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Martina takes another stand

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Scout, Feb 20, 2019.

  1. Oggiedoggie

    Oggiedoggie Well-Known Member

    My ex-wife donated part of her liver to her son and the transplant was successful.
     
  2. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    it doubles the amount of prizes that can be won
     
  3. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    I've sometimes wondered whether one of the reasons it's so hard to be trans is that you can never perfectly fix the mistake that you feel nature made. There is a trans woman in my town who you would never guess was born a boy, but she still struggles mightily with depression and suicidal thoughts. I can't imagine what it's like for someone who more obviously displays attributes of their former gender.
     
  4. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    The LGBT group -- practically any group, in fact -- is/would be being stupid to sever links with Navratilova.

    She is one of the most intelligent, fair, articulate, courageous, brave, active and fearlessly proactive people who could ever be behind anything. I'd listen to and think hard about anything she ever wished to discuss.
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2019
  5. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    I wonder how she feels about bitcoin.
     
  6. qtlaw

    qtlaw Well-Known Member

    People want certainty (understandably) but on this issue there's unlikely to be a bright line available. I read a story in the 2017 Best Sportswriting compilation (sorry forgot author) about this issue and its heartbreaking how they isolate and quickly condemn those who "appear" to be cheating. Those born with ambiguous genetalia or high testosterone levels are doomed to leper status until we as a society become more understanding of their plight.

    What's the answer? I don't have it but I do know that my heart goes out to those who have drawn that unlucky straw.
     
    Sea Bass likes this.
  7. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    That's the problem. I don't think anybody has a good answer. I do think it is a terrible idea to accuse somebody like Navratilova of transphobia because she is used the word cheating. Cheating is a big deal in sports. If the games aren't honest, what separates them from entertainment such as pro wrestling? Just because a current or former athlete or coach has a strong reaction to something they consider cheating doesn't mean they have any hatred or ill-will toward people who are transgender.
     
  8. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    This will become a major issue once someone who looks like Gorman Thomas from the ‘79 Brewers shows up and hit 37 home runs and drives in 118 in D1 college softball.
     
  9. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    Never heard the liver thing, so I went looking for some information. If you want to read fun with scientific research, there's this article Organ transplantation and gender differences: a paradigmatic example of intertwining between biological and sociocultural determinants, which states there have been some poorer outcomes with female donor-male recipient liver transplant cases, but that may be due to confounders like donor age, health etc. But you can never 'completely' transition for other reasons, notably breast tissue (FTM have a higher risk of breast cancer than XY males or MTF, prostates, etc.). This really only matters to physicians in terms of screening tests.

    This is such a difficult topic, and it's not any clearer to me after my last two months, where I learned a lot about this in general and some of the intersex conditions, because it gets at the absolute and actual difference between male and female physiology and "athletic prowess," for lack of a better term.

    Some people, especially on social media or the lay press, like to imply that elite male and female athletes are on an equal playing field, so to speak (the Billie Jean King thing, the national team hockey player in the NHL fastest skater comp, etc.), but especially around here we know that's just not true. In sports, there are reasons we have gendered divisions as the most primary starting point for elite competition, and that's because in basically everything a genetic female (XX, no pathologic conditions) is physically less apt than a genetic male (XY, SRY gene present, no pathology). There are a very few exceptions like women's gymnastics that have to do with center of gravity position, flexibility, height, etc., but for the faster, higher, stronger sports, there's no substitution for male levels of testosterone. This has been recognized all the way back to the beginnings of organized sports.

    And so we segregate by gender, which is almost always determined for genitals at birth but works to equalize adult testosterone levels across divisions. This works for 99.9 percent of people, and even most of the weird pathologies. But there are a handful where you get a combination of essentially female external parts and very male levels of testosterone. It's an incredibly difficult question to know where they can fairly compete, as we've decided that exogenous testosterone is a banned, performance-enhancing drug and they have levels that clearly exceed typical levels allowed in females. It's clearly not "cheating," but it's also basically obliterating the purpose of gender divisions, putting someone with the athletic blessings of high testosterone compete against people who don't, and I understand why that might make people angry. Is that the same thing as having genes that make you 6-foot-9 or better vision? I have a hard time arguing with that, but I also have a hard time making peace with that as well.

    Transgender is a little easier for me. For competition levels, at least, I have no problem asking that they meet the IOC standards of basically drug-testing for female athletes. If the purpose is to transition to female, then your hormones need to be at female levels to compete with female athletes. In the athletic world, testosterone is a performance enhancing substance in many ways (muscle mass, bone strength, height if given before puberty, aerobic capacity, energy storage, etc.) and to ignore that is almost purposefully naive. It's not "cheating" to not take the hormones, but if you choose not to you should be allowed to compete against the appropriate class of near-equals, which in that case would be XY males. External parts shouldn't matter because they're not what makes a difference in athletic ability.

    If anyone is actually curious about those intersex pathologies and how they work/who gets an advantage, happy to explain that on DM. Way too nerdy for here.
     
    RickStain and maumann like this.
  10. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    I have turned into Ragu. I am so sorry.
     
    sgreenwell and HC like this.
  11. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Testosterone levels seem the fairest way to regulate this issue. So far.

    In your reading, have you found any other chemical/biological markers or methods that might make sense in testing transgender athletes?
     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2019
  12. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    The physiological differences between men and women go beyond testosterone levels. To the extent that testosterone levels do impact athletic performance, there are likely differences that we don't understand between exogenous testosterone and the hormones your body naturally produces. And within that distinction, testosterone levels may affect different types of athletes, of different genders, differently.

    People are so eager to put this into the realm of science, but science hasn't proven anything with regard to testosterone, and in fact, the study the IAAF used to try to force Caster Semenya to take medication in order to compete (which is insanity to me) didn't prove any correlation. It actually suggested that performance is way more complicated than the simplistic notion that testosterone levels are a catch-all answer. It didn't establish causation, as much as a very loose association. And that association varied widely across different types of competitors.

    Where people have taken this just seems backward to me. We are now in a world where someone's natural physiological traits got her labeled a cheater, and they tried to force her to do something unnatural if she wanted to compete. Yet, at the same time, others have been insisting that people who have artificially messed with their natural physiology are the equivalent of those who haven't.
     
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