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For those who don't follow cricket closely, there are a few significant rule variations for women's cricket - namely a smaller/lighter cricket ball and reduced field\boundary dimensions.

There are also implicit limits in the upper end of cricket performance- Elyse Perry holds the record for the fastest womens cricket ball bowled ag 130.5 kph, while Shoaib Akhtar holds the overall record at 161.3 kph. There's an interesting article here that goes into more detail on the precise physical characteristics that influence bowling, where they define male fasf bowling at >122.9kph and female fast bowling at >97.8, a 30% ish difference: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35259727/

This is all to say that there are very clear and established differences between men and women's cricket in the interest of safety and fairness already baked into the laws of the game. If you accept that male puberty leads to a disproportionate advantage in bone density/muscle mass vs cis women, then this decision is sensible. The exact numbers are hard to quantify, skill and natural technique plays a huge part in cricket, but on the bell curve of something like pace bowling the risk of a trans woman significantly outperforming cis women is undeniable.

Sport is the most boring show on TV by far, and yet the actors are paid insane amounts. The fandom is the most toxic bullshit out there and the show runners encourage it.

Cancel sport already, it's really dumb.

In theory trans women are superwomen and then in reality they're weaker and derpier than the top female athletes and all of this is just a scare tactic because these theories havent played out in the real world at all.

On the sports angle, esports looked like it would finally be the place for me to be a fan because the athletes are relatable to me. But no, they got bought up by the Saudis, so all I get for relatable media is drag queens and furries or whatever.

The ultimate reason it's wrong to ban transgender people from competing in athletics competitions is that the implication is that testosterone can be considered a performance enhancing drug -- even if the athlete in question is well within hormonal levels of any other cisgender athlete in the same sport.

If that's the case, then it opens the door to banning other athletes for exceeding the testosterone limit, and guess what? Cisgender women with African heritage naturally produce more testosterone than the average woman world-wide. So banning transgender athletes leads to potentially banning African women which is obviously racist and wrong to do.

Also, poly cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that affects about 1 in 10 women and a very common side effect of PCOS is elevated testosterone levels. So 1 in 10 women would be banned for medical reasons outside of their control. And banning people for a medical condition is ableist and obviously wrong to do.

And, ultimately, sports aren't fair. We try to make them equitable by making the rules universal, but biological advantages are just part of sports. If we start banning athletes for hormones, why not ban athletes for being taller than average? Why not ban athletes for having better vision than average? Or better peripheral vision? Or faster reflexes? If only the absolute average, or below average people were allowed to compete then nearly half of all people would be unable to compete.

Plus, the vast majority of athletes say that they don't want transgender people to be banned from their respective sports.

And not to mention that it's just rude to exclude transgender athletes, and if it were truly such an advantage to be transgender then why aren't transgender people winning tournaments left and right? About 1% of people are transgender, so if transgender people are winning 1% of all tournaments then that would mean that they're exactly on exactly equal footing with their competitors. But I suspect that less than 1% of tournament winners are transgender which means that transgender people are actually at a disadvantage, which again, is fine because sports are inherently unfair as I outlined above.

At the end of the day, transgender athlete bans hurt everyone, and anti-transgender jerks are just making a big stink about it because it sounds reasonable on it's face to uninformed people and so it's a good wedge issue to bring up. Anti-transgender people don't care about the sports they're "trying to save", they just hate transgender people and want to see them suffer, and anyone who entertains their non-sense is complicit (probably unknowingly) in that suffering.

So please, those of you who are reasonable, shut down any discussion of transgender sports bans.

My fist thought was "why does the International Criminal Court care"

The whole uproar about banning transgender athletes from competing in women's divisions is weird.

We've banned athletes from taking performance enhancing hormones for decades because of unfair advantage. Allowing someone who is scientifically a male to compete in a women's division raises the same hormonal-related concerns of unfair advantage. It's irrelevant whether or not that male is choosing to socially identify as a man or woman.

Get that terf garbage out of here.

Hej, I‘ve seen quite a few comments using weird expressions to refer to trans women here, so to clarify, a trans woman is not:

• a scientific male (trans women are scientifically women)
• a biologically born male (Biologically born? Yes. Male? No.)
• a biological male (as, usually, biological markers such as anatomy, hormone levels, chromosomes and behavior in trans women are ambiguous)

A trans woman is:

• a woman (female) who was assigned male at birth
• often, but not always, a person who has gone through testosterone puberty, but identifies as female

Just use the words trans woman and cis woman, it‘s concise, correct and respectful. I‘m not saying that there are no differences between trans women and cis women, but simply that trans women are women. If you disagree with that, go watch ContraPoints or PhilosophyTube.

Consequently, the international cricket council should call it the elite cis women‘s game from now on, that would just be consistent.

Safety of the players? How do trans women playing cricket endanger cis women?

I'd be mad except... it's fucking cricket.