LMAO. What is reality?

[mattemate]

While there might be an equitable way to do this, I seriously question if it is attainable.

See my previous post and you'll understand why this is not actually possible.

 

[DoctorTaco]

first off @ChickenBrother i appreciate your respectful tone and the points you bring up. I’ll address them earnestly, no snark or attitude intended. It’s refreshing considering how sherdog can be on hot button issues.

While there might be an equitable way to do this, I seriously question if it is attainable. Are they going to require all trans women to be under a T-level maximum? Require them to maintain that level for a minimum period to lose the residual effects of having been a man? It would be like USADA-style protocol for all trans women and I don't see any organization stepping up to pay for that. Will all trans-competitors be required to pay for their own testing? Good luck getting that mandated.

i could easily see a blood panel for all competitors to make sure no one is doping regardless of gender. Ammy mma fighters are required to do annual blood work so there’s already a precedent there in some regard.

Even if you adjust for the physiological differences (which I don't see getting enforced any time soon), you still have the social differences in upbringing between the two genders. A trans woman who grew up as a boy would have been treated as a boy, had the opportunity to compete on the boys wrestling team, been around other boys doing boy things, among which are contact sports and combat sports in particular, much more so than girls.

I appreciate the concern here but this opens up questions regarding how all kids were raised and how it would affect their training. Do we need separate divisions for competitors with siblings because they rough house more? separate the kids raised by single mothers bc their old man wasn’t there to teach them to be manly? And you’d have to answer to the cis women who were raised rough, Tom boys that grew up doing all those traditional masculine things- do you consider that enough of an advantage to not let them compete against girls who’s parents forced them into dance and pageants?

Most Judoka, BJJers and some wrestlers have rolled with women in training. The chasm between the average trained man and his female counterpart is fucking enormous. Like an elite female will get owned by a diligent male hobbyist at the same weight because the male advantage in explosion and strength is all but insurmountable barring an equally insurmountable skill disparity. I'd argue the difference between the average trained woman and the average trained man is greater than the difference between a natty trained man and a same weight dude blasting PEDs.

this is a reasonable thought process. I’d be curious to see how juice heads of a certain weight compete against someone with equitable weight and training. My experience in the power lifting world tells me they separate the juice heads from the nattys for a reason. One could probably look at powerlifting contest results by weight class in the natty and juice head division to see how much of a difference there is.

So unless you control for these disparities (not likely), you're putting normal women in a position they shouldn't be. It's like Sterling or Anthony Smith getting blasted in the face with an illegal knee and being given the "choice" to continue or not. That's a lose/lose decision. For normal women, that's a choice between 1) Facing opponents with anywhere from a small to an insurmountable physical edge OR 2) being labelled an out of touch bitch, losing friends, scholarship, etc.

I agree that the discussion and decorum around the topic has gotten out of control. No one should treat a person that way regardless. If they were afraid to compete that’s perfectly reasonable. I’d like to think the more trans folk were welcome into combat sports the more trans training partners people would have. The more trans training partners people had the more they’d get opportunities to see for themselves how they stack up. That might lead to them being more comfortable competing against trans athletes as well.

OK, let's set the record straight on something. This is where a comprehensive background in REAL science comes in.

Have you ever wondered why on average a man is stronger than a woman of the same size and muscle mass, even if they both train? There's a reason for it, and it cannot be changed, no matter what one does.

You have to look at a cross section of muscle and have a basic understanding of muscle contractions in order to get the point I'm making here.


The reason that a man is on average stronger than a woman with the same muscle mass is that within the fassicle of a muscle he will have a greater number of smaller muscle fibers. This gives an overall greater surface area to male muscles. Specifically, there are more actin and myosin fibers in male muscles of the same mass as female muscles, and that means more myosin heads, which are the "oars" that cause the muscle contraction. How many more?
Given the same muscle mass, a man will have about 30-40% more actin-myosin filaments than a woman. This is due to the fact that men have a higher proportion of smaller, more powerful muscle fibers. These fibers have more actin and myosin filaments, which are the contractile units of muscle.
View attachment 1002422






Let's look at the numbers for weight lifting.

