection.
"That being said", studies on top trans athletes in particular might be quite small, studies on the effects hormones have on muscle atrophy and or muscle increase, on the performance of top athletes with invisible intersex conditions, on the sexually dymorphic traits that influence competitive advantages, how prominent they are, and to what extent trans people carry them, are better documented, at least to a point where we can have a much more informed opinion on the issue even if we don't reach a definitive consensus.
And keep in mind, the tobacco industry and Coca-Cola directly benefitted from these studies being published which is why the studies are directly related to what they are selling. Who exactly would benefit financially from trans people being allowed to compete in sports? I gotta be honest, I've yet to hear a person bring up "big money" being involved in regards to trans people being treated fairly and equally in society that didn't end in "the jewish question".
Arguments of some people that sport in general is unfair because for example some women are taller than others, therefore, they have advantage in playing basketball makes no sense. It's only natural and normal that within a sex category (male or female) obviously the people with the best physical attributes for a given sport will participate in it. Tall women will play basketball etc, short women might go into figure ice skating etc.The issue comes when we have a group of the best female athletes, both when it comes to a talent and innate physical attributes necessary to perform best in a given discipline, so we cannot actually find anyone better in the female category, and then comes someone whose only talent was being born male. All female basketball players will be tall and female, but one can be as tall and male. And this is what makes it unfair.
"All female basketball players will be tall and female, but one can be as tall and male" and what does it matter? In that case "male" means you have another power, being genetically stronger what is an advantage just like "a tall woman". So the Person would have simply two advantages, being a Woman that is tall and genetically stronger. It is not the Gender that is the problem, it is the genetically advantage the Transwoman has then. But that doesn't make her less of a Woman. Just a double strong Woman.
Therefore Sports should be devided by abilities and advantages, that take the biological sex obviously in account. But the Biological Sex has not to do with what Gender the Person is.
It just shouldn't be called Women Sports or Men Sports, if it excludes Transpeople. They should just say Sports or use Terms that refer to the Genetically Advantages and Abilities.
But thats "difficult" and "complicated" so people rather refer to it as Women and Men Sports, even if it excludes Men or Women with different Biological Advantages.
There are alot of Ciswomen that are Tall and just as strong as a man, that have the two advantages then. But then it would be fine?
As already said, Sports should be seperated by abilities, not gender.
I'm increasingly skeptical that science actually has much to say on this. It's a democratic, collective issue, not a facts-and-logic issue. All this discussion of HRT is a red herring. The point of female athletes is for women to have relatable individuals to look up to in the domain of sports and physical achievement. The same for male athletes. The majority of the female population is cis. It's only fair that they get a category that fits their general experience. Ideally there's simply a category for everyone. Who cares which is most prominent... the Special Olympics can be incredibly meaningful for the athletes who compete in it. And objectively it is just as "hard" as the regular Olympics, if not harder. Similarly for the hypothetical Trans Olympics.
We don't allow employers to join unions because we recognize it is not in the collective interests of the majority of the workers. But employers *are* employees, they work for the company too. And there are pro-labor employers out there, who identity with workers and would likely not negatively impact the union. There's no perfect dividing line. Yet unions generally don't open membership to employers. There's just bits of inflexibility in the world that you have to accept, because none of these institutions are perfect, and none by themselves safeguard the general welfare.
@@theshadowsroses Well, you can say that transwoman's gender is "woman", but her sex is still male. The division in sports has never been based on gender (self-identification) but on sex (physicality) because that's what matters in sports performance. I find it "fascinating" that although "gender community" has always been saying that sex and gender are two different things, now they seem to conflate the two when it benefits them.
@@ZawieHahis sex is still men.
It's pretty offensive towards women that just because a man says so, he is suddenly seen as a woman. It's denigrating and humiliating against real women.
And the women that support this misogyny are just women too eager to humiliate middle class workers by forcing us to accept men in the same bathrooms our daughters are.
We need to make a separate category for them. I have no bad feelings for trans people, to each their own. However, just because someone wants to become another sex identity does not mean you developed the same.
10:18 Sport have been "fair" based on the common understanding of the word "fair". We (humans) have sought to eliminate the most pronounced sources of unfairness (age&sex) by creating alternative leagues or divisions. An inability to achieve perfect fairness (not the goal anyway) is not the basis of an argument to give up on the pursuit of fairness entirely.
In terms of biological sex, trans women are closer to cisgender women than they are to cisgender men. If you are truly interested in pursuing fairness, you should know it's unfair to have trans women compete against cisgender men who haven't transformed their bodies and biochemistry in ways that align more with women than men.
Well said.
This video made me realize that this channel is not about science at all but rather about indoctrinating people into leftist ideology
Just legalize hormones and put everyone in the same league without exceptions on weight, gender or age. Lets ruin all sport careers for once as we have already started with women
There's no common understanding for fairness, only constant negotiation and renegotiation.
To be fair, I would love to see professional basketball with different height groups. Not only would that allow for shorter men/women to compete professionally, but it would also be quite refreshing, since different height teams would have to utilize very different techniques.
I wanna see Lebron James identify as female and go play in the WNBA. 😆
The “transgender women should have their separate sports” argument always strikes me as a rehash of the “separate but equal” doctrine from the segregation era. “White people feel uncomfortable sharing a restaurant with black people! Why do you demand to be let into the white restaurant when there’s a perfectly good black restaurant down the street?”
@@smokexsmoke99, except here it's not about "comfort", bot fairness.
In college, there were under-6' intramural basketball leagues. I enjoyed being able to play against people who did not tower over me.
Muggsy Bogues disagrees.
Severly disagree with the Fairness part of the video. It's one thing to be randomly seated somewhere on a Bell curve or to compare two entirely different bell curves. The tallness argument is the best proove for that. The exact same male teams will have similar differences between teams..but 10-20cm above their female counterparts....
yeah she really dropped the ball there. Her field of expertise is physics. Talking about equality, sports and transgenderism is clearly not her specialty.
@@bananatree1234567so is that your speciality? 🙄
@@user-sb3sn8di1s you don't need to be a chef to say a certain meal tastes bad.
Agreed, this was a terrible cop out . Her conclusions lack common sense
What if a cis woman takes testosterone to increase her muscle mass? Should she be forced to compete with men? What if a cis woman is born with naturally higher levels of testosterone (something that is well-documented among athletes)? At a certain point, you cannot hide behind the excuse of 'biological advantage'. There are millions of different factors that affect muscle mass and athletic ability. There are specific genes which directly correlate with higher athletic potential in various areas. Should people with those genes have to compete in their own league? How far are we going to go in order to compensate for this?
A simple way to understand the advantage is, how many female to male trans do you see demanding to be allowed in men's sports classes? It almost never happens. Plus when you look at a trans person's ranking in the men's sports class vs post trans rankings in the women's sports class. Suddenly they go from average to low performance in the men's class to setting records in the women's class. While sports isn't fair, it's one catagory we have seperated for. Just like we seperate for wieght classes in boxing. Why suddenly change this to protect a person's feelings?
"... too many opportunities for unethical behavior..." is exactly why pro sports will still exist.
Perhaps... But the money in pro sports comes from people willing to watch it (and their ads), so if most people turns their back on it because it's just about what rich people/teams bought/developed the most extreme gene modification, the money incentive will be gone.
Still people want to be entertained, so perhaps either a shift towards blood/death/gladiator things (humans are humans), or things like driverless motor sport (no driver, so no genetic enhancement - just best motor, sensor, and programming/AI).
@@baardkopperud I think most people would complain but still watch it.
@@baardkopperud What evidence is there that people would actually do that? Or are you just projecting what you see as an ideal world?
Also sports will always be part of our society because it is part of our human nature in so many ways. And since we love to optimize and earn money (love /need) there will always be the road to professiinalism
@@TheRealFlenuan I suppose it'll depend on why you follow sports...
For the acheivments? Gone! It's about who could afford the best mods. Because you dream it could be you out there, or remembering how you almost made it as a youth? Nope! Anybody good were moded, injected and trained from before birth. Rooting for the underdog? No such thing anymore! Celebrating human acheivment and endurence? No! ...Unless you mean our ability to tamper with genes &c.
Sure there are many other reasons to follow sport, but I do think they'd loose many - if not most - viewers.
The part at the end about how sports would incentivize unethical behavior brings to mind the Futurama episode where Lela tells fry about the time that steroids became mandatory for all Blernsball players to make the game fair.
Isn't that essentially the case now? I've heard that in many sports you can't be competitive unless you are taking steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. And none of our current pro sports even have "multi ball mode". As far as I know.
the steroids thing is tame compared to genetically modifying babies to maximize athletic output, but we're likely to be dealing with that in all aspects of life if it's not heavily regulated :(
Lol!
