A record number of athletes openly identifying as LGBTQ+ are competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics, a massive leap during a competition that organizers have pushed to center around inclusion and diversity.
There are 191 athletes publicly saying they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and nonbinary who are participating in the Games, according to Outsports, an organization that compiles a database of openly queer Olympians. The vast majority of the athletes are women.
That number has quashed the previous record of 186 out athletes counted at the COVID-19-delayed Tokyo Olympics held in 2021, and the count is only expected to grow at future Olympics.
“More and more people are coming out,” said Jim Buzinski, co-founder of Outsports. “They realize it’s important to be visible because there’s no other way to get representation.”
The moment a single trans athlete wins top 3 in their sport, expect every troll to suddenly become an expert biologist. But they don’t actually give a single fuck when trans athletes lose.
Would be interesting to see something that could prove or disprove if transwomen (or transmen too, I guess) get any benefits. All I’ve seen is inconclusive or partial results (see my other comment). For that reason, I don’t think IOC’s guidelines can be thought of as being finalized or uncontroversial.
Suddenly the people who spam 41% at inboxes will forget what a statistic is
I have a very real problem with any guy ever competing in a woman’s sport. It’s a hard line that should never be crossed. Your biological sex at birth is quite valid, there is no discussion on this topic in the realm of sanity.
This is the line that most sane people also draw, and if you think otherwise you need to get off the Internet.
The sports organizations which allow trans atheletes do exactly that. Example:
https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/049-9_exhibit_i.pdf
“the International Olympic Committee (IOC) determined criteria by which a transgender woman may be eligible to compete in the female category, requiring total serum testosterone levels to be suppressed below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to and during competition.”
Good enough for the Olympics? Good enough for me!
Shows how insane our society has become.
The IOC isn’t exactly “our society”.
Depends how you look at it I guess.
Trans women/girls aren’t “guys” - GTFO with that!
If the only puberty someone goes through is a female puberty, where does their advantage come from? Hormone blockers exist for a reason and they do a really good job at delaying puberty for younger trans people.
What you’re saying is, that trans women/girls who have gone through a transition before puberty are physically equal to born women. You clearly agree that there must be some regulation at least onto when the transition happened.
The sports organizations which allow trans atheletes do exactly that. Example:
https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/049-9_exhibit_i.pdf
“the International Olympic Committee (IOC) determined criteria by which a transgender woman may be eligible to compete in the female category, requiring total serum testosterone levels to be suppressed below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to and during competition.”
Good enough for the Olympics? Good enough for me!
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Sorry to correct, but it absolutely is the world we live in. You’re fighting to change it.
End of the day, transitioning has many downsides and massive toll. Sorry, but maybe competing has to be one of them. Your example of pre puberty child that then goes to compete doesn’t exist, right? Every example brought up is about someone who transitioned after their bodies were “done” growing.
As you said, don’t paint it black and white when there is whole lot of grey on both sides.
Why does competing need to be a downside of transitioning? Why does transitioning need any or more downsides?
The original post in this thread was entirely black and white, saying it should be decided at birth. Where’s the nuance there?
Where are the trans athletes that are ruining female sports at? Shouldnt we have at least something real to be afraid of? What about men’s sports? Noone wants to talk about trans males for some reason, why dont you take issue with them?
Simply, tough.
I’m not writing an essay to address your numerous of accusations because that’s been done to death. You’re not interested anyway and only want to argue in bad faith. You’re just fishing for a gotcha. If all you want is a reason for you to justify dismissing comments, why not just move on?
There’s also the fact that there are hormone variations across cisgender people.
Wasn’t there some sort of controversy a few years ago where a cis woman participant(cant remember if it was the olympics or not)tested high in her natural testosterone levels and was prevented from competing because it gave her an advantage or something?
So it’s possible for some cis women to have naturally higher testosterone levels than some trans women.
Hormones are a lot more complex than we think and I feel like all these keyboard endocrinologists are overconfident in their understanding of hormones and how they effect the body.
