Gender in sport is not about identity, it's about biology.
Also it creates a huge backdoor to Olympic gold medals. There's nothing that stops turning the female category into all transgender..
Well, except for people born as women who take testosterone, then.
If you are born a certain sex, you should compete in the same sex category provided you haven’t taken any substances to enhance performance. This would mean you are only using what your body naturally produces.
Theres a difference between trans-women and women.
Being trans isn't a choice, but taking testosterone or whatever definitely is. It does not matter if you're male, female, trans, chinese, african or american.. Nobody should be allowed take banned PED's in professional sports.
It is very important to keep this integrity in sports. You could argue that you can let a FtM take testosterone because else he wont be able to compete with the others, but what if he started winning. Will people say he won because he's so good or would it be because he's allowed to take testosterone?
No ifs, no buts.
I disagree. You just cannot be caught taking steroids/testosterone. Plenty of athletes do it and get away with it. Its part of the game, a meta game if you will.
The fallout of a decision like this for professional athletes who are trans is huge. That fallout and the effects from that decision should not at all be taken lightly.
Having an MTF proffesional athlete to compete in the male category is going to probably cause a lot of disphoria. It will also make it much harder from them to be accepted as female. Many people will question "If she is a woman, why is she competing in the male category". Hence it would probably cause many MTF professional athletes to simply decide to drop their profession.
Transitioning is already hard. Adding "drop your profession" to that makes it that much harder. Especially to professional athletes to whom "being an athlete" is probably rather important. Just dismissing these concerns as "easy" is wrong. The impact this will have is huge and deserves significant consideration.
I believe that, on balance, even when considering the above, there are still cases where MTF athletes should be barred from "women's leagues". At least in sports where their biology gives MTF athletes a significant advantage. But that is a close and difficult call to me. Not at all an easy one.
The impact of making women’s competitions an impossibility for non MTF persons seems far greater in comparison.
All athletes have to drop their profession sooner or later.