A certain amount of fairness has always been the point. I love Sabine, but she speaks from the point of view of someone for whom competitive sports was not part of her youth and maybe not part of her family culture growing up. It is not just about making sports entertaining, it is also about your average kid growing up finding a sense of brotherhood (or sisterhood) and a chance to improve themselves through grueling discipline and training, a process that tends to dramatically improve self-image and a teenager's sense of identity. They don't need to compete at the elite level or be a biological outlier to experience this. Thus, the goal is to set rules that encourage men and women (in particular) to participate in sports, even if they are not phenomenal athletes. If a transwomen competes on a team and dominates (or causes higher than average injury to other athletes), and this discourages many biological women from competing on the same team, or in the same league, due to a real or perceived sense of unfairness and/or futility and safety, then the rule is not serving the majority of women. Sports is not just a fun thing to help people have a fun group activity and feel included (this is what people who don't understand sports sometimes think). It literally saves lives and dramatically improves health and the sense of wellbeing for millions of teenagers who participate, and creates habits that will benefit them over a lifetime, and anything that discourages young people from participating in sports more than it encourages them, is not good for the men or women. Not every rule can be geared exclusively to benefit the tiny minority. Sometimes you have to set rules that serve the majority and I don't think any amount of social conditioning is going to make women (in general) okay with Lia Thomas winning, and then stepping on the podium and looking like a giant compared to the other two women on that podium, with some 4th place girl crying off to the side.
What if a cis woman takes testosterone to increase her muscle mass? Should she be forced to compete with men? What if a cis woman is born with naturally higher levels of testosterone (something that is well-documented among athletes)? At a certain point, you cannot hide behind the excuse of 'biological advantage'. There are millions of different factors that affect muscle mass and athletic ability. There are specific genes which directly correlate with higher athletic potential in various areas. Should people with those genes have to compete in their own league? How far are we going to go in order to compensate for this?
@@verisimuli A cis-women taking testosterone is illegal in high level sports, I believe. On the other hand, you are correct, that there is a LOT of variability in CIS-women (and men). A 5 foot women is probably never going to play in the WNBA, no matter how hard she works. However, keep in mind that that an under 15 years boys team from Texas beat the U.S. Women's National Team in a scrimmage. The average differences between men and women in terms of strength and speed are enormous. Males often have 3 times the upper body strength of biological women and transwomen have already sent women to the hospital in some pretty dramatic instances. Sports typically deal with people at the extremes of physical performance and genetics (at least at the very competitive level) and at the extreme ends of the distributions, biological males are much stronger than biological females. In other words, the bell curves do NOT overlap at the very ends of the spread/distribution, despite the hundreds of factors involved. This means that by letting biological men compete against women, we introduce a situation in which even the best biological women face a potentially hopeless situation. Ultimately, if you argue that biological men can compete against biological women, than you are arguing that we shouldn't have separate men's and women's sports at all, and this would destroy women's sports overnight. After all, why differentiate between men and women in sports (as some would argue) if what makes someone a man or women is just a feeling in someone's head that can't be defined and has little or no correlation with anything biological? And than, like I said, most biological women would never participate in sports at a competitive level, or they would simply join private leagues that required you to have 2 X chromosomes.
I'm reminded of a scene in the Red Dwarf books where athletes were genetically modified to gain advantage, to the point where soccer goalkeepers were modified to fit exactly into the dimensions of the goal.
Must have been kind of hard for that goalie to get on the bus after the game!
Really? That's funny as fuck!
That was specifically the Scotland goalie. They still failed to reach the knockout phase.
Red dwarf is fun
Indeed, and why I love British humor; it always has an element of truth behind it (as compared to American humor which is usually based entirely on a complete fabrication of the truth, aka lies). I've lost interest in what I call "freak sports". Basketball became "who is the tallest". Volleyball has become the same and they even allow freely swapping their 7 foot freaks into the front row and replace them with rear court defensive specialists ... they don't even play a full rotation anymore. Most hockey goalies are the biggest players on the team, for the simple reason they fill the net more and barely have to move to save a puck. I still like hockey because it's too dynamic to totally turn it into a freak sport.
Sabine, we don't and never have separated sports in gender and weight classes to make them less predictable. We separated them to increase representation.
If you remove the women's division in basketball you won't suddenly get pro women's team getting predictably shit on by male teams, you just won't have any pro female basketball players.
If you remove weight classes from boxing you won't see small fighters get beat up by big fighters, you'll just only see big fighters.
Thats a fair point. As Sabine pointed out, trans women are currently underrepresented in sports so they don't appear to pose any threat to the representation of cis women competing in the same league. On the other hand if trans women were to compete in the men's league that would certainly quash what little trans women representation there already is in sports. So it would seem that unless we get to a point where trans women are over-represented there need not be any concern. When and if that happens some course correction would possibly be deemed necessary. A common refrain I hear from people opposed to trans women and cis women competing in the same league is that trans women should compete in their own league. If theres not enough financial investment and trans women athletes to create meaningful competition in that league the representation of trans women in sports may further decrease so that would seem to be the wrong choice. On the other hand, having their own league and their own opportunities might drive up engagement and end up being a good thing. Either way it seems that we'll get our answer based on representation.
I think an obvious follow-up question is who is deciding who's representation matters here? As Sabine mentioned its age that is the heighest determinant in athletic capabilities not sex and we dont seem overly concerned about older people being represented in sports. Some might say well the free market decides by supporting whichever leagues are deemed the most profitable. By that logic it would seem that circles back to Sabine's point that entertainment value does in fact play a role here. That and all sorts of other societal factors that determine what makes a sports league profitable.
Personally I wouldnt be surprised if at some point in the future we end up with gender non-descript sports leagues. The idea being that the league you are placed in is based on your athletic potential not your gender. You would presume young cis men would be over represented in one category and older cis women in the other but there would hopefully be several intermediate leagues for people that fall into any number of demographics so long as they have similar athletic capabilities. If the goal is representation it would seem this model would maximize our success.
@@sf4603 I think a lot of things are getting conflated here.
We have gender categories in sport for representations sake, but we don't have sport for representations sake. We have sport for its entertainment value and entertainment value is somewhat linked to predictability.
How succesful sport is as a whole is determined by entertainment value and how much representation there is room for is determined by the sports success.
If we make the assumption that MtF trans athletes have an advantage over cis female athletes and we allow those trans athletes to compete with the females, they don't have to outnumber the cis athletes to be a problem for the cis athletes.
If the trans athletes has an advantage that leads them to win -> they'll make the sport predictable -> the sport become less entertaining -> less people will watch it -> less athletes can go pro in that sport -> in turn representation is lowered as less people participate.
Let's take are more obvious example, with boxing (again). If the boxing today had 2 weight classes 65kg and bellow and 80kg and bellow. No one that can make 65kg will compete at 80kg, you aren't big enough. If you are a small guy you are in -65. But lets say we think it's a shame even bigger guys have no representation, stop fat shaming and whatnot. So we say the 80kg class is now open for people up to 100kg. If there's only one big guy who is actually naturally 100kg at en elite level that wants to compete, he'll beat everyone. Size is a huge advantage in boxing. The sport will be boring because everyone knows big dude will win every fight he participates in, viewership will fall and the sport as a professionel sport will die. Now neither the guys at 80kg nor the one dude at 100kg is represented. Alternatively there isn't just one big dude but a lot. In that case the sport will be dominated by big 100kg dudes and there's no room for the fighters originally in the weight class that was naturally around the 80kg mark. So you haven't added any sort of representation, you have just changed who is represented. If you wanted 100kg athletes to be able to compete you don't let them fight with the 80kg athletes that are at a clear disadvantage, you make a new weight class for the 100kg athletes.
That's what people are worried about (of the people that aren't just transphobes and want any excuse to exclude trans people because they are bigots). It doesn't matter if there are a lot or a few trans athletes, if there are many there'll exclude female participation and if there's a few they'll kill the sport entirely. If both cis females and trans athletes are to be represented, the trans athletes need their own league, but there aren't enough of them for that. So it's a loose loose situation and it's just a question of deciding who do we pick to loose, the cis female athletes or the trans athletes.
"Personally I wouldnt be surprised if at some point in the future we end up with gender non-descript sports leagues." We for the most part have that. Many if not most male leagues aren't actually men only, they are open for everyone, it's just that since men have an advantage all the athletes good enough to compete are male.
"The idea being that the league you are placed in is based on your athletic potential not your gender." again, we already have that. It just only the athletes that compete in the most competitive league (or maybe two most competitive if the sport is popular enough) are professional, the rest can only do it as a hobby.
People only want to pay money to watch the best of the best. If you make a league specifically to be worse than the other league people wont watch it. That we have women professional sport in itself is not a given and it's relatively speaking new. In most sports there weren't professional female athletes just going back 10-30 years and it's the reason female athletes are still paid way less than men.
Women sports has worked really hard to be taken serious and just have a fraction of the paid athletes mens sports have, and they are in my opinion justified in being scared that trans athletes will kill the progress they have worked for over the last half a century.
Male athletes couldn't care less. Being a FtM trans athlete is a disadvantage and if someone overcomes that disadvantage they'll take one of many sports from cis male athletes, nobody cares. But MtF trans athletes could make women sport less popular, ruining hundred of cis females opportunity to go pro in the sport.
Realistically speaking the trans community have two options, there athletes there accept they'll have to compete against the men, where they for the most part are allowed to compete. Or the trans community commits to supporting their athletes through trans only leagues, putting their money where their mouth is so to speak. Pretty much doing what cis women has had to do.
