Originally Posted by
gsteinb
I think it warrants further discussion.
...
Rachel make's an interesting point in that women come in all shapes and sizes, but to start this debate with the 6 foot 200 lb outlier in a match sprint race doesn't help. I believe Rachel said she transitioned at 29. For whatever reason the debate about doping comes to mind. The one that says if you've trained on doping products, some of those advantages never go away. You've had the ability to train at a higher more powerful level. That's in the background of the individual. It just is. It's probably the same thing that allows some ex elite racer show up at he local race and factor in despite the fact that he hasn't ridden his bike.
This is something I struggle with as well. I don't want to treat someone differently because of their biology but it really can feel to many people like how a user of anabolic steroids can come back after a suspension still huge and still getting the benefits from the training they did on the drugs even if they have been clean for the last two years. On the other hand, even if I trained night and day my whole life, I'd never have the fast twitch muscle fiber density of Usain Bolt, and that kind of sucks too (but we all agree that it's fair because it's nature).
Originally Posted by
gsteinb
I'm not smart enough to understand the science of all this. I do know it offends me to be treated like a climate change denier because I look at a podium photo and can't help go "but, but, but...she's HUGE, of course she won." And this is perhaps where the discussion gets most interesting. Philosophy and science aside a lot of this comes down to the
PR game. And Rachel was never very good at that here, and she's not very good at it out there. When the discourse brands anyone transphobic who wants to explore the issue it's going to be tough to win allies. And without allies it ultimately doesn't further the trans cause, but hurts it. Pissing off people who are really on your side, because they question the relative fairness of an athletic event is not a very good way of playing the long game. And this is a long game. Women aren't even treated the same as men in this country yet, and they were given the right to vote in 1920. We're making incredible strides socially, which are highlighted by the attention destructive behavior is given. Still there's a long way to go. So even if the science of allowing trans women to compete in the women's categories is solid, the movement needs a more nuanced and deft spokesperson. "You can't erase my identity" might be the worst argument in the whole thing. It's philosophically unsound. It assumes that people are (and indeed some are trying) trying to erase her identity because they question the fairness of the competition. And that's just not necessarily the case. This is a case of athletic fairness. To make it the poster cause for trans rights isn't an astute
PR or political move.
There's a good chance my comment is going to come out very paternalistic or transphobic (and I hope I'm neither), so I'm sort of hesitant to make it. One of the recent articles about her makes a quote about how she is taking drugs to lower her testosterone. I don't know enough about the science, but that seems to imply to me that maybe she hasn't surgically fully transitioned (or maybe she has and her adrenal glands are still making enough that it has to be regulated - or maybe ..., I don't know and I don't really want to know)? I'm not saying that anyone should change their body in any way that they don't want to or aren't ready to do, but I do wonder if a lot of people (and yeah, I've seen them on other threads, they do exist) who are saying, "oh she just did this change so she could win some bike races because she was only a Cat 3 and not successful as a man" (as if someone would completely uproot their lives for 10 years and start living full time as a member of the opposite gender just to win some amateur bike races) would be less vocal if there were a surgical and permanent transition. Maybe not, I don't really know. I just remember a couple of years ago when bathroom access was the top thing on the national conversation, there were a lot of less-than-open-minded ex-classmates and extended family members on my social media feeds posting about how transgendered women were still men because they had all the parts and were just perverts trying to sneak in to molest or daughters. Obviously, bull****, but I wonder how many of those complaints would have gone away had the discussion only been about fully surgically transitioned people (lets say we lived in a magical world where anyone who wanted to transition could automatically and freely surgically transition, but it only could happen once). Like I said, I don't care what this particular individual has done and I'm not trying to tell anyone what they should do, but there seem to be a lot of people who think someone will switch one way to get some sort of advantage and then switch back at a later time once they've gotten what they want. As a purely academic exercise, I wonder if the discussion would change at all if that changing back was not something that could be a physical option. Would it change things at all? Probably not, but I do wonder.