eeeeewww gross. No no no no no that is completely wrong. When you refer to the past of a trans women you refer to her past. You can say things like "back when she was competing as a male" or whatever.

No. He would be immensely proud of the records he set as a cis male against other cis males 20 years prior.

Nothing wrong with 'her' today or others today talking about 'the records he set back then from 2001 time frame still stand'.

If she today, wants to suggest other than fine. But you don't get to speak for all trans as if they have an issue with their prior selves being identified as they DID identify back then.

As someone who earlier ITT thought "biowomen" was ok and then seemed to think "CIS" as some sort of capitalized acronym was ok, perhaps you should be a little less confident that this is ok. It isn't. She is a woman today, and when she reflects on her past she does so as a woman today. That isn't to suggest she isn't proud of those past accomplishments or pretending that she was not male when she did them, but you still refer to her today as a her. This is very basic.

I do not accept your offense on behalf of her (Ooboo'ing) today.

There is nothing wrong with speaking of his accomplishments as a 20 year old male, an identity he had for most of his life, as the accomplishments of a CIS male.

"She" did not set any records in male CIS weight lifting. A cis male did. Those were not 'her' records in a cis male sport. You are acting as if recognizing the transition or prior period is somehow shameful.


But that is exactly why I mentioned that to David as I suspected the Ooboo was coming.

I didn't say I was offended. Or offended for others. The only one who brought "offense" into this is you, just like last time. I'm saying you are wrong. You were wrong that biowomen was correct. You were wrong that CIS women was correct. And you are wrong to use her past pronouns to describe her, even when reflecting on her past.



It is fine to say that she was a male in her past and competed in male sports and had successes in male sports competing as male. That isn't the issue. The issue is that when you use a pronoun to refer to her, to reflect about her and her past, you should use your current pronouns.

Not at all. Just as with your bit about being offended, you are making this up. It is perfectly fine to talk about her past accomplishments competing as a male and being explicit that she was a male when you accomplished them. However, that is her past as she is now a female and when using a pronoun as a stand in for her we use the female pronoun.

You are far too arrogant for this.

You are literarily saying she has no say in her prior identity. You alone will state what is right or wrong in terms of identity and f she disagrees, she is wrong.

Sorry but I reject your arrogance. You do not speak for her no matter matter how much you Ooboo.

She was a cis male. She did set records as a cis male. The record 'he set in 2001' is a different, unique but ALSO celebratory part of this person's life.

If you have permission to speak on her behalf show us otherwise gfys and your Ooboo'ing and telling her what she can and cannot identify as.

Becasue I am certain there will be lots of discussion to be had here. Here is a discussion of the questions this will almost certainly bring, and especially if she medals.


She qualified fair and square, but here is why Laurel Hubbard should not compete at Tokyo 2020

By Mark House Sunday, 30 May 2021

The deadline for weightlifters to qualify for the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is tomorrow (May 31) and there is no doubt about who, among the qualifiers, wins the gold medal for attracting publicity.

That award goes to someone who was unknown in weightlifting at the time of the last Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro five years ago, and who did not make her first lift in international competition until March 2017.

Step forward Laurel Hubbard, the New Zealander who will compete in the over-87 kilograms women’s super-heavyweight category scheduled for August 2.

There are plenty within the sport - you have only to look at social media to see how many - who think Hubbard should not be there.

I admit to being one of them, not because of any outrage at how Hubbard qualified - there is nothing wrong with that - but because her participation will seriously diminish the chances of having a rational discussion about transgender policies. She should not take her opportunity.

Before transitioning, Laurel competed at a reasonably high level through the junior ranks, hitting a 300kg total in the +105 men’s category.

To put that in perspective, that total would have won the past couple of Junior National events in the United States, but would not come close to earning a place on an international team.

At the 2019 Junior World Championships, a 300kg total would have been good enough for last place by 31kg.

In short, pre-transition Laurel was talented, but not a world-calibre athlete.

At age 35, Laurel started competing as a woman in the +90 (now +87) women’s category.

Although her total was down from her days as a junior male, she made 285kg in Pattaya, Thailand at the 2019 World Championships, her best in international competition and good enough for sixth place.