@@valdemarjrgensen8128
I don’t think people realize how hard people fought for women’s sports to effectively exist. It was a huge social issue in the 50s-70s. In most developed countries there actually had to be federal laws that enforced spending and creation of women’s sports at the high school and college level. And even with those laws that on paper require equal access to sports regardless of sex there is still a pretty serious disparity in funding and access for women’s and girl’s sports. The worst part is that when various school boards are challenged and are order to fix the disparity in funding and access they don’t increase women’s sports, but decrease men’s. Which has lead people to stop taking action as no one wants these to be less access to sports for high school boys.
I don't think you have a cause to say that with such a strong emphasis on it. Ultimately, it's all part of the same problem one just causation of the other.
If we didn't get weight classes and gender segregation in sports the results would be so predictable that the physically weaker individuals wouldn't have any point in competing.
Sure, some might try at first, but then would as we all know get destroyed and then just stop because there's no point.
In combat sports it's even particularly important. Super Heavy Weight classes in some sports don't just give opportunities to different people, they give you a different kind of show. Heavy Weights and Welterweight fights are quite different and engaging in different ways. Boxing talent rotates and different weight classes can have change in their pool of talent. Sometimes the Heavy Weight Division can be a snoozefest due to lack of talent, but that depends on the level of athletes, which goes up and down over the years.
@@gamingwhilebroken2355
No one wants less access to sports for boys, but if that's the only way to have balance then that's how it has to be. Girls have just as much right to do it in a modern society.
And well as a sports consumer and fan of individual sports, I get just as excited for women's sports as I do for men's. Sure, Women's performances aren't as impressive show of pure physical human peak, but when the playing field is leveled, and the people are just as competitive then a dominant female athlete in her category is just as exciting as dominant male one in his, it's still a show of pure talent dedication and athleticism and physical peak among their own peers.
I don’t think your argument at 10:19 about fairness really follows/makes sense. Especially after showing that the research suggest that trans women maintain a physical advantage over cis women. Even though your point that it’s technically unfair that any given individual has a physical advantage over another is true, I think we still want to avoid letting trans women compete with cis women because in the ultra-competitive world of elite sports trans women with such advantages will likely categorically rise to the top of their ranks and beat their opponents. People want to be aware of and praise the top performing biological females (cis women) for what they can do within that biological category
10:36 I’m pretty sure many people want to know what is the best that someone can perform considering their natural advantages *within the category of biological sex*
I agree with you but here in the posts for this video we seem to be a minority.
I believe if a person wants to compete they should be able to. But thing's need to be balanced where they can. The only time I hear the word "fair" in any competition, sports,monopoly etc. is when cheating is suspected. If fair is the bar then a person could only compete against themself. Balanced allows for divisions. But more importantly with rules in place then it's on the person to decide if they will give it a shot. If I enter a row boat race and halfway in they announce we're allowing the use of Motors that's unfair to those that made their decision to compete based on the rules at the time.
My question for those that think this happening is ok.
So do we allow let's say Olympic athletes who have not won a medal to compete in the Special Olympics? Yes there will always be exceptions. Runners who have lost legs and compete with the help of prosthetics. In some automotive quarter-mile racing we had a Run what you brung. Cars were never even/fair. The choice to still compete knowing the rules was up to you which made it fair.
Sorry I should have put this as a post.
Yeah, feels like mental gymnastics. I'm so confused when she said this part.
We want fair competition so try to make it most fair. Fighting sport usually have weight range which reduce physical advantage.
@@Rheologist "I’m pretty sure many people want to know what is the best that someone can perform considering their natural advantages *within the category of biological sex"*
But why "within the category of biological sex"?
Is it just that we are so accustomed to partitioning people by sex that we can no longer imagine not doing it?
What if someone wants to know what is the best that someone can perform within the category of having size-9 feet? Or the best that someone can perform within the category of being between 5' and 5' 6" tall? If any attribute affects performance, we can imagine partitioning people based on that attribute. Why single out sex, specifically, rather than any other?
@@omp199 Because sex is one of the biggest differences. Comparing 5'11" Allen Iverson to 6'10" Kevin Durant is interesting but they also played against each other, neither has played against Diana Taurasi and likely never will because the athletic gap is insane. There's been less than 20 total dunks in WNBA history. There's more difference between the sexes than any other category. There's only a few sports women can even compete with men at the highest level, yet you'll find men of all shapes and sizes throughout professional competitions.
This is the best I’ve seen anyone handle this topic on UA-cam by a long way. Very well handled. Finally have a video I can share with people to help them understand.
Yeah absolutely. This is such a divisive topic! When I saw the title and thumbnail, I literally thought "Oh f*%k". But this is about as best and as factual as anyone has handled this topic.
@@contrabest528 I mean, she did mention there's a ton of variantion in testosterone production in men and women, and she does acknowledge and even cite studies that show post-puberty transition does indeed give and advantage. If there's a significant effect of testosterone exposure in-uterus and that reflects on athletic performance, and that is documented in studies, I do think it'd have been a good idea for her to mention. Would you know any study on this?
@@contrabest528 Definitely not. Before puberty there’s hardly any difference in muscle and bone structure. That small difference is vastly exceeded by woman with deviating hormonal function.
Sorry a lot of the “scientific” studies she quotes were written by activists with an agenda. In addition what is a trans athlete? Is it someone who had doped for a could of years? The difference in womens tennis between men and women is huge. Same for soccer. The American womens soccer team was easily beaten by a high school boys club team. Many boys high school track teams beat the woman’s world record for the mile.
@@jimkennedy4509 It's funny how I recognise every single talking point you deliver because it's hatemongering propaganda that has all been debunked for ages. How about you step out of your indoctrination camps and look at reality?
It doesn't take a scientist to know that biological men have a distinct advantage over biological women. Simply observing and the tiniest shread of intellectual honesty will bring you to the obvious conclusion. The fact that this is even a debate only shows how politics will trump intellect in those with a political bias.
Yes yes and yes again!
As a trans guy... I didn't know what to expect of this video, having not watched Sabrine's videos before. Ended up absolutely loving it. First one I've seen that offers *that* many complexities, details and perspectives, and ends questioning the enitre idea of "fairness". Hell, this kind of perspective is something I haven't even thought of much before. Athletics aren't meant to be fair, otherwise people wouldn't play basketball with someone 30 (or more) cm taller than them. Will defintiely send this to anyone who takes a very opinionated, but clearly not muh thought-out stance on the issue!
"This is why I suspect a century from now, professional athletics will not exist anymore. It creates too many incentives for unethical behaviour."
I agree that competitive athletics create incentives for unethical behaviour but that hasn't stopped anyone yet.
And it breed animosity within children and promotes troubling dynamics of power (e.g. bullies get a platform)
It won’t exist because people won’t exist
Yeah, I find that prediction somewhat unlikely, what will happen though is that records will be reset as they cannot be compared to older ones.
@@noxiousophidian9634 I don't think anyone is talking about the end of sports in general especially not for kids.
The existence of many incentives for unethical behavior hasn't done that much to get rid of politicians or elite universities.
When I first read the title, I thought to myself “oh no, is she really gonna go there?!” I’m sure glad you did! I’ve never seen this topic tackled in such an objective and multidimensional manner and I commend you for doing so.
Me too! Another really good video.
I agree. It's a "hot topic," but a valid question to ask and discuss. And science should be able to ask the uncomfortable of questions and look at them in an objective way. Although it may be a hallmark of transphobia, I believe it isn't transphobic to discuss how trans people in sports should work, or in prisons.
And this was a good discussion of those issues, without being bogged down with feelings.
Obliterating the gender divide after decades of hard work giving women a fair way to play is objective?
I was also worried! But I thought this was very well done
I feel like this creator is interested in a purely rationalistic approach. Such an approach seems to support the basic tenets of trans rights.
I don't think "fairness" is even relevant to this discussion. There are teams for handicapped athletes; but no provision is made for "normal" athletes to compete with them. Nobody argues that this would be "fair". Why should physically superior trans women be allowed to intrude on an event for biological women without their genetic advantages? If you could get enough trans women and spectators to make an event, I don't think anyone would try to stop it- but don"t match them up head to head with bio-women and talk about "Fair".
In a perfect world, all sports would be strictly demarcated based on skill and only skill, e.g., Chess works this way. Your age, biological sex, gender, and gender identity do not matter at all when competing in Chess. Chess players are ranked by skill, and that skill level determines who they can compete against and who they cannot compete against. Determining skill level in chess is a simple and straightforward process.
Unfortunately, that isn't practical, or perhaps even possible, for the majority of sports. That is exactly why we use simple demarcations (age, biological sex, etc) as AN ATTEMPT to "level the playing field". The point isn't complete fairness, which is impossible, but rather it's the most practical way to make things quasi-fair.
