The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that not many users on Lemmy follow Cricket or understand it fully. My comment isn’t going to cover if the decision by the ICC is correct (or otherwise) but to provide a little insight into the men and women’s games
Speed / pace is a noticeable difference between the sexes. I don’t believe there are any current female players that consistently bowl pace over 120km/h. In contrast, male pace bowlers generally try to meet a consistent speed of 135km/h for the same role. The upper bounds for men is roughly 160km/h and maybe only one or two pro players globally can do this.
There are enough men’s bowlers who can bowl at 150km/h. At this speed an average batter would find it difficult to see the ball. Arguably batters in baseball receive faster pitches but at 150km/h+ including the ball bouncing makes it incredibly difficult to face.
The batting is also different but it might be harder to explain to a non-cricketing audience why this is.
To add extra weight to this comment. It is a common tactic to attempt to “bounce” a batter out, which basically means bowling with enough speed at such a short length that it comes towards the body, and especially, the head. If a batter is unprepared, it usually requires getting out of the way because trying to play a shot is likely to end up with you getting out or struck by the ball.
The ball is much harder and denser than a baseball and even a famous up and coming professional, international, batter died when he failed to get out of the way and was struck in the head.
Basically, there is a very real safety concern for players when it comes to something like this.
Cricket is like Blurnsball, right?
it’s slowly becoming that, yeah.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
As someone who is not an athlete and not really interested in sports as a spectator either, I’ve used arguments like that before in good faith. Why is it a problem? Most people never get the chance to compete at a high level in any kind of athletics, full stop. Participants at the highest level are all, necessarily, exceptional individuals.
Can you help me understand what makes that particular exception to be so important? Why would women who have undergone one puberty or the other cast aspersions? Like you said, there are methods like testing hormone levels to ensure a level playing field. Given that, it seems like the only aspersions to be cast would be that their history somehow makes them less of a woman, which I can’t agree with.
I can’t speak for everyone but ime when people use the argument they are often more interested equality or inclusion at all costs. Their good intentions blind them to the fact that womens’ sport has spent centuries trying go gain validity / parity with mens’ sport.
But isn’t the whole reason for women’s sports trying to gain validity about inclusion? Doesn’t parity mean, in another word, equality?
I’m not really sure I understand the difference, is all I’m saying. And again, speaking as someone who mainly thinks about sports by wishing they made my life less of a hassle when there’s a road closure for some game I don’t care about.
Just responding to myself here. My original comment which sparked off this discussion/chain appears to have been deleted. I thought I had been respectful but in the future I’d recommend mods just remove news stories that make them uncomfortable instead of censoring comments.
Participants at the highest level are all, necessarily, exceptional individuals.
Bullshit. High level athletes, artists, chefs, etc. aren’t exceptional by god-given talent, but by relentless pursuit of that skill. Some of the best football (soccer) players of all time had unwanted physical builds or even small “defects”. Some of the best volleyball players were way shorter than their peers. The problem with having trans women competing on the same field as cis women in most sports is that the biological advantage they might get far surpasses the most rigorous training they could do, i.e. it becomes about genetic makeup.
The problem with having trans women competing on the same field as cis women in most sports is that the biological advantage they might get far surpasses the most rigorous training they could do, i.e. it becomes about genetic makeup.
The implication of this is that a trans woman who hasn’t devoted her life to the sport will be able to compete at the highest levels. I think that is patently wrong. Most trans women, like most other women, would never have a chance at that without having devoted their lives.
On top of that, many women (and likely trans women though I can’t say for sure) do devote their lives to a sport but still never make it to the highest levels of competition. It’s obviously not just about “god-given talent” as you said, but exceptional circumstances are a necessary condition. Not necessarily in the same way and the same set of conditions for every athlete, but every top-level performer is, necessarily, exceptional.
The implication of this is that a trans woman who hasn’t devoted her life to the sport will be able to compete at the highest levels
There’s no such implication. They’d still have to train, but there’d be an inherent advantage. A common example used to justify the division of sports between male and female categories is grip strength – the female world record is ~65kg, whereas the male average is ~50kg. A trans woman who underwent male puberty would have an unfair advantage, on average.
A common example used to justify the division of sports between male and female categories is grip strength – the female world record is ~65kg, whereas the male average is ~50kg.
