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@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder Ah well, we reap what we sow I guess.
A legal paper on the subject and related matters.
This is from Auckland University slightly before the most recent law change on gender ID, although it probably doesn't affect the paper much. It gives some food for thought for sports, particularly at the competitive/elite level.
Not really covered in there, but something I would say from an administrative standpoint as someone who has been involved in national selection for international competitions and sports administration generally, if someone turns up with ID with their gender/sex on it, it's very difficult to make a case that they aren't the gender/sex on the ID.
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@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder So in a nutshell, the people who said this legislation was the thin end of the wedge were right?
Hard to tell, it's pretty recent stuff, and while there will no doubt be some bad faith actors who deserve all the opprobrium they get, my sense of the submissions (written and oral) on the legislation and other material on the subject was that the vast majority of the people using this type of process are using it for genuine reasons that don't impact anyone else.
In terms of impact on sport, there aren't that many trans people (3% is a high estimate in NZ) and Sport NZ research shows their participation rates are lower than for the general population. It's already an issue that girls who turn 12 (or whatever age the sport has for gendered competition) sometimes can't play their sport any more because there is no local girls team or competition due to lack of numbers, mandating separate transmen and transwomen sections/competitions would have the effect of banning gendered sports for much of that population because it is so small. Quite hard to promote sport as the great place of cameraderie and team spirit etc when it comes with a caveat of "except for transpeople."
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I've said before the solution is remarkably simple:
Have an open division (men's) and protected divisions (women, disabled).
If you are female but awesome, then you can try to play sport at the highest level you can in the open division.
If you aren't female (i.e trans-woman) then you can try to play sport at the highest level you can in the open division.
If you were female but undergoing testosterone supplementation (i.e. trans-man), then you can try to play sport at the highest level you can in the open division.
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder So in a nutshell, the people who said this legislation was the thin end of the wedge were right?
Hard to tell, it's pretty recent stuff, and while there will no doubt be some bad faith actors who deserve all the opprobrium they get, my sense of the submissions (written and oral) on the legislation and other material on the subject was that the vast majority of the people using this type of process are using it for genuine reasons that don't impact anyone else.
In terms of impact on sport, there aren't that many trans people (3% is a high estimate in NZ) and Sport NZ research shows their participation rates are lower than for the general population. It's already an issue that girls who turn 12 (or whatever age the sport has for gendered competition) sometimes can't play their sport any more because there is no local girls team or competition due to lack of numbers, mandating separate transmen and transwomen sections/competitions would have the effect of banning gendered sports for much of that population because it is so small. Quite hard to promote sport as the great place of cameraderie and team spirit etc when it comes with a caveat of "except for transpeople."
Nobody is saying that. What we are saying is we want woman's sport protected. That used to be a non-controversial opinion.
Is it worth throwing away decades of progress made in woman's sport for a tiny minority?
@antipodean has the perfect solution, if participation is the actual issue.
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder So in a nutshell, the people who said this legislation was the thin end of the wedge were right?
Hard to tell, it's pretty recent stuff, and while there will no doubt be some bad faith actors who deserve all the opprobrium they get, my sense of the submissions (written and oral) on the legislation and other material on the subject was that the vast majority of the people using this type of process are using it for genuine reasons that don't impact anyone else.
In terms of impact on sport, there aren't that many trans people (3% is a high estimate in NZ) and Sport NZ research shows their participation rates are lower than for the general population. It's already an issue that girls who turn 12 (or whatever age the sport has for gendered competition) sometimes can't play their sport any more because there is no local girls team or competition due to lack of numbers,
Isn’t it possible that admitting transwomen could make that bad situation worse?Is it possible that any girl who is uneasy about their presence would opt not to make a scene and risk social ostracism and just drop out of sport? Has any independent research been done on the relative increase in trans participation vs a potential reduction in girls’ participation, or is even the suggestion that it is possible in itself transphobic?
mandating separate transmen and transwomen sections/competitions would have the effect of banning gendered sports for much of that population because it is so small. Quite hard to promote sport as the great place of cameraderie and team spirit etc when it comes with a caveat of "except for transpeople.
That may be true. But every action has a price. I just wonder if that price has been fully and honestly assessed in this case. Does a cis 12 year old’s mental and physical health matter?
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Would be lovely if it could happen but most sports with gendered divisions are gendered by international rules, so open competitions can't be sanctioned by the local bodies unless their international body allows for it. NZRU aren't going down this pathway unless the IRB go there. Likewise for FIFA etc. Seems remarkably unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes.
