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.
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.
Source?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289906/
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… 🤔
I never said otherwise.
That works for a team sport, but what about sport for a single person, like kickboxing/grappling/tennis/etc?
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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.
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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.
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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
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