I’ve seen this statistic before in this context. What I hadn’t seen (despite trying to find it) is any data on trans women’s grip strength, or how well grip strength correlates to athletic ability. I don’t disagree that trans women have had different life circumstances than cis women, and that those circumstances likely give them an advantage in many different sports. What I don’t think follows from that is this advantage being an unfair advantage, especially since every top level athlete has advantages (inherent and otherwise) that have led them to their position.
As I understand it, “male puberty” does confer some definite athletic advantages, but hormone therapy and other processes undergone by trans women largely mitigate those advantages. What I can’t say (and haven’t seen discussed scientifically or otherwise) is whether or to what degree those advantages remain “unfair” or even significant.
It’s not that their history makes them less of a woman, just that going through puberty with testosterone leads to advantages that those that went through non-testosterone puberty didn’t have.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as taking testosterone blockers or whatever, they still don’t reverse some of the advantages that going through testosterone puberty provides.
Someone smarter than me may come along but if not just googling or ducking some knowledge about testosterone puberty will shine some light on why they’ve made this change in the sport…
Just make it third category.
- female sports won’t get affected
- fairness will increase
- fans can watch their own "cup of coffee "
- possible pretenders will no longer be motivated by easy winning
It’s own category with like 5 people in each sport. Great idea.
What is the alternative though that won’t ruin female’s sports that was built as part or followup of female’s emancipation ?
Some sports do it based on what kind of puberty you went through.
As a significant number of the physical advantages come through going through male puberty.
That could be a good start.
Which sports do that?
A quick Google gave me this:
Several international governing bodies including World Athletics, World Aquatics and World Rugby have restricted trans women who had undergone male puberty from participating in the female category
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_sports
Oh i misunderstood i though you said that if someone is born one sex but get to transiaion by chems in puberty they are allowed.
No, it depends which puberty they go through.
You can trigger whatever puberty you want by taking hormones/medication.
The one where trans women play in the women’s league and trans men in the men’s. If it causes any sort on unfairness we would have seen it by now.
We have. That’s why it’s a dumb idea.
Where? All the hyped up news stories have been titles like “trans woman destroys women in insert sport here” but if you look into it they took 600th or something and beat maybe 10 women.
That is what tons of folks fights against. But i agree it makes sense. However, is taking testosteron considered doping for females or is it OK? if it’s OK, why other “chems” are not allowed?
The testosterone for trans men is just to get to the levels that average cis men have, I’m pretty sure they test for excess testosterone. Some medication is allowed for sick athletes that is considered doping for anyone who isn’t sick, like the therapy for increasing blood oxygen levels which is a common form of doping but is a valid treatment for some illnesses.
Medication for sick people seems kinda different thing to me than being healthy and chumming chems to gain muscles.
So testosterone for female( born) athletes should be allowed until they reach avg male(born) level? Is that really a thing we want to introduce into sports ? Will steroids also count as getting to avg male upper muscle mass ? Where is the line? Won’t that make female athletes either obsolete or force them to chems chumming which then can cause them health issues given that most of them propably don’t plan to transition and might want start families etc?
For trans men they get like an injection of testosterone, they aren’t getting it to play sports, it’s medication for dysphoria. I haven’t said anyone else other than trans men should be taking it and definitely nothing about steroids.
deleted by creator
Imo we should get rid of the distinction by gender and just use weight classes, or whatever attributes are appropriate for a given sport.
Avg Joe can weight about or even less than avg Jane but he still outperforms her in physical activities. It’s gonna be quite hard. But i can see it working as one of the many params in complex evaluation formula which never will be finished in sense every year someone will come up with exceptions and new paralela.
That’s true for grouping by gender as well, probably even more so. Genetic lottery means some will always be better at a given sport than others of the same gender putting in the same effort. But it’s so engrained in our thinking that we don’t even perceive it as a problem, instead we tell those with physical disadvantage that they were just not made for a certain sport.
So we are far from competing with perfect here, and being able to pick other attributes to group by should enable us create much more evenly matched groups. I mean, right now we just use one deciding factor for everything and call it a day. And that’s before we get into the whole gender discussion.
Regarding the actual formulas, I think we just need to find good tradeoffs between fairness and practicality. Of course even a perfectly fair system will fail if it doesn’t work in practice, but I think we can do much better than just using gender in pretty much all cases.
You’ve just killed all of women’s sports by relegating them to the bottom tiers, congratulations.
