There should be a bright line test between POST OPERATIVE surgically resembling persons and pre-operative trans people.....if Martina wants to avoid contact with a penis player she is correct to say so but after the surgery and hormone therapy a visibly female player won't be such a physical competitive musculature advantage and Martina should compete against seeded qualified players anatomically correct/ed

I was wondering how people would respond to this topic because free speech is tempered with political correctness and the good humanists we are, we wouldn't want to to offend anyone.

From what I have read, if reassignment occurs before puberty ie, hormones stop biological males from growing tall, having wider shoulders etc. They would then be able to compete against females without an unfair advantage.

I'm not sure what I think about allowing kids to decide what sex they choose to be. It is a serious operation and one hell of a decision for a 9yr old to have to make. Some trans have come to regret the decision later and opted to transition back.

if I have a son who loves dressing in women's clothes, he might well grow to be a happy husband and father who happens to enjoy cross-dressing. Imagine if I'd pressured him into becoming a female when he was a child. Likewise, many lesbians describe tomboy childhoods where they shunned dolls and wrestled with the boys. They grew up to be lesbians but are still happy being female.

We already ban the use of steriods and HGH treatments by athletes for the same reason, that they provide an unfair advantage to those who use them. Athletic competition should be decided by athletic performance, mainly by talent, training, technique and strategy, not by drug use or hormone levels. These are also why swimming banned the use of ultra-fast swimming suits a couple decades ago, because world records were commonly being set by wearing the suit, rather than by talent, training, etc...

What about some women that are naturally larger build and extremely athletic. Should they be banned as well?

The physical advantage does not seem fair. A very complicated subject.

Biologically they are male, but Transgender women are women, IMO. I don‘t think they should compete, but in all other areas, I think they are women. The psychological component is completely acceptable. Can you imagine the former BruceJenner/Caitlyn competing in Women‘s sports in his/her prime? Unless the Olympics removes the gender division completely, this would be bad for women’s sports. If a woman has natural gifts that make her have some unique hormone levels, etc, she is no different from any women as I think, through history, there have always been people unique in their athletic gifts as individuals. Transgender is a woman, but is given hormones to reach that physical state. This is fine, IMO, she i s a woman. To completely develop female body, hormones are part of the transition. But hormones are banned from Olympics for a reason, for all participants. If the playing field will not be even/fair regarding drugs, hormones, blood doping, etc, then it is not Olympics.

Makes perfect sense in an upside down, insane time.

Trans doesn't reflect the body very sticky situation, not denying feelings and desires I'm talking physiology

Probably competition will be ruled out by sports organizations, because sports people are sticklers for no drugs. However, I am for a test of testosterone level for trans-gender athletes that will determine if their level is similar enough to the normal level of the sex they have chosen to be. And they would probably have to measure muscles and strength to be fair to other competitors. I think it would be fairer to find a way to test these attributes to see if they could qualify as competitors. Or is that too difficult for the competitions to test?

It's a tricky question, and one that has been dividing several sports recently - notably cycling, in which a Canadian trans woman recently became a world champion on the track.

My own mind is not made up: if an athlete has an advantage due to having been born male, it seems logical and fair that she should not be permitted to compete and I totally understand the concerns of those athletes who were born female who support that view. However, the IOC and other sports organisations have stringent methods in place to check testosterone levels of trans athletes - despite some people's concern that a man could simply announce that he now identifies as and wishes to compete as a woman and then go on to dominate in his/her chosen sport, this has never happened: the two trans woman cyclists I can think of are both regularly tested, only compete when their testosterone levels fall within the boundaries set by the IOC and lose races far more often than they win them.

Ive not read her comments but at first thought, I am thinking that if a trans woman has the physical advantages of a man, then perhaps it would be an unfair advantage in sports

Don’t see why not. There’s enough discrimination around people who are gay, transvestite, black, Christian, Muslim, left-handed, deaf or autistic.

Let’s quit this bullshit and relate to people as people rather than ‘people with things!,