That Trans Thread

[Belacqua]

If they can test for steroids, there’s no reason they wouldn’t test trans athletes for estrogen and T-blockers. The fact that those drugs do a number on your physical performance is, frankly, a big part of why they’re allowed in women’s sports in the first place. It’s one of relatively few domains where being assigned male at birth can potentially give a woman a material advantage. And if it turns out that something important for transitioning like hormones can actually negate that advantage, that’s great.

If trans women were required to be taking estrogen and or T-blockers, it might alleviate some of the objections people have to trans women competing in women's leagues. The playing field would be considered more level, probably.

Still, I don't think that a person MUST be on those treatments to be considered a trans woman. Some trans women want those treatments, no doubt. Others would like the treatments but haven't started them yet, for whatever reason. Still others might be perfectly happy to be a trans woman without planning to do the treatment -- it's not for us to say that a trans woman MUST be trans in a way which you and I determine. 

So if sports leagues compromised by requiring certain hormonal levels or other tests, that might satisfy some people. But I suspect that trans women who haven't had the treatments would still argue that they are really women, regardless of what the hormone testing says. And since they are really women they have the right to compete against other women. 

Have you heard anything about who is proposing this kind of standard for determining who can be considered eligible for women's leagues? Are the anti-trans people satisfied by this? Are there trans women who find the ruling too strict?

That fell apart because it turned out that trans women needed to go on hormones in order to be allowed on any team.

I don't know anything about the movie, or the Daily Wire. Did the sports league start the rule about hormones simply because the men in wigs were obviously fakers? Is it applied more generally?