This is just a complete non solution to the problem and effectively just ends up with trans people being banned from sports altogether.
“Trans” sports teams/leagues (whatever that means) can’t really exist at the amateur local level anywhere but the biggest citiess due to there being not a lot of trans people, and even less trans people who want to play sports.
The struggle to even get enough trans guys or trans girls to form a team for football or whatever would be a challenge in and of itself, and then this team would pretty much have to fly across the country (or possibly to a different country altogether) to even play a match.
This is not a reasonable solution for anyone but the people who want to ban trans people from sports.
The second issue is that this is just fear mongering and not an actual issue to be solved but that’s being argued all over this thread already.
What is your suggestion than?
Does he have to have a better suggestion in order to point out how yours isn’t viable?
It’s preferable, as that’s what constructive productive discussion is about as opposite to just negating and pointing out all is wrong all the time while never accepting any ideas.
It can be very constructive to point out why something is a bad idea without having an alternative in mind.
Doing something just to do something is how a lot of mistakes and accidents happen.
all the time while never accepting any ideas.
That hyperbole. What about good ideas?
I disagree because it doesn’t lead anywhere , thus it doesn’t consruct anything.
It can stop you from making things worse, but I’m tired of arguing this with you.
Believe what you want.
Trans people should be allowed in the sports of their gender provided they’ve been on HRT consistently for some time
The length can be argued but 2-3 years seem to be enough.
However those sport associations claim they had researches done and conclusions were that it is not fair due to difference in physical abilities and it brings health risk for female athletes.
2-3 years doesn’t change lung size or bone density. There is a lot of stuff that doesn’t change once it’s developed.
Just make a separate league
Two categories:
- Women
- Open
Perfectly fair and simple.
women as females or identifier ? Open is males + trans females + trans males ?
Identity is irrelevant. The separation exists so that women get fair competition.
Women as in someone who was born as, and always has been, biologically female.
Open means everyone, unrestricted.
I see so in other words keep it stricly male and female category and let female to enter male category by choice.
Then we are where se are with people lobbing for change.
So, do transgender leagues get the same amount of resources as male and female? There’s no way they’re going to bring in as much money as male or even female leagues.
Female leaves done bring as much as male leagues either. So male leagues sponsors female leagues. So i guess nope, as male and female leagues do not either.
Removed by mod
Studies have shown that after around 2 years of HRT the strength of trans women level out to the average of cis women. The only things that really stay the same are things like bone length /bone density, and it’s not like there are no cis women with dense bones that are tall.
Edit: taken from another comment of mine:
found a more recent study that states endurance things like running and swimming level out by around 2 years, with most things level out after about 4 with the exception of upper body strength. Which is still declining in trans women past that point
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgad414/7223439
So the 1 year that is recommended is too soon for trans women athletes to start competing, but for endurance sports like racing and swimming it should be fine by 2 years. Other sports may need more time, but also we shouldn’t be delaying the lives of trans people for so long. We need to find a good middle ground because it’s not like exceptional cis women don’t exist in those same sports.
This is all also completely ignoring that if a trans women starts hrt before puberty then there is no real difference. So the real solution is to let trans teenagers transition.
Aren’t their trans women who don’t take HRT?
That compete in sports? No.
The vast-vast majority of trans women take HRT and many of the ones that don’t, don’t because of a lack of access.
Makes sense thanks for the explanation. Yea, I figure it’s way less common for a trans woman to not want to go the HRT route if they have the ability to, but I know a few must exist.
They do exist and they are just as valid, but they’re definitely not the ones competing in sports (plus there are already requirements for trans women to be on HRT before competing in women’s leagues)
Why did my comment get removed?
Probably a biased mod who gets mad whenever a discussion doesn’t go their way.
Brand new user totally understands how things work here. Alternatively, recently banmed user totally understands why they got banned. BIASED MODS!!!
The word you’re looking for is biologically.
Thanks
Why did my comment get removed?
Hmm I wonder
My fist thought was “why does the International Criminal Court care”
God I thought it said the international criminal court
Cricket is as a fun as baseball.
Downvote this foo!
Or don’t, I’m not your mama.
I thought I told you to get rid of those sideburns! …“But Mr Burns I don’t think know you what sideburns…”
I’ve had it with your attitude! You’re outa here!!
Appropriate then, that the issue is dicks
I’d be mad except… it’s fucking cricket.