Imagine trying to make baseball 100% fair. How are you going to accurately test the skill level of the millions of people who play in baseball leagues? It simply isn't something we can do.... hence why we choose to keep it simple: baseball leagues are demarcated on age and biological sex. It isn't perfect, but it's an extremely simple and straightforward way to achieve a level of fairness that most people are comfortable with. On the other hand, spending untold amounts of money and time trying to accurately identify skill levels in baseball just isn't practical, possible, or rationale.
"They're freak shows. Kind of like physics conferences" that is pretty much spot on. There's no better argument for Borg infiltration than attending a large conference.
Ya, that was hilarious.
This statement was hands down the best! 😆😆
What do you mean, why would the Borg help?
@@watcher8582 I think he means "take me now, make it stop", lol.
Really though, aren't conferences actually dating forums for scientists now??
Waist-hip ratio (very important for punching), heart and lung size relative to body mass, relative fist size, relative jaw size, bone density (for many years or life), neurological differences in spatial reasoning. Those are some of the advantageous differences that are not eliminated by postpubescent hormone treatment.
Thank you! And to bolster the argument I point to the fact that there are a plethora of records that were set by trans women but I've never heard of a single one by a trans man. Where are the scholarship opportunities being taken away from men because a trans man beat them in the regionals etc? The nuttiest part about this is that is she's all "Is there an unfair advantage? Yes there is but it doesn't matter because sports are unfair anyway". What?! What's the point of looking into the science if the answer is the same no matter what?
@@jasondashney exactly! 👏🏼 Brilliantly put. Thank you.
@@jasondashney well said
@@jasondashneyExactly! I caught that portion too!
The muscle retention is still there, along with many biological advantages that hormones just can’t strip away.
Thank you for sharing your piece - this really hurts women ultimately and nobody wants to hear it!!
How ever trans women are not neurologically alike cis men even before HRY in general and even less so post HRT.
Spatial skills like sense of direction declined to a degree even in cis men if they for any reason had to radically lower their testosterone.
Simple questions..
Why are there women sports to began with?
Why is it considered "cheating" for women to take steroids?
Because otherwise, athletics would simply be closed to women.
It starts at the local town level with casual play. If there are large groups which have a high difference in aptitude it makes sense to play separately (sex, weight etc.). Competitions arise from this separated casual play.
In the case of sex separation we overdo it sometimes out of habit (darts, pool etc.) but the sensible origin is clear.
Sabine picked a one off study. The results are nonsense. We know that even low tesosterone males stil have 5 times (!!!) more testosterone than a high T female. Read LARGE DIVERGENCE IN TESTOSTERONE CONCENTRATIONS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR ELITE ATHLETES IN SEX-SPECIFIC COMPETITION IN SPORT, A NARRATIVE REVIEW if you want to know more.
Completely playing devils advocate here but following the logic of some, so what if sport becomes completely closed to women? There’s natural variation within the population that gives advantages to some. Obese and elderly people have a disadvantage too. Unless every possible disadvantage is catered for with a separate category, why should women get one?
@@hllytmh those are examples of fitness issues. It's fine to discriminate on that basis since it's the main part of athletics.
So, it sounds like trans women do have an advantage over biological women, but the conclusion was “But who cares about sports, it’s about entertainment anyway, right?”.
That’s not the conclusion I would have reached based on the presented information, but hey, you do you.
I was initially worried about how this video would shake out, but it was remarkably clear headed and dignified to all! I should have known that ultimately Sabine would end by completely dunking on professional athleticism entirely.
What? You're not even qualified to understand the pubs yet you're confident in your understanding of the validity of the peer review??
@@kathleenpearson-dh9od Those are entirely different moral questions. We are here to talk about the science, at least Sabrına is. What you are doing is shaming another person for not entertaining a personel belief on a science video, which I think is indefensable.
I would be happy to discuss why the beliefs you hold are bigoted however. I am not a scientist (though I am a med student) so discussing morality is more in my wheelhouse.
@@kathleenpearson-dh9od Kathleen - take a fucking chill pill.
Yes. I had to laugh that the final conclusion was that sports are dumb and incentivize poor ethical behavior. Such a nerd argument. I loved it.
@@yttrxstein4192 that’s usually how it is. Lots of new stuff are happening, so it’s to early to tell, and there might be things that might occur in the future that might take what we already know, and flip it on its head. Mainly due to reality being extremely complicated.
“They’re really more like freak shows, kind of like physics conferences.” Lol!!!! Great presentation.
I lol
11:16 context for those curious like me, she's talking about how professional athletes already represent the best of the best and can't be considered representative of the rest of the population.
That's right. And if in reality I was a Chemical Engineer, Structural Engineer or some other scientist who actually worked for a living, but insisted on admission into the Physics conference because I "identified" as a Physicist, then I could increase my chances of consideration if I took enough cognitive suppressing drugs that allowed me to share in the wonderful joy of string theory, supersymmetry and all of the other topics presented at the average conference.
I knew someone would get this comment in before me - Sabine excelling herself (again).
"Woah woah woah, you used to say you were a Chemical Engineer but through years of hard work and persistence in study, you now have a paper certifying from the experts of your higher learning institution that you have a degree in physics and you want to be let in and treated like a Physicist since accredited experts say you are one? Nice try, Chemical Engineer. Maybe in another life" - physics conference people *and _certain other folks_
The reason competitive sports are segregated by sex in the first place is because of the potential athletic advantage that males have over females. It's not that all men are physically advantaged over all women, it's that in many competitive sports, the upper limit of male athletic prowess significantly exceeds comparable female limits. Naming the two categories "men's and women's sports leagues" is a misnomer - in reality, these are male and female leagues.
While trans women ARE women, they are not congenitally female. However, I'm no sports aficionado, so I would defer to professional and amateur sporting associations to determine male and female sports league eligibility. The bottom line, however, is that female sports leagues in general suffer far more from lack of financial support than from any competitive challenge from trans women.
so... you agree with the video?
Where are the transmen athletes that are performing well? Breaking records?
like with women i imagine trans men would have an advantage in long distance
to be fair, there aren't that many trans athletes in the first place and the media would hardly give attention to trans men, when they can instead sensationalise trans women being in sports
Sex is not “assigned at birth”. It is OBSERVED at birth. Even by the progressive definitions, it would be gender that is assigned at birth, not sex.
I think the conclusion that sports isn't fair because not all physical characteristics are ever the same is a little disingenuous. Whether more categories in a specific sport (based on muscle mass, arm span, or whatever the case may be) are sensible is an interesting discussion, but the point is that IF the categories male and female exist, athletes should in all fairness be able to expect these categories to be enforced.
In other words, if a woman with shorter arms enters a woman's swimming competition, she would have no grounds to complain that her opponent had longer arms than her (she busted her butt becoming a pro swimmer knowing that she might have to compete against women with longer arms and accepted that handicap), but it would be reasonable to complain that her opponent is a biological man (she never accepted THAT handicap). Expecting whatever imperfect rules there are to be enforced is not unreasonable, and saying that "if you hadn't lost against the biological man, you might have lost against the biological woman with longer arms" doesn't address this in good faith. One is a disadvantage the athlete accepted when choosing her sport and investing decades into it, the other is not.
I also think that the argument that pro athletes are the extremes actually works against Sabine's point here. It is at the extremes where the smallest edge makes all the difference. And a male puberty is a pretty big edge.
If the male-female distinction is deemed too imprecise and exchanged for some other method of grouping athletes together, that's fine by me. But as long as it does exist, wanting it to be enforced is not crazy. How precisely it is enforced (testosterone levels, waiting time after reassignment surgery) is certainly open to discussion, taking into account people that don't neatly fit into the male-female dichotomy. But certainly the answer can't be "if you say you're female, you can compete in women's sports".
I wholeheartedly agree. Well put. I had the same issues with Sabines arguments.
I agree, she comes off as trying to justify the advantage trans women get from male puberty by saying "well life's not fair so where do we draw the line?" when the advantage some athletes get from their genes happens organically(and they still gotta train their asses off) while hormone replacement therapy is manipulation of one's biology so they can appear to be more athletically handicapped than they really are.
I mean, isn’t sport entertainment at its heart? It’s a person pushing themselves to be the best they can be at something . What do they care if someone busted their ass more than them and ended up being half a second faster. They still busted their ass training. The categories only make since if the only motivation to be an athlete is “I want to win this competition”
It wouldn't be enforcing a category. If you're enforcing gender categories, that would put trans women in women sports without questions since their gender is indeed women. The problem is that there is others factors to take into account.
And I don't think people are surveyed on their opinions about their opponents :
Do basketball players have accepted that height will be an unfair advantage, or have they just no choice if they want to compete professionally ?
If having advantaged taller players in basketball is imposed, then why wouldn't it be possible for other sports with other advantages ?
If it isn't, shouldn't be regular surveys for all sports about advantages that are accepted and those that are refused ?(things will inevitably be biased every time there is something that may change the minds of the people surveyed, but it would be possible. )
In any case, by current standards, the only imperfect rule that there is to be enforced about the participation of women in women sports is the level of testosterone that they must have and the number of year at that level that they have.
And, to add to that, it is not unreasonable as well to expect imperfect rules to change to make them more perfect. In this case : either sports more fair, or more inclusive.