Most of her totals tend to be in the 270-280kg range, good enough for the top 10 in any recent international event. If Hubbard were to place sixth in Tokyo there would probably not be much uproar. If she is on the podium, and circumstances suggest that it could happen, it will be a disaster for transgender policy.

If China sends Li Wenwen, the best of its many elite super-heavyweights, she should win.

Tatiana Kashirina from Russia, who has the next best total, is serving a suspension.

North Korea is not participating so Kim Kuk-hyang, the only other non-Chinese athlete, besides Kashirina, to have made 300kg in her career, will not be there.

That opens the silver and bronze medals wide open.

Among the major contenders for those spots are the American Sarah Robles, whose best total is 290kg but who tends to total in the 280kg range, Emily Campbell from Britain, who just made 276kg at the European Championships and looks good for another 10kg at the Olympic Games.

Anastasiia Lysenko of Ukraine and Lee Seon-mi of South Korea are others, and even without the Hubbard controversy it should make for a great session of weightlifting.

If an American or a Briton is displaced by Hubbard on the podium in Tokyo, it will spotlight transgender policy, at least in the western world, to a far greater degree.

The question then becomes: Is Laurel Hubbard the person advocates want to be the face of transgender policy?

The question is rhetorical because the answer is obviously “no”.

Having an individual who spent most of her adult life as a man, transitioning at age 35, as the face of a movement will surely spell disaster for any real transgender policy from ever taking effect or even being considered.

Although it should not be the case, anecdotes make policy, and Laurel Hubbard is a totally unsympathetic character upon which to make policy decisions.

If she wins a medal, she will highlight the fact that men should not be competing in women’s sports, that it is patently unfair.

The only thing people will notice is that an above-average male lifter just placed at the Olympics as a woman, and that the laudable efforts of other women were devalued, in real terms, because of that.

To believe "people" will view this any other way is simply delusional.

Policy on transgender athletes needs to be based on fair competition and inclusiveness, in that order.

Any policy that is implemented by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) must ensure that fair competition is its primary goal.

Inclusiveness is important, but it cannot come at the cost of fair competition.

The current transgender policy from the IOC states:

"2. Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:

2.1. The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.

2.2. The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L (nanomoles per litre) for at least 12 months prior to her first competition…"

That IOC Policy does not guarantee fair competition in weightlifting.

Subsection 1(D) of the IOC Policy provides, in relevant part, that "The overriding sporting objective is and remains the guarantee of fair competition."

That guarantee must ensure that women - as classified by sex, not by gender - in sport have an opportunity to excel.

The average range for elite female athletes is from 0.26 to 1.73 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) of total testosterone.

Essentially, the policy of the IOC is that a transgender woman may have five times the average total testosterone of a biological woman.

What makes this even more interesting is the fact that Hubbard is 43. Testosterone of 10 nmol/L barely registers as low for a man of that age according to the American Urological Association, which recommends anything lower than 10.41 nmol/L be treated as low testosterone.

One would assume that there would be some sound science behind the <10 nmol/L policy, but there is nothing in the IOC Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism to indicate what science supports the policy.

What difference does this make on elite athletes?

No idea - we have no science to tell us whether this apparently arbitrary number makes sense at the elite athlete level.

Also, the imposition of a 12-month requirement is not, to my knowledge, supported by any study that would indicate that 12 months is sufficient to do anything other than maybe confirm someone’s dedication to living as a woman.

Unlike the prior policy, the current IOC Policy does not even require sex-reassignment surgery as a condition for transgender athletes to compete as women.

There is plenty of science to support the idea that suppression of testosterone in non-elite transgender women is ineffective in achieving parity with biological women.

The review article Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage, published last month, is worth reading.

Its authors are a developmental biologist from Manchester University, Dr Emma Hilton, and Tommy Lundberg, a researcher in clinical physiology from the Karolinska Institute, a medical university and research centre in Sweden.

The reviewers reach the conclusion that the minimal losses of performance, roughly five per cent, after at least 12 months of suppression therapy are not even close to the advantages of having gone through male puberty, which gives an advantage of 30-40 per cent, in weightlifting specifically.

So the five per cent loss took Hubbard down from her 300kg total, as a male, to 285kg as a female.

