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[–] 2 points 1 day ago* (3 children)

Trans women forced to compete with the wrong sex (men) should go into long-distance running just to rub it in the faces of bigots. The potential advantages women have, from the article:

Fat metabolism – women have higher fat stores and burn it more efficiently, giving them a steady energy source for longer.

Muscles – women have more oxygen-efficient muscle fibres, known as "slow twitch", that are better suited for endurance activities.

Fatigue resistance – women retain more strength over hours of endurance exercise.

About the only sexually dimorphic feature relevant at all to sports that trans women retain from their natal biology are skeletal features, everything else changes from hormone replacement therapy. In most cases, your sex really is defined by your hormones. Trans sports bans force biological women to compete with biological men. I think we should use the few sports cases where women outperform men to make a mockery of people who claim trans women belong in men's sports.

So I think trans women forced to compete with the wrong sex should use it to their advantage. Trans female athletes should crowd into long-distance running. Make it so men are completely uncompetitive in the field. Make it so no man can ever win in long-distance running, because they're forced to compete unfairly against trans women. Make it so every "men's" category of long-distance running are completely dominated by trans women runners. And the same for any other sport where women tend to perform better than men.

Trans men unfortunately can't pull the same trick. Trans men are really shut out of sports entirely. They're barred by bigotry from competing with cis males, and they're shut out of women's sports because their regular cis-male level of hormones are slandered as "doping" when forced to compete against cis women. When you see a headline about a trans man competing in women's sports, that's a trans guy who hasn't undergone any medical transition. But trans men who medically transition literally cannot compete in any sports league with a trans sports ban.

But at least trans women can rub it in the faces of bigots. We should make it so that men are completely shut out of the upper ranks of long-distance running.

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  • [–] 5 points 23 hours ago

    Just one thing to consider: I don't think ultra long distance running, where women seem to have these potential advantages, has any men's/women's divisions. There are so little participants and it takes such a long time to host these events, it makes no sense to establish any. There's not much money on the line either, it's a very "pure" sport where participants do it for the challenge only.

    As for (regular) marathons, where there are men's and women's division: The article mentions men still retain a ~12% advantage, so this wouldn't work unfortunately.

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