@@yucol5661 I mean, sure... it's only a problem for female athletes that want to be successful. Unfortunately, at the _professional_ level, that's all of them.
One issue not mentioned is bone structure which is a huge factor in why men are more powerful runners than women since their gait is straight versus a woman's gait is more rounded (hip structure allows more circular motion of the leg as it moves). No discussion about VO2 Max, fast twitch fibers, bone density, skeletal structure, and many other factors that contribute to the differences among men and women. A woman's fertility cycle also becomes an issue when she cannot devote an entire month of training. I thought these studies were incredibly simplistic in their view. You cannot limit a study to one or two variables and claim little difference but rather it must be viewed from a holistic approach that takes in all the differences among genders which cumulatively contribute to the differences. Since men lose so little with hormone therapy and they have a distinct advantage in sports in general, the unfairness is limited to the females. A "good" high school male runner can easily beat a world record holding female runner every time. I once compared Florence Joyner's world records for the 100 m and 200 m to high school males and she would not have ranked in the top 400. Those extremes cannot be overcome by simple hormone therapy treatments hence making female athletes unable to compete at these levels.
If we are going to dismiss the notion of fairness, then we really don't need women's sports, paraolympics, special olympics, or any other category other than just sports. I am not in favor of the 'games just for the fittest' which would be limited to only male sports. I do believe there is an argument to be made that we must have distinct categories to offer a space for those who can compete at the highest levels just not against their male counterparts.
Well said. I can't believe the arguments put forth by Sabine in this video. The plethora of scientific evidence, decades old, tells us plainly there are significant differences in the kinesiology and performance of females and males. That can not be disproved by a few biased studies on transgender athletes performance that focus on a single metric. But then Sabine, after quoting all of this science, then negates the relevance of any scientific study, because of the "entertainment" factor. Well if a trans athlete competing with women will be more entertaining, why not go for the full show and have men and women compete? There is more to sports than entertainment. Solidarity and support, the witnessing of expertise and performance, receiving inspiration from dedicated people. You can have all the natural advantage in the world, but it's training and dedication that win events.
What it all boils down to is whether these differences, no matter how large or small, and regardless of whether they are attributable to one or more factors, can be overcome with training and effort. As she mentioned, the average male has no chance of becoming a successful NBA player. If you're 5'8'', no amount of training can overcome this and put you on an equal footing with a 6'6'' player.
Also, not all of these factors are useful in all sports. As she mentioned, there are certain sports in which women have an advantage over men.
@@Adam-nw1vyIt matters how large or small the differences are. If they're too vast, no amount of human, non-chemically aided, training could overcome those differences. Which they are, indeed, vast af.
@@Donald6309 And, like her, I'm saying that the difference between the average person and the typical successful NBA player is too vast, and that no amount of human, non-chemically aided training could overcome this difference. Do you disagree with this?
It’s obviously not fair. Men and women are very different and the Olympic records are clear proof
Your comment makes too much sense to these woke lefties who deny reality.
Sabine picked a one off study. The results are nonsense. We know that even low tesosterone males stil have 5 times (!!!) more testosterone than a high T female. Read LARGE DIVERGENCE IN TESTOSTERONE CONCENTRATIONS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR ELITE ATHLETES IN SEX-SPECIFIC COMPETITION IN SPORT, A NARRATIVE REVIEW if you want to know more.
The women's division was created in order to give women a chance to shine in sports. The rules were made to exclude men with their overwhelming advantages. Now some people are trying to circumvent that rule. That IS unfair.
"Sports have never been fair" It's a fantastic way to put it. Just look at the birth months of professional baseball players.
August 18.6 26.6%
September 17.8 21.1%
October 15.9 8.2%
Why would this be? What does their birth month have to do with ability?
These kids were as old as possible when they start school. In fact in many states if haven't turned five by a certain date you don't have to start school that year. This means children will be larger and have an advantage in sports for their age. This is an example of the Matthew effect where people with an advantage gain more advantages over time.
The month that you were born in contributes overwhelmingly to the possibility of you being a professional athlete. That's definitely not fair.
No it's not, the only reason women's sports exist is to let women compete against other women without men. Excluding males from competing is the entire reason women's sports exist. It's a terrible argument.
I learned this fact a few months ago and was so surprised. It perfectly shows how unfair sport is. People really underestimate the effect luck have on an outcome. So many people like to believe it’s all a 100% hard work.
Uhm...you do know that correlation doesn't imply causation, right?
@@juimymary9951 Absolutely, but everything we're talking about today is statistical. Taller basketball players are statistically more successful in basketball, but that doesn't erase the fact that Muggsy Bogues was successful and was only 5'3.
@@AiguilleVoodoo We all like to think that we deserve what we have because we work hard, and while working hard does contribute, there is so much luck in everything we do. Being born into a country where you can get an education, being born to a family that can afford to feed you good food, pay for college and on and on.
It's uncomfortable fact that working hard is only one factor in being successful in anything.
You think that pro sports will disappear due to high incentives for unethical behavior? I admire your optimism. Personally, I think we're much more likely to increase unethical behavior than get rid of sports.
perhaps it all boils down to people just wanting to enjoy the thrill of overcoming or outcompeting each other without any care for the methods or ethics involved therein...
Being trans is unethical?
The definition is professional is to get paid for the activity. The idea is that the money gets removed from the equation. But yes, agreed, I can't see prof sports going away in the foreseeable future.
@@BooksAndShitButNotLiterally did u even watch the video…?
@@user-bl2vr9jj2z Some of it.
I think the big point to consider here is the question of, "what is a woman?" If you accept the statement, "trans women are women", then going through a male puberty is just part of the natural variation of women. Logically, this means that denying trans women the ability to compete in women's sports while allowing natural variations in cis women means denying that trans women are women. It's simple logic; "if A then B" immediately implies "if not B then not A". The fairness argument is just a smokescreen for denying that trans women are women, and it's why conservatives have paid more attention to women's sports in the last couple of years than any mainstream media platform did for the two decades before that.
Trans women are not women and therefore should be playing in men’s sports. It’s really that simple.
I don't agree on your point about fairness...Gender/sex should be a factor in leveling the field... when anyone says that trans women shouldn't compete in sports with cis women what they mean is that it disturbs the level playing field you can't equate usain bolt having long legs to a trans women competing in sports of cis women...Even if Usain Bolt has long legs he has chances of loosing races (he has lost fair share of them) but a trans women in cis sports will 99.9% of the time always come on top
Fastest male 1 mile run record: 3:43 (Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999)
Fastest female 1 mile run record: 4:12 (Sifan Hassan in 2019)
That's a MASSIVE difference !!! 😮
and let's not forget that those competitions mean something to those who put a lot of effort into training to compete! it is not only about winning a trophy but also money and opportunities afterwards.
I mean, most won’t get any money and opportunities afterwards. Thinking about profesional sports as a competition for money is flawed because most will make extreme sacrifices and still don’t make money. The effort and years of training and dedication do mean something to the athletes. But it’s not as if sports being unfair and taking away money that could have been theirs is their main risk.
@@yucol5661 nobody said it was the “main risk”
Simply another cost for women from men participating in their sports.. despite their leagues being separated BY sex. It’s just so ridiculous…
Logic applied, thankyou!
Reffering to people as 'Cis' is clearly derogative in my opinion but choose whatever you like.
Agreed. It presumes everyone has a 'gender identity', which is a made up term relying fully on ideology.
Answer: no, of course not. Anyone who refuses to recognize the difference between a man's body and a woman's is out of touch with reality. It has nothing to do with sexual preferences or identification. It has to do with athletic classification, so body types matter more than psychological makeup.
Sabine, it is possible that the low testosterone scores for elite male athletes was a result of them coming off of their steroid cycle.
These kind of scores are often seen in athletes who are known to use steroids, Jon Jones is a good example. It is very unlikely that a man with levels of testosterone comparable to elite female athletes would be able to compete at an elite level with men… unless of course he’s just coming off a steroid cycle
... i'm not sure she actually critically examines every study she shows.
actually i'm rpetty sure she doesn't.
Just read the discussion of the paper. These levels were measured after an event, and extreme stress can deplete your testosterone levels apparently. Often this is recovered after a good night's sleep. This study was a spin-off from a study on the effects of doping, so roids have definitely been checked for :) The interesting part of this paper isn't necessarily about testosterone, but differences in lean body mass. They even conclude that using serum testosterone as a means to exclude certain women from competition is untenable, and that LBM is likely a much more important marker.
Yeah that was weird
@@sandrawiersma2512
Good on you, dude-ette!
@@sandrawiersma2512doping still takes place at extraordinarily high levels at the olympics and not usually in very specific and borderline undetectable way, very hard thing to control for even in a study of this magnitude
Is TOTALLY unfair to make compete biological men against biological woman. Period.
Of course a profesional woman athelete will win over me on every sport, as I'm ot trained at all, but in professional sports where all the participants are well trained, the biological gender makes a huge difference for similarly trained men and women in most sports.
That argument that "we are all different" makes no sense at all.
