Should transgender kids be allowed to play on sports

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Should transgender kids be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity?

I personally don't think they should; it would give them an unfair advantage. There was one woman from some country in Africa (I think she ran the 400 or 800) She was born with high levels of the male hormone testosterone. She wasn't just setting records; she was smoking the other women. It was ruled she had an unfair advantage by some track governing body. As a result she had to meet the same testosterone requirements as her competitors and had to bring down her levels to meet that criteria. I think the same would apply (plus reverse) to your post

Yeah, Caster Semenya. She quit (I think), and now plays Women's Association Football in her native South Africa.

If this was Adults we were talking about, I would vehemently say no. But Children I'm Iffy on so I don't Know what to say on the subject (at the moment).

Sports should be degendered.

Problem solved.

*Sigh* If only it were that simple.

Organise by body weight like weightlifting and boxing.

Organise by skill level and rank.

I don't see what's so complicated.

Beginners ---> Novice ---> Elite

The only biological difference is centre of gravity I suppose.

* Spoken as a sports mother

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Cisgender men and trans women still, all things equal, would have a competitive advantage over cisgender women and trans men (depending on testosterone dose). (Even after weight classes and skill groups)

No matter how you organize the competition, someone always has an unfair advantage

The winner of the competition depends on (nature versus nurture)

Someone always has better genetics or otherwise physically stronger, faster

Someone always has better coaching opportunities or whatever




So

To eliminate unfair competitive advantages

And to avoid discrimination

The only alternative:


Get rid of all competitions

Competitions cost too much cash anyways

How would it be if they kept gendered teams, but allowed anyone to play on the teams? Cisgender boys could play on a team with girls if they wanted to, and likewise cisgender girls could play on a team with boys.

I'm pretty sure it'd be fine with kids that haven't reached puberty yet, like under the age of ten since the biological differences aren't that big at that age, but after that... I don't know, I don't have enough knowledge of how much the treatments trans people take actually even out the differences.

Do I think trans kids should be allowed to play on sports, yeah. Absolutely. Despite not being a fan of sports, I did coach a few teams when my kids were in school. Most of them were not divided up into boy or girl teams. In my city, we were lucky if we had enough kids to play and enough parent volunteers to let those few kids play on each team. We had times where not every school in our district had coaches or players to support a team, and if those kids could get a ride, a different school would let them play with those kids. We had no choice, is my point. The kids did fine playing together on one team. It wasn't a big deal. They were just happy to be playing. They had fun. And they got a pizza party at the end of the season.

I knew two trans kids when my kids were in school. One of them being my nephew. Here's a perspective to add to the mix...it can be really hard to feel like you fit in as a trans kid. Sports can give kids a peer group, a team, a sense of togetherness, acceptance, and belonging. It was really beneficial for the two kids I knew to be able to go out and be a part of those teams. To tell them no, seems like a total di*k move if you ask me. They would have missed out had teams in my town been divided up by gender and they weren't allowed to join. They're kids who want to play sports. It's not complicated. Life is hard enough without all this extra crap...

My two cents anyhow.

It is a stupid question to ask really because the answer is so obvious one way or the other. Yet the confusion only comes because we confuse the issue.

What happened before when we did not promote transgenderism? We had sports regardless of if the person is straight or gay as we based our criteria on the outward body and not the inward and it worked.

Yet now we are confusing the issue because we are trying to base the criteria on the mental felings of gender and so when it comes to sports we either give some an unfair advantage or an unfair dissadvantage because physically mean and women (As in ones physical body are not the same).

So in reality when it comes to sports, we are talking about the physical body here and not so much the mental sexual preferences.

Changing rooms are another subject and if anything as a straight man, I did not like changing in front of other straight men anyway. I feel everyone needs separate changing areas regardless of physical sex or sexual preferences.

We set ourselves up for confusion when we try to portray a mental sexual preference onto a physical activity when the subject itself is physical and sexual preferences in a mental way do not come into it.

The only time where the subject comes under question is with those who physically have both genders and it is not that often we come across a person who has this, so apart from these rare circumstances it is not an issue.

Um, no.

I did co-ed martial arts for years, the difference between a man and woman of the same general size and skill level is huge, the women often could not hurt me with strikes, and during practice I could usually allow them to apply a joint lock with a huge leverage advantage, and then overpower them to get out of it. I'm not in particularly good shape and don't work out, so it's not like I'm a juiced up meathead or something, but my upper body strength advantage vs women was huge and obvious, even when the women were far more advanced in skill than I was. You can see this across sports, just look at the men's world records vs the women's, there's often a huge gap.

Yes, maybe we should just make all sports noncompetitive. Then separation of them based on gender won't be necessary.

When it comes to sports, we could have the same conversations with many other elements such as "Do tall people have an advantage over short people?" So many subjects we could add.

And it all depends what sports we are talking about as some advantages can go in a different direction with some sports when compared to another.