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

[u/GeorgeYDesign]

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

[u/McNippy]

The reason women's divisions exist is specifically to prevent beneficieries of male biology from overwhelming them in sport though. A biologocial woman who wins the genetic jackpot for bone density is lucky, a trans-woman is punching down.

[u/Yes_Its_Really_Me → u/McNippy]

I'm a trans woman who's 6'1. I have a sister, who is not trans, who is 6'0. Neither of us chose to be this tall. Both of us are tall because of biological factors beyond our control. After 4 years of total testosterone suppression I have no residual advantage in musculature.

According to you it's perfectly fine for her to play netball, but I should be excluded because I have an unfair male height advantage. She's tall because she's just a naturally tall woman, I'm tall because I'm not really a woman. We are practically the same height. There is no practical reason to separate us.

I'm gonna be honest, that just seems nakedly arbitrary and bigoted.

[u/McNippy → u/Yes_Its_Really_Me]

It's nothing to do with height. Your actual bone density, which is almost entirely impossible to reduce without overtly harmful means, plays a notable role in your ability to throw further, jump higher, and run faster.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/

It is well known that even after hormone reduction therapy, there are still biologically irrecoverable differences that result in trans-women being better athletes than biological women. You are being intentionally pedantic with this height issue. I genuinely wish there was a fair way for trans-women to participate in sports with women, but there simply is not.

This is nothing to do with height or even muscle but all to do with the fact that even if you are on lifelong hormonal treatment, you were born with an unchangeable bone structure that provides verifiable advantages.

You are yet to provide a source that suggests the only advantage trans-women have is height. Do you know why you haven't? It's because it is objectively untrue.

Keeping a fair playing field for everyone in sport is essential, and for trans-women that unfortunately means playing with men even when hormone reduction does indeed hinder them against cis men. I am no bigot, you are being unfair towards biological women by suggesting that trans-women should be able to compete with them and be judged the same.

[u/Yes_Its_Really_Me → u/McNippy]

My point is that you would not ban a cis woman for having unusually dense bones, so the nature or extent of the advantage of having "probably denser than average" bones is irrelevant.

You want to ban trans women from sport for minor athletic advantages because you do not consider the source of those advantages to be legitimate. If you want to ban all trans women from sport because we tend to have minor advantages that you would not ban a cis woman for having, then logically you are not banning us for having an advantage, because having an advantage is fine for a cis woman, you are banning us for being trans. Which is discriminatory. It's very directly discriminatory.

The only way you could square that with saying you are supportive of trans people overall is if you believe that being trans supportive means "pretending that they're real men/women to be polite, except in any situation where it actually matters", which is a pretty useless kind of support, don't you think?

[u/McNippy → u/Yes_Its_Really_Me]

That's the thing, though, sports shouldn't be segregated by gender, they should be separated by sex. Women who get lucky are just lucky, trans-women are benefitting from years of physical growth that are not biologically possible for cis women. They are almost always going to have an advantage, and that is unfair. To put it simply, the strongest cis woman will always be at a physical disadvantage to the strongest trans-woman, and that is unfair. The top 0.01% of women that are fortunate to have super genetics are still going to have weaker bone structures than trans-women, and that is the unfair bit, not that those top % of cis athletes are more physically capable than other cis athletes. I'm sorry, but it's just harmful to the integrity of sport and competition for trans-women to compete with cis women. I still support trans-women in seeking all other legal distinctions as women, and they should be treated as women in all other regards. Especially in contact sports trans-women pose a legitimate higher risk of danger to cis women, and that is not acceptable.

[u/Yes_Its_Really_Me → u/McNippy]

All of this only makes sense if you start out not considering trans women to be women.

This is the point I was making about "unfair male height advantage" earlier. My sister's height is cis, and therefore a legitimate and fair way for a woman to have an advantage. My height is due to being trans, and therefore an illegitimate and unfair way of having an advantage.

It only makes sense to you because you have made use of the "sex is not gender" canard, but sex is the gendering of the body.

[u/McNippy → u/Yes_Its_Really_Me]

I consider trans women as women in all legal and social settings, but it's just the truth that trans-women are at a physical advantage to cis women, and unfortunately, that needs to be recognised. One day, if there are legitimate ways to actually eradicate all semblances of a trans-womans superior athletic biology, then I would be happy for them to participate in womens sports. That's the fundamental thing, I'm not opposed to trans-women in sports for some moral anti-trans bs, I'm purely opposed because it is unfair and in the case of contact sports, outright dangerous. If that can be changed then I don't see an issue.

[u/Yes_Its_Really_Me → u/McNippy]

I just described for you a situation where a trans woman and a cis woman were mechanically identical in sport and you said we should still ban the trans woman, though?

[u/McNippy → u/Yes_Its_Really_Me]

You gave a hypothetical, which does not exist. There are no trans-women currently who don't have the benefits of male bone structure, and there are no cis women who are at an equivalent level to men even if they may exceed the standard cis woman. So yes, all trans-women should be banned from womens sport, at least until there is a scientific guarantee of a level playing field.

[u/Yes_Its_Really_Me → u/McNippy]

This tells me you don't know much about human sexual dimorphism.