happybday29475

CB, you're no Dutee Chand; your situation has little in common with hers. And fairness is not simply about hormone levels. I suspect that you are a post-transition transwoman, who has the musculature, body fat levels, and history of athleticism of a male. These are athletic advantages that have been acknowledged to endure post-transition in papers that you yourself have cited and encouraged us to read.

Your meteoric rise through the women's ranks suggests that you might be benefiting from these advantages as well.

If "fair" is important to you, why don't you stop racing in fields where everybody knows that you're the strongest sprinter by a country mile, and enter into race categories in which you might be challenged?

happybday29475

Precisely.

happybday29475

Well said.

There appears to me to be a very apparent bias in CB's statements, even as she protests their objectivity.

canuckbelle

M'kay. cya.

Heathpack 

Well actually, in our previous run through of this discussion, you claimed that there was sufficient scientific evidence to support your contention that transgender women in cycling have no anatomic or physiologic advantage over non-transgender women. You did not say, "I see this as a moral issue".

At the time, my impression was (knowing that you are an academician) that you had recently published a paper on the subject, so I asked for your reference list. I genuinely figured you had researched this subject with a some kind of sense of intellectual honesty and that you'd happily pass along your references. It's a simple and straightforward matter- a friend of mine publishes a paper on vagal nerve stimulators for the treatment of refractory canine epilepsy, I ping her and say, 'hey, I want to understand this better, can you send me your references?', and 45 seconds later I get an email that says, 'attached'.

So I looked into it myself and found only one study that looks directly at athletic performance of whole-organism transgender women- distance runners. That paper has some serious methodological flaws but even it concludes that it's results should not be extrapolated beyond distance running. And the author (herself a transgender woman) points out explicitly that in sports in which sprinting ability is important transgender women may well have a significant advantage.

My point here is that a degree of intellectual honesty is important. If its a moral argument, couch it as a moral argument, not as a scientific one.

Ethically it seems like your assumption is that the rights of transgender women to compete somehow outweigh the rights of all other women to have a fair playing field. I'm not sure I agree with that, I think you could instead argue that providing the vast majority of women with fair sport might outweigh meeting the desires of a few transgender women to compete. However, there's probably little sense in attempting a conversation with you on the subject. If anyone disagrees with you, you just label them "phobic" and their opinions "laughable". Baffles me completely because during my time in academia, discourse was nothing like this. We admitted when we were voicing opinion and argued facts when we had facts to argue. We drew tentative conclusions when we had insufficient facts but were open to rethinking things as additional evidence became available. We looked for ways to generate more evidence one way or the other.

I guess philosophy & ethics are just different than veterinary medicine. You just decide something & that's it. Facts don't matter. Interesting to learn that how it works.

TheKillerPenguin

I'm totally torn on the issue. Psychologically it has to be extremely difficult to feel disconnected with your biological gender. After transitioning it has to be equally difficult to feel ostracized for wanting to compete in sport if that is what you enjoy doing. On an exclusively sportive level if there is found to be physiological differences that remain after a transition, particularly male to female, that put naturally gendered individuals at a real disadvantage, if we're going to define the purpose of racing as crossing the line first it is hard to justify total inclusion. I think the purpose of sport in general is multifaceted and depending on your viewpoint more weight is assigned to some parts than others. This is a forum dedicated to racing and so I think many of us view it pretty much exclusively as you cross the line first while playing by the rules. I could see a fairly valid argument to be made that the purpose of sport in general is to inspire others and/or allow for personal growth. I've argued with my gf about this a few times. She's a psychologist, so her views tend to be a bit more holistic than mine, and it's softened my stance on the issue, or at least (I hope) inspired more empathy. That said, how inspiring is it to go to a race and know you're going to be beaten by someone with a real advantage that you can't hope to close on?

For now it appears that the evidence is in favor of letting transitioned riders race with their identified gender, BUT that more evidence needs to be gathered, and that this may take time due to relatively few individuals being in this situation. I am in favor of innocent unless proven guilty. It seems that the governing bodies feel the same way.

