at the risk of getting into a debate i neither want to, nor am able to, participate in, this is such a stupid/fruitless argument to have. on the one hand, the whole thing is entirely peripheral to treating 99.99% of trans individuals with empathy and respect. on the other hand, the (extreme) liberal position essentially demands the willing suspension of disbelief in differences btwn males and females.
yes, same
I'm not going to speak for anyone other than myself but the nuance of this situation is very important and my issue is that the two posters I'm arguing with in this thread and pretty much everyone discussing it on social media, of course, don't want to have a nuanced conversation about this issue.
I don't think anyone is ignorant to the physiological differences between men and women, especially those in their early to mid 20s, this age group may have the most striking differences. However, in the very specific case of Lia Thomas we have no idea what her physiological differences are and how they are manifested in swimming. Sure, it feels like something is unfair, but I want to know what is unfair. All of the things we know, other than she was born a male, either indicates she doesn't have an advantage or that advantage is undefined.
We know there are other successful women swimmers with the same body type as Lia. So if her body is something that other women can and do have, how is that some unfair, unachievable advantage?
We have no idea what her hormone levels are, how long she's been on estrogen, whether or not she's continuing to take estrogen during the season, and what effect hormone levels have on swimming and swimmers in general. Her times in the 500 are about 15-18 seconds slower competing as a woman than she did as a man, so it stands to reason that the estrogen has had some effect..
If the difference is purely physiological, I'm going to need to know why that difference only manifests itself in one distance for Thomas.
Why aren't we discussing things like lung capacity or natural levels of oxygen in the blood? We know that Thomas' supposed advantage isn't speed, she's worse at the shorter distances.
I think there is a conversation to be had here discussing these things and more. I'd love to have a discussion about trans men and women in distance running. Elite men and women distance runners have similar body types so why are the times so disparate?
Anyway, these discussions aren't going to happen here because wacky is just interested in trolling and discussing posters. IPA has nothing other than it's not fair and making some weird point by calling Lia a man, and dax is dax.
I think it was Chi Cat who said it but this thread clearly isn't about trans athletes, it's about trans people.