Backlash as transgender weightlifter qualifies for Commonwealth Games

[Deborah]

Backlash as transgender weightlifter qualifies for Commonwealth Games

By: Josh Milton

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/11/24/backlash-as-transgender-weightlifter-qualifies-for-womens-category-at-commonwealth-games/

Laurel Hubbard has been named to the New Zealand women's weightlifting team for the Commonwealth Games, sparking controversy in the sport.
Hubbard, 39, will be the first transgender sportsperson to represent New Zealand. . . .

However, not all reaction to Hubbard's selection has been positive.
Australian Weightlifting Federation chief executive Michael Keelan on Friday claimed Hubbard would have both a physiological and mental edge over her rivals. . . .

"I personally don't think it's a level playing field. That's my personal view and I think it's shared by a lot of people in the sporting world."
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I'll be the odd one out in this forum and agree with the objections.  Particularly in the area of strength I believe that trans women maintain a clear advantage over CIS women even after hormones have changed. 




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[Rachel_Christina]

It's simply not fair atall point blank.
You had T in your system most of your life or still have it you should not be allowed to be in competition against women.
Not fair atall. It's like steroids, it's not fair.
It's unfortunate people who are trans will naturally want to fit in to the role we feel we should be in. But in the case of sports, Testosterone is huge advantage even if it is no longer in the body.

[Angela Drakken]

It's simply not fair atall point blank.
You had T in your system most of your life or still have it you should not be allowed to be in competition against women.
Not fair atall. It's like steroids, it's not fair.
It's unfortunate people who are trans will naturally want to fit in to the role we feel we should be in. But in the case of sports, Testosterone is huge advantage even if it is no longer in the body.

Considering I lost more than 60 pounds when I began transitioning and most of that was musclemass, I dont really see myself having an advantage over anyone.

Hell I struggle doing things that used to be easy for me.
I feel embarassed needing help lifting things at work.

*shrug.*

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[Rachel_Christina]

Still if we where training for it we would have an advantage. Especially considering this person already knew they could lift heavier than what they did do to qualify.
The only this could be fair is if a person was on blockers before puberty. And never experienced Ts effects.

[Deborah]

My opinion is from my experience.  After two years of HRT and undetectable levels of testosterone and no strength training I started lifting weights again.  After just six months my squat is between advanced and elite women's standards and my deadlift is at elite women's standards.  These standards are defined as: http://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift

Advanced
Stronger than 80% of lifters. An advanced lifter has progressed for over five years.

Elite
Stronger than 95% of lifters. An elite lifter has dedicated over five years to become competitive at strength sports.

Additionally, I didn't even lift weights a whole lot before HRT.  I was a runner.  There are certainly CIS women a whole lot stronger than I am right now, but they also had to put a whole lot more time and work than I did into getting there.  I'm also a lot older than most at an age where improvement is even slower. 

So the only conclusion is that a lifetime on fairly high levels of testosterone have effects that linger long after that testosterone is gone.


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[Rachel_Christina]

The only way it could be fair is if T never happened in youth.
Or in the opposite sense if a Trans guy was lifting as much as the other guys it would be pretty insane.
But a trans woman who has already been lifting for years simply cannot now compete against other women just because she cut the T levels.
I mean if that where the case you could cut the T levels just to pass the tests required and then come back of blockers for training and preparation

[Angela Drakken]

Still if we where training for it we would have an advantage. Especially considering this person already knew they could lift heavier than what they did do to qualify.
The only this could be fair is if a person was on blockers before puberty. And never experienced Ts effects.