Also says to transwomen that as far as sports are concerned, they are not women.
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@no-quarter said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@booboo said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
Going to suggest we split the non-sport Trans debate out of the sports talk stuff.
Because I think there are different issues at play.
And if I sober up any time soon I shall do it. If any if you other mods see an opportunity and have the time ...
It's all related and leads to the completely absurd situations like males competing in female sports. We've got to stop shoving this absolute garbage down kids throats.
Kids don't usually care, and for under 12s, sports are generally not able to be separated by gender anyway (by law - S49 of the Human Rights Act) so it doesn't really come up (and legally can't). I don't want to get into the legal niceties around additional gendered events as a means of encouraging participation, but the general reasons behind that legal restriction is that gender/sex don't have a serious impact on sports for under 12s (there will no doubt be examples to the contrary, but that's where the line was drawn as a balance between inclusivity and safety).
For all the hypotheticals, can anyone point to a NZ-specific example of high school sports where it ever actually happened and the trans girl was the new clear best? Usually the complaints are that girls can't play in the boys competition which means they can't play at all since there is no girls competition, but maybe there are some examples somewhere of trans girls ruining competitions.
There are also trans boys and men overseas who have to compete in women's divisions etc because of these types of laws, which doesn't seem to work out that well either.
Also, what's Parliament's interest in legislating this? From their perspective, in terms of sports legislation currently active, the main thing they care about is participation in physically active sports and recreation which goes back to the benefits like cost savings to the health system from lifelong physical activity. If it was purely about things like competition and results, the legislation and funding priorities would be different. With that in mind, why would or should Parliament get involved?
Not quite what you asked, but my daughter does competitive athletics, and at last years NSW state qualifiers a trans kid took one of the qualifying spots off an 11yr girl. Seemed a bit stink to me
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
Would be lovely if it could happen but most sports with gendered divisions are gendered by international rules, so open competitions can't be sanctioned by the local bodies unless their international body allows for it. NZRU aren't going down this pathway unless the IRB go there. Likewise for FIFA etc. Seems remarkably unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes.
Also says to transwomen that as far as sports are concerned, they are not women.
Biological differences between the sexes is a thing.
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
Would be lovely if it could happen but most sports with gendered divisions are gendered by international rules, so open competitions can't be sanctioned by the local bodies unless their international body allows for it. NZRU aren't going down this pathway unless the IRB go there. Likewise for FIFA etc. Seems remarkably unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes.
Also says to transwomen that as far as sports are concerned, they are not women.
Well they're not.
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
Would be lovely if it could happen but most sports with gendered divisions are gendered by international rules, so open competitions can't be sanctioned by the local bodies unless their international body allows for it. NZRU aren't going down this pathway unless the IRB go there. Likewise for FIFA etc. Seems remarkably unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes.
Also says to transwomen that as far as sports are concerned, they are not women.
Haven't World Rugby (pedant alert) already taken that position? Based on safety and well being?
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@voodoo said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@no-quarter said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@booboo said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
Going to suggest we split the non-sport Trans debate out of the sports talk stuff.
Because I think there are different issues at play.
And if I sober up any time soon I shall do it. If any if you other mods see an opportunity and have the time ...
It's all related and leads to the completely absurd situations like males competing in female sports. We've got to stop shoving this absolute garbage down kids throats.
Kids don't usually care, and for under 12s, sports are generally not able to be separated by gender anyway (by law - S49 of the Human Rights Act) so it doesn't really come up (and legally can't). I don't want to get into the legal niceties around additional gendered events as a means of encouraging participation, but the general reasons behind that legal restriction is that gender/sex don't have a serious impact on sports for under 12s (there will no doubt be examples to the contrary, but that's where the line was drawn as a balance between inclusivity and safety).
For all the hypotheticals, can anyone point to a NZ-specific example of high school sports where it ever actually happened and the trans girl was the new clear best? Usually the complaints are that girls can't play in the boys competition which means they can't play at all since there is no girls competition, but maybe there are some examples somewhere of trans girls ruining competitions.
There are also trans boys and men overseas who have to compete in women's divisions etc because of these types of laws, which doesn't seem to work out that well either.
Also, what's Parliament's interest in legislating this? From their perspective, in terms of sports legislation currently active, the main thing they care about is participation in physically active sports and recreation which goes back to the benefits like cost savings to the health system from lifelong physical activity. If it was purely about things like competition and results, the legislation and funding priorities would be different. With that in mind, why would or should Parliament get involved?
