Two points:

1. Top-level sports isn’t fair. Most famous athletes are outliers in terms of height, weight, muscle mass, etc. Some, like Phelps, have genetic or developmental differences that give them a pretty significant advantage.

2. I must admit that the legal definition of ‘transwoman’ varies from country to country. In India, where I live, a person can legally change their gender without any medical intervention, and such people might have a physical advantage over cis-women. But in the vast majority of countries, they have to take hormones and / or do surgical procedures that reshape their body to be more ‘feminine’. Once they do that, they have no significant advantage over cis-women.

Equating transgender women with cisgender men is biologically inaccurate.

The tests assessed body composition, lung function, cardiopulmonary exercise testing, strength and lower body power.

Among the results was a determination that the trans women athletes had decreased lung function compared to the cis women athletes.

In addition, the bone density of the trans women athletes was found to be equivalent to that of the cis women. Bone density is linked to muscle strength.

The researchers say their findings “reveal notable disparities in fat mass, fat-free mass, laboratory sports performance measures and hand-grip strength measures between cisgender male and transgender female athletes.

“These differences underscore the inadequacy of using cisgender male athletes as proxies for transgender women athletes.”

Biological and genetic differences are always contributing to why some athletes are better than others. Also: the science on trans athlete performance is mixed and unclear.

It’s a complicated issue, but I’d sooner reevaluate our attitudes and culture around competitive sports before resorting to creating a lower class of person. Maybe we take these things too seriously.

To expand on this, maybe we just have tiers of competition regardless of gender (like leagues) and people play where the competition is kept even. It might stratify so that there is more mixing of genders in the mid range and trans athletes may also fall into that range (but again: science isn’t clear).

Maybe mine is a weird way to explain it, but here it is. It’s up to the rules to decide what is an unfair advantage and what is not. You can make sports categories based on gender, or body weight. You could theoretically make them according to muscle mass, or maybe even blood androgen concentration. But here the rules only say “men and women”; if you think some people might still have an unfair advantage under that scheme, that’s okay, but going down the lazy path of leaving basically everything unchanged exept you restrict some women from participating in “women’s” sports is the worst possible way to handle it. It alienates people by refusing to grow beyond an outdated model.

So a few things;

A) on the professional level sports ain’t about fair. It’s about who has the biggest natural advantage and enough money and time to develop the skills to make use of that advantage. Take the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps who has genetic mutations, plural, that mean we’re likely to never see anyone ever break his records.

Now that’s just the professional level, and a less than professional level sports are about fun, not fairness; and in a team game it’s about teaching social skills over fun.

B) post bottom-surgery on hrt trans people, either main direction, have no biological advantages. In mixed leagues there are trans women that are far below cis women, and there are trans men far below cis men. This scare mongering that trans women specifically would have this massive advantage simply isn’t represented in the real world where trans people have competed with cis people directly.

C) You want the secret to athleticism? It’s not sex, it’s t level. Testosterone is literally the magic key for sports. Trans women that no longer produce as large amounts of t (see. Above) consistently under perform cis women with high natural t levels. To preempt this as well, bone density isn’t fixed. The Joe Rogan scare mongering on women’s boxing is that trans women supposedly have higher bone density than cis women. This can be true, sometimes, but most often it’s not. Estrogen attacks bone density, and does so ridiculously quickly when you have elevated levels from any source. It takes just 3 years on average for your bone density to drastically change when your hormones balance changes.

D) this type of discrimination leads to false accusations, harassment and death threats more than preserves any integrity in sports. The Olympic boxer Imane khelif is a cis woman. XX. This trans hysteria has tainted her win, because she doesn’t look woman enough, whatever that means. Many cis women that don’t fit the local stereotype of “woman” are harassed because of people freaking themselves out about the trans Boogeyman. This type of harm outweighs any and all harm to sports, period.

It’s not the job of an oppresed group to explain over and over why they shouldm’t be oppressed. But, since I am not trans and I have done some reading on the topic and I try to be a decent ally, I can give it a shot

Basically, any “biological” advantage of a trans woman (cause that’s the “problem,” trans men are invisible) would have is erased by hrt. Muscle density, bone density, you name it. Hormones are powerfull stuff

The only thing that hrt won’t change (if started post puberty) is height. So, if you ban trans women you must ban tall cis women too

ps: trans friends, feel free to tear into my comment ♥️

edit: also, there are cis women with high levels of T, eg that boxer in the olympics thae was harassed to hell and back, are you banning them?

The broader issue is discrimination, and if one class of people should be allowed to be singled out and discriminated against.