Enjoying broad support from association management, fans, and fellow players, apparently.

Honest questions, as I just can't figure this out and I want to understand. A WNBA player has come out as non-binary and trans. Can one be non-binary and trans? Isn't being trans selecting a binary status?

What is a trans male doing playing in a league for women?

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/tv/meet-wnba-s-first-openly-non-binary-transgender-athlete-layshia-clarendon/ar-AALAt5c?ocid=msedgntp

I am so confused...

“Clarendon — an eight-year veteran in the WNBA — announced they were trans in 2020. In an Instagram post, Clarendon wrote he was trans and non-binary, meaning she does not identify with the gender assigned to her at birth, but does not consider himself exclusively male or female. Clarendon uses the pronouns she/her/they/them/he/him.”

That's because women's sport was introduced in order to protect women's participation in sport - if we didn't have that, there would be no (cis) elite female runners. It's a protected category, like youth tournaments or the Paralympics.

Now the million dollar question is - what exactly makes women need protection in sports?

First obviously we have to ask, what is a woman? By the current definition, you're a woman if you identify as (or sometimes: are legally recognized as) a woman. But obviously there's absolutely no connection between identification/legal recognition and sports performance. There's no difference in performance between men and pre-op or non-op trans women (not every trans person wants to do surgery or hormones and transness isn't inherently tied to that). For example Caitlyn Jenner, before transitioning was perfectly capable of competing with men.

However, there undeniably is something that makes cis women be unable to compete with men in most sports - this isn't just a hypothetical, if you look at women's world records (which for most sports are the results of decades of competition), they usually aren't enough to even qualify for the men's competition. For example Katie Ledecky, who's an absolute once-in-a-generation talent and world record holder, wouldn't even make men's qualifications.

The reasons for that are complex and not all that very well understood. There are studies that show evidence that testosterone is major factor (which makes sense as testosterone can also be used as a PED), but it's far from the only - for example there's evidence that the impact for testosterone is a lot lower/less clear in people who have XX chromosomes than in people who have XY chromosomes. (Then again there are also people who might have XY chromosomes but are insensitive to testosterone, they obviously don't have an advantage either).

Intersex women like Caster Semenya make up a very small percentage of the human population but they are highly overrepresented in certain sports (at the 2016, there was one runner's podium where not a single woman who had received a medal had XX chromosomes, they also all had testosterone levels was above what is common in women - XY women are 140 times more common among elite female athletes than in the general population, and they're even more overrepresented on the podium. Women with XX chromosomes - aka around 50% of the population - don't have a chance to compete.

So the Federation that regulates running established rules that if you want to compete in the women's competition, but have XY chromosomes and aren't testosterone insensitive, you have to have testosterone levels in the what is considered the "normal female range" (in fact the value they chose, 5 nmol/l would be considered an abnormally high value among women that no healthy cis woman - as in, without conditions such as PCOS - would reach without supplements, the normal range for cis women is between 0.3-2.4 nmol/l). These can be reached for example by taking birth control pills, but also by surgery. The reason why most of the intersex athletes are from Third World countries is that in the first world, these kind of surgeries used to be absolutely standard procedure for intersex children, so that they wouldn't even reach these testosterone levels. Many First World countries now have introduced a gender category of "X" or "Diverse" that can be used for intersex children so they won't receive this surgery.

It's a complicated topic that's probably always unfair to someone but it's too simple to just make the Michael Phelps comparison. Because if a female Michael Phelps arrived, nobody would ban her from competition for having longer arms. She'd be allowed to compete - and she probably still wouldn't be able to compete against regular male swimmers, because the gender differences is just so big.

That's why a women's competition exists - it's to give women a chance to showcase their exceptional athletic skills without being reduced to differences due to sex. There's absolutely no point to women's sport if there's no protection from specific sex-based advantages.

So I think a comparison with for example youth tournaments makes more sense - an adult Michael Phelps was not allowed to compete in U16 youth tournaments - not because of his arms or bodyshape but because he was an adult and the point of youth tournaments is to protect kids from having to compete with adults who are older and therefore more developed than them.

Edit: thank you for the gold! This has made me look up the actual times on Wikipedia. Michael Phelps is currently world record holder in the 400m medley with a time of 4:03.84 at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He was 0:02.32 faster than silver medalist Laszlo Cseh. If we put that advantage on the current women's record (4:26.36 by Katinka Hosszu), even if we use the absolute and not a relative increase, aka make her as much faster as Michael Phelps was compared to the competition at the 2008 Olympics, she'd still be significantly away from the Olympic Selection Time of 4:21.46 that you need to even get to the male event . Obviously this is hypothetical, but according to these numbers a female Michael Phelps, while obliterating the women's records, would still be not even close to even qualifying in the male event.

Hmmm... good... i guess? Maybe? I don't know. At my office there are four multi-stall bathrooms per floor: one womens, one mens, two gender neutral. Everyone can choose what they are comfortable with. That seems like a better solution than open season, but I don’t regularly interact any under-20 trans people so maybe I'm too old-fashioned to understand.

I just find it odd the lengths here to serve a fraction of a percent of the population.

Like catering to rich people, amirite?!

Gonna need some examples

massive tax cuts come to mind first.

Thomas’ current best times racing for the women’s team:

200 free: 1:41.93

500 free: 4:34:06

1650 free: 15:59.71

Thomas’ best times racing as a male the first three years at Penn:

200 Free … 1:39.31

500 Free … 4:18.72

1,650 Free … 14:54.76

NCAA women’s swimming records:

200 free: 1:39:10 (Missy Franklin)

500 free: 4:24:06 (Katie Ledecky)

1650 free: 15:03:31 (Katie Ledecky)

RIP women’s sports