Featured World Athletics will ban some Trans Women from competing in Women's Sports

[AgnosticBoy]

Recently, Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics (WA), stated that transgender women that have gone through male puberty would be prohibited from competing in women's sports. For those of you who don't know, the WA is an international governing body for athletic sports, covering track and field, cross country running, road running, race walking, mountain running, and ultra running.

I thought that this was a fair decision for obvious reasons, but apparently there is some backlash from human rights groups. The WA gave the following as an explanation:

In a statement to CNN on Friday, WA said: “The science shows that anyone who has gone through male puberty retains male anatomical differences that provide an athletic advantage.

“The World Athletics Council was unwilling to compromise the integrity of the female category without evidence that these male advantages can be ameliorated.

Source: CNN

However, CNN disputed the science in the same article:

Advocates of banning transgender women from women’s sport have argued that transgender women have a physical advantage over cisgender women in sports.

But the mainstream science does not support that conclusion. A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found “no direct or consistent research” on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers, and critics say the bans add to the discrimination trans people face.

Debate in the scientific community about whether androgenic hormones like testosterone serve as useful markers of athletic advantage remains ongoing.

For Debate:
1. Is it discrimination or wrong in any way to ban transgender women from competing in women's sports? What does the science say?

2. Assuming there is a good answer, how can this issue be resolved?

I am thinking that a blanket ban on transgender or allowing them all without conditions might be the extreme positions. I could be wrong. Let's discuss!

 

[AgnosticBoy]

1. Is it discrimination or wrong in any way to ban transgender women from competing in women's sports? What does the science say?

I believe that transgender women should be banned from competing in women's sports if or when they have an advantage. The ones that would call this discrimination usually speak in terms of social equality. Sure, in the spirit of being non-discriminatory/inclusive, we should want for trans women to be treated as women. However, we have to also consider equality or fairness in terms of physiology when it comes to sports, and this is where allowing trans women to compete with biological women runs into problems.

Reading some of the science, I see that a lot of it is focused on testosterone and its effects. Here's some excerpts from one article:

Testosterone secreted before birth, postnatally, and then after puberty is the major factor that drives these physiological sex differences, and as adults, testosterone levels are ten to fifteen times higher in males than females.
...
Male physiology cannot be reformatted by estrogen therapy in transwoman athletes because testosterone has driven permanent effects through early life exposure.
...
Male physiology underpins their better athletic performance including increased muscle mass and strength, stronger bones, different skeletal structure, better adapted cardiorespiratory systems, and early developmental effects on brain networks that wires males to be inherently more competitive and aggressive.

Source: Heather, A. K. (2022). Transwoman elite athletes: Their extra percentage relative to female physiology. International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health, 19, 9103.

In the first post, I quoted CNN on a 2017 report published in Sports Medicine that says there are no "direct and consistent research" that show transgender women having an advantage. Surprisingly, CNN did not post a citation for this study so I went looking for it myself...here it is. This was not original research but instead a review of other research on the topic.

And both of the articles I posted in this post, mine and CNN's, it seems that none of them give a solution. The one that CNN reference just says that policies restricting trans women from competing in women's sports should be reconsidered.

My problem with the article from CNN is that even if there are no consistent results, but there still is very good reason to giving a blanket allowance of trans women to compete in women's sports. If we don't make those considerations or draw the line somewhere then we may as well just let biological men compete in women's sports if they decide they want to. You can't get a better empirical test than that.

2. Assuming there is a good answer, how can this issue be resolved?

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a perfect solution. The best answer should be one that doesn't conflict with the best available science on the matter.

If I were to be as open-minded as possible, then I can say we can try it in small steps to see how it works, like allowing trans women to compete in some sports and then see if there's an advantage. Heck we should even allow men to compete in those sports as well just in case someone questions if there's any physical advantages at all.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Is it discrimination or wrong in any way to ban transgender women from competing in women's sports? What does the science say?

Here's an article that shows what the US population thinks, esp. along party lines...

Americans are less supportive of transgender athlete participation in single-gender sports than they were two years ago, a national survey has found, even as more people say they know someone who is transgender.

The findings, gleaned from Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, suggest Americans see the issue more as one of competitive fairness than of transgender civil rights, said Jeff Jones, a senior editor for the public opinion polling firm.

Source: Yahoo

And I agree with "competitive fairness" trumping transgender rights if the latter is intended to mean that transgender women get treated as women in every way. I think that is wrong when it creates unfairness for biological females.

More interestingly, take a look at this chart which divides along party lines:

Americans' Views on Transgender Athletes, by Party Identification, 2021 vs. 2023

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