The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at its 241 mostly small colleges across the country.
The NAIA Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote at its annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes competing in more than 25 sports, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.
According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed participate in women’s sports.
A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in interscholastic competition.
Can trans men compete in men’s sports? Because I’m always told that “women” can compete in men’s sports if they want, but they don’t have the athletic abilities. So what about trans men? They could be taking hormones that increase their muscle mass. So they can play basketball with the men despite not having a penis, right?
Also, can we stop making such a big fucking deal about sports, especially college sports, as if it were anything other than a form of entertainment?
Until college is free college athletics are a major way low income kids can get a college education. Everyone in college sports isn’t thinking about getting drafted into the NBA or NFL. Most are just trying to find a way to pay for college that doesn’t stick them with thousands of dollars of debt.
So they are a BIG deal
They are a big deal for the same reason rich people’s charities are a big deal- government has failed the poor. Athletics should not be a way into college just because you have a physical advantage over other poor people. There is nothing equitable about that. That is, in my opinion, not a defense of college athletics and more than it’s a defense of the Salvation Army.
I agree but as of now our system is what it is. So I personally think it’s less productive to complain about college sports instead of our broken education system.
I would also say that conflating the fact that specific college sports are taken way too seriously and made way too big a deal of doesn’t reflect athletic scholarships as a whole, considering people don’t go crazy about college wrestling or college field sports. When was the last time you heard of a college pole vault star? If there were some sort of “scandal” involving a transgender person in women’s college pole vault, would we even hear about it?
Yes, trans men can and do compete with cis men. It’s not talked about as much because the concern is usually about fairness, and those concerns just aren’t there with trans men. If you’re not able to transition when other boys are going through puberty, you’re always going to be behind on muscle mass, and taking extra hormones to catch up is going to get you banned from competing for the same reason taking steroids will get a cis man banned.
Also, why are you putting women in quotes?
Because trans women are allowed to compete in men’s sports and cis women are not. So only certain types of woman are allowed as if trans women were not women. Hence the quotes.
That’s not true. Several cis women play college and professional baseball. The same is true of endurance sports or ones where skill or intelligence are more important than strength. In pretty much every major sport, cis women are absolutely allowed to compete with men, but strength is so important in those sports that being more skilled isn’t enough to make up for the physical disadvantage.
What cis women play in the NBA?
There are none, and I literally just told you why. In sports like basketball, strength is so important that being more skilled than a man isn’t enough to overcome the physical disadvantage women have. It’s not that women are banned from the NBA.
The ability to jump really high is the obvious example in the NBA. Plenty of women are tall. There are plenty who can handle a ball and shoot at that level. But it’s incredibly rare for women to dunk, and that’s something everyone in the NBA can do. Spud Webb, at 5’7", could do it so well he won the slam dunk contest in '86. Meanwhile, only 8 women in the history of the WNBA have done it, and the vast majority of those dunks belong to Brittney Griner, who’s 6’9".
That is what you said.
And you asked about the NBA, which is basketball.
In baseball, there’s a long history of women playing with men. Lizzie Murphy played in the minors in the 20s. Jackie Mitchel struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game in the 30s while playing in the Southern League. Toni Stone, Connie Morgan, and Mamie Johnson played in the Negro Leagues in the 50s. Ila Borders pitched for the St. Paul Saints in the 90s. Eri Yoshida pitched in several men’s leagues over the last decade or so. Stacy Piagno played in the Pacific League a few years ago. Kelsie Whitmore is currently playing in the Atlantic League. There are also several women currently coaching men at the highest levels - Justine Siegal, Bianca Smith, Rachel Balkovec, Alyssa Nakken, Sarah Edwards.