DarrenBarefoot.com

As a gay person, I am naturally sympathetic to the plight of transgendered people. However, as a sports person, I can also see the other point of view. I don’t think that FTM transgendered people should be allowed to compete at an elite level until there is conclusive scientific proof that this does not confer an advantage over someone with a pair of X chromosomes. I don’t think this will be soon in coming, and if it did, it would still be controversial.

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Having solved all other pressing problems …

This issue almost certainly only becomes important if we find that people are changing their gender so they can win a particular sporting event. (Hmmm, what a disappointment if one changes ones gender and then loses.)

On all other occasions: it’s a sport, people; it’s a game. That’s why it doesn’t matter if Michelle Wie beats the men or not just like it didn’t matter if Bobby Riggs or Billie Jean King won. What matters is … well, nothing, really. The sun still comes up the next morning, my Corn Flakes don’t taste any better and, fwiw, my love life has been affected. (The conspiracy theorist in me wonders who exactly is trying to market this “issue”.)

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As a transsexual person (female-to-male), I was dreading reading the comments on this. Thank you for surprising me, folks. The general public is generally not as level-headed and kind as y’all have been.

Personally, I just don’t understand how people can think that a male-to-female person on hormone replacement therapy has an advantage over non-transgendered women in competitive sports. There may be a slight “advantage” in that they’re taller than the average woman, or perhaps have slightly more muscle mass than the average woman (which isn’t usually the case at all), but, er, that’s true of a lot of women who compete in certain sports.

It’s like saying that women who are taller than 6′ or who have a certain percentage of body fat shouldn’t be allowed to compete in sports because they have a biological advantage.

It just doesn’t make sense to me.

And even if Canada’s sports bodies got together and had some doctors make an opinion on the matter, what happens when those sports teams have to compete with teams in other countries?

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Darren, I was with you right up until I read Matt #2’s comment. But I realize now that I think the line is too blurred.

Because it’s absolutely the case that elite female athletes often have very masculine bodies, no less so than a MTF transgendered person. Otherwise, shouldn’t someone like Venus or Serena Williams, for example, have to compete against the men because they are so tall and their bodies are so muscular? And talk about being un-PC. Somehow I don’t think they’d take too well to being told they look too much like men to compete against women.

Matt #1, I don’t see how a “third sex” category would work, how could you ever come up with enough contestants to make this a valid category? And wouldn’t you need a third AND fourth sex category then? One for MTF and one for FTM, right? I don’t see that as being feasible.

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If you’ll pardon me for the self-promotion, I mentioned this incident on der metblog.

Since I am so clever and have such deep insights into the physiology and psychology of transgender issues, it is of course required reading.

No, I’m kidding. What I said there was similar to what you said. Note that Michelle Dumaresq went from never having competed as a man to instantly becoming a pro-level racer on the women’s circuit. Natural talent and a lot of non-competitive experience and training, sure, but also something to make one’s eyebrows rise.

Here’s a useful experiment: how competitive do you think that an FtoM transsexual would be in any reasonably athletic sport you care to name? My bet (without hard evidence) is that the answer is roughly “not competitive at all against elite male athletes.”

The same instinct leads me to guess that there’s some advantage to being an MtoF transsexual, hormones and all.

Laura: please look at a photo of either of the Williams sisters, then look at a photo of Michelle Dumaresq. One of these photos will show a very strong, very fit woman. The other shows a woman whose body is a massive, massive statistical outlier among women.

My wife is quite fond of reminding me that average male heights run around 5′10″ these days. this chart I found online says that 6 feet is about the 75th percentile for white men: 25% of caucasian males are that tall or taller. I’m doing this with a racial classification only because that’s the chart I found; conveniently, downhill mountain biking is a rather white sport, demographically speaking.

A chart from the same source says white women average 5′5″ tall, and the 95th percentile is about 5′9″.

If I’m reading that chart right, women in the 6′1″ range are very rare. I’m not clever enough to properly extrapolate the proportion of the female population taller than 6′ (even though Wikipedia says it’s a gaussian distribution), but a conservative guess is 1%.

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If science can prove that there is no physiological advantage then I guess this is all irrelevant. But I don’t think its unfair to suggest someone who hormones and genetics pre-therapy allowed them to achieve an advantage in high and ability pertaining to one gender will that can never be lost completely. If you combine all of the men and womens track and field events, I believe only a single record (discuss) is held by a woman.