Experts are still studying this stuff, and if they say there’s no significant advantage I’m inclined to believe them. Besides, most anti trans people didn’t give a fuck about women’s sports until it gave them an opportunity to be hateful.
This.
Trust the expert and the studies. Opinions equals shit against the reality.
If you had a look at the actual statistics, with measures such as “be on hormones for at least X months before competing” in place: Middling athletes stay middling, shoddy stay shoddy, stellar ones stay stellar. If Michael Phelps transitioned and then competed and won it wouldn’t be because of being born as a man, but because he’s a genetic freak. Ideal limb structure, something about his lactose processing, you name it, he’s been born with tons of advantages.
Which brings me to another point: No, the competitions have never been fair. Grit and determination is necessary, but definitely not sufficient, to win the Olympics. Athletes transitioning to get an edge? I believe it when transphobes demonstrate it, under doctor’s supervision, on themselves. More likely they’d off themselves due to dysphoria before they could even dream of competing.
Children tend to have parity up until a certain point, I believe thats where some of the concern is at.
Why do you think the exact gender needs to be nailed down right at birth?
Well since trans women are women and not men that shouldn’t be a problem.
What a weird thing to worry about. Stop being weird.
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You use words without knowing what they really mean.
Except the whole thing about their natural physiology. People who were born as men just have a more powerful physiology than women. This doesn’t change during or after transitioning. Sorry, but you’re being weird here.
Oh so strength doesn’t decrease when testosterone lowers and estrogen increases, and vice-versa?
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It’s hard to understand peoples train of thought here sometimes, that’s for sure.
This crowd is heavy with animal fuckers
You got any evidence to back up that ridiculous claim? Because it seems that you’re just trying to slander people who disagree with you.
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there’s the evidence
You’ve made a claim. A claim is not evidence.
Have you seen
No, I have not. Not from my instance, lemmy.world (which is the instance we’re talking on) or any others that end up in my feed or even the “All” feed.
Have you tried blocking the one single instance that’s probably coming from?
Or even just using your feed?
And I hate to break it to you, but one community on the fediverse is not indicative of “this crowd being heavy” with anyone. If that were the case, all social media, and real life, would be.
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Get over yourself you jumped up twat. I don’t have to provide you with evidence for anything. I understand how the fediverse works.
Someone sounds upset.
If you make a claim in an attempt to discredit a whole platform of people, don’t be surprised when someone asks you to provide evidence.
There are plenty of fucked up little scrotes on here with weird as fuck fetishes and I dont care to see it in my feed
Fun fact: you can add certain communities to your feed and only view those. So either you’re not using your own feed, or you’ve added those communities to it.
I already block entire instances, communities and anyone who posts fucking weird porn cartoons or political american shit or any other shit I think is retarded. I dont give a shit whatever sordid shit turns you on. I dont need to know about it. Its not all on one instance, or one user and I’m forever filtering it out…
Sounds like a problem with the instance you picked then. I do not have this issue, and you clearly haven’t heard of an NSFW toggle. That or it doesn’t work.
Nobody cares if you don’t care about other things on the internet. It does not belong to you, you don’t get to go on an angry tirade when there are things you don’t like, and you definitely don’t get to use it to try and slander people who are completely unrelated to it. Learn to properly curate your feed and move on.
Go back to reddit pls
Very inclusive of you.
Why would I want to include bigots / trolls?
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Just calling out your hypocrisy. You are either inclusive and change people the right way, or you are no different than that you think you are better than. People who think like you are ignorant and mentally weak.
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It’s not hypocrisy. Tolerance is a contract if you don’t agree to it, it doesn’t cover you.
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No one asked.
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Lol, cope.
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What percentage of all athletes is that?
1.7% Roughly. 191/11000, as that was the closest estimate.
As a population the estimate is 5% of people so probability there are almost twice as many athletes who are in the closet then those who are out.
