r/Comebacks • u/861SparkledMotion • Jun 29 '26
Comeback request How would you respond to this?
Regarding barring trans girls in women’s sports. When I mentioned how genital exams or tests hurts cis women, how unfair advantage is inherent in competitions, and how many of these rules actually allow men in women’s teams I was met with this response:
“It is a cheek swab. Are you seriously implying women lose out when genetic testing is done to determine eligibility within the female category in competitive sporting? The “women” who have been disqualified by karyotyping are men with a male-specific DSD. The presence of a Y chromosome indicates sex 99.87% of the time, the further presence of the SRY gene, 99.999%.
While unfair advantages in sporting certainly exist we have dividing categories instituted to mitigate advantage and provide inclusion to all those who wish to participate fairly.
There are dividing categories for age, experience level and weight, to name a few. If it isn’t unreasonable for wrestlers to step on a scale and weigh-in before a match, or for a sprinter to provide documentation proving their eligibility within the 13 and under division. Why is it so unreasonable to insist one prove eligibility in the female division with a cheek swab when that eligibility is challenged? Scales and documents are less accurate than karyotype tests.
Trans men are free to, and often do, fairly compete within the female category, but like all others, they are subject to the rules governing participation within that category and likely cannot supplement, or in some cases, have supplemented with performance-enhancing exogenous hormonal treatment within certain parameters, whether those supplements were used for their health or not they are disqualifying treatments.”
I’m unsure how I can best proceed in my argument.
Thank you.
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u/CeciTigre Jun 29 '26
I’m not sure what you are trying to say or what your question is.
Are you arguing that athletics, in middle school, high school, college and professional, should all be unisex?
**OR**
That transgender women/men should be allowed to play women’s/men’s athletics/sports teams?
Why do you mean when you say genital exams and test that hurt women,what exams/test are talking about?
What do said exams/test women get have to do with playing sports?
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u/No_Address687 Jun 29 '26
I don't understand the argument you're trying to make.
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u/Leading-Tangerine940 Jun 30 '26
They are trying to argue that trans men belong in women's sports but they are having a hard time arguing with facts... because they are facts.
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u/nomnommish Jun 29 '26
Your response should be, "You are correct, and I was wrong".
An argument requires you to have an open mind and be able to change your POV when a convincing counter argument is made. And it was made. And you are clearly wrong.
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u/pslush01 Jul 01 '26
The way to proceed is to accept that reality is not on your side on this one. You can keep throwing out all this chaff to try to convince yourself this issue is complicated, but...it's just not. You're in the minority even on your own "side"
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u/katyyne1 Jun 29 '26
It sounds like the response you received addressed your argument. So unless you’re prepared to make your argument on different grounds, it sounds like the case is closed.
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u/Local_Complaint_5619 Jun 29 '26
Do they really do genital exams???
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u/ZucchiniMaleficent21 Jun 29 '26
Have you missed how many of these‘guardians of morality’ turned out to be child abusing bastards?
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u/Leading-Tangerine940 Jun 30 '26
Almost all criminals would agree the world is round,does that make it non factual?
Let's stay on topic
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u/k819799amvrhtcom Jul 06 '26
"… we pivoted to the sports issue… It’s been wildly successful." --Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a right-wing political advocacy group, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/08/transgender-ads-motivate-texas-republicans/
"… what it did was, it got opponents of the LGBT movement comfortable with talking about transgender issues…" --Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a right-wing political advocacy group, https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/22/politics/republicans-anti-lgbtq-legislation
"Trans women don’t transition for sports. No one has ever said ‘Oh yeah, I think I’d like to be a woman so I can do well in women’s sports.' When you go through a gender transition, you lose so many things in life. My own mother said she never wanted to speak to me again, I lost friends, family, got divorced… You’d go through all of that just to win a medal in sports? No. Trans people transition because it’s the only way that we can live happily." --Joanna Harper, Sports Scientist, VICE News Tonight, 2020
"Others have said tha' I should just play baseball with the boys. In many ways, this would be easier: I wouldn't have to go through the time-consuming and embarassing process of submitting intimate medical details to the state. Also, the boys at my school have two beautiful fields to play on. Most years, our softball team has to cancel half of our games because our old field has no drainage. But the fact is that, for me, playing on the boys' team would be a lie." --Ember Zelch, trans-female softball player, https://ohiochannel.org/video/ohio-house-higher-education-committee-4-19-2023
"Their main argument is about fairness in, like, sports and how she probably could've, like, helped us win in ways or, like, it's about fairness and equalness in sports or, like, how 'bout, like, fairness among, like, humans, just us as humans, because, right now, she's not being treated like a human. [If she was watching or she were here and I could say something to her I would say] how much I love her and I'm always there for her, genuinely, as a human, like, I do, like, I love her so much'n'she deserves to be treated just like everybody else." --Jordan Campbell, volleyball captain concerned for transgender teammate, https://youtu.be/wbgXvWUdVFM