Heathpack 

But reflect honestly for a bit. Don't answer me right away or at all, you can consider it a thought experiment. Do you feel like its ok to have a race set up such that one person in the race has an unfair advantage over everyone else in the race because it's not your race? You'd still be perfectly ok with this if it was your race? I really really think not. It's very easy to be generous about this kind of thing when your sacrificing someone else's playing field & it's just a theorectical argument to you personally.

And truthfully: the evidence does not exist in favor of transgendered female cyclists racing with their identified gender. There is almost zero information and what there is can be argued either way. There has been extrapolation from other sports with inadequate information and extrapolation from basic science understanding of physiology to athletic performance, which is a huge leap to make.

For sure, if the science existed, @canuckbelle would be here arguing the science to support the ethical argument she makes. The fact that she repeatedly dodges requests to share the scientific information pretty well tells you that it just doesn't exist.

So the current court decision and governing body rulings were not made based on evidence. They were made out of an abundance of caution to disadvantaged a subset of people (ie transgender people) who are already perceived as having a tough lot in life. Absolutely true. But the logical conclusion of that is not the sacrifice of the fairness of women's racing. It's really hard for people to articulate that, I get it. No one wants to be labelled transphobic or to seem unenlightened. Easier to just sacrifice someone else's racing than to feel like you might be perceived as bigoted or prejudiced.

TheKillerPenguin

Negatory, it's a general stance on the issue that I would hold if it were the races I entered as well. I wouldn't be happy about it, but it is what it is. I can see where you're coming from though, and I felt the same way until some recent back and forths.

Honestly, my gut says that male to female do have a real advantage, particularly if the individual was a highly trained athlete before transitioning. I really don't know much about the science of how gains are retained over a lifetime and how hormone therapy affects them, though. I think the innocent unless proven guilty process (I don't know wtf else to call it at 12:30am) exists to override gut reactions like mine, so let's see where it all falls after data is compiled. I think that it's better to be inclusive than exclusive. That said, if I were a transitioned athlete in that position, I think I would be uncomfortable competing, especially if success came quickly. There is no moral judgment attached to that statement, I just think that is what would occur to me.

So says the middle class white guy with no skin in this particular game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Heathpack 

Ok, but I really don't think you're being completely honest with yourself. After all the hand-wringing I hear in the 33 about "participation sports," I really can't see most of you here who accept transgender women into women's racing standing for the same thing in men's racing. Your racing turned into a participation sport? My money is on it somehow losing its appeal and you walking away from the sport. But truthfully I don't know you well enough to predict, so I will drop that whole line of argument, no problem.

I agree with you as well that if I were transitioned and it all came very readily, I think I'd stop and reflect a moment too on exactly what I was doing and what the impact was to the sport I'm competing in. I'm not sure that I'd be ok damaging the entirety of something for personal benefit.

Part of my perspective is that women's racing already is fragile in that there's not really enough women to have optimized competition. Little bits of attrition hurt women's racing more than men's so IMO it should be nurtured and cultivated more carefully.

topflightpro

I think TKP has a pretty solid perspective on this. I too can see both sides of this.

My perspective is that CAS has made a decision and set standards trans women must meet to be able to compete with women. It's only been a year since that decision was made, so maybe those standards will need to be adjusted in the future as the science develops further. And while the science is limited, I also think the sample of trans women competing against other women is so far too small to draw any conclusions about the impact on sport. Only 0.3 percent of the population in the US is estimated to be transgendered. That's a pretty small number, so I do not expect women's races to suddenly be overwhelmed with trans athletes. Nor would I expect many teenagers to suddenly decide to transition to be able to land college scholarships, as Doge suggested.

Here's another story on the women Doge posted about: https://cyclingtips.com/2016/12/pavi...llian-bearden/

TheKillerPenguin

No way, cycling rules and ball sports drool. Also, running is for losers. I don't smoke weed so I can't snowboard, and also it's dumb, and if I have to listen to one more of my friends humblebrag about how tired their legs are after spending a day skiing Windham Mountain I'm going to poop my pants.