View attachment 1002417

These are the closest weight categories for powerlifting available for comparison. These women are about 7% heavier than the men, but the men are 47% stronger. Read that again. Men are 50% stronger than women. With the greater number of filaments in addition to the anatomical differences, the major factors are accounted for. No amount of hormones or surgeries will ever change this, as the number is set at birth. Read that again. The number of muscle fibers within a muscle is set at birth. Humans cannot grow new muscle fibers, and cannot lose existing muscle fibers.

Men are stronger than women. We all know that, but now you know why.

Great post. Truly, I appreciate this. I’d never had the science broken down like that. I’d like to read more for myself and better understand why a blocking male hormones and injecting female ones wouldn’t affect someone’s strength, lifting numbers, etc.

thank you too @mattemate for keeping a level head and talking facts instead of heated opinion. It’s helpful to the convo. I am a bit of a scientist myself- but sadly it’s in the sweet science so I’m useless anywhere but a boxing gym

 

[ChickenBrother]

first off @ChickenBrother i appreciate your respectful tone and the points you bring up. I’ll address them earnestly, no snark or attitude intended. It’s refreshing considering how sherdog can be on hot button issues.


i could easily see a blood panel for all competitors to make sure no one is doping regardless of gender. Ammy mma fighters are required to do annual blood work so there’s already a precedent there in some regard.

I appreciate the concern here but this opens up questions regarding how all kids were raised and how it would affect their training. Do we need separate divisions for competitors with siblings because they rough house more? separate the kids raised by single mothers bc their old man wasn’t there to teach them to be manly? And you’d have to answer to the cis women who were raised rough, Tom boys that grew up doing all those traditional masculine things- do you consider that enough of an advantage to not let them compete against girls who’s parents forced them into dance and pageants?


this is a reasonable thought process. I’d be curious to see how juice heads of a certain weight compete against someone with equitable weight and training. My experience in the power lifting world tells me they separate the juice heads from the nattys for a reason. One could probably look at powerlifting contest results by weight class in the natty and juice head division to see how much of a difference there is.

I agree that the discussion and decorum around the topic has gotten out of control. No one should treat a person that way regardless. If they were afraid to compete that’s perfectly reasonable. I’d like to think the more trans folk were welcome into combat sports the more trans training partners people would have. The more trans training partners people had the more they’d get opportunities to see for themselves how they stack up. That might lead to them being more comfortable competing against trans athletes as well.

Likewise, I appreciate the respectful tone bro. I know you've been training yourself and others for a long time and you know your shit.

Re. social conditioning, I don't think this can be disregarded. Even if we disregard parenting style (which as you state has a big impact), I'd argue societal norms are more impactful. I think we can agree that institutionalized racism is a bad thing. A group of people treated differently from birth learns to think of themselves differently, act differently and that mentality doesn't go away if racial barriers are removed once they've reached adulthood under the prior regime. Well, society at large treats men and women much more differently than any two examples of different races. Years of living as a male means years of being exposed and pushed toward (by society) behaviors and activities that females aren't, even in current "woke" times.

Re. physiological differences, we know that testosterone is heavily associated with strength, physical toughness, recovery and other prototypical male characteristics. A healthy natty man has test levels between 300 and 1000 ng/dL. For women, it's 15 to 70 ng/dL. That's 15x to 20x as much test for men on average. But even without this data, the disparity is obvious to anyone who's trained with women in any combat sport. And I'd argue the powerlifting records @mattemate posted actually understates the delta. Because for a skill sport, proficiency is about much more than just static strength. Higher test means better recovery, more muscle making you less injury prone. So you can train harder, more often, allowing you to become more skilled. If you've spent years with higher test levels, you have a huge training advantage even if those levels are equalized to normal women later in life.