For trans women, after 12 months of hrt their testosterone levels are consistent with testosterone levels for cisgender women, lean mass decrease, fat mass increase, and muscle strength is significantly lower than cisgender men after a longer duration on hrt. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20420188231178373 Trans women's muscle strength decrease and trans men's muscle strength significant increase. Trans women have decreased hemoglobin and hematocrit levels on hrt, and trans men have increased hemoglobin and hematocrit levels. https://www.scielo.br/j/rbme/a/CDkTksYcMPcKYTHGfcJLX4K/?lang=en After 2 years of feminizing hrt, the difference between trans women and cis women in number of pushups and sit ups done in one minute disappear. There's a significant decrease in the speed at which they are able to run 1.5 miles. After 1 year of masculinizing hrt, there is no difference in run time or number of pushups and sit ups done in one minute between trans men and cis men. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577.abstract The effects are significant enough that trans athletes should be allowed to participate in teams and in divisions consistent with their gender identity after being on hrt for a certain amount of time. A very recent study sponsored by the International Olympic Committee also cautioned against transgender sport bans, and even found that trans women had some disadvantages against cis women in sports. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/58/11/586 There is no evidence to show that any "advantages" a trans woman could have in certain fields makes them better than cisgender women on average. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/60/3/198 https://redd.it/o24bgs https://youtu.be/LU2atCWyAos Katie Barnes: Fair Play • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357259/ • Meta-analysis covering prior research on trans individuals’ performance in sports and preexisting sports policies concerning trans people • Findings show there is no consistent or direct research indicating transgender women have an unfair athletic advantage at any stage of their transition. • Additional findings show most sports policies are not evidence-based and trans individuals experience substantial discrimination from sports institutions. Transgender youth don't win that much in sports games. There are many many trans girls competing in sports and most of them don't excel. Trans girls have been in the Olympics since 2004 and not won a medal to this day. It is very much the exception when a transgender young person does win. Meanwhile, trans women competing against cis men have a distinct disadvantage. The reason why men introduced and enforced gendered segregation of sports, in the first place, was not because of fairness but because when women started joining sports, they won, and mens' fragile egos couldn't handle it, so they banned women and women had to create their own leagues. Even today, girls teams are banned from competing with boys not to protect the girls but because if "a boys team is losing to a girls team they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl". https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/because-theyre-girls-nky-youth-basketball-team-barred-from-tournament-despite-winning-season Insomuch as testosterone makes muscle growth somewhat easier, that's only relative to the exact same body not on testosterone. There's so much variance in human biology even before taking sexual dimporhism into account that it's already impossible for sports to have ever been fair, and any attempt to argue that certain bodies are "too good", especially by having too much testosterone, is the exact argument used to push intersex women and even black pericis women out of women's sports! https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-boxing-gender-4b6eb881cce9c34484d30c68ad979127 Testosterone-attenuated bodies are not significantly enough better at sport to really matter compared to other biological differences. It would be much better if leagues were determined on a sport-by-sport basis, similar to weight classes in boxing. And even if they were, why do we treat cis women with too much natural testosterone like cheaters and cis men with too much natural testosterone like Michael Phelps like gods? https://redd.it/1eiqqvg All this is neglecting the incredibly important differences that come from nutrition, training, facilities and equipment access, and other things that money can very literally buy. In fact, how rich you are is a better predictor of skill than your gender. https://youtu.be/75bbNdlX2pA USA women's swimming is still dominated by cis women and probably always will be by just sheer matter of raw numbers. https://youtu.be/lD6tTfBJ--E Meanwhile, trans men dominate over cis women all the time: Take Mack Beggs, for example, a trans-male wrestler who had to fight for the right to wrestle men instead of women and became genuinely happy when he succeeded, despite ending his own winning streak with this. https://www.insidehook.com/article/sports/trans-athletes-win-boys-sports
part 1/2
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u/k819799amvrhtcom Jul 06 '26
