The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at its 241 mostly small colleges across the country.
The NAIA Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote at its annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes competing in more than 25 sports, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.
According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed participate in women’s sports.
A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in interscholastic competition.
Can trans men compete in men’s sports? Because I’m always told that “women” can compete in men’s sports if they want, but they don’t have the athletic abilities. So what about trans men? They could be taking hormones that increase their muscle mass. So they can play basketball with the men despite not having a penis, right?
Also, can we stop making such a big fucking deal about sports, especially college sports, as if it were anything other than a form of entertainment?
Until college is free college athletics are a major way low income kids can get a college education. Everyone in college sports isn’t thinking about getting drafted into the NBA or NFL. Most are just trying to find a way to pay for college that doesn’t stick them with thousands of dollars of debt.
So they are a BIG deal
They are a big deal for the same reason rich people’s charities are a big deal- government has failed the poor. Athletics should not be a way into college just because you have a physical advantage over other poor people. There is nothing equitable about that. That is, in my opinion, not a defense of college athletics and more than it’s a defense of the Salvation Army.
I agree but as of now our system is what it is. So I personally think it’s less productive to complain about college sports instead of our broken education system.
I would also say that conflating the fact that specific college sports are taken way too seriously and made way too big a deal of doesn’t reflect athletic scholarships as a whole, considering people don’t go crazy about college wrestling or college field sports. When was the last time you heard of a college pole vault star? If there were some sort of “scandal” involving a transgender person in women’s college pole vault, would we even hear about it?
I’m really curious how the majority of cis women feel about this. You’re medically limiting a person’s potential and promising they’ll be competitive but not dominant. I’ve heard there’s no difference, physically. But also that in some cases records have been shattered.
Trans women aren’t these hulking beasts that the right portray. But I can understand people being uncomfortable when athletes are so competitive. But also women, cis and trans, just want to play sports.
I remember a similar (but definitely different) conversation had about a runner with a prosthetic leg too.
There was a football player named Tom Dempsey who had half a foot. Because of this, he had a special shoe that had a flat front and was basically a sledgehammer. And he was a kicker. He held the distance record for field goals for years. But they changed the rules to say you had to have a normal toe on your kicking shoe. Just some similar sports trivia I guess.
Or, and this is wild I know. We can stop treating student athletes like professionals. We made this problem but schools were never supposed to be some kind of professional league with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line for schools.
If the NCAA really cared about fairness they would do something about the suspect and wildly inconsistent officiating.
Simply create trans categories for sports. One for mtf and another for ftm. This is the fairest option to all. Remember, the gender categories in sport exist not because of outdated sexist beliefs, but to ensure a literal fair playing field.
