How to Think About Trans Sports

I dove into the trans-athlete debate with a fresh perspective, using stats to help you understand the issue. As a professor of critical thinking, I explored how bell curves, showing traits like height and strength for men and women, overlap yet still suggest the solution to the dilemma. These patterns uncover the true fairness puzzle in sports. Plus, I found out why the comedian John Oliver, might miss the mark on this one. Want to see what I discovered?

[aoikk]

I think the biggest statistical takeaway is that only a fraction of trans people become athletes, and only a fraction of athletes are trans. However, the trans discussion dominates the athletic discussion, and the athletic discussion dominates the trans discussion. People make a big deal out of what is very little.

[ghostlore]

The problem I have with it is that you just don't have large counts. if you want to prove that trans female athletes, after HRT for some amount of time, still have a statistically significant advantage over cis women, you would need a sample of hopefully 30 or more trans female athletes in that sport. I don't know of any sports where there are more than TEN trans female athletes.
On the whole, I liked this video. I rarely see people bring up the point that sports are just unfair because of biology, and that gender is far from the only genetic factor that confers advantages.

[zelgore]

I would argue that there are already examples of sports having specialized categories that generate enough interest in said sport. Such as boxing, wrestling, and UFC. In these sports, where metrics are used to keep competitors within their realm of "fairness" why does there then need to be a gender separation?

[silverspuppet]

I found your video to be very well structured and concise but I think it has a major problem which was probably a result of responding to Jon Olivers claim.
Approaching this discussion as a purely statistically based one disregards many of the nuances it has.

For one the repeated statistical comparison of men and women is statistically speaking completely true, but it has little effect on the actual argument. We are talking about trans athletes, which not only have undeniable differences in physiological aspects (the loss of muscle mass for mtf people is what I am referring to), but are also mot just people transitioning from male to female like your presentation may leave the impression.

In my opinion each sport would need to examine the influence and possible advantages of trans athletes in their respective field and act accordingly.

Another, in my opinion important aspect of the discussion is the types of sports trans athletes are barred from competing or face backlash.
Sports like chess, darts, etc. have banned trans athletes from competing in these categories for supposed biological advantages, but what can not be underestimated is that statistical correlation does not necessarily point towards a reason.
Chess for example is divided by gender to encourage female participation in a typically male dominated sport and not because men have some innate biological advantage over them. If there are only 11 female players for all 100 male players I think it’s correct to assume that in this group a lot of male players are better.

Now I talked about male and female chess players but what about trans athletes? Well seeing as they make up an incredibly small part of the population I don’t see the issue in them competing in the categories of their respective genders.

This argument is highly politicised, with possibly drastic consequences for the people involved, which is why I view videos like yours a bit more critically and felt the need to point out what I personally felt was „missing“
Nevertheless I appreciate you presenting this point in such a neutral perspective and pointing out a real issue, when it comes to statistics in the media.
I would love to see more of your content.
Also thanks for reading this it got quite long, I hope it made sense.

[dan_rad]

I think all women should be able to compete in men’s divisions if they are capable. For some sports this means very few or even no women would be in the main division but that’s equal opportunity and they could still have a female league to compete in. I think there are so few female trans athletes that they could be taken on a case by case basis and have some simple muscle mass, testosterone, BMI or height weight tests to determine if they have an advantage over other competitors.

This way you’re not excluding all trans athletes from competing in sports or forcing them to compete in male divisions. Yet you are protecting the female athletes from competing against individuals with a huge biological advantage (which is mostly the point of having female divisions in the first place).

[Reed-me-md]

the premise here is that sports shouldnt be divided by extra categories because sport is about biological differences, but then you fail to question if the current categories are actually helpful? if biological advantages are the point, why not let everyone compete together? why split it along gendered lines? especially when we know gender isnt a binary option.

its like if videogames were divided into "red games" and "blue games" based on if warmer or colder colors are more common in game. you could make the same arguments. the "red games" would probably be more violent and fast paced on average, so comparing them against blue games would give them statistical advantage for, like, "best fighting game" at the game awards. and then you argued that nobody would watch the game awards if they had "best red game with pink upper left corner and blue middle right pixel" but then you never asked "well whats the point of the red game / blue game distinction at all"

[durgeshmishra]

Agreed
Nice video, but the funny part of this video is that what you proved by analysing complex statistics is exactly the same what a normal person would have concluded without doing anything.
And the point about how we need to make sports on basis of something, if not gender then testosterone levels etc. is an argument that makes a lot of sense
Keep making stuff buddy

[jxn]

John also makes the point that no one transitions as a way to perform better relatively to the competition, which to me supports the idea that any trans athlete would still be an athlete regardless of gender identity. For that reason it seems misleading to present statistical averages across all men and women when as you point out, athletes often exhibit outlier traits anyways. A bell curve of athlete populations would demonstrate how much overlap there is best. Also key to point out that John conceded the pro level is more complex and chose to focus mostly on youth sports, where physical advantages are less predictable/relevant to performance.

[PraxisU]

A major point from John Oliver’s video was the lack of evidence on where trans women fall in that statistical distribution after hormone replacement therapy, which severely impacts performance after those women have been on it for a year+.

Your video doesn’t address that at all.

[MinaB-on]

Tbh. I would appreciate an undivided competition. Yes men would win every competition but in the End that's just the same genetically luck you got by having for example a higher lung capacity than average instead of asthma

[Liratan]

So basically trying to ignore the statistical difference between men and women is stupid, a much better argument is that instead of gender we should divide based off of something else. You could also just have a few divisions of players where someone could promote up or drop down based off of performance metrics. There are many stories of women that are capable enough to compete with the men but aren't allowed to because of gender divides.

[colinfinn]

What you said is technically correct, but shouldn't be used as an argument against trans women in sports. Your claims make the implicit assumption that trans women still have "Men's bodies", despite the fact that HRT (hormone replacement therapy) has drastic effects on athletic performance indicators, such as muscle mass.

[countessmomo]

You created a straw man. Yes you are correct that that is how distributions work and that we can find statistical significance. However you on premise decided that A: HRT does not matter, which there is evidence that it does (and exactly how much still requires research) and B: this difference is the important one. Lung capacity would also be a statistically significant difference in performance. Same with height. The argument you make is predicated on "trans women may have the advantages of cis men, and thus we should categorize them off of this advantage"

[simonfattobene]

I see lots of good points on measuring hormone levels, etc. But that is not financially sustainable, nowadays even with the loose rules of dopping, most sports can't cope with the costs of drug testing... Maybe with 1000 years more of innovation, and industry prowess we might have to talk about it. By now the most fair and posible thing we can do, is to separate by sex.

[OtKH]

Where I think the argument falls apart for most supporters of trans athletes being able to compete in women's divisions, is that there is nothing barring the competition in men's leagues. It is alright to be trans, but we know there to be statistical significance to having undergone male puberty, so if you've undergone male puberty, just compete in the men's divisions where the competitors have also undergone male puberty.