I compete with myself and it just so happens that the best way to do that is racing. What better way to see what you're made of than training to have other people beat the snot out of you, voluntarily? And then if you do well enough you get to upgrade and get your ass kicked all over again. You learn how to set goals, deal with setbacks, suffer, cultivate your sock game, meet cool people, see tons of divey motels. There is value in sport for the sake of sport, and it sucks to exclude people from that because our gut reaction is that the athlete's gains aren't legitimate even though current research seems to state that post transition and after a period of time (which i forget the length of) that stuff is within normal biological parameters. So I say again that I'm happy the innocent unless proven guilty process (again, do not know what else to call it pre-coffee) exists and overrides my gut reaction, because judging me based on my dating history and racing results, my gut reaction isn't always right.

Heathpack 

Does a sport have to be overwhelmed with athletes with an unfair advantage for the situation to be unacceptable?

For example, let's say a cyclist moves to your district who has developed an undetectable doping method. You race 35 races that year and your doping rival competes in 32 of them and wins say 30.

Based on your logic, you'd argue that this undetectable doping method has no impact on racing as a sport because after all it's only one doper. Ok, I'd argue against that because the essence of sport is fair competition. Everyone that witnesses and experiences this situation gets a sense that the sport is BS.

Again, it's very easy to be generous with sacrificing fairness in someone else's race fields. I just see very few of the men here being willing to experience this type of thing in their own fields, if it came down to it.

Of course at any given point in time, a decision on a controversial subject must be made so that rules can be established. But that doesn't mean the decision is correct. It may be entirely the wrong decision made based on insufficient information. It may be made for political reasons. It may be supported by one faction of the sport (you) because it seems fair and inclusive but without being fully thought-through because it does not impact you directly. All of that is why discourse on the subject is useful. You discuss it, you don't just claim the matter is settled (not that you've done this).

You can link to inspirational blog posts or news articles on the subject and at first glance that's great to read. But you know who's story is not getting written? The 5' 4" 115 pound trackie who trains all year for her three events at nationals and gets beaten by the 6' 4" 215 pound transgender woman.

So stories and blog articles might influence the emotional context of how we think about complex issues. But we still need to think non-emotionally too. I get it that there is a huge reluctance to suggest that transgender people should not be excluded from anything they want to do. After all, transitioning from one gender from another is just such a difficult thing to go through. What if that person also loved sport? How can society deny them the opportunity to compete? That would just be too cruel.

But the reality is that in life we all have things that we'd like to do and can't necessarily do them. That's the nature of life. Sports have rules and if a transgender woman competing in that sport undermines the spirit of those rules, then society should not feel ethically that they have to throw the sport out the window to meet the needs of transgender women. Again, because there are transgender women and non transgender women. The needs of both should be considered in a balanced, unemotional way.

And to be clear, I'm not arguing that transgender women should not be allowed to compete in sport at all. Right now, I think there is enough evidence to suggest that pure endurance sports like distance running would be relatively unimpacted. But "sport" is not one thing. Cycling or any sport with a sprint or size component (like shot putting, say) should reasonably be treated differently. The current rules treat all sport the same, because that was the most expedient thing to do.

rubiksoval

Good points, @Heathpack.

Heathpack 

Lol. Sounds like you might have got the dating thing right finally, though.


I get what you're saying. I just put my skin suit on and I'm heading out the door for I race I have no hope of winning. I've been sick and yesterday almost hacked up a lung doing a 5 min threshold interval. This is not going to be pretty. And besides, my racing Nemesis will be there and she is just faster, stronger, fitter and more experienced than me. (But I still like her.)


So why I am going to race if I know I can't win. Well, I like to race TTs, for one. We're racing a series and I want to grab some points if possible. But mostly I'm going because one day I hope to beat my Nemesis and that process begins with these early races for me. So not winning is fine, if its setting you up for future success. But not winning because the play is unfair is an entirely different thing I think.

