• radiofreeval [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Michael Phelps has the perfect body for a swimmer. No other athlete could compete at the same level as him, no matter how hard they trained. He had a genetic advantage over every other swimmer when he was active. Both Kiptum and Kipchoge are perfect runners and 99% of people can never match their pace, no matter how hard they train. Professional athletics are innately unfair due to genetic advantage. The only difference is it isn’t cis people with an advantage this time.

    • AutomatedPossum [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      That’s way too generous. I call bs on trans women on HRT having any significant advantage in women’s sports. If this were the case, trans women would have dominated sports for deacdes by now. There’s just no empirical evidence to back up the transphobe fantasies about inherent advantages of trans skeletons. Instead, we see that performance is basically the same after just a year on HRT. Lia Thomas is the best example these people have, and it’s not as if she won everything, she went from something like 60th place in the men’s league to low 40s in the women’s league - after postponing HRT for 3 years because she was (rightfully) afraid transphobia would ruin her career. You can’t compete at your best when you torture yourself by delayed transitioning. It just doesn’t work. That pain alone would be enough to explain her performance difference, and that difference isn’t groundbreaking to begin with. But in our political climate, we have athletes who tied with her for second-to-last place complain how unfair it was to swim against her.

      Don’t take people seriously when they are silly enough to take claims about trans women being a threat to fairness in women’s sports seriously. They do not deserve to be humored like this, they deserve nothing but ridicule.

    • SnowySkyes [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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      8 months ago

      I assure you I have no such advantage after having been on HRT for coming on 2 years. I’ve gone from being able to pick up almost 150 pounds to struggling to pick up a 40 pound bag of litter. I’m no longer being asked to move heavy shit because I simply can’t anymore. So I’m curious where such an advantage lies.