Not quite what you asked, but my daughter does competitive athletics, and at last years NSW state qualifiers a trans kid took one of the qualifying spots off an 11yr girl. Seemed a bit stink to me
How can an 11 yo be trans? They have the vaguest concept of sexuality at that age.
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@booboo said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@voodoo said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@no-quarter said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@booboo said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
Going to suggest we split the non-sport Trans debate out of the sports talk stuff.
Because I think there are different issues at play.
And if I sober up any time soon I shall do it. If any if you other mods see an opportunity and have the time ...
It's all related and leads to the completely absurd situations like males competing in female sports. We've got to stop shoving this absolute garbage down kids throats.
Kids don't usually care, and for under 12s, sports are generally not able to be separated by gender anyway (by law - S49 of the Human Rights Act) so it doesn't really come up (and legally can't). I don't want to get into the legal niceties around additional gendered events as a means of encouraging participation, but the general reasons behind that legal restriction is that gender/sex don't have a serious impact on sports for under 12s (there will no doubt be examples to the contrary, but that's where the line was drawn as a balance between inclusivity and safety).
For all the hypotheticals, can anyone point to a NZ-specific example of high school sports where it ever actually happened and the trans girl was the new clear best? Usually the complaints are that girls can't play in the boys competition which means they can't play at all since there is no girls competition, but maybe there are some examples somewhere of trans girls ruining competitions.
There are also trans boys and men overseas who have to compete in women's divisions etc because of these types of laws, which doesn't seem to work out that well either.
Also, what's Parliament's interest in legislating this? From their perspective, in terms of sports legislation currently active, the main thing they care about is participation in physically active sports and recreation which goes back to the benefits like cost savings to the health system from lifelong physical activity. If it was purely about things like competition and results, the legislation and funding priorities would be different. With that in mind, why would or should Parliament get involved?
Not quite what you asked, but my daughter does competitive athletics, and at last years NSW state qualifiers a trans kid took one of the qualifying spots off an 11yr girl. Seemed a bit stink to me
How can an 11 yo be trans? They have the vaguest concept of sexuality at that age.
yeah, I dunno, maybe he (she? they?) was just lost?
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
Would be lovely if it could happen but most sports with gendered divisions are gendered by international rules, so open competitions can't be sanctioned by the local bodies unless their international body allows for it. NZRU aren't going down this pathway unless the IRB go there. Likewise for FIFA etc. Seems remarkably unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes.
Also says to transwomen that as far as sports are concerned, they are not women.
Correct.
The first time somebody tried this, the sports admin should have just said
"You can't play as it's not fair for very obvious reasons".
And that was that. Flat earthers are rightfully disdained for not having their heads screwed on properly. The same approach should be taken for those that think Trans Woman are woman in the sporting world.
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@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder So in a nutshell, the people who said this legislation was the thin end of the wedge were right?
Hard to tell, it's pretty recent stuff, and while there will no doubt be some bad faith actors who deserve all the opprobrium they get, my sense of the submissions (written and oral) on the legislation and other material on the subject was that the vast majority of the people using this type of process are using it for genuine reasons that don't impact anyone else.
In terms of impact on sport, there aren't that many trans people (3% is a high estimate in NZ) and Sport NZ research shows their participation rates are lower than for the general population. It's already an issue that girls who turn 12 (or whatever age the sport has for gendered competition) sometimes can't play their sport any more because there is no local girls team or competition due to lack of numbers,
Isn’t it possible that admitting transwomen could make that bad situation worse?Is it possible that any girl who is uneasy about their presence would opt not to make a scene and risk social ostracism and just drop out of sport? Has any independent research been done on the relative increase in trans participation vs a potential reduction in girls’ participation, or is even the suggestion that it is possible in itself transphobic?
mandating separate transmen and transwomen sections/competitions would have the effect of banning gendered sports for much of that population because it is so small. Quite hard to promote sport as the great place of cameraderie and team spirit etc when it comes with a caveat of "except for transpeople.
That may be true. But every action has a price. I just wonder if that price has been fully and honestly assessed in this case. Does a cis 12 year old’s mental and physical health matter?
Sport NZ research on 12-17 year-olds dropping out of sport shows that both boys and girls drop out as they get older, and that girls drop out at a higher rate than boys. That research provides a few main reasons, being time commitments (that's a big one), over-emphasis on competition and lack of social and participatory options (these two points are obviously linked), body image (uniforms have also been mentioned in other research as girls with poor body images are not keen to play in skimpy sports uniforms, and white pants/shorts/skirts are also highly unpopular). Activities like running and dancing are popular instead of competitive sport, but there is still an overall reduction in sport and physical activity as girls get older.