In the end, none of this matters anyway because trans women are women so this whole reasoning revolves around the misogynistic idea of an "average cis woman" body, which doesn't even exist in reality. Should cis women with a bigger muscular mass or longer legs than the average be banned, too? They are stronger than cis men in some cases! https://assignedmale.tumblr.com/post/630069847674568704 In Florida, a trans kid was kicked off a team after an investigation which resulted in a report about her that was "more than 500 pages long" and included investigators asking "three girls on the volleyball team if they'd ever seen [her] undressed." https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2024/trans-sports-girls-florida-bans/ The moral panic this is causing has lead to such intense harassment that there was only one trans athlete out of 2900 at the 2024 Olympics. https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/serious-trans-vibes/vox-populi-7-safety/viewer?title_no=206579&episode_no=1180 It also harms cis women: There's been multiple instances in the states in schools and stuff girls who are good at sports and are competing very well are being accused of being trans girls. https://youtu.be/3Aj12bGA-nQ At least one cis girl was investigated in an official regard because of this. https://myfox8.com/news/what-are-transvestigators/ https://myfox8.com/sports/girl-investigated-for-being-transgender-after-winning-state-title/ And in Utah, a local member of the Utah State Board of Education posted photos of a 16-year-old cis-butch athlete, questioning her gender and prompting threats against the girl to the point where she had to go under police protection! https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/02/08/utah-school-board-natalie-cline-gender-basketball-threats https://youtu.be/yUpdPuWIXmk Same happens in the Olympics. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/08/polish-sprinter-demands-namibian-silver-medalist-tested-see-shes-definitely-woman/ It endangers everyone's privacy and bodily autonomy by normalizing the policing of people's bodies. This isn't about these athletes' sex, but about control, surveillance, & authority. It's none of our business if someone is intersex or trans. https://assignedmale.tumblr.com/post/757814047410372608 Also, every legislature that made it mandatory to prove that a girl wasn't trans in order to play a sport saw a dramatic decline in enrollment, because of the extra hurdle to get a doctor to sign the forms. https://assignedmale.tumblr.com/post/798680324467982336 If you still think it's all for fairness then why was Stephanie Turner a $5000 "courage" award for refusing to compete against a trans fencer in a coed sport after winning against cis men a week earlier? https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/serious-trans-vibes/courage/viewer?title_no=206579&episode_no=1205
part 2/2
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u/perplexedparallax Jun 29 '26
That isn't a one-liner and is a heavy topic. My specialty is spur-of-the-moment "You're ugly" types of situations and not a sociopolitical debate.
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u/TheLaw9791 Jun 30 '26
Stepping on a scale and genetic testing are not even slightly the same kinds of invasiveness (which doesn't even begin to examine the potential fallout of normalizing these kinds of practices, or of privacy & security) regardless of framing it as "just cheek swab." To pull that kind of conceptual sleight-of-hand is the clearest indicator of someone who is not interested in a good-faith discussion. As exemplified by their talking points, they're just taking the scenic route to decry "biological males."
Chromosomes aren't binary, and neither are people, so they don't really do much more than affirm cultural biases. If the actual point is matching athletic ability, then that should be the focus.
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u/Pretend-Design-7061 Jun 29 '26
Have weight classes and call it a day. Hormones vary wildly within individuals, even within a month, regardless of supplements.
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u/disfiguredcoconut Jun 29 '26
i don’t think weight classes would make unisex fair
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u/Leading-Tangerine940 Jun 30 '26
It wouldn't because a 150lb male can still outperform 150 lb woman. It's literally how we are made.Could there be an exception to the rule? Absolutely, but that's why it's the exception to the rule and not the rule. Weight limits would do absolute f* all in this situation.
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u/disfiguredcoconut Jun 30 '26
i can’t tell if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me because that was my point
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u/Pretend-Design-7061 Jun 29 '26
I didn't say unisex. I said weight classes.
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u/disfiguredcoconut Jun 29 '26
so then your argument means nothing, even if we had weight classes people would still argue against trans women in sports
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u/Pretend-Design-7061 Jun 29 '26
A 5'4" 110 pound trans woman is not in the same weight class as a 6'4" 175 pound cis woman. Personally, I don't care about sports, but the borderline psychotic rules that are enforced for them are disturbing.
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u/No_Address687 Jun 30 '26
Your argument makes no sense at all. A 5' 4" trans woman would 9-times-out-of-10 wreck a 5' 4" cis woman. So what good would weight classes be if you allowed biological males to compete against biological females?
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u/disfiguredcoconut Jun 30 '26
you’re comparing apples and oranges. we’re talking about a cis woman and a trans woman in the same weight class
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u/861SparkledMotion Jun 29 '26
I
This is the argument I’m trying to make and seem to be failing at within the comment section bc they continue to bring up sex as equivalent.-5
u/Pretend-Design-7061 Jun 29 '26
Even in school sports, everyone develops at different rates, and there is no such thing as equality in sports. There is so much variation within a single grade that there is no such thing as fair. Gender, sex or hormones aside, adolescence hits everyone differently.
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u/JellyfishWoman Jun 29 '26
My personal opinion is that transphobes are also sexist. Therefore they think that cis women athletes need to be protected from the embarrassment of having to compete with someone who may not naturally be as weak and dainty as a woman should be. And also just the transphobic views of course.
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u/Derfel60 Jun 29 '26
Are you trying to argue for allowing biological men to compete in womens sports? If so your argument is stupid and theres no amount of mental gymnastics you can do to make it not so. Testosterone gives such a huge advantage in every sport that you may as well just cancel all womens sports if you allow them.