Thanks for this piece. As someone generally in the unsure camp on these issues, this was a useful perspective for me and I'll be thinking about it more.
Substantively, just wanted to comment on footnote 1, which I found less convincing than the rest. In the "in theory" scenario, if trans girls were to win every girls' athletics competition, that would strongly indicate that there are meaningful, systematic differences between trans girls and cis girls as groups.
Yes, we can say in any individual case that, well, everyone has different genetics and them's the breaks. But if it really were the case that, consistently, no cis girls could beat trans girls, we've moved to a mirror of the reason that we have gender-separated sports in the first place.
Short people, as a group, probably won't succeed at basketball; so it goes, that's part of the definition. But if we were to enter a situation where cis girls, as a group, probably won't succeed at girls' sports at large -- well, I feel it's clear why that is a problem.
As you say, though, in practice, it hasn't actually reached this point; hopefully it remains so.
Hey, thanks for this! It’s super thoughtful.
Thanks for this piece. As someone generally in the unsure camp on these issues, this was a useful perspective for me and I'll be thinking about it more.
Substantively, just wanted to comment on footnote 1, which I found less convincing than the rest. In the "in theory" scenario, if trans girls were to win every girls' athletics competition, that would strongly indicate that there are meaningful, systematic differences between trans girls and cis girls as groups.
Yes, we can say in any individual case that, well, everyone has different genetics and them's the breaks. But if it really were the case that, consistently, no cis girls could beat trans girls, we've moved to a mirror of the reason that we have gender-separated sports in the first place.
Short people, as a group, probably won't succeed at basketball; so it goes, that's part of the definition. But if we were to enter a situation where cis girls, as a group, probably won't succeed at girls' sports at large -- well, I feel it's clear why that is a problem.
As you say, though, in practice, it hasn't actually reached this point; hopefully it remains so.