(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The solution to the school transgender war that would truly make sports safer and fairer [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-14 Mike Males Advocates backing laws and bills across the country to ban male-to-female transgender students from school athletics typically cite points such as Psychology Today’s 2012 article reporting that "men have greater cardiovascular reserve, with larger hearts, greater lung volume per body mass, a higher red blood cell count, and higher hemoglobin than women." These advantages are "most important for success in sports such as strength, speed, and endurance" and give male-to-female transgenders a purported advantage against cisgender women. Biologically-based unfairness has always been a feature of sports, and it needs to be addressed. The average height of a high school basketball player is 6 feet, 5 inches for boys and over 5 feet, 8 inches for girls. The average college football player is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 207 pounds. These average athlete heights are attained by fewer than 10% of men and women, even in adulthood. Thus, well over 90% of high school students are at a severe genetic disadvantage in the many major sports in which height, reach, and stretch confer advantages, such as basketball, football, baseball/softball, volleyball, lacrosse, hockey, tennis, and track. Similar genetic gaps prevail for speed and strength. Why should a student born to be 5 feet, 1 inch tall and weigh 100 pounds have to compete with, and risk injury from, a student born to be 6 feet 5 and 250 pounds? There is a simple solution that largely solves the gross unfairness inflicted on millions of school athletes extending far beyond the tiny number of female transgender athletes, and that is to reform sports divisions along tests of athleticism rather than arbitrary gender and school-size groupings. Students going out for school sports (and perhaps those enrolling in gym classes) would be classified based on height, hemoglobin (endurance), strength, speed, reach, and other standard measures of athletic ability applicable to each particular sport and assigned to athletic divisions based on prowess, not demographics. Large schools would have more divisions – say, quartiles of athletic ability – in which the highest division generally would have taller, faster, larger, and stronger students. Boxing and wrestling already employ size criteria. Testing could be flexibly designed, so that those whose tryout scores placed them in one division could be re-assigned if their abilities changed – an option that would apply to transgenders whose hormonal levels evolve over time. Having athletes compete based on similar levels of scientifically-based athletic qualifications would avoid imposing arbitrary and discriminatory demographic assumptions to ban all members of a group from teams for which they are otherwise qualified. It would allow smaller schools that could field high-level teams to compete with larger schools rather than being excluded from higher divisions based solely on school enrollment. It would also reduce injury risks to athletes of smaller body size, who would tend to be assigned to divisions with similar-sized athletes. Individual ability and willingness to practice and condition would replace arbitrary all-boys’ and all-girls’ teams that must deploy intrusive, often inconclusive hormone testing, school-enrollment divisions, and male-to-female transgender banishments. In practice, males would likely dominate many higher divisions, but no one would be assigned or banned based on rigid prejudices. Because major sports are designed around male strengths, redesign of some sports should be considered. For example, moving the tennis service line back three feet, an old idea, sharply reduces the dominance of height and reach in the serve. Those seeking to bar transgender girls from girls’ sports insist they are not bigots or phobic. They simply want fairness. They’re right in their general concern that luck-of-the-draw genetic endowments are, on their face, unfair. Reforming sports to reward individual athleticism and hard work promotes fairness and safety, not dictating capricious and prejudicial barriers. Conversely, anti-transgender groups that would not agree to science-based sports reforms that truly promoted fairness and safety would expose their goal as simply bigotry: to punish and ban an entire group they unreasonably fear and hate. Mike Males is content director for YouthFacts.org and formerly taught sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/14/2187231/-The-solution-to-the-school-transgender-war-that-would-truly-make-sports-safer-and-fairer Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/