Yes, it does. I'm not a medical expert but I don't think that allowing children to fuck with their testosterone level sounds healthy thus I think US Club soccer should say no.
Trans eligibility rules for girls sports.
- Thread starter dad4
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Not at all which is why I think that US Club soccer given what they have stated in their mission statement should not allow the player to be sanctioned.
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So at what age do you tell the transgender girl that she is too biologically superior and needs to go play with boys? What if her genetic makeup is inferior and she is not even a good athlete?
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
We form competitive groups in children's sports to eliminate the strongly correlated advantages of age and sex (Y chromosome definition). In soccer, and many other sports, no other variables come close to differentiating performance. No one is denied participation. As our resident "pay-to-play" advocate GG states, there is a level for everyone. In recreational sports we'd be better served by making an evaluation of skill level and partitioning accordingly regardless of the Y chromosome and age.
even with respect to age there’s a huge difference between a January and December birthday, especially at certain ages such as 11 for the girls and 13 for the boys. We have deliberately chosen to shaft the December borns (and as a kid with an august birthday who was formerly the oldest and now is bottom middling I take the situation personally)
everything is trade offs. If we cared about age bands we’d at least divide the years in half if not quarters but then some teams wouldn’t have sufficient numbers to roster and commutes would be longer to find appropriate teams. We could do development age bands but the issue there it is it would be subject to cheating.
so there are other factors being considered than just age.
the trade off on a hard ban on Y chromosomes is how far you willing to go? If We really care only about that we’d allow opposing teams to challenge the genetic composition of anyone playing on opposite girls team including anyone who is otherwise biologically female but Carries a genetic anomaly. If we want to take it even further to cover glandular disorders and steroids, we’d allow challenges forcing girls to testosterone test.
Just trying to understand where this guy is coming from. I see both sides and honestly haven't fully formed an opinion.
Considering the numbers... less than 2% identifies as trans, about half are MTF, about half of those will medically transition, about 7-8% of kids in the US play soccer... my guess is that the demographic of MTF transitioners that want to play youth soccer is so infinitesimally small that we will spend more time arguing about it in a year than MTF kids will spend on the field.
Seems kind of like a tempest in teapot to me.
Soccer Dad & Ref
SILVER ELITE
really hoping you didn’t use their real names here. Outing a child or adult for that matter is one of the worst things you can do, unless they were already100% public about the transition
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Yes, it's a trade-off. At some point, I believe Canada decided to split youth hockey into 6-month age intervals to reduce the advantage. I don't disagree with anything you said, but again, what is a better predictor of athletic performance in children than their age and Y chromosome (primarily after puberty)? To your point though, I believe with children, the biological presentation should be the determining factor and not a chromosome or testosterone test.
Do any of the trans females performing at a high level in women's sports such as Lia Thomas have any of these anomalies you speak of, or are they otherwise typical biological males who identify as female?
Over 15 years ago and 100% public. Thanks for judging me for the worst things I could ever do.
My only point is we are somewhat arbitrarily assigning winners and losers based on values other than “fairness” because fairness is an illusory concept. Go too far one way and you have the South Park situation. Go too far another way and mtf have no where to compete because they are too weakened to compete with the people who present as male
if the test is the Y chromosome you are allowing an arbitrary advantage of intersex and xxy chromosome people to stand. Testosterone you are allow the arbitrary advantage of girls with a hormone imbalance (or who cheat and take steroids) to stand. a tiny fraction of people but we are assigning winners and losers based on something other than an illusory concept of “fairness”— we don’t want to force all girls to test just to screen out this tiny set of people. Even “born that way” isn’t a totally rational distinction because there is a tiny subset of people born intersex and assigned a gender and an argument that trans People aren’t so much making the choice but a condition that is born that way
I’m just saying we are picking winners and losers and the justifications are illusory (based on concepts like morality and fairness) and we can choose to totally shaft mtf trans the same we we choose to shaft December birthdays.
Happened again
SILVER ELITE
Great question and a complicated one. Hard to have that type of discussion on a board such as this- it's an emotional topic. What you have described above is very ambigous.
Biologically/medically speaking, puberty is a good place to start. To keep it simple, 12 is a good marker for boys. If you are/been the parent of a 12 year old boy, you are familiar with the physicaly transformation that occurs from one season to the next. Boys go through puberty later than girls. One year the girls are bigger, the next that advantage is completely erased. It's why, generally speaking, girls teams will scrimmage against boys teams 2 years younger. Boys quickly close the gap when they hit HS. Clubs that use younger boys as a training tool for older girls usually transition to 3 years younger when girls are U17.