And the 30-40 per cent advantage? I wonder what the other medal contenders think about that.

Interestingly, two of the female athletes used by Hilton and Lundberg for the comparison - Kashirina and her fellow Russian Oxana Slivenko - have both been sanctioned for doping offences, which further reinforces the argument that even using performance-enhancing drugs cannot close the gap created by biology.

How much benefit is there to an elite athlete going through puberty as a male?

The Hilton-Lundberg paper cites a 45 per cent difference in the amount of lean muscle mass that is attributed to male puberty. In all categories - body composition, muscle mass, cardiovascular function and so on - male puberty provides an enormous benefit.

Anecdotally, the results support the notion that male puberty is an insurmountable advantage.

In reviewing the results from the under-11 competition at the 2019 USA Youth Nationals, the boys and the girls tend to lift very similar weights.

For example, in the 44kg boys’ class, the three best totals were 64kg, 61kg, and 60kg, while the girls in the 45kg class were 74kg, 66kg, and 65kg.

So as not to be accused of cherry-picking results, there were weight classes where boys would have dominated, and weight classes where girls would have dominated.

For the most part, however, the gender of the athlete did not matter much - if they had all lifted together, gender would not have been an accurate tool for predicting who would win.

Contrast that with the USA Senior Nationals from 2019.

In the 81kg classes, shared by both genders, the top three men hit 318kg, 300kg and 295kg.

The top three women were 232kg, 213kg and 210kg.

Even comparing Kate Nye, the IWF Female Lifter of the Year for 2019, to a man in a comparable weight class is striking.

Nye, who lifts at 71kg or 76kg, totalled 248kg at the 2019 IWF World Championships as a 71kg lifter to win gold. She would have placed last among the men at the USA National Championships that year in the 73kg class and would have finished fifth of nine in the 67kg weight class.

That is, arguably the best female lifter in the world would not have won a medal at her National Championships if she had to compete against men in a lower weight category.

Even in the Youth Nationals that year for 15 to 17-year-olds the last-placed lifter at 81kg made a total of 166kg, which was 5kg better than the winner of the women’s category at the same weight.

That is, the top female athlete would have finished at the very bottom had she had to lift in the male group - and this is at age 15-17.

From an optics standpoint, there is a real difference between: one, transitioning as a grown man; and two, being born male, suppressing puberty, transitioning to female, then competing as a woman.

The latter individual could be the face of the transgender movement.

Let me say it differently - that person should or even must be the face of the movement if the transgender community wants to have any chance at science being used to support policy.

Even more than optics, this has real consequences to the lifters.

More than just losing out on a medal, funding for many nations, including Britain, is likely to be determined by how their weightlifters perform at the Olympic Games.

If Hubbard displaces Campbell at the Olympics, that will likely influence how UK Sport funds the British women’s team.

It also has direct financial consequences to the athletes.

An Olympic medal brings more than just glory, it brings stipends and performance bonuses.

For example, a bronze medal for Sarah Robles nets a $20,000 (£14,100/€16,400) bonus, silver $25,000 (£17,600/€20,500), and gold $50,000 (£35,200/€41,000).

On a larger scale, performances at a national level are used to determine international teams, college scholarships, stipends, and funding for international events.

How can the IOC, and thereby the IWF, create inclusion while maintaining fair competition?

There are a number of solutions that get discussed, such as giving transgender athletes their own competitions; disallowing them from a reassigned gender; allowing them only under hormone restrictions; or allowing them to compete but not to win medals.

Having a separate competition for transgender athletes is a terrible idea in my view - taking a marginalised group and segregating them even more.

Being inclusive is one of the stated goals of the IWF. Besides, there are not enough athletes to make the competition meaningful.

Disallowing transgendered women from competing in their reassigned gender?

The argument here is that many athletes have a medical condition such as low testosterone, which, if treated, would disallow them from competing.

The same argument can be used to say that if an athlete wants to treat gender dysphoria, they can do so, but give up their ability to compete.

The argument is sound, but it requires us to abandon being inclusive, which is a stated goal.