Cricket is the second-most popular sport in the world.
I’ve literally never seen a game of it, and know nothing about it, but this affects a lot of people.
Like baseball but slower.
Removed by mod
no transphobia here
citation needed
Removed by mod
Fuck this. Sports are games, they shouldn’t be taken this seriously. Like, for example, Micheal Phelps has webbed feet and freaky monster lungs but nobody’s banned him from swimming events for that. Every human is different, people need to fucking accept that sports can never be totally fair and realize that’s not what this is about.
I think that gender specific leagues need to go the way of the dodo but while they’re here they’re essentially weight/strength classes and most transwomen are more fairly matched against AMAB men than AFAB women.
Ideally, we could just realize that having multiple league levels based on body type would be much more equitable.
most transwomen are more fairly matched against AMAB men than AFAB women.
Source?
And backing up your claim, thank you!
No worries at all. I know this is a really sensitive subject and it’ll basically require a change in how we view sports leagues and gender to resolve.
The problem is that there’s too much money on the line. If certain performance enhancing drugs (like testosterone) are allowed, every athlete will be required to take them if they want to compete at the highest level. Athletes are known to favor short-term gains over long-term health consequences, and they’re pressured by their environment to do so as well.
Capitalism ruining good things, as always. In the case of trans men on testosterone, though, who cares? I feel like that just levels the playing field for them generally. And as a trans woman? Estrogen has fucked up my body’s ability to build muscle if anything. These arguments all boil down to excuses.
Even on estrogen, the power level is nowhere near equal to born women. I personally think that the only fair solution is to have separate trans divisions, but there’s the question whether there are enough contenders for that. Even women often have problems, I know a kickboxing slender woman who constantly complains about not being able to find competitors and always having to compete at a severe disadvantage.
Says who? Why segregate sports in the first place? Why can’t they just exist for the sole purpose of fun? Does it really matter if trans people have a advantage? Are you that afraid of trans people succeeding? Is any of this really enough to justify dehumanizing trans+intersex people and shunting them out of another public space?
Why is it dehumanizing to have a separate division? Is it dehumanizing for women to have a separate division?
You can do sports for fun, but not the one with the money behind it. The one without the money behind it is not the one you can see in broadcasts, it happens elsewhere. Because broadcasts cost money, and so those are interlinked.
So, the whole topic is only about the one with the money behind it, aka the one not done for fun.
Because trans people are their gender, and because intersex and nonbinary people exist too and we all deserve to have access to the same opportunities as others. That means the big, televised sports too. Gendered divisions don’t give cis women a fair chance at a national platform either, comparatively and oftentimes unduly sexualize the players. If you want any given game to be fair every single team should have a certain distribution among height/weight classes if not among genders as well. There is no reason I see most sports can’t be coed either if this is practiced. It’s almost like it was never about fairness in the first place… 🤔
That means the big, televised sports too.
I never said otherwise.
If you want any given game to be fair every single team should have a certain distribution among height/weight classes if not among genders as well.
That works for a team sport, but what about sport for a single person, like kickboxing/grappling/tennis/etc?
Removed by mod
Women should be allowed to compete in women’s leagues. There could be some argument if the sport gave heavy advantage to people who had high testosterone during their teens, but that is not the case in cricket. This shouldn’t be a discussion.
Not sure how familiar you are with the sport but the fastest bowled delivery in the men’s game is over 100mph. In the women’s game the fastest is just over 80mph.
Couple that with the fact that women have slower reaction times (men’s are faster although some may argue the difference is negligible), and men have greater muscle mass (to hit harder and further), the playing field isn’t exactly level.
Not sure if you’re familiar with transition as a concept? Because your uncritical comparing men to women without even considering that transition might have an effect implies you aren’t.
Removed by mod
Cricket isn’t on that list. What is the relevance? Genetic differences are significant somewhere else?
And “men who pretend to be women” are not what transgender is about. Saying so is very shitty.
Removed by mod
Oh I’m american I barely know what cricket is tbqh. I just hate how people like me are being discriminated against and excluded from healthy, mainstream pursuits like this especially. Pretty much the holy grail of trans representation because it’s the most dangerous-to-conservative-sensibilities kind of visibility we could have. Like, gods forbid fit trans people do something so normal on TV
Removed by mod
Lotta bigoted users are really going mask off on this thread huh
For real. These people are brain dead.
