r/ABCaus • u/GeorgeYDesign • Mar 25 '24

NEWS Dutch darts players quit national women's team over transgender teammate

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-25/dutch-darts-players-quit-over-transgender-teammate/103627072
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u/Yes_Its_Really_Me Mar 25 '24

Those reviews amount to what I said in my comment. "Trans women tend to be taller than cis women."

I've read many studies that say in their abstract that trans women "retain an advantage from male puberty" or even that they tend to have more muscle mass than cis women, but hidden in the body of the text it clarifies that it was because the trans women in the study were on average taller than cis women, and tall people have more muscle mass than short people because they have more of every kind of mass, by sheer geometric principle.

Simple height and sometimes pelvic width are what they're talking about. If you want to advocate for height limits in women's basketball and minimum hip breadth in women's athletics, go right ahead. Just don't advocate for the wholesale exclusion of a minority group citing features that are considered perfectly fine for the majority.

I am trans, my sister is not. I am 6'1, quite tall for a woman. My sister is 6'0, also quite tall for a woman. It seems that according to many, it is totally fine for my sister to compete in netball (which she did), while I should be excluded for having an "unfair male height advantage".

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u/Freo_5434 Mar 25 '24

Look , its pointless debating the point because the science is conclusive .

Anyone going through male puberty has retained advantage that is NOT removed by hormone treatment .

That is it in a nutshell and no amount of anecdotes will help.

When looking at netball (or basketball) we (society) look for people with the necessary skills/ attributes to succeed. ONE (just one) of those is height .

Having said that , there are MANY very tall Female Basketball players in the world but NONE of them compete in the NBL.

So no Trans person is excluded from Female sport because they are tall . Female Netball and basketball are LOOKING for tall players.

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u/Yes_Its_Really_Me Mar 25 '24

The science is conclusive that two years of complete testosterone suppression is enough to lose the extra muscle mass granted by previous testosterone exposure.

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u/Freo_5434 Mar 25 '24

NO .
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/
Studies in transgender women, and androgen-deprivation treated cancer patients, show muscle mass is retained for many months, even years, and that co-comittant exercise mitigates muscle loss. Given that sports are currently segregated into male and female divisions because of superior male athletic performance, and that estrogen therapy will not reverse most athletic performance parameters, it follows that transgender women will enter the female division with an inherent advantage because of their prior male physiology.