If you want to make the competition more fair with people of the same biological sex you don't have to make a thousand categories for each item, just split it in categories where it matters the most (ie. you can make "height" categories on basketball as boxers have "weight" categories as is totally unfair to mix them in a fight).
Age categories are also a real thing on semi-professional sports environments.
Also It should totally exist a transgender category in sports.
The American women's basketball team crushed the El Salvador team because they're taller? It doesn't matter. Put either against a competitive high school boys' team and they'll get destroyed.
Just wanted to add my personal (Trans fem) experience with HRT that's shared among many others. The first year is barely enough time for most changes to occur. I started becoming drastically weaker after 2-3 years. In that time I had a very physical job and it slowly became more difficult to move the same things the same way I'd been doing for years. After 5-7 years, muscle and fat distribution changes have mostly completed. I started at age 21. /anecdotal I know, but this is the only channel I've seen talking about this in good faith so I figured I'd add my perspective.
Subjectively, I get what you're trying to say. But assuming you had male puberty. if you we're a 6'3" man your skeleton didn't suddenly shrink to become a 5'0" woman. There are innate differences, especially after puberty.
But you will always benefit from the testosterone you got in utero and going through a male puberty. Getting weaker because of hormones doesn’t mean you no longer have advantages over biological females.
I have a friend who transitioned after 40. Five years later, she still has the husky build she had before. And is still noticeably stronger than most Cis women her age, even though she's not particularly athletic. Male puberty does make a huge difference.
Thanks for adding your lived perspective @ModernCRTGamer.
@@KevinJDildonik Precisely, his hips are narrower, his pelvis has less angle than a womans. He will always be able to sprint faster than a significant chunk of the female population because of that, as just one example.
This made me nervous, seeing the topic, but you've earned my trust enough that I gave you a shot, and I think you've earned that trust again.
She doesn't take any stand and only presenting what is. I think she rarely doesn't if ever in any of her videos.
@@lylelaney8270 there is no such thing as not taking a stand -- you can't avoid making a choice
@@philipripper1522 unless she clearly said I agree or disagree or this is right or wrong then it's not.
@@lylelaney8270 That's still a stance. You think she doesn't editorialize? She'd correct you herself.
@@philipripper1522 If she does then she does. I'm pointing out unless she says it unambiguously then it's not a stance. That's all. It's unfair but it's still OK. It's wrong but it's acceptable. It didn't fit the current fact but it's still not contradictory. That's basically what she said. (Rephrasing)
I'm a bit surprised about the claim of men and women being better matched up in endurance sport: wouldn't that mean the Tour de France should have very competitive women in it ? I guess the Tour de France does not let men and women compete together, but then: what about cycling in general ?
No, it's not fair. It's not even close. We're stupid to pretend this is even a question.
why not question it. she brings up some interesting analysis. but I don't think a woman, cis or trans, would ever sprint faster than the fastest biological male. as for the fastest female sprinters, it's unclear. are there any trans sprinters?
@@kalevala29 yes there are trans sprinters (MTF) and they destroy female sprinters in their races. It's not even close to being competition.
@@kidzbop38isstraightfire92 I know no woman has broken Flo-Jo's record time, in 30 years? then again, wasn't there charges of her doping?
@@kalevala29 give it time... As soon as a true upper-tier Male sprinter identifies as female, it's over.
@@kidzbop38isstraightfire92so it's not happened then and you know you're presenting lies 🤔
Its interesting to note that the paralympics do classify people by giving them a handicap; thus enabling many people with varying levels of the same type of handicap to compete against one another. Of course this doesn't remove all differences, but does allow for a certain level of reasonable competition. In the end this is all that can be done; like the way we separate competitors with respect to age. Today we even have senior competitions. Should we provide every person in the world with a handicap evaluation such that someone who is half-blind can complete on the same level as someone who has perfect vision in archery? I'm sure there isn't a perfect answer to this question; as the answer will depend on the objective of competition. Is it to amuse the spectators, it is to make money for the performers, or profit to the business people? Good luck solving that riddle!!
Perhaps what should then be included in professional sports is an active 'handicapping' negotiation segment where teams or individuals are handicapped based on pre-event negotiations by the managers or coaches. Like in hot rod street racing!
Michael Phelps, no one will race you unless you give them x seconds head start!
This is a crazy utopian idea that will, if implemented, destroy elite sports for spectators and thus lead to their complete collapse. We watch sports to see the amazing feats the very best athletes can pull off. Seeing Bolt win by 0.5 seconds in a ten second race makes more people want to watch, not less. Seeing a man who identifies as a woman beat people by that distance in a women's race, would have those who aren't utopian fantasists throwing their remote control through the TV and not replacing it.
Paralympics is rife with cheating
I thought the random Meghan Trainor lyric would be the highlight of this video, but then there came: "Athletes are biological extremes. Fairness has never been the point of these competitions. They're really more like freak shows. Kind of like physics conferences, basically." 😆
This quote is so degrading to people who put in hard work and determination.
And also degrades the people who lose... As though winning is the only reason we have sports.
A tall lazy man always loses to a short hardworking one. The people who think trans people can compete don't even watch sports.
@@dansfrance188 There are no lazy tall athletes at elite level. They are competing with other motivated abnormally tall athletes. The short person has no place there no matter how hard he/she trains.
@@dansfrance188 a lazy female trans athlete also loses to the hardworking female cis athlete
@@dansfrance188 why do you think trans people can't compete? Does the transgender particle stop them from being able to pick up a ball or something?
@@66Kusmu Us women’s Olympic soccer champions lost to 15 and under boys. Same with the Australian women’s Olympic soccer team. They lost to 14 year old boys. Trans men have an unfair advantage on women when it comes to physical sports. That’s why you don’t have any examples of transitioned women to men in male sports.
Gender is not assigned at birth. Gender is observed at birth and it can be observed before that with ultrasound.
Pretty sure that's sex
Let them all compete in an open category. People are not assigned a sex at birth. Please stop using this ridiculous expression. Sex is IDENTIFIED at birth or before. In the vast majority of cases, almost 99% of the time this identification is correct. I appreciate the scientific data you presented. It is totally contradictory for a trans athlete to loose muscle to be more feminine, but build muscle to win at sport. It is clear what they will focus on as athletes.
As a trans person (but not a competitive athlete,) I have been struggling with how to feel and think on this contentious issue. Thank you for bringing some objective scientific perspective!
I respect your choice - be it man or woman. I respect your right of living the life you choose. On the other hand, if you were a man last week, or last month or last year and chose to compete in a women's event I would be as mad as hell.
so, what is your conclusion? Should trans-women be allowed in women's sports?
@@neyson220293 not the ones who are playing now … I wouldn’t even call a person that looks like Thomas a trans woman
@Alex "I respect you as long as you don't do the things I get to do despite all evidence in the video showing the whole of sports is inherently unfair and we focus on classically male advantages too much, but hey that's not the problem no it's your participation that crosses the line" lmao go "be mad" elsewhere if you aren't here to learn. Telling someone you respect them but would get angry at them for athletic participation is such a masked threat of power -- it makes your respect flimsy at best, and an obvious lie to say what you *really* mean at worst.
At one end of the scale, we have scoundrels, men that put on a dress then compete in women's sports to gain a competitive advantage. IMO, these people need to be permanently banned, stripped of all titles and publicly shamed.
On the other end, there are sincerely trans individuals that never fealt like their genetic gender and have transitioned. I am simply too ignorant to even talk about how these cases ought to be handled. I don't even have an opinion.
But the real problem is, who determines who the con artists are?
Very informative and well-articulated. I especially appreciate the brief coverage of intersex conditions at the start, the philosophical exploration of "fairness" in sporting events at the end, and the humourous bits interspersed throughout. Thank you for making this.
But it isn’t though it’s the same exact thing every other person says “yes it’s not fair but sometimes life isn’t fair” ignoring the difference between controllable and uncontrollable advantage
It was a low quality compared to what she normally produces. Her conclusion is literally a Nirvana fallacy lol. Her analysis is also lacking a lot of relevant physiological differences between males and females yet she only focuses on males who have undergone "transition" of which the data pool is extraordinarily small while we already know for a fact that muscle insertions, distribution, and bone density stay the same. She, like so many others, is afraid of having her career assassinated by political zealots.
@@deuscoromat742 EXACTLY !!!!!!
@Deus Coromat if she would care to be canceled, she doesn't criticize hardly string theory.
Intersex people are so rare you may as well say they are statistically zero. The issue is not people being born with female and male parts, it is people who feel they do not have the right parts.
Kind of unrelated but if everything in sports was fair and no one had any advantage would that not mean the winner of each competition would be completely random? The only reason why one person is better than others in sports is because they had access to more advantageous genetics and environment involving their muscles, bones, desire to train harder etc. If all of these were controlled for so the playing field was perfectly even, surely each person would perform equally as well so the winner would just be from chance.
So... It's not fair, and the arguments against are poor at best. Saying the "end" is categorizing infinitely is slippery slope fallacy. There's a clear seperation between cis and trans here and it seems most fitting for trans to have their own categories.