I imagine at least a half of the countries participating in the Olympics being morbidly bad at LGBTQ+ rights and that a biggoted campaign against a sportsperson can cost them their entire career or life adds to the reasons why there’re more of them we don’t see. They phut Muh Mutherland to shame! is a big target to put on someone’s back if not for the state, but for it’s most reactionary citizen.
I don’t know if this specific group has the same distribution of LGBTQ+ folks as the general population, but as a second thought I’m sure the amount of persons being aware of their own sexuality and gender identity or learning them can top their own nation’s metrics because of the exposure to the international sports scene.
Maybe some of them aren’t in the closet but have never been asked.
Wow. Impressive.
Alternative read: The gays are getting fitter!
Apparently grindr etc are banned in the athletes village. They’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way.
They can’t openly use grindr. I’m sure theres plenty of stealth profiles on there.
Emphasis on … OPENLY
There’s still plenty of individuals out there who choose to keep their sexuality, identity and preferences to themselves, either for personal, social, societal, political, or religious reasons.
One day, I’ll learn how this works.
I wonder how many of those are from Africa and the Middle East.
(just kidding, we all know it’s zero)
https://www.outsports.com/2024/7/17/24097560/celebrating-out-lgbtq-athletes-2024-paris-olympics/
The list of out athletes is heavily weighted to parts of the world where being LGBTQ is both legally and culturally accepted. This includes countries in North and South America, Western and Northern Europe and Australia and New Zealand. There are out athletes from 27 of the 206 participating nations (including the Refugee Olympic Team).
The countries with the most out athletes at the Paris Olympics: USA (31), Brazil (30), Australia (22), Germany (13), Spain (12), Great Britain (11), Canada (11) and the Netherlands (10).
There are only three out athletes from Asia that we know of at the time of publication: two boxers from the Philippines and one from Thailand. There are only four athletes from Africa: three South Africans, and one from the Refugee Team, boxer Cindy Ngamba, born in Cameroon and now living in Great Britain. There is only one athlete from any Muslim-dominated country (a Turkish volleyball player), places where being out and gay is often illegal or dangerous, and none from Russia, which has cracked down on LGBTQ rights in the past decade.
Thank you for the source, much appreciated!
I’ve no idea how stating this is relevant to the conversation
Calling out hypocrisy. Cheering LGBT representation is pointless if only a select few get to benefit while others are harshly repressed.
Small steps I suppose. Can’t police the entire world, but we can promote the behavior we’d like to see to try to encourage the repression to be removed
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Most cis sportswomen have naturally elevated “masculine” hormones. Trans women see many physical changes (like fat redistribution and changes in muscle n fat mass) after commencing hormone therapy. Therefore, the “advantage” that they have over cis women is negligible. It is in fact comparable to the advantage that some cis women have over other cis women (the hormone thing that I mentioned in my first sentence).
But no, being assholes towards trans people is cool, and there clearly aren’t other issues to worry about. /s
Recently I read that for men who have gone through puberty, their hitting strength is 162% of that of women. So seems like some things do give you a massive advantage. But I guess that’s why they have those gender rules for boxing at least.
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There is an undeniable trend of mtf athletes breaking female records. Trying to hide from that does noone any good.
Trans athletes have been accepted in the Olympics since 2004, yet not a single one has so much as qualified for a games since then, despite having such a “big advantage”
And globally the only trans person to ever get a professional title was a div 1 swimmer in the US.
That’s just factually incorrect. Laurel Hubbard qualified for and competed at the Tokyo Olympics.
Ah okay, my information is clearly out of date, but I think my point still stands as she came 7th
No, not at all. There was also Quinn who won a Gold medal at the same Olympics. And Laurel Hubbard won silver at the World Championships and gold twice at the Commonwealth Games but was 43 years old by the time of the Tokyo Olympics.
Additionally, you have to consider that the current rules regarding trans athletes are only in place since 2015. Before it was required to undergo sexual reassignment surgery and have your gender legally changed. And even after the changes, many trans athletes couldn’t compete at the Olympics because the governing bodies of their sport are more restrictive. So even if trans athletes have a “big advantage”, there are plenty ways to explain their lack of presence at the Olympics.