By contrast, if an athlete goes through female puberty, then transitions to being male, my belief - unsupported by science - is that it would not matter what hormones they took, they would never catch up with the elite men.

If there is science to refute this, it should be followed, of course.

Allow transgendered women to compete without restriction or with a hormone restriction?

Under the existing scientific evidence, this is not a viable strategy if the IOC Policy of "fair competition" is to be maintained.

Inclusiveness is a great goal, but it cannot come at the expense of giving an unfair advantage.

If there is additional research to be done, then policy can evolve when it is accomplished.

Maybe the policy does not need to be solely testosterone-driven.

No matter what policy is chosen, it must follow science, not emotion or rhetoric. Subsection (1)(G) of the IOC Policy provides that, "These guidelines are a living document and will be subject to review in light of any scientific or medical developments."

At the time the policy was written, maybe the IOC could be excused for believing that the 10 nmol/L was a decent policy.

That policy, however, has not withstood scrutiny.

If further evidence supports the notion that a sport-by-sport policy makes sense, that should be examined.

In a strength-based sport such as weightlifting, there is probably no way to overcome the advantage of going through male puberty.

Which is why allowing transgendered athletes to compete, but not to win, may be the best option, or even the only one.

A similar argument has been raised in masters weightlifting forums about using testosterone in masters athletes - those aged 35 and up.

I will use myself as an example here: I take testosterone because mine is low due to a medical condition.

I am never going to be able to win a masters championship, I lack talent, but it would be fun to compete without fear of being banned for doping.

While this is not a solution to the Hubbard issue, it is a viable alternative for being inclusive while not punishing biologically female athletes.

As the population of transgendered athletes grows, competitions could use the Sinclair numbers - a points-based system that works across all weight categories - to determine the top transgendered athletes.

The athletes would compete in the same bodyweight categories, but would not be competing head-to-head with the biological women.

If it turns out that the advantage of going through male puberty can be ameliorated through hormone control that is safe for the athlete, then by all means, that should be the policy.

If the result is that going through male puberty creates an advantage that cannot be safely "corrected", then I believe we should follow the "cannot win a medal" option in order to maximise inclusion while maintaining fair competition.

This is the only policy actually supported by science, as of now.

There is no indication that nations would abuse the current IOC Policy, but the parade of horribles is not hard to imagine.

Many nations have no problem with outright cheating - state-sponsored doping has been the major plague in weightlifting for years.

One can imagine that these nations, who take a win-at-all-costs attitude, would coerce second-tier male athletes to declare their gender as female, comply with the 10nmol/L rule, and dominate the women’s events.

With the requirement of sex reassignment surgery removed, the athlete could compete as a woman for a couple of Olympic cycles, then stop taking the suppression therapy after winning for a decade.

Remember, there are nations that had no problem doping 13-year-old girls in order to win medals.

All of this leads me back to my opening statement that Laurel Hubbard should not compete in Tokyo.

But let me make one point clear - if she is allowed, and elects, to compete, I will cheer her on just like any other athlete.

I’ll still be rooting for Campbell and Robles to win a medal, but that is because they are two of my favorite athletes.

Hubbard has broken no rules, has qualified in accordance with the policies in place, and for that she has earned our respect.

In short, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I understand you are very offended that I have informed you are wrong about "biowomen", wrong about "CIS women", and wrong about "his past". But no offense is needed. You are simply wrong and can either learn from this or not. It looks like you are going to stick your head in the sand and insist you are correct, but that choice is on you.

This is a very poor point. Of course if someone tells us they want to be referred to in a specific way, we will follow that. But baring that, we just use standard, basic terminology. In general, a trans woman is to be referred to with she/her pronouns. Yes, that is even when referring to her past. If she tells us otherwise, we can act otherwise. But the worst thing to do would be to make up some non-standard choice and impose it for no reason.



You said it correctly then you ****ed up again. The bolded is correct. 'She set records as a cis male' is perfectly fine. As soon as you turn that 'she' into a 'he' you are wrong. Her past is, well, hers. When we speak about her past we are doing so not in the past, but today. When she identifies as female. And thus we should use female pronouns.

