As a Liberty-Minded guy I try to be tolerant of many alternative lifestyles that don’t harm me. I must say the whole Transgender thing is a bit alien to me. Mostly because I get being straight, and through that I get being gay, and knowing many gay people and hearing the struggles with family and relationships they go through, I know its not a “Choice” as many say. Further I’ve known several gay people who REALLY fought the good fight to live the straight lifestyle before finally realizing they are who they are, and there’s nothing they can do to change that.
I also understand body dysmorphic disorder, and have seen several cases of transgendered people who were sad and unhappy people as one gender, and elected to change their gender to be sad and unhappy people of another gender.
Still like most groups there are many types within each, and I’ve heard many stories from well-adjusted transgendered people. I’ve also been told in confidence from some friends that while they aren’t terribly interested in changing their gender, that they fall into the transgendered spectrum, and while I may have never considered them a man living in a woman’s body, or a woman living in a man’s body, when they confessed that to me it suddenly clicked.
Still this story is very different from all of that:
Born a man, Fallon Fox became a woman through surgery and then trained to fight in mixed martial arts.
Now that she has won her first two bouts — both in the first round — she has gone public as a transgender fighter, the first on record in a popular sport that some consider as the successor to boxing.
“The reaction has been positive,” said Fox, 37, who revealed her story recently to Sports Illustrated after a journalist with another publication began to investigate her private surgery. “It’s just some people, some of society doesn’t get it yet. And this is what we’re trying to do now is to inform people and let them know about transgender athletes.”
When asked if it’s fair for a man-turned-woman fighter to face another woman in the ring, Fox said there was “no unfair competitive advantages.”
What was unfair, her last opponent and her manager say, is how Fox didn’t disclose until after the fight that Fox had a sex change operation.
I think this really pushes the lines on the gender separation in professional sports a bit too far. We have rules where athletes cannot take steroids or other hormones to give them an advantage, and we have bodies of rules to verify that people competing in sports are indeed the gender they claim.
While this case may not be as sinister as an athlete juicing up on illegal drugs to enhance their bodies, or a man posing as a woman to compete in what is biologically a less competitive field of sports, this person biologically speaking is neither a man nor a woman, and depending on the biological time of the the reassignment she may posses some body morphology closer to that of a man than a woman.
Frankly I don’t see this as something that needs too much regulation as gender reassignment right now is VERY rare, and of that group, most don’t elect to enter professional competitive sports.
Still I think the complaints about lack of disclosure to be VERY valid.
Kind of reminds me of The Ringer….”Hello. My name is Jeffy and I like to, eat apples.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6NABK5IQc0
You know, I may be a little old, but I really don’t have a Dog in this whole LGBT Marriage/No Marriage Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell “Societal Debate”.
And I don’t think any Trigger does either.
Which is where my Political Mindset is coming down to. I don’t give a Damn who or what you are, as long as you are on the side of the RKBA.
“this person biologically speaking is neither a man nor a woman”
I find this statement somewhat confusing (granted it has been 20 years since I had biology or physiology) so maybe you can clarify something. I would say that biologically speaking this person is a man, even if socially she is a woman. All of her cells have DNA that say she has an X and a Y chromosome which biologically (or genetically) means she is a man. Hypothetical: if she left some dna at a crime scene, they would analyze it and come to the conclusion that she was a man. Am I missing something? I understand that she has altered her body to look like a woman’s and probably taken a dose of hormones to help affect that change, but that doesn’t change the underlying biological fact that she has an X and a Y chromosome.
That being said, I agree that no government needs to get involved in the regulation of this. Sports bodies should consider it now and how it will be handled. In this woman’s case, she has basically been doping (albeit unknowingly) for the entire time of her life before she became a woman. On the flip side, if a woman becomes a man and wants to compete, biologically she will probably be at a disadvantage, however, as part of the gender re-assignment, she will be provided a healthy dose of hormones (i.e. doping) to affect the transition which may provide her an advantage.
Disclosure is an absolute must if the sport is to have any integrity. By the same token, I have no problem with athletes doping. What I have a problem with is the non-disclosure of doping. If Sports organizations want a no-doping policy, that is fine, perhaps there is a market for a doping sports organization (although probably not, because if everyone is doing it then there shouldn’t be any advantage – on the other hand, from what I have read, professional cycling has a large percentage of dopers, so maybe there is a market afterall).
A DNA sample would show an XY sex chromosome genotype, you are correct, but that does NOT mean the person is male or female. Think of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Acress Jamie Lee Curtis is one of the more famous examples. She has an XY Genotype but a Female phenotype, as her body is incapable of responding to androgen hormones. Since all humans start out as female, and hormones induce masculine traits change the baby from female to male. (Fun fact, that seam that runs from your urethra across your scrotum down to your anus is in fact the vestigial vestage of your pre-natal vulva opening.)
For hormonal sex changes an Androgen isnsensitivity is induced by medication, and estrogen is suplimented. Male to female transgenders can grow small breasts, they lose body hair, and if they have pattern hair loss, they re-grow hair. In other words they start losing secondary sex traits. But some sex traits like the skeletal differences between men and woman (ie Broad shoulders in a man, or wide hips in a woman, or height) aren’t lost, and these mophilogical differences could make a difference in fair competition.
