by Profbam
People who claimed “it doesn’t hurt you” or “why do you care?” were hoping that regular individuals would ignore the situation until it becomes too difficult to stop. The evidence of people being punished for not accepting the false idea is why regular people are concerned.
A Vermont high school girls’ basketball team that withdrew from a tournament in February after refusing to play against a team that had a transgender player is no longer able to participate in future Vermont Principals’ Association activities and tournaments, the group said in a news release March 13.
VPA, the state’s governing body for school sports, sent a letter to the Mid Vermont Christian School on March 13 saying the school’s forfeiture, and stated rationale for forfeiting, did “not meet the expectations” of the organization’s policies after MVCS forfeited the February 21 game.
The 2017 review of literature in Sports Medicine worked with a limited amount of data to reach the conclusion that there was no evidence for an advantage for transgendered athletes–that is data are lacking. The paper does not state that transgender athletes do not have an advantage, rather that a conclusion one way or the other cannot be supported.
Since then, more data has come in. The data suggests that even after years of hormone suppression that an athlete who went through puberty before reduction of testosterone will retain half of the advantage of maleness. Reports show that males have about a 15% advantage in speed events and 30% in power events (weight lifting). That is seen with swimmer Lia Thomas whose best time in the 500 as a college male was about 64th in the world. After a year of hormone suppression, her time dropped by 8%, but still fast enough to win the NCAA D-I championship.
A year ago, the sports medicine committee for the World Organization of Women’s Rugby Leagues switched from allowing transgender athletes to banning them from participation. They stated that their review of the data showed that the advantage for speed and power created a safety risk and a lack of fairness.
Thus, there is a choice between political correctness versus fairness and safety.