Doge

.3% of the population can be a huge % of athletes.
Full athletic rides are already in the low single %s of all college freshmen. There does not have to be a large population (so your .3% is plenty) of teens that can affect the make-up of a funded team. Just 1-2 on the roster of 30rowers can make the boat win, can make the school win. Like cycling, rowers wins by fractions of a second.

It is common for teens and college athletes to cheat on tests, grades - they cheat. I'm not seeing a huge ethical/moral impediment to them saying they are something they are not if the bar is set so they can switch and switch back after college.

topflightpro

Doge, it's not just saying you are something else. CAS requires testosterone levels to be within a certain range for a year before competition is allowed. Most men will need to take something to suppress testosterone production to reach those levels. That is a big commitment. And while I have not investigated this at all, I don't know that it is as simple as just going back after college.

Doge

I do not think it is a problem now. I do see it as a slippery slope. And while not sports, identifying as a different race to get a scholarship is a thing. I don't see just hormones being the difference. A 6'4" woman is getting on the rowing team if she wants, regardless of how she got to 6'4".
In any cases where the athletes are violating WADA guidelines (PEDs, injectables etc.). No Insulin, no T - whatever WADA says need to apply where money is involved - NCAA, pros etc. Fondos and Strava can allow what they want. Local racing has the honor system.

SprinterSmak

After reading through all that I felt compelled to add my 2 cents...as a female who has actually competed against trans women. Honestly, I don't see it as a real issue. Two women I know of in my cycling community are transgendered and one of them competed in college while still identified as a male. Have they had any spectacular result? Not really. I just don't see this 10-12% advantage that has been discussed. I've raced them in crits and hilly road races and the bottom line is they aren't riding around with targets on their backs. They just don't have results to make them worth a second thought during competition. When I first raced against them I did have those thoughts! I admit it! How could it be fair?! How can USAC allow this? And after a few seasons racing with them, I can say it was an overreaction. Now you can go back to debating with research to back up your arguments. And no, I won't give out their specific results since its way to easy to figure out their identities. I've never finished a race behind them, though.

beatlebee 

This year's El Tour de Tucson female "winner" is transgender. There was a story on it locally with some interviews of other racers. Some were upset, others didn't care.

topflightpro

That's what restarted this debate.

tommyrod74

Are height and weight not physiological characteristics?

echappist

It sounds like you are saying it's a moot point because neither place as highly as you do. As noted earlier, we can all be charitable when the extra advantage isn't enough to affect our own standings, but one only has to look at how people "snitch" on sandbaggers and such to get a sense of what happens when there's something to lose

PS. i think with the description, you've already outed your geographical racing area and the rider in question when you mentioned collegiate cycling.

TMonk

I am training to be the next Floyd Landis, check out my new threads!

https://humboldtcycling.files.wordpr...-road-race.jpg

EDIT: I had decided to delete this but changed my mind at the last minute because it's hilarious. My coworker posted this from a computer in the lab. That is me for the record during my first season in college, racing the UNR road race. Sorry for the thread derailment

SprinterSmak

After reading this I thought this women must be a beast on the bike! According to USAC results though this season she only won one other event, a TTT...and her team was the only team racing her category. Otherwise her results are pretty middle of the road.
15/17 at the national hill climb champs
11/14 in a crit
3/4 in a rr
5/8 crit
11/12 rr
1/3 the TTT she was in...her teammates finished second and third with the same time
9/10 individual TT
3/6 rr
9/28 rr
2/7 crit
11/22 crit


I'm just not seeing a clear dominant streak.

SprinterSmak

If you have the time to sit down and research my race results and then find out who these women are, then surely you would discover that my race history is mediocre at best. And considering the women's 1/2/3 racing population in my region is less than 100 women, you could pretty easily conclude that their race results are nothing worth getting worked up about. I see no physiological advantage here.

With two out of <100 racers being transgendered I think you would be able to pinpoint pretty quickly if there was some kind of unfair advantage. Bottom line is these are real world results, not lab fabricated tests done in unreal settings. It's not worth getting your panties in a bunch about. I'm far more concerned with the prevalence of amateur doping (particularly in men's racing) than transgendered women standing next to me at the start line.