The eye test is easy to administer. Again, emotionally charged...we as a society are trending towards the emotionally charged discussions VS a scientific and pragmatic ones. An athletic, high leve U15 boy has no business on the same competitive field as an athletic, high level U15 girl - it's not even close. We can carry this over into hormone treatment.....but..... what are we doing having discussions about hormone treatments for teens who's brains aren't 100% developed and can barely make decisions on what shoes to wear for school <--------This is type of statement is where the societal and cultural clash occurs...
You will never ( I should probably not say never) be able to apply NCAA, IOC, etc guidelines to youth sports...and should you? Are parents OK treating pre-pubescent children and to what end?
Happened again
SILVER ELITE
Yep, it's really more of a ideological discussion, unless you are that parent who has a kid who's involved on either side of the argument.
Theres a lot to unpack here in this thoughtful statement. The eye test is helpful in a South Park situation. It’s less helpful in the situation jabroni described which is someone born xy but genetically inferior in athletics to other xy and if you look at the person they are closer to girl than boy. In such cases the eye test isn’t a useful limiting principle because it’s in the eye of the beholder
there’s been a lot of inconsistency and debate surrounding age of consent. A lot of data shows kids don’t really start to fully mature til their mid 20s. We don’t allow them to drink until 21 and there’s a push to restrict gun ownership to 21. But there as also a push to allow vaccine and abortion consent at age 12, and if they can consent to that why not hormones? They can drive (and negligently kill someone with a vehicle) at age 16. Die in war at 18
the age at which this should happen is also fraught. It is true there are some trans cases that are very obvious: it’s been obvious since they were very small that something was different…waiting in such cases will definitively impact the quality of life of such a person by forcing them to wait to transition. It is also true that these things have life altering implications that can’t be undone and there are people that have gone through it that later regret it or say they have some other psychological condition that was missed. At a minimum the standard for psychological screening before anything permanent is done needs to be much much higher than it is when it comes to minor and the ideology needs to be removed from it as much as possible.
This is a fallacy except at the highest levels where there is only one level (Uswnt, a pro team)
for everyone else (including college teams) those Behind are pushed back a space. The person behind them gets less playtime. The person who sits most of time on the bench gets bumped down a level. There’s plenty of room on flight 3 teams so the notion we’ll run out space is not realistic unless there’s a sudden rush of mtf into soccer beyond what we have now.
I note the same thing happens if you have a girl that is xxy join the team, or who just happens to have more testosterone in her system, or who is cheating and takes steroids, or who just happens to be unusually taller. The starting assumption of your statement is they are taking the space of someone who “is a real girl”.
GoldenGate
GOLD
The NWSL policy requires a statement that they identify as female and testosterone levels under 0.10 nmol/L. Virtually every 10 year old biological boy has testosterone levels about half that dumb shit. Because allowing a 10 year old trans girl to play on a girls team is fully compliant with NWSL policies - which you claim should be the standard - does this mean you'll STFU now? Or are you going to admit that you only wanted to rely on the NWSL policy because you're a freakin' transphobic moron who mistakenly believed it supported your transphobic beliefs?
Honestly, I'm in the same boat. The question was if the sanctioning bodies should allow it and I can only go based off of what their vision statement says.
Who said anything about 10 year olds? And at what age do we tell the transgender girls that she isn't able to play with the girls anymore until she starts regularly testing? And when the transgender girl goes through puberty, do we have her start androgen-suppressing treatment? Do we wait until she is suspended for a year, as also stated in the policy, before we start doing that?
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
All distinctions such as these will have "winners" and "losers". I don't call on morality or fairness - just distinctions that are the most meaningful in terms of competitive advantage. Is Lia Thomas one of those tiny fractions of people born biologically male but developed physically in a way that is typical for females? If not, I'd say we are shafting every female that has to compete against her.
If there is no competitive advantage to being an MTF trans in female sports, we should expect to see as many high-performing FTM trans playing male sports. I haven't heard of any but I haven't looked either. Also, if we do get to the point where it's generally accepted that "sex" isn't binary, we need to expand Title IX accordingly. For every MTF trans female sports scholarship, we need to give an FTM trans male sports scholarship.
At what age? Swimming went with 12 years old.
It’s probably about right. That’s also about the age when sprint times really start to diverge.