The fairness argument presented can be used to justify men joining women sports as it's not fair anyways. I think we can safely disagree with that. And since the science for transwomen show negligible differences even after years of therapy, the conclusion should be clear: either trans people get their own category or competition remains based on sex at birth rather than gender
Of course since transmen are significantly affected, the conclusion is flipped.
The fact that sport, like life, is not exactly fair, is not an argument for making it less fair. If it was then we would remove all categories: sex, age, disability etc. but nobody is arguing for that, so I don't see why anybody can make a special case for sex.
disabled athletes CAN compete… its just that due to (depending on disability) they may not qualify. same with age, you can be 60 and try to qualify all you want, your just probably wont make the cut. the trans in sports argument outright bans those competitors, preventing them from even qualifying.
@@dkolendo they are not banned from competing - they can compete in the open (male) category
@@jim23mac right, but the entire point of this argument is that women are banned from female categories, in case you missed it
@@dkolendo only if they take drugs or bring the sport into disrepute
@@dkolendo not women though, are they dominik
11:24 regarding the entertainment value of sports; It's more interesting to watch a sporting event where the contestants are closely matched but have slight variations in abilities than watching one team curb-stomp the other.
That is, of course, unless the one doing the stomping is the one that is considered the underdog.
That's not true, Usain Bolt stomped his competition for over a decade and was really fun ti watch
Or any team against the Dallas Cowboys.
@@jamonnaranjo Now replace all his opponents with the fastest women.
If its the Pats or Colby Covington getting stomped, I'm here for it any day.
I think this is going to be the ultimate relevant factor in sports competitions. Does anyone really want to watch a trans man destroy a bunch of cis women in any kind of competition? Is that interesting? Exciting? It would be boring as hell, and honestly would make me pretty mad. I don't see how any trans man can possibly think he is earning that win. If I joined a kid's competition and wiped the floor with them, have I earned it?
It's not a fair competition. Everyone knows it isn't. The trans man especially should know that it isn't.
No one is going to pay to watch events like that.
Mike Tyson could transition and compete. He'd kill someone. Michael Jordan could do the same and win an instant wnba championship. And I'm not talking about the young Jordan or Tyson. I mean today. Now. Todays teary-eyed Jordan would destroy the wnba. The argument becomes obvious at the extremes.
The number one female tennisplayer would be probably no 200 in mens division i don't think you need more science about it.
This is probably the most honest and well researched take on this issue, thanks for taking the effort to clear things out
@OGSF exactly i wanna see some cyberpunk shit like adam smasher competing in the olympics
No completely solar panels can be placed in area like water canals that would help with algae growth without disturbing land also solar can work with distribution verses Transission and battery storage like Hopedale Australia has proven the concept while also showing how batteries have helped during g peak operation instead of starting up a peaked plant which is vastly expensive saving the customers money united Arab emeritus use solar for pumping gas at 5 cents a kilowatt hour and if no sun or wind for 3 days we'll we would have another more to worry about than energy
Sorry, but she's a professional LIAR:
TWO QUESTIONS THE SABINE HOFFSTEDER AND OTHER LIARS WILL REFUSE TO ANSWER
Firstly, if at some point in a physical endeavor, strength becomes a secondary factor to endurance, and women are supposedly able to cope better than men when it comes to physical endurance, why is it that even in extreme endurance events like the Navy Seals Hell Week and Ultra Marathon Runs that men still continue to show significantly higher levels of endurance than women? Why is it that only ONE woman Grace O’Rourke, has ever been recorded in all the history of Hell Week to endure its brutal and punishing physical regimen and practically ALL the most significant endurance records listed in the Guinness Book of World Records are held by men?
Secondly, if fairness is essentially a meaningless concept in competitive sporting events, what’s the point of even having rules that punish cheating or doing anything that gives one competitor an unfair advantage over another?
@@thebeatnumber long distance swimming records are all women
@@allijnera That was based on skewed data collected from the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim ( between the years 2009 and 2010).
The women in the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim were on average significantly YOUNGER than the men (33.7 versus 41.5 years)
In marathon swimming events where men and women are the same age, the men dominate.
I like the idea of "meaningful competition." We don't have to account for every variable either. Boxing has weight classes. Why not apply similar classes to sports based on advantages? Yes, it would be imperfect, but most things are until we observe and adapt.
I find it funny how the "fairness" goons are trying to force women's sports that include trans women to exclude them. The fairness goons FUCKING HATE flat-track roller derby because we've told them in no uncertain terms to get bent.
It's not just a matter of 'imperfect'; it's a matter of 'does it work at all'. For instance, the same blow landed on a woman will be much more likely to cause injury than on a male, due to bone strength and size (the latter applying even in cases of similar height-weight, curiously enough). So a woman competing against a man in a boxing match will be much more likely to suffer a broken bone or other serious injury than her opponent, EVEN IF they fall into the same weight class. That is neither fair nor meaningful competition.
We already divide them into classes for fairness - those classes are called male and female
@@OutsiderLabs And you actively try to destroy anyone and anything who steps outside those classes because those classes aren't about fairness.
@@katherineberger6329 'actively trying to destroy'? What on earth are you talking about? People pointing at the scientific literature and demonstrating that temporary HRT exposure doesn't magically erase the significant physical differences between male and female competitors are not trying to "destroy" people who don't fit neatly into "male" and "female."
There is a complicated ethical discussion to be had about intersex people who have advantages within female sex segregated sports (with the most significant being XY chromosomal people with partial/complete androgen insensitivity and as a result naturally present as female). That conversation has nothing to do with the fairness of allowing natal males to compete against natal females under the (empirically verified to be false) presumption that undergoing hormone therapy to aesthetically appear more female makes one physically equivalent to a natal female competitor in sports performance.
i am OUTRAGED and OFFENDED that you think my Boston Red Sox will cease to exist in 100 years
The studies that focus on muscle size and mass, while telling, also seem to neglect the advantage of neuromuscular efficiency in biologically male athletes. If you are born as a male your neurological development in regards to muscle fiber recruitment is likely much superior to someone born as a woman. It also doesnt account for pre-disposition to a higher proportion of fast twitch glycolytic muscle fibers as opposed to slow twitch oxidative. Im not sure how much of these gender differences are brought on by the onset of puberty.
I have to disagree with the assertion that competition and sports are inherently unfair. The entire point of any competitive setting is to have as fair of a playing field as possible hence why certain things that give a distinct and notable advantage that involves outside interference such as steroids are often banned in sports. If we were to follow the premise that all competition is inherently unfair because of every tiny difference that exists such as someone's leg being half a cm longer than many other competitors, then at that point there's nothing to stop us from simply throwing out any and all segregation of sports entirely. Many people simply don't like theat idea because they prefer having sprcific spaces for men and for women. Ignoring that though, removing said segregation also causes issues such as males becoming dominant in most sports to the point that females simply don't get to compete.
Also, from the entertainment perspective it's arguable that said division actually increases entertainment value to viewers, as creating a close competition is what makes viewing spirting events engaging. That's specifically why most often combat sports have weight classes, for example.
let's see what "fairness" has led us, shall we? go take 2 seconds to google "David Simon" and how he was banned from korean basketball league for simply being "too tall". yup. his got banned for his genetic predisposition of growing longer bones. do you think that's fair? no? then why do you think it's fair to ban people who are genetic predisposed to grow more muscles, aka men transitioning to women? why do you draw the arbitrary line there? a bit double standards don't you think?
or maybe you think that IS fair. then that means all the other 99.9% of world's sports codes who don't have genetic restrictions are unfair, correct? have you ever voiced your concern about any of those? or did you just decide to have an opinion when your completely arbitrary line was stepped on?
It is inherently unfair because there will always be one on top where one has the superior genetic that allows said one to dominate physically or perform as an outlier. Rules and regulation are created so that people can compete fairly as much as possible in other factors like tactic and skills than physical advantages.
When she said it is unfair, it means sports are competed by a group of outliers where the physical gaps between are much closer than "mere mortals".
Indeed, while Sabine's argument is well researched and eye opening there's still at least one point she missed that is what women's sports do for women liberalisation. It was started specially for this purpose and had a great effect in opening space for women in sports and other places.
Perhaps that's not entirely evident to her given Western countries progress in the area but it is still relevant in most developing countries especially India where it has a massive impact in feminist movement...
It is inherently unfair as, at the very least, genetics play a role and it's not your fault that your body has less of a potential. In one sport, being very big and muscular might be an advantage, in another being light and slim might be an advantage. But it's not meant to be fair. The whole point is to determine who is better at it. Whether they got there through hard work or sheer luck. And in the case of professionals, the whole point is to entertain people and sell them products. When it comes to banning, you want to ban things that are bad. Because we know people will do bad things if you reward them for it. We wouldn't have to ban doping if it was perfectly safe. Of course, it can get more complicated and you might have rules meant to decrease cost of competition, but that's not really the case for athletics.
Division doesn't make competition closer. It allows you to have more competition. The other divisions typically feature people who would never make it in an unlimited division. Essentially, it's like having more disciplines. You have more competition, more winners. Of course, they're not going to be equally popular.
