this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
706 points (99.7% liked)
LGBTQ+
2575 readers
558 users here now
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Euronews searched Glenique Frank’s marathon profile and found she placed 583rd out of 2,235 runners in her age category.
A solid middle of the pack performance.
I fucking hate that transphobia has made her feel like she can't compete until she passes.
Yeah, it's fucked. In total fairness, though, she'll still be guilty of existing while trans. Passing isn't really enough to douse the hate.
She can't compete with women. You were missing an important word there. The problem here is that her results are not even that competitive, and it leaves this unfairness feeling. We need solid criteria for allowing transgender women to participate on women support. I'm sure it is ok to allow some of them, but definitely not all of them. Compare it to certain phisique enhancing drugs. They are banned at sports. Now, imagine someone who used such drugs the whole life competing against people who did not. It makes sense to ban them as well. But we have half of population like that, so instead of banning we have divisions.
Trans women should be allowed to participate. The thing is that her results are reflective of most trans women, they perform on par with cisgender feminine athletes. This entire "trans women in sports" debate is just transphobia masquerading as fairness. It essentially boils down to "trans women can only participate if they lose".
I'd be fine with banning trans participants from professional-level compensation if we also banned anyone who ever took a PED ever. It's the same argument. If trans people get lifetime bans, then so should PED users. Of course the second will never happen, so...
Can we turn the magnifying glass to trans women who do seem to have an unfair advantage? Something resembling the use of performance enhancing drugs? I'll wait until you find one.
The Olympics have this solved. Trans women have been allowed to compete for the last 20 years as long as they've been on HRT for at least 2 years and have hormone levels in the expected range. The results plainly show there's no advantage, and possibly even a disadvantage. The only trans person to win a medal was an AFAB nonbinary soccer player who wasn't taking hormones, and the only trans woman to compete in an event came in dead last. No other trans athletes made it past qualifiers.