Re. trans athletes in training, I have no issue and I don't think the majority of folks would either. But when it comes to competition and awards, scholarships, recognition, trans women shouldn't be eligible until and unless the physiological disparities at a minimum can be demonstrably equalized. That just sucks for normal women who spent their lives training as biological women and deserve to compete against the same.

 

[mattemate]

Likewise, I appreciate the respectful tone bro. I know you've been training yourself and others for a long time and you know your shit.

Re. social conditioning, I don't think this can be disregarded. Even if we disregard parenting style (which as you state has a big impact), I'd argue societal norms are more impactful. I think we can agree that institutionalized racism is a bad thing. A group of people treated differently from birth learns to think of themselves differently, act differently and that mentality doesn't go away if racial barriers are removed once they've reached adulthood under the prior regime. Well, society at large treats men and women much more differently than any two examples of different races. Years of living as a male means years of being exposed and pushed toward (by society) behaviors and activities that females aren't, even in current "woke" times.

Re. physiological differences, we know that testosterone is heavily associated with strength, physical toughness, recovery and other prototypical male characteristics. A healthy natty man has test levels between 300 and 1000 ng/dL. For women, it's 15 to 70 ng/dL. That's 15x to 20x as much test for men on average. But even without this data, the disparity is obvious to anyone who's trained with women in any combat sport. And I'd argue the powerlifting records @mattemate posted actually understates the delta. Because for a skill sport, proficiency is about much more than just static strength. Higher test means better recovery, more muscle making you less injury prone. So you can train harder, more often, allowing you to become more skilled. If you've spent years with higher test levels, you have a huge training advantage even if those levels are equalized to normal women later in life.

Re. trans athletes in training, I have no issue and I don't think the majority of folks would either. But when it comes to competition and awards, scholarships, recognition, trans women shouldn't be eligible until and unless the physiological disparities at a minimum can be demonstrably equalized. That just sucks for normal women who spent their lives training as biological women and deserve to compete against the same.

Since there are so many factors, I think we need to make it into discrete categories.
XX and XY.
This is what the Olympics did for years (they had sex tests).
And I would say, barring trans divisions, MTF cannot compete against women, but FTM can compete against men if all parties consent.
This is NOT a double standard. A double standard is based upon all other things being relatively equal, and we've already established that men and women are not equal when it comes to strength or athleticism.

 

[GreatSaintGuillotine]

It's an open class and NAGA gives you the choice to say no to these kinds of matches. She agreed and won. I genuinely see no issue here. As long as all parties are aware and agree then who gives a fuck?

I've seen some suspect matches involving trans people but this ain't one of them.

 

[GreatSaintGuillotine]

if a bio female refuses a match with a trans female (a bio dude), could that impact the bio female's ability to win/rank in a tournament? I'm just curious how it would work if a bio female and trans woman end up in the finals/semi-finals and there is a refusal

Depends on the comp and size of the bracket

 

[Paolo Delutis]

so if a cis woman was treating another cis woman roughly it would be ok by you? Or is it the rough nature of the roll that you have a problem with?

what bio advantages do you mean? And would you be ok with a cis woman competing against other cis women if they were bigger, stronger, had higher T levels, etc?

Yes because that would just be two.men grappling with one of them having more test in them...like normal mens BJJ lol

Another other then this shouldn't exist...

Its biological proven men are stronger and more durable then women... that's not sexist its science...are their outliers sure .

But the general genetic structure of the male anatomy shows and proves that they are anatomically stronger and capable of having more functional muscle then any born woman could ever had...

 

[randomg1t]

oh come on man

you got rage baited

that match is from NAGA

it was in the absolute bracket, hence the size difference

NAGA policy with trans competitors is such that bio females can agree or disagree with the match ahead of time

both competitors agreed

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST

your clip cuts out before the smaller competitor wins the match with a vicious high elbow guillotine

yes but how can we display our phobia when you put it all rational like that?

obviously gay and trans dudes are the most pressing issue right now.