@@karatekid7640 The funny thing is why. Men compete to attract women. That's a huge motivator. Women seem to compete just to prove they can do it as well, so they don't feel inferior. A very different game. But history is full of examples of women wanting what men had. Even something as feminine as high-heeled shoes were originally made for men.
Did I miss the discussion on bone, heart, and lungs differences in men vs women?
Yeah, I was disappointed by that exclusion, too. How about the fact that men have proportionally longer legs, making them faster runners? People were really impressed by the impartiality of this video, but I felt it fell a little flat in the science department. This isn't in any way a sort of close call physically.
Skeletal shapes as well. Post-puberty hormones aren't going to change the shape of your hips, shoulders, jaw, hands, etc...
@@TheGiantRobot yes I was impressed
@@n0madtv Which also affect center of gravity, a significant factor in many sports. Another point ignored in this video.
Unfortunately, this video includes just enough bits of science-related factors to make it appear as if it's actually scientific, but it isn't. Selective data is junk science, anti-science, whatever term you want, but to say that it's flawed is a considerable understatement. So much so as to undermine her credibility, which is also truly unfortunate.
@@barbarakauppi9915 It is unfortunate. I liked her physics videos, but after a little too much misinformation on various subjects, including physics, I've now unsubbed.
The problem is ,if thy would do a transgender category..some extremist countries ,like arabs ,muslims ,russia ,china ,nigeria ..wouldn't approve or allow such thing ,so what if a huge international sport event took place in one of those muslim countries ,like world cup in Qatar ?
So ..categorizing is a bullsht
Well yeah we can have the open and the female category.
The question is not fairness but artificially induced unfairness
How different are transwomen from doping?
Advantages are a product of drugs
I really appreciate the sources in the comments. So many popular and trusted channels provide no sources which I think is messed up. Its a huge relief to be able to watch your videos and not have to worry about being lied to.
I get that about other topics but if you need sources to know women get crushed by trans women idk what is going on up there.
@@raykings5244 that's because that doesn't happen. Hard to find sources about something that doesn't happen. That's like trying to find sources about the dimensions of Santa's house in the North Pole.
I will never trust anything without a source, so I love this channel.
@@hollisticc But it does happen, and it will happen more and more.
@@hollisticc wdym it doesn't happen?
I am very used to seeing videos with titles like this one ending up being statements of opinions with half hearted proofs, and I am very happy to have learned so much in this one! Very comprehensive and truly instructive, thank you for making this topic so understandable !
It’s very sad that you think you learned something from her rationalizing and pandering.
@@RAF71chingachgook shut up karen
Yes if your certain you are Wright then oh oh possibly an error has occurred
Life is not fair soon going to be hard for sports to be truly fair as spectators kinda know this already fans still like to watch it is entertaining
@@josephcunningham5482 - Who is "wright"? Are you referring to one of the Wright Brothers-- Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright? 🤔
What about bone density, lung capacity and muscle size? Athletes that have gone through male puberty, have by far an advantage, and those things cannot be reversed by hormone treatment. So NO, trans women should be competing in their own categories. Has anyone noticed trans MEN in males sports? No, I wonder why.
That's a big topic in the 2024 Paris Olympics - especially because two biological men now compete in the final fight of women boxing.
Women sports is a special category that protects absolutely and only women. There is no personal right for anyone to compete in this category. if one can not hold up to a biological categorization without any doubt as a woman. So if anyone has in any way some traits (e.g. chromosomes, genitals, testosterone level) that are not female, he can not compete in this protected sport and has to enter the men category or Paralympics or some other special category yet to establish. End of story for me.
11:35 That's just wrong. We did not segregate sports by sex because otherwise they'd be too predictable. A non-segregated sport would be no more predicable than a male sport, since women would simply fail to qualify. And we know this, because many "male" leagues are in fact "open". We segregated sports because we wanted women to practice them, and this requires that they have a change of winning. Not winning the Olympics necessarily, just winning at some level. And allowing transwomen to compete against women does defeat this goal. It's like allowing non disabled people in the Paralympics.
Huh? You're still see women compete when you see trans women compete. The goal is still met
@@lomiification Transwomen are men. But even if they were women it would be irrelevant, because the goal is to protect a physically disadvantaged group, hence the criterion has to be physical not psychological.
So in short: no it's not fair, but who cares?
If I were an athlete I would care very much if my competitors had an inherent advantage over me. Even if that will always be the case we should still try to preserve the integrity of fair and meaningful competition
yeah it's a bit dismissive to say that since it can never be TOTALLY fair then who cares if becomes even more unfair
@@pseudonamed Exactly. Just because we can't technically measure how big of a difference something makes doesn't mean it's difficult or irrelevant to understand it's real implications. I could care less about competitive sports, I honestly think they are a waste of time and not enjoyable to watch. However, I very much respect the integrity of that hobby/career choice, and I support the idea of regulation and fair competition, at the full (if admittedly imperfect) discretion of participants and/or their elected representatives. The same goes for government and all aspects of human society. Just because math and science cant definitively give us all the answers doesn't mean we should stop caring and ignore people who have enough experience in the real world to determine the implications of a variable
We should care if we womens sports records are going to become in achievable to women.
@@AlinaTowers Trans women have been competing for decades. Has that happened? How did you miss so obvious a question, unless you wanted to?
You're missing the fact that trans women have been competing in sport for decades, and there's been no "takeover" or anything remotely like it. You seem to think trans women just appeared when you deigned to notice them. Why?
Frankly, your arguments are much more akin to those used by people who sought to keep Black athletes out of "white" sport than anything else.
Situation is not confusing at all and you obviously do not understand competitive sport. If trans women are allowed in any way to compete with women, this will just destroy competitive women sports, since no women will be able to win anything ever again.
The rest is just a word salad trying to obfuscate this extremely simple fact.
John McEnroe stated that Serena Williams would be maybe #700 in the world ranking of male tennis players and he is right. The physical advantages are simply overwhelming. Good example is also the famous mix team race where the Polish team decided to put men against women of the other teams on the 2. and 3. leg (if I remember correctly) and then had a woman as last runner who started with a huge lead and then was overrun by many men of the other teams. I only know of one transgender man who as a boxer is successful against male boxers.
I see the following options:
1. we give up any gender separations and all humans compete together. That is fair (everybody has the same start) but only in the sense of integration, in the sense of inclusion it is of course not (since not everyone has a chance to arrive at the same outcome, i.e. #1), but then again no competitive sport is ever "fair" in that sense, since everybody is different and I can train as much as I like, Husain Bolt would still already be having a cappuccino while I would struggle to get out of the starting block.
2. We keep the current binary approach and then the only option would be to define for all sports a testosterone level that defines whether you are in one or the other category.
3. we follow the idea of paralympics and define more diverse categories in sports. But then you have at least 5: men, women, trans women, trans men, people with any disabilities/limitations. And probably a lot more depending on the development of the concept of identity in society.
I somehow like #1 but my money would be on 2. imho.
Dunno if that was applicable to the case you're taking about, but I also remember a soccer instance where a male team easily won against a female team; but then it's very worth noting that male soccer is extremely more invested to and thus they have access to better coaches, equipment, etc.
But ye lol, if we could circumvent the part where biases would likely lead to such 'better environments' for male athletes, it would be cool to forgo all this bs and just give everyone the same resources and see how far human physiology can be pushed. Would be tempted to suggest also allowing doping (since it's done anyway), but there's actual safety issues that would come up then so it would require more thought out substance control :p
Well thought out, but the fact still remains that as far as I know up to this point, there hasn't been a single trans man win a single male sporting event of any type, (if anybody knows of one please reply) while trans women are breaking women's records left and right at all levels and all events.
Patricio Manuel comes to mind
@@orbeetles Exactly what title or gold medal did he win against another man? He's had 4 fights against men. The first 3 were against specially picked fighters to let him win, the most recent one didn't go that way. I know all about Patricio Manuel. He's the first and only one anybody brings up so I did some research on him. As a female she was a champion, as a male he's just an oddity and will never win a title.
can you please show me where this left and right winning everywhere is?
@timehaley which trans women are doing all this record breaking
@@orbeetles Using
the web
Here are some of the trans women who have won national or international competitions or championships:
Tiffany Abreu: The volleyball player was a big part of the team that won the 2022 Brazilian Cup.
Molly Cameron: Cameron won the female category of the three-day Cascade Gravel Grinder in 20231.
JayCee Cooper: Cooper won the women’s 2019 national championship for bench press in the super heavyweight division.
Michelle Dumaresq: She won the 2003 Canadian National Championships in downhill mountain biking.
Laurel Hubbard: The Olympic weightlifter won two Oceania Championships and two Commonwealth Championships, amongst many gold medals she won during her competition years, adding a World Masters Games title in 2017, when she won a silver in the World Championships.
Veronica Ivy: Ivy is a two-time masters world champion, notably winning the 2018 UCI World Masters Track Cycling Championships in her age category.
It’s important to note that no out trans woman has won an Olympic medal in the women’s category. However, Canadian soccer player Quinn, who identifies as nonbinary, has earned gold medals.
Please note that this is not an exhaustive list and there may be other trans women who have achieved similar feats in various sports