Please give us a widely accepted definition for ‘female’ based in science.
Females have larger gametes. Males have smaller gametes. Just because this doesn’t apply to 100% of cases doesn’t make this an accepted definition – everything has exceptions in nature. 98-99% is good enough for a categorization though.
Does this affect how transwomen do in women’s category? Probably 98-99% not (hah), since IOC has declared this all works just fine?
Still it’s still a bit controversial, e.g. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577.full?ijkey=yjlCzZVZFRDZzHz&keytype=ref this study showed one set of cases where hormone treatment removed most differences in transwomen vs women but they remained significantly faster runners.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7846503/ this seems to show that transwomen lose very little of their biological advantage. "Rather, the data show that strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected. "
Who made this the accepted definition? Because you haven’t shown me who came up with it and who agrees with it.
Also “doesn’t apply to 100% of cases” is not a way to scientifically define something, so I doubt it’s accepted. But feel free to prove me wrong since you came up with links that don’t support your claim.
Who made this the accepted definition?
Evolution, as far as we can tell.
But feel free to prove me wrong since you came up with links that don’t support your claim.
I usually approach these things from the point of view of trying to reach truth together, not from the point of view of trying to use sources as hammers to beat down your opponent. Are you different from me in this way?
Sorry, ‘evolution’ is a process and does not come up with definitions. Scientists do.
Since you apparently can’t find any scientists who agree with you, I think it’s safe to say you’re wrong.
Since you apparently can’t find any scientists who agree with you
I’m not sure what we’re conflicted here about, so let’s clarify: Are you saying that I cannot find any scientists to agree with me on my claim that males have smaller gametes and females have larger gametes? Also: what’s the standard we’re aiming at here? What do I need to find to convince you that I’m right? Do I need to find a live actual scientist that answers this question for me, or do you need a scientific paper or something? I’m guessing that a basic biology book is not enough for you, since this fact definitely is in every one of them.
You said it is “an accepted definition” for both, but that there are exceptions, which is not scientific. Definitions do not have exceptions in science. If the definition is not universal, the definition is thrown out and a new one is found. That’s how science works.
Does not contain male levels of testosterone post maturity.
What are ‘male levels of testosterone’ exactly?
Are men with hypergonadism not men?
Don’t be obtuse. It’s considered a malady in males, hence the full term “Male hypogonadism”.
Your definition of female:
“Does not contain male levels of testosterone post maturity.”
That includes men with hypogonadism.
It’s not my fault that the medical term doesn’t agree with your definition.
Oh? Explain why you think “male” is specified in the disease then if my definition were not correct?
You defined ‘female’ purely based on testosterone levels. That’s not my fault if it fits some men.
XX chromosomes
So you’re not female if you have Swyer Syndrome.
In Swyer syndrome, individuals have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome in each cell, which is the pattern typically found in boys and men; however, they have female reproductive structures.
People with Swyer syndrome have female external genitalia and some female internal reproductive structures. These individuals usually have a uterus and fallopian tubes, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) are not functional. Instead, the gonads are small and underdeveloped and contain little gonadal tissue. These structures are called streak gonads.
Not a woman, right? Despite not even being able to tell even when you see them naked, right?
How about XXY people? Men or women? Because they usually look like men, but at least one got pregnant.
Correct. Human, worth just as much as everybody else, but not technically female.
So males can get pregnant?
Your own quote tells me that people with chromosomal abnormalities tend to be sterile, so no. XX makes you a woman. XY makes you a man. Abnormalities are just that, abnormal. Trans people have problems and cutting them up is not the solution.
That is not how science works. There is not “exception to the rule” in science. That’s not how it works. If you can’t come up with a scientific definition that biologists agree with you on, just admit it. None of you seem to be able to. You think you know the science, but you can’t back it up.
Are you saying we can’t know if someone is male or female just by looking at them and that there are other options according to the discussion below?
There are clear visual markers, but in the age of misguided mutilations chromosomes are the clearest indicator we have.
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