Reverie
2 min readFeb 4, 2022

--

The thing is Steve, people sometimes are born that way anyway. Take Caster Semenya. She was born with these kind of advantages to the point that people keep trying to insist she must be male. But she's not (she may be intersex but that's not confirmed, she might have some other condition that gives her elevated testosterone in the body, while being an XX non-intersex female). And yet people try to stop her competing anyway.

Elite athletes (especially Olympic level) have an inherent unfair advantage over 99.99% of the population. The people who win world records - people like Usain Bolt, or Michael Phelps, are born with unique body types that give them an edge over the other competitors in their categories. It's NOT and has never been the case that elite sport has everyone start at the same level and then whoever wins is whoever worked harder and whoever wanted it more.

You could argue that a trans woman is born with an "unfair advantage" of having grown up with testosterone. But so was Caster Semenya, so was Michael Phelps born with an unfair advantage over other men that his arms are longer, so was Usain Bolt. We don't look at someone like Michael Phelps and say "your arms are too long, it's not fair to other competitors". So why is it only for an issue when it comes to trans people?

You say that being trans is like doping - but you could apply this logic to being born tall, to being born with greater lung capacity in general, to being a female with narrow hips etc. Is it an unfair advantage for a woman with Masai ancestry to compete against a Filipino woman? No! Why not? The Masai woman is far taller, stronger and has longer legs than the Filipino woman.

You could argue that different races can't compete against each other using the logic of "being born with physical advantages means you can't compete in elite sport".

--

--

Reverie
Reverie

Written by Reverie

“The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds” — Cloud Atlas

Responses (1)