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Athletics governing body to require DNA tests for women’s sports
(www.aljazeera.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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By definition that then means that if you are born a woman then you can forget all your dreams about becoming a competitive athlete because those roles are reserved for the ones that were born a male.
Implying of course that we were not born women.
I think your article nails it on the head here.
In other words,
That said, we could theoretically have new height classes in basketball, the same way we already have weight classes for wrestling. Likewise, if we did need some new form of class for an Olympic sport, I'm sure we don't have to call it out by gender, but can have some similarly gender-agnostic criteria.
The issue here is that people have no problem admitting that tall individuals have an advantage over shorter ones in basketball - but when someone points out that trans women may have an advantage over biological women in terms of strength and speed, those same people suddenly come out of the woodwork, calling it a lie or transphobia.
If instead they acknowledged the advantage but still argued for inclusion, then at least we’d be agreeing on the facts - and the discussion could focus on how to level the playing field. Blanket bans are rarely the optimal solution, but neither is a free-for-all.
Key word that's often missing: "may"
The NPR article that you used as a source is pretty clear on this, that there's a group of trans women for which this (stronger and faster than cis women) is not true.
FTFY.
Actually, I suspect the issue here is that other folks - right-wing and MAGA in particular - take the a statement similar to yours, and run away with it to justify a blanket ban.
In other words, your original statement,
Well, I don't know it. Perhaps the folks on the World Olympics have loftier ideals - I sure hope that's the case.
But there are folks that don't want trans people to be able to use washrooms. (See https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/no-link-between-trans-inclusive-policies-bathroom-safety-study-finds-n911106 which references the belief, while pointing out that science doesn't provide support.)
Hence some hypervigilance to keep those folks from taking over the conversation.
True - the discussion really should be focus on inclusion, and of course a level playing field should only further the cause.