I still frankly have to disagree with you on that point, and thats okay. I know for a fact in my own personal experiences, Ive gone from being able rope several hundred pounds of gear 200 feet in the air on a jinn wheel for 10-12 hours a day, shoulder a 10 foot w8 steel I beam and walk it 300 feet to my job face, or run wheelbarrows full of concrete up ramps with relative ease to struggling wrestling with ALUMINUM scaffolding gear.. And again my activity levels or 'training' regimine hasnt changed. (I shudder to think how many swings I'll take to drive spikes home framing now.. Lol)

This to me is like arguing fighters dropping wight classes to fight in lower levels is cheating also because they know they can compete in heavy weight and want to thump some welterweights around for the lulz

But again were both allowed to disagree. Thats the beauty of the civilized world. :3

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[Rachel_Christina]

I don't see it as the same thing atall tbh.
It would be like McGregor deciding he feels female (that would be totally fine) and going on to fight women, I simply cannot see that it would be fair.
Unfortunately the effects of testosterone change things.
We all have to deal with that. In general those effects can go unonticed, but things like strength and nervous system have been effected by it. And in the case of someone who was already a competitive power lifter as a man, definitely has an advantage over the girls. Even more so considering they never stopped powerlifting

[Deborah]

This is a pretty good article explaining our advantage.

http://daily.barbellshrugged.com/the-new-science-of-muscle-memory/

"Sure, muscle fiber size will decrease with de-training, but the added muscle nuclei from periods of focused growth and strength training will remain for a long time. . . .
This new muscle hypertrophy model may explain the 'muscle memory' phenomenon from the cellular level. While your muscles can't remember anything, the added nuclei do act as a sort of placeholder. This allows the muscle to regrow much faster and efficiently with a future hypertrophic stimulus (like weightlifting).
One thing we don't know is how long these extra nuclei actually stick around. It could be months, years, or forever, we don't know."

Even if one has never trained much at all the presence of higher levels of testosterone result in some increased muscle mass. 


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[Dena]

On T I could never chin myself or do pushups. About the only thing I did well in PE was setups. Even today I am pretty sure that with the proper training I would not be competitive with a woman in weight lifting as my body type just doesn't allow upper body strength. Even when you take hormones out of the picture, some people have a body type that allows them to build strength while others don't.

[Deborah]

Independent of sex, individual genetic variation plays a big role.  Additional factors include.
- Body type; endo/meso/ectomorph
- Muscle insertion points on the bone can increase or decrease leverage
- Arm and leg length. i.e. long arms are an advantage in deadlift and a disadvantage in bench press; longer legs are a disadvantage in squat
- Overall bodyfat levels; more fat allows for more muscle and strength in both men and women.


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[rmaddy]

It's simply not fair atall point blank.
You had T in your system most of your life or still have it you should not be allowed to be in competition against women.
Not fair atall. It's like steroids, it's not fair.
It's unfortunate people who are trans will naturally want to fit in to the role we feel we should be in. But in the case of sports, Testosterone is huge advantage even if it is no longer in the body.

Bunk.

There is sufficient science to support the contention that post-HRT, transgender athletes do not retain any advantage over their cis-women competitors.  There exists to this point not a single example of a transgender athlete dominating his or her sport post HRT.  Joanna Harper (both a medical physicist and a competitive distance runner) did a small but elegant study which showed that, in fact, transgender women post HRT performed at the same percentile in their female competitions as they did previously in male competitions.

Trans male athletes, for their part, experience push back because they are injecting testosterone instead of manufacturing it internally, even though they are mandated to prove that their levels fall within expected norms for males.  You can't win when arguing with bigots.

Nevertheless, one need not add ones voice to theirs.

[Deborah]

The rest of the story, to quote Joanna Harper:

"To be clear: This study speaks only to distance running. Trans women who are sprinters may maintain something of an advantage over other female runners in that they tend to carry more muscle mass, potentially allowing for increased speed over short distances. (Whereas extra muscle mass is a disadvantage in distance running.) And since gender transition doesn't affect height, it would make sense that transgender women would have advantages over other women in sports such as basketball, where size is so important, and disadvantages in sports such as gymnastics, where greater size is an impediment."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/do-transgender-athletes-have-an-edge-i-sure-dont/2015/04/01/ccacb1da-c68e-11e4-b2a1-bed1aaea2816_story.html?utm_term=.c71779f81d49


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[Rachel_Christina]

Bunk.

