Anti-Transgender Hate Arguments

So, the other day, I ran across a new anti-trans group here in Alberta (shocker, I know).  This one calls itself "Women and Girls Alberta".  As you might expect, they make the usual assortment of arguments as to why transgender women have to be shoved out of society.  

Now, a few things caught my attention, and I think warrant a moment or two of my time to comment on.  

First is their discussion about crime and in particular violence towards women.

The opening assertion here is that recognizing trans women somehow erodes women's safety.  I want to be clear here:  I don't think anybody is here to discount the impact of violence on women - least of transgender women.  There's a "yabbut" here though: they are going to proceed to claim that transgender women present unique dangers to women because ... they had a penis once. 

There are a series of claims made in this type of argument to establish alleged danger, and I'm going to go through them and explain the problems with the claim and the evidence upon which that claim is based.  

Alberta's Anti-Trans Legislation

So, now that the UCP has rolled out their anti-trans legislation, we can take a long look at it.  Yesterday, they tabled 3 related bills and earlier in the week they tabled their amendments to the "Alberta Bill of Rights".  I'm not the fastest read of law, and I suspect that some of the legislation has been created to tangle the courts up.  So ... this is probably part 1 of a series.  

Anyways, let's dive in.

Trans Athletes ...

So, wayyyy back in 2021, I wrote a piece pointing out that a lot of the arguments about whether transgender athletes (and particularly trans women as athletes) have "intrinsic advantages" in sport are very questionable, and there simply isn't a lot of good science that backs up the claim.  A big part of the issue is that most of the studies seen to date were either comparisons between cisgender men and women, or if they involved transgender people at all, they did not necessarily involve transgender athletes.  

Yesterday, Outsports.com reported on a recent study that actually compared cisgender and transgender athletes in a cross-sectional study.  I would urge you to go read the study (actually, even the Outsports article is a pretty decent summary if you don't feel up to wading through the proper study).  

However, there are some interesting findings in the study that warrant further consideration when examining alleged advantage on a sport by sport basis:  

Transgender women presented lower absolute jump height than CM and lower relative jump height, normalised for fat-free mass, than transgender men and cisgender women (figure 4). These results in this study cohort suggest that transgender women lack lower body anaerobic power compared with the other groups. Transgender women’s higher absolute peak power than cisgender women (figure 4C), coupled with higher fat mass potentially driven by higher oestradiol concentrations (figure 1B), suggest that transgender women had more inertia to overcome during the explosive phase of the countermovement jump, which may lead to decreased performance. [Emphasis Added]

This one little quote is interesting because it aligns with my own personal experience with sports performance over the course of transition, and it contains much of the same basic reasoning that has led me to argue that any claim of "advantage" has to exist on a sport by sport basis, and must be underpinned by solidly done science that actually quantifies the claim instead of merely asserting it.  

Therefore, based on these limited findings, we recommend that transgender women athletes be evaluated as their own demographic group, in accordance with the principles outlined in Article 6.1b of the International Olympic Committee Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination based on Gender Identity and Sex Variations.4

In other words, the findings of this study demonstrate that most current studies that are often bandied about to claim that transgender women athletes have "massive advantages" don't show that at all, and a whole lot more evidence needs to be gathered before the various governing bodies go jumping off in all directions.  

You Got Played, Girl

 On March 19, 2024 the United Conservative Party of Alberta held an event that they called "Let Kids Be Kids" (spoiler alert:  it was an anti-trans/anti-2SLGBTQ/anti-SOGI/"parents rights" rally in reality).  

They brought in a transgender woman from Lethbridge to speak to the transgender case.  I don't know this person, but from their answers to the questions put to them, they clearly lack both research and clinical knowledge in the domain.  Being transgender does not mean that one has spent time in the academic and clinical literature relevant to this domain, and this is a problem.  

Her stated purpose was to engage in dialogue, but quite frankly, she got played.  In a 2 hour long event, she was allocated a grand total of 10 minutes during which the host asked them questions that she had to respond to.  The rest of the 2 hours was given over to opening comments, and presentations by some of the most dishonest players in the Alberta "parental rights" movement - and their presentations destroyed any semblance of "goodwill" and "open dialogue".  She got played for a patsy. 

Let me explain: 

About Alberta's Proposed Ban On Trans Athletes

Among the heartless and cruel things that Danielle Smith announced in her "policy package" about parental rights (anti-transgender policy, really), was an absolute ban on transgender women competing in sports in Alberta. The rationale being that somehow "transgender women have massive advantages in athletics", and somehow that having transgender women playing in women's leagues creates a "danger" to women. 

But, more seriously, does this make any sense from a policy perspective?

Alberta's Proposed Trans Policy

It's been 3 days since Premier Danielle Smith dropped a bomb on Alberta's transgender community, and I'm still reeling.  I'm alternating between being angry with the government, and grieving for the youth that will be most deeply affected by these policies. 

Before I dive into a deeper analysis of what Premier Smith announced, and my thoughts about it, I just want to say to my readers who are not themselves transgender, and may be looking at this as "well, this seems reasonable":  Ask yourself how you would feel if your access to treatment, social validity, and activities were arbitrarily legislated away?  Because that's exactly what's being done to transgender people (not just youth) here. 

Now, onwards into the policy bundle that Premier Smith announced on Wednesday.

On Transgender Athletic Performance

There is an enormous amount of noise being made about the alleged advantage that transgender women have in athletics.  First, let me start off by saying that the topic of athletic performance is not an area of expertise for me, so what follows is largely my opinion, bolstered by observations about what I see in the academic materials published. 

Broadly speaking, the claims of "an advantage" hinge around the development of secondary sex characteristics from a male puberty.  Generally speaking, these claims fall into a small range of categories relating to skeletal structure, muscle mass, and height, and so on.

A superficial look would suggest that a male certainly does have "an advantage" in athletics, and to some extent that is borne out by marked differences between male and female record performances in various forms of athletics.  However, it's a much more complicated discussion when we start talking about transgender athletes.