Issues with transgirls outcompeting cisgirls doesn't feature in any of it which is not surprising because time commitments are obviously unaffected by that, and if girls aren't interested in competitive sport and prefer non-competitive social and fun activity, being outcompeted isn't an issue in that environment.
There's also a pretty obvious question that given professional women's sport exists and men apparently have the much-feared ability to become women and play pro sport at which they will dominate easily, why haven't professional women's sports been dominated by transwomen for years already? Why hasn't a top youth male tennis player transitioned to take over women's tennis for all the money instead of bothering with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic? Surely there's some young guy in the top 1000 or even 2000 who could transition and become top 50 women's tennis and win far more money, and surely this could have happened any time in the past 10-20 years.
All this seems awfully reactionary about a perceived problem that doesn't appear to be there in anything like large enough numbers to warrant totally overhauling everything.
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@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:
@godder So in a nutshell, the people who said this legislation was the thin end of the wedge were right?
Hard to tell, it's pretty recent stuff, and while there will no doubt be some bad faith actors who deserve all the opprobrium they get, my sense of the submissions (written and oral) on the legislation and other material on the subject was that the vast majority of the people using this type of process are using it for genuine reasons that don't impact anyone else.
In terms of impact on sport, there aren't that many trans people (3% is a high estimate in NZ) and Sport NZ research shows their participation rates are lower than for the general population. It's already an issue that girls who turn 12 (or whatever age the sport has for gendered competition) sometimes can't play their sport any more because there is no local girls team or competition due to lack of numbers,
Isn’t it possible that admitting transwomen could make that bad situation worse?Is it possible that any girl who is uneasy about their presence would opt not to make a scene and risk social ostracism and just drop out of sport? Has any independent research been done on the relative increase in trans participation vs a potential reduction in girls’ participation, or is even the suggestion that it is possible in itself transphobic?
mandating separate transmen and transwomen sections/competitions would have the effect of banning gendered sports for much of that population because it is so small. Quite hard to promote sport as the great place of cameraderie and team spirit etc when it comes with a caveat of "except for transpeople.
That may be true. But every action has a price. I just wonder if that price has been fully and honestly assessed in this case. Does a cis 12 year old’s mental and physical health matter?
Sport NZ research on 12-17 year-olds dropping out of sport shows that both boys and girls drop out as they get older, and that girls drop out at a higher rate than boys. That research provides a few main reasons, being time commitments (that's a big one), over-emphasis on competition and lack of social and participatory options (these two points are obviously linked), body image (uniforms have also been mentioned in other research as girls with poor body images are not keen to play in skimpy sports uniforms, and white pants/shorts/skirts are also highly unpopular). Activities like running and dancing are popular instead of competitive sport, but there is still an overall reduction in sport and physical activity as girls get older.
Issues with transgirls outcompeting cisgirls doesn't feature in any of it which is not surprising because time commitments are obviously unaffected by that, and if girls aren't interested in competitive sport and prefer non-competitive social and fun activity, being outcompeted isn't an issue in that environment.
There's also a pretty obvious question that given professional women's sport exists and men apparently have the much-feared ability to become women and play pro sport at which they will dominate easily, why haven't professional women's sports been dominated by transwomen for years already? Why hasn't a top youth male tennis player transitioned to take over women's tennis for all the money instead of bothering with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic? Surely there's some young guy in the top 1000 or even 2000 who could transition and become top 50 women's tennis and win far more money, and surely this could have happened any time in the past 10-20 years.
All this seems awfully reactionary about a perceived problem that doesn't appear to be there in anything like large enough numbers to warrant totally overhauling everything.
That doesn’t really answer the question. If a concern is the drop out rate of 12 year old girls surely any action would need to be assessed for its ability to make that situation better or worse. If that assessment hasn’t happened you’d have to draw the conclusion that the drop out rate of 12 year old girls doesn’t concern the people advocating for trans inclusion. Now there’s no reason why I would expect trans advocates to take it into account but I’d probably expect officials to know and care.
The fact that we don’t have a flood of pseudo transwomen invading women’s sport yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen. What we know now is that a decade ago that would have been impossible, now it’s not.
You can call me reactionary if you want, but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I’d probably call myself conservative because although I am very firmly socially liberal I believe that social change should be evidence based. I’ve seen way too many poorly considered actions that end up making things worse.
Transgender debate, in sport, in general