The other worry, (oh, almost a slippery slope argument) is what if others took advantage of it. This happened a number of times with eastern block countries in the 50s where the gender was disputed. The counter-argument is would you change your gender for a sport, well we know many countries were athletes don’t truly make their own decisions.

I know a few transgendered people, and I respect them. But I know who they are on the inside is can not yet be completely reflected by who they are on the outside.

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s/taking place/taking part

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Thanks for all the comments and discussion. Please don’t believe everything that you read in a newspaper. I am not 6′1″, I’m actuall just over 5′9″ and I DO NOT weigh 210 lbs. So much of this story has been blown outta proportion and twisted. I never raced as a male but I grew up riding the hardest trails in the world in Vancouver. When I finally did start racing it was after 20+ years of riding. I also did quite well racing in Canada but internationally was another story. In Canada #1, internationally I was #26.

Anyway, keep discussing.

Michelle

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Unfortunately, most commenters here, and Darren, seem to work from a vantage point that absolute equality of treatment means absolute equality. Boys should play sports against boys and girls against girls, for example, because otherwise *inequalities* will emerge.

I see a range of objections to this approach.

* There are many fields in which we treat people differently in recognition that absolute equality of treatment does not result in actual equality. The big examples are disability (deaf people may need sign-language interpreters while hearing people don’t; they really need those interpreters just to be on an equal footing with hearing people); religious accommodation (observant Jews must leave work before sundown Friday); pregnancy (a woman cannot be discriminated against because she is, may be, or will become pregnant, and is entitled to leave from work after childbirth).

* Not all sports are sex-segregated. There are admittedly *very few* that aren’t, and possibly there should be more that aren’t, but there are some, like some classifications of equestrian and archery. In fact, disabled athletes compete equally in archery, and one Olympic (not Paralympic) medallist was in a wheelchair. We would not be having this discussion if Dumaresque were an archer.

* Elite sport is not concerned with eliminating all advantages. If so, then poor countries would simply be barred from the Olympics, because their athletes pretty much don’t have a hope in hell of medalling. Only some advantages are filed away from the edges of competition; others remain in place, and some of those are the *essence* of competition, because *somebody has to win*. Fantastically fit, scientifically trained Western athletes have a huge advantage in many sports. Athletes with better equipment, like a really good bike, bobsleigh, canoe, or wheelchair, have an advantage. We view those advantages as fair.

It is just possible that the one or two (or ten, or twenty) transgenderist elite athletes do not have the kind of “advantage” that people who do not understand the full complexity of the equality argument think they do.

And even if you object to that advantage, fine. Some others object to different advantages for different reasons. Wait till you talk to some Paralympic athletes who have their divisions merged with higher, stronger, more-elite divisions because not enough athletes from their original divisions showed up. *That’s* an unfair advantage, but I don’t see any blog entries about it.

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“Laura: please look at a photo of either of the Williams sisters, then look at a photo of Michelle Dumaresq. One of these photos will show a very strong, very fit woman. The other shows a woman whose body is a massive, massive statistical outlier among women.”

…have you ever SEEN a picture of Michelle? She’s got broader shoulders than your average woman, but other than that? Both Williams women look are far larger. Venus Williams is 6′2″, for christs sake. Should she be banned from elite athletics because she’s above average?

While I can’t verify Michelle’s height, I did see the documentary regarding the issue, and she’s no taller than most of the other women she’s racing with. Seems like they’re all a pretty tall group. Since the average height of an adult woman is 5′3 and 130lbs… well, hey, I’m 5′3″ and 130! Maybe I should be the only person allowed to race! All those freaks at 5′10″ should have to sit on the sidelines. :)

Here’s the thing: Elite atheltics ISN’T equal. I don’t have a hope in hell of winning ANY elite sport. I’m short, of average size, and clumsy as hell. The idea that if you’re not the exact size of the other racers, you can’t compete is … ridiculous, to say the least. NO elite athlete is “average”. Sort of defeats the term “elite”.

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Joe: You didn’t say ‘developing’, you said ‘poor’. Those, I hope you’ll agree, are different. Would you like to change your original comment to ‘developing’?

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