There is sufficient science to support the contention that post-HRT, transgender athletes do not retain any advantage over their cis-women competitors.  There exists to this point not a single example of a transgender athlete dominating his or her sport post HRT.  Joanna Harper (both a medical physicist and a competitive distance runner) did a small but elegant study which showed that, in fact, transgender women post HRT performed at the same percentile in their female competitions as they did previously in male competitions.

Trans male athletes, for their part, experience push back because they are injecting testosterone instead of manufacturing it internally, even though they are mandated to prove that their levels fall within expected norms for males.  You can't win when arguing with bigots.

Nevertheless, one need not add ones voice to theirs.

I'm hope your not calling me a bigot, because that I am not.
But someone who has been a powerlifter for a long time as a man and has already spiked their nervous system to heights well beyond that of a female counter part, even though they now are hormonally and socially female, has a massive advantage.

[Charlotte F]

The IOC have recommended that a MTF athlete:

must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women's competition)

Presumably the body responsible for each sport would take this requirement seriously on a case by case basis so as to avoid physical advantages over cisfemale competitors.  If that body has neglected to do so, it seems unfair to criticise an individual athlete or indeed all trans athletes for the possible failure of the 'system'

In drug testing, a MTF athlete caught with a testosterone level above 10 nmol/L would no longer be able to compete in the female category.  As such tests are random and not just confined to competition, one can't simply choose when or not to use blockers to gain some sort of advantage.  Doing so would be akin to doping

It also seems to me that in most sports there is much more to success in competition than just the physical prowess of the athlete.  From my experience psychology is as important if not more so than sheer strength in gaining those podium positions

What I have noticed personally since starting HRT is that my aggressive, competitive nature has all but gone and it is highly unlikely it will ever get back to the same level as I had last year.  Without this, I doubt I'll ever have an advantage over other female cyclists

This seems to be reflected in the comments I have heard from elite and professional MTF athletes.  More so, there are plenty of MTF athletes across many sporting disciplines and I have yet to hear of one dominating her field in any way

[rmaddy]

I'm hope your not calling me a bigot, because that I am not.
But someone who has been a powerlifter for a long time as a man and has already spiked their nervous system to heights well beyond that of a female counter part, even though they now are hormonally and socially female, has a massive advantage.

I'm not.  I am worried though when you make reference to people flippantly changing their sex to compete.  This is exactly the same ploy used by anti-trans activists.  I recommend that you reconsider throwing it out there.  Hopefully we agree that they are wrong to use it on, say, the bathroom issue.

Factually, I am interested in is what you know that the IOC and IAAF don't. 

[Cindy]

 

I am watching and reading with interest so let's have a full and productive discussion and think twice about our comments and use of language before hitting the send button.

Cindy

[Deborah]

I just find it curious that right now after only six months of sub optimal strength training and minimal strength training background I can lift more than  many women in my age group and weight class competing at National level powerlifting competitions.

I say suboptimal because I'm trying to maintain a decent running base at the same time.

And before I get flamed, my running speed and pace has decreased about 10% from pre-HRT; one of the main reasons I started lifting - to try and get back that 10%.  My strength has increased from pre-HRT.


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[rmaddy]

The rest of the story, to quote Joanna Harper:

"To be clear: This study speaks only to distance running. Trans women who are sprinters may maintain something of an advantage over other female runners in that they tend to carry more muscle mass, potentially allowing for increased speed over short distances. (Whereas extra muscle mass is a disadvantage in distance running.) And since gender transition doesn't affect height, it would make sense that transgender women would have advantages over other women in sports such as basketball, where size is so important, and disadvantages in sports such as gymnastics, where greater size is an impediment."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/do-transgender-athletes-have-an-edge-i-sure-dont/2015/04/01/ccacb1da-c68e-11e4-b2a1-bed1aaea2816_story.html?utm_term=.c71779f81d49


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She left the door open.  Still no study exists which validates the idea that trans athletes have an advantage in sprinting, weight lifting, etc, and so far no trans female has become an elite athlete in any sport.  The author also opines that people are fine with her competing so long as she never wins.  Hers is the only study to date that shows how any athlete ranked within their discipline pre and post transition.

[amandam]

Men have superior lung capacity to women. Do we lose that if we transition?