So while your observations are indeed correct, what makes us our gender is VASTLY more complicated, and therefore what gender this person is is VASTLY complicated.
Also I don’t get why the US Government has been involving itself in sports. Take Baseball, the clubs, their and stadiums are all privately owned, and the Commissoner of baseball is employed by the collective of the sport…so why does the government care about what they do? MMA being a much smaller and less-organized sport I think the government should have even LESS interest.
In this case disclosure is simply for intregrity.
Acress Jamie Lee Curtis is one of the more famous examples. She has an XY Genotype but a Female phenotype
i had no idea but it makes a lot of sense. (says the girl who works for a genetics lab)
I don’t care much about sports. They always seemed like fun games as a child, but a sincere waste of time as an adult.
That said, it seems to me that a transgender person would have an unfair advantage in a physical sport like MMA and don’t think it should be allowed. However, I don’t think the Federal Government has any place in that decision.
As far as the broader subject of transgender, gay, what-have-you. I believe that people are just people. I don’t care what someone’s sexuality is, or what gender someone was/is. I treat people how they present themselves. Including the well over 6′ tall linebacker that used to come to where I worked years ago in a flowery sun dress. She (he… dude made an ugly woman) remarked once how she always had issues when she went elsewhere. I, on the other hand, treated her like she was just another customer. Why? Because she WAS just another customer.
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Reputo beat me to this one. While I can see that Androgen insensitivity can muddy the waters, and there are some seriously BS stats out there (ranging from 1 in 13,000 to 26,000 in live birthed children). We know that there is going to be a whole suite of degrees of expression and at that point, is anyone correct to expect that competitive judges are going to pre-screen prospective participants based on phenotype and their muscular morphology? That’s just a discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen, but the fact is that this is where blanket policies are most fair.
Have some knowledge here, from my studies back when…
Body performance is strongly influenced by androgens vs estrogens. So if you are on the latter long enough the advantage goes away, since most transsexuals opt for surgery specifically to dismiss the source of androgens that moves them faster to female performance.
The whole question of male vs female is much muddier. What about XXY and XYY
and a few other flavors that often occur. Then you have various other genetic causes
as well as those introduced by environmental chemistry, DES comes to mind. This is where phenotype, morphology and the whole mental expression of what a person is
tends to get, complex, or simple, if your not hung on unimportant details.
Last I can maybe add a bit more on the gay vs transgender. Everyone in life has maybe two or three things that defines who they are. Gay is who you want to love, transgender is best of my knowledge about who you want to be and is entirely separate
from who they may wish to bed with. So if you apply context things like a male to female transsexual could also be gay as in lesbian.
Two things come to mind. Never underestimate the complexity of humans. Pigeon
holes are not even for pigeons.
Eck!
Yeah, maybe I was rambling a bit, but I was in no way saying that trans-gender = Gay or anything close. It seems that trans people come in every sexuality. Further I know of several cases where a straight individual converted to essentially a gay transgender, but also there are gay people who become heterosexual transgenders.
My only real concerns with the whole issue was medical ethics. There are some deeply troubled people who have opted for gender reassignment, and frankly with those cases I saw it as body dismorphia, and from my very armature viewpoint, think they would have been better served treating that issue over changing their gender….much like we don’t give an anorexic gastric bypass surgery, instead we treat why they feel they need to be thinner when they are already emaciated.
Still those were some of the more “newsworthy” trans cases, and I’ve encountered some of the more emotionally balanced people, and heard the stories of people who are now happy for the first time in their life in a reassigned body.
Yes, its complex. Like the anorexic/bariatric, practitioners make every effort to verify and assure that they are dealing with transsexual for surgery and not a opposing spectrum transgender that is really a crossdresser and deeply enmeshed in the paraphernalia. That is where bad things happen. Often the whole process is simple verification and then unraveling their life call it reverse puberty and running it forward as they acquire normative lifestyle and interactions in their chosen gender. That works the same way for M to F and F to M. However there are standards out there and generally the process is not a weekend thing with those I’ve known taking years to complete the steps leading to living in role and eventual surgery. The doctors
and other professionals understand well that ethics and do no harm rule first. So the general course of therapy includes living in role before any non-reversible steps are taken. For most it’s quite forfilling to see those that were formally broken at some level and truly in need emerge as complete people.
The body body dismorphia model doesn’t fit as the base assumptions are counter. As part of the psychological checks that is an axis that is reviewed. The usual check is if the male or female specific attributes were replaced with their alter there would the body be acceptable.
The whole disclosure thing is one that I don’t understand and likely lies in the crux of then problem, the word sex. Generally people are private and sex change doesn’t seem to alter that so unless its seriously someones business its private. The response is generally NYOB (none of your business)! Its fair in serious sports to do the check but unless the results say cheat, privacy is expected. The key cheat is doping and not what you claim to be. For every one else its right up there with grabbing someones crotch (TSA!) and announcing boy or girl loudly. Not many would appreciate that happening to them. FYI for female to male requires testosterone with its advantages and liabilities,
is that doping if he competes in male sports? In both cases once surgery has been completed the resulting loss of gonads require the sustained taking of hormones appropriate for the new gender.
I figure this last line will make half the guys cross their legs and wince. However the best comments I’ve heard is a man/woman would never remove those xxxxxx (fill in the blanks).
I became and engineer for that reason, people are hard to understand, harder to fix.
Eck!