Skate Canada won’t host Alberta events due to sports gender law

[MacMadame]

So if born female athletes take testosteron to increase their strength it's doping but if a man identifies himself as women he/she is acepted? Are there no rules about testosterone levels from WADA? Can a man's testosterone level be lowered enough by transgendering to match a woman's?

No, that's not how it works. There are testosterone limits for every sport for the female category at the elite/international level.

Why not do a quick Google search instead of pearl-clutching?

The way I see it, if it isn't an issue for kids before they hit puberty, then why not just require that all competitions below a certain level (novice, pre-novice?) be mixed-gender categories? Seems like that would be a lot easier on competition organizers - less judges/officials if you have 1 event instead of 2 per category/level.

You mean like already happens in many domestic competitions for many of the categories?

As an adult ice dancer, I not only competed against men but against little girls -- which is a lot more unfair as they usually won unless they were really bad because they were "so cute." Yes, a judge at a competition said that to me after I lost to a cute kid who made mistakes when I did not. (The only time I won against a kid was when one kid was completely off the beat the entire dance. )

 

[Kiki5375]

No, that's not how it works. There are testosterone limits for every sport for the female category at the elite/international level.

Why not do a quick Google search instead of pearl-clutching?

Well I did google it and I did not find anything about testosteron level for transgender women. I am trying to understand so this was an honest question since so many of you seem to know everything about the medical aspect of this topic.
Thank you for your polite info though

 

[kwanfan1818]

Well I did google it and I did not find anything about testosteron level for transgender women.

There aren't testosterone levels for transgender women. There are testosterone levels for women, where there are women's categories. All women need to meet them.

 

[tangerine dream]

The way I see it, if it isn't an issue for kids before they hit puberty, then why not just require that all competitions below a certain level (novice, pre-novice?) be mixed-gender categories? Seems like that would be a lot easier on competition organizers - less judges/officials if you have 1 event instead of 2 per category/level.

I can't see them doing that. It's already hard enough to keep boys in the sport as they tend to get made fun of. Competing against girls and losing to them is hardly going to help.

 

[kwanfan1818]

In ballet, another pursuit in which young boys are greatly outnumbered by girls and because of which their peers can make their lives hell, the trend has long been to have separate boys' classes with male teachers.

Every time I see a recital where the young students have to have bunny tails attached to their tights because that makes them "too cute," I want to hurt someone.

 

[gkelly]

The way I see it, if it isn't an issue for kids before they hit puberty, then why not just require that all competitions below a certain level (novice, pre-novice?) be mixed-gender categories? Seems like that would be a lot easier on competition organizers - less judges/officials if you have 1 event instead of 2 per category/level.

At these nonqualifying levels, everyone who signs up for a local competition before registration closes gets to compete.

Across the whole competition, the total number of competitors would be the same regardless of whether there are multiple separate small and medium-sized events at each level or just one big event for everyone who registered at that level.

The total number of skaters would be the same, so the total number of official-hours would be the same, and therefore pretty much the same number of officials.

What might be different is that with more large events and fewer small ones, it would be less convenient to offer officials reasonable-length breaks. For each large event, they'd either be on or off. Which might require more officials total to make sure no one has to be on the stand for two or more large events in a row, with maybe a resurface in between if they're lucky.

 

[Orm Irian]

I can't see them doing that. It's already hard enough to keep boys in the sport as they tend to get made fun of. Competing against girls and losing to them is hardly going to help.

If a small boy's ego is so fragile that he can't handle losing to a person with a different set of genitals, he doesn't need a protected category to compete in, he needs better parenting.

 

[overedge]

I get the sense that a lot of these people shrieking about men "pretending to be women" and invading women's changing rooms have never actually been in a women's changing room.

Guess what?

1) There are women and girls who were born female and have never been anything other than females who also don't want other women to see their bodies. They could be shy, they could feel there is something "wrong" with some part of their body, there could be any number of reasons. In women's changing rooms, women who feel this way tend to get changed in the corners, with a towel or something else draped over them, or in the toilet stall where they can shut the door and have some privacy. No one is running around showing off their body.

Another thing that men tend not to understand: there are no urinals or other fixtures in women's changing room that require the users to show their genitalia. Women do their business in stalls with closed doors.

2) Changing rooms are for changing. Usually every woman or girl in there is changing their clothing as fast as they can so they can go do something else. Despite what you might have seen in porno films, women generally don't hang around in the nude for a long time in there. And a lot of changing rooms at rinks are smelly (thanks, hockey players) and cold, which are also incentives to get in and out as quickly as possible.

3) If someone in a women's changing room is acting inappropriately, like staring intently at other women's bodies for a long time or making questionable comments, you can bet that word will get around very quickly to watch out for that person. Or if their behaviour is really unsettling, they might get reported to the rink management, their coach, or their club. Women generally don't put up with that kind of behaviour in changing rooms because they get more than enough of that sh*t in the rest of the world.

So the idea that a man "pretending to be a woman" is going to go into a women's changing room and wave their junk around in front of everyone and traumatize them is just ridiculous.