Lol some epic self-pwnage. The very article Cuepee quotes correctly uses female pronouns to refer to her past events as a male.
I was right. You were wrong. Can we move on?

btw, wall of text copypasting an entire article is just silly. Give a link and maybe quote a couple sentences, don't copy the whole thing ffs.

Right.

But up until you hear THEM say it you will tell OTHERS they are wrong in your Ooboo mindset.

You will take offense and correct them as if you can speak for others.

At least it seems you might be humble enough to retract it and take it back if in fact the person corrects you and is fine with it. And AFTER THE FACT correction you make once you are shown to be wrong that you have no humility to not do in advance.

I do not accept you taking offense for and speaking in advance and on behalf of others, which does not mean you cannot do it, but understand it will get you no where. Well other than a flame war if that is what you are looking for.

As evidenced by your own article, there is a standard convention for pronouns and transgender people. You violated the convention. If someone has a personal taste that also violates the convention, great, I am happy to respect their wishes. But if you are writing an article like the one you quoted or otherwise speaking in the public sphere like this forum, you should at least TRY to understand what the conventions are. "Biowomen" is wrong, "CIS women" is wrong and "his past" is wrong, all violate the convention.


You seem really focused on offense. I corrected you, but that isn't the same thing as taking offense. I just said you were wrong. It seems that you are using "ooboo" as some sort of weird shield, like you can just keep being wrong and if anyone points it out to you then you are going to whine about offense. I will inform you directly if I am offended by something you have said. I have never thus far been, despite many many accusations of such.


You assert this a lot, but it couldn't be further from the truth. This should be a two post interchange. You made a mistake. I informed you the correct answer. Your own article agrees with me. Let's move on. If you keep going on new bizarre tangents trying to justify yourself, then sure I'm happy to explain why each of those bizarre tangents is wrong too. But this was never meant to be more than the briefest correction of a mistake you made. Let's move on.

You are lying about what the article says. Flat out lying.

No where does it address it as wrong to speak of the record setting accomplishments that a 20 year old cis male set as 'his accomplishments at the time being good ones within the male division' and saying instead you must refer to 'her' setting records in the male division but you can throw in clarifiers to not confuse anyone since 'women' were not competing then.

Again you are taking pre-offense for something you have no idea the person would object to you ADMIT you will change and adapt if you are wrong.

So you are just DECLARING yourself the arbiter until you take it back, later.

I have no global avalanche of hate for her but she is a biological male and should not competing against women. Its just not fair to a biological female. Maybe there comes a time were we have a Trans Gender Olympics or division.

Denying kids I would agree with is wrong but High School athletics sorry your a biological man .

Lol. The article uses the correct pronoun to refer to her past. I never said it was making the case why you should use the correct pronoun, silly, cool your jets with the "Flat out lying" nonsense. I said the article uses the pronouns correctly, as I told you they should be used.

Do you see how the pronoun the article uses to refer to her past accomplishments is not the one you used? You simply were wrong in your usage. Can we move on now?



Again this bizarre obsession with "offense". I have repeatedly told you my position is that you are wrong, not that I am offended about it, neither on behalf of myself or anyone else. Why do you keep returning to this nonsense about offense when you are repeatedly told that isn't my position?

False. I'm not declaring myself the arbiter. I'm saying there is a basic, standard social convention. The article you quoted uses that convention. You did not. I'm not the one arbitrating what the convention is.

Ok. I don't have a particular quarrel with how people arbitrate the very pinnacles of sports. Mostly I believe this should be left up to the specific sporting bodies to make their own scientific decisions and if those bodies decided the 10nmol/L standard for testosterone is not a good threshold that's fine by me.

This is where I care more. You and I seem to agree that kids should be allowed to play sports according to their gender. Sports is so valuable, being discriminated is so harmful, that is just makes sense. It seems where we disagree is exactly where that line is.

You say "high school". So you think a local schools playing grade 8 soccer in gym class, that in this context it is appropriate to deny a young trans kid? Personally I look at how much trans kids are suffering, their suicide rate for instance, and think that any small loss in the ideal of competitiveness here is overwhelmingly made up for in extending the power and benefits of sports to these kids.

You asserted i was wrong, as if this is a matter of settled fact and misrepresented what the article said to try to make your point.

My point is BOTH can be accurate to say.

