The post is about kids though, not men or women. Kids’ sports are already heavily segregated by age because kids entering puberty can gain a massive physical advantage with just 1 year of growth. A kid who goes through 2 years of puberty as a boy and then transitions to a girl could have 6 inches of height and 60 lbs of extra body mass over her peers.
2 years of HRT as a requirement would effectively shut her out of high school sports (puberty 13-15 as a boy, transition to girl, 15-17 HRT, graduate high school)?
This conversation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You also have to remember that things like puberty blockers exist that would delay the onset of that male puberty and with them those kids could start HRT and effectively go through a female puberty.
These kids don’t just decide one day they’re trans, almost all of them they’ve known for years. Most all of the suddenness comes from finally getting up the courage to come out if there is any. I knew at 8 that being a boy felt wrong but I didn’t have the words to express the problem I felt. Especially because the idea of being a girl felt just as wrong for different reasons. Those feelings only intensified as I went through puberty. I didn’t figure out nonbinary was something someone could even be until I was 26.
If there wasn’t such a stigma attached to all of this and people could just get the gender affirming care they need most of these “issues” wouldn’t exist.
Puberty blockers definitely are an option for the kids. The question is what are the sports teams supposed to do? Sports teams can’t force a kid to take puberty blockers.
Ideally they wouldn’t need to force anything. These conversations could just happen openly enough and early enough that those decisions could be made in time for them not to be an issue.
But given that’s not the world we live in, generally what’s been done previously is monitoring by a doctor for things like serum testosterone levels like they already do for HRT regimens. That would unfortunately open the door for situations where a kid might not qualify depending on how early they might be in their transition but unfortunately as long as our mere existence as trans people is questioned and kids are told to wait and suffer through puberty for bodies that don’t align with their identity “just in case” they “aren’t actually trans” because “what if they regret it later?” then there’s not a whole lot we can really do about that aspect.
The post is about kids though, not men or women. Kids’ sports are already heavily segregated by age because kids entering puberty can gain a massive physical advantage with just 1 year of growth. A kid who goes through 2 years of puberty as a boy and then transitions to a girl could have 6 inches of height and 60 lbs of extra body mass over her peers.
2 years of HRT as a requirement would effectively shut her out of high school sports (puberty 13-15 as a boy, transition to girl, 15-17 HRT, graduate high school)?
This conversation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You also have to remember that things like puberty blockers exist that would delay the onset of that male puberty and with them those kids could start HRT and effectively go through a female puberty.
These kids don’t just decide one day they’re trans, almost all of them they’ve known for years. Most all of the suddenness comes from finally getting up the courage to come out if there is any. I knew at 8 that being a boy felt wrong but I didn’t have the words to express the problem I felt. Especially because the idea of being a girl felt just as wrong for different reasons. Those feelings only intensified as I went through puberty. I didn’t figure out nonbinary was something someone could even be until I was 26.
If there wasn’t such a stigma attached to all of this and people could just get the gender affirming care they need most of these “issues” wouldn’t exist.
Puberty blockers definitely are an option for the kids. The question is what are the sports teams supposed to do? Sports teams can’t force a kid to take puberty blockers.
What should the rules be for kids sports?
Ideally they wouldn’t need to force anything. These conversations could just happen openly enough and early enough that those decisions could be made in time for them not to be an issue.
But given that’s not the world we live in, generally what’s been done previously is monitoring by a doctor for things like serum testosterone levels like they already do for HRT regimens. That would unfortunately open the door for situations where a kid might not qualify depending on how early they might be in their transition but unfortunately as long as our mere existence as trans people is questioned and kids are told to wait and suffer through puberty for bodies that don’t align with their identity “just in case” they “aren’t actually trans” because “what if they regret it later?” then there’s not a whole lot we can really do about that aspect.