I said her and she when referring to her now, and said when he set those records in 2001 he did so as a CIS male before transitioning or any such admitted thoughts.

If what you are saying is correct, then with one singular quote where I show a trans person referring to their prior status by the opposite pronoun back then I can claim I am right and you are wrong. But that would be as dishonest as what you did as an example or 'either/or' is not proof of either.

Quite the opposite and is proof of what I say and you ADMIT you would change and correct.

But you continue to suggest that until you are corrected and change your way you will insist others are wrong. Then you will 'takebacksies' and admit you were offended wrongly for others.

Nonsense. I quote the article using the correct pronoun in the same context you used the incorrect pronoun. The article was correct. You were incorrect. I didn't misrepresent anything about the article.



No, only one of these is accurate, the one I and the one the article used. But if you think otherwise, I challenge you to find a similar article to the one you quoted that uses the pronouns the way you used it. I can save you some time though: I've been advocating for trans rights for many years and I've never seen an article talk about "his past" when it is a trans woman. Your "both can be accurate" nonsense I suspect is just an emotional overreaction to the fact that I informed you that you were not using the correct term. Not that a single example disputes the existence of a clear convention for one of them, but I doubt you will be even able to manage that.

Nothing in the article makes any claim and THAT is your lie.

If I can quote a single person in an article saying it my way will you admit you are lying and wrong?? Or will you claim, as you have said already, you will respect that once 'they' say it.

Answer that question carefully as I am ready to post.

I am NOT claiming there is only ONE WAY to say it and either are you. So quoting its use in ONE WAY in no way proves me wrong.

Again nothing wrong in saying 'when he competed 20 years ago as a CIS male and set records' when i say in the same sentence 'her' when referring to her now, is entirely appropriate.

It offends you and you race in to Ooboo for her but even you admit you would change as soon as she corrected you. So you are offended in advance by definition.

Lol. All I said about the article is quoting that it uses the correct pronoun, in contrast to you who used the incorrect pronoun. I didn't say the articled maid "any claim" other than that it happened to use the right pronouns in the relevant context, so what on earth are you imaging that I have lied about? Be specific. Quote the exact thing I lied about.

My claim is there is a standard convention to refer to use the gendered pronouns a person currently identifies with, and that includes when you talk about their past. It is possible a counterexample to that convention exists, and if you have found something please do post it! That certainly wouldn't imply I was lying - wtf man! - but it might count as evidence against my claim that this convention exists. Well, barely, as a single counterexample doesn't do much to affect the existence of a convention, but at least you would for the first time in the conversation not be making things worse for yourself.



Nope. You screwed up the bolded pronoun again! And my goodness man you screwed up cis again and capitalized it like an acronym, we've been through this! You are referring to them now, today, in the present. Hence, you should use their current, now, today, pronouns. Do it exactly like how you learned to do in the article you quoted: "her days as a junior male".

Ah yes, this tired nonsense. No matter how many times (a half dozen now?) I've told I wasn't the least bit offended for myself or anyone else you keep coming back to this. I think you are wrong. I think you used the wrong pronoun that violates the standard convention. I'm not offended by that. Why are you obsessing over something that has been so explicitly and repeatedly explained to you is just entirely in your imagination?

Congratulations, uke_master! You have kept Cuepee's streak alive of him calling basically everybody he interacts with a "liar" at some point in the discussion.

He even called Original Position a liar in another thread, which was quite rich, indeed.

You're wrong. It's standard to use the same set of pronouns to describe an individual pre- and post-transition, just as it is to use the same name. The idea is that they were always the gender they are, even if living as another gender before.

I wouldn't expect everyone to know this, but you have now been informed. Is it that difficult to admit you learned something?

And how exactly does that work in a gender fluid person?

And how exactly do we assume this person was always a female when at age 21 the competitions being competed in were for men?

Do you not see how silly it is to assume she was always the gender she is now when playing male sports?

And this is the end of the Woman's Sport issue that is all but lost in these discussions.

As an analogy, it would be weird to talk about back when Elton John was straight even though he was married to a woman. He was always gay.

How many reasons can you think of why she wouldn't have come out and transitioned 20 years ago?