[jonwithoutanh]

Would it be fair for cisgender woman to compete in strength sports against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janae_Kroc?

Do you truly believe that this person would have no advantage competing against cisgender woman? I think most people would be able to see the obvious advantage Janae gained from formerly being a male.

[slg]

It is just as "fair" as it is for me to compete against LeBron James for a spot in the NBA. Sports are inherently unfair. They take a tremendous amount of work, but it is almost never about work alone. The best athletes are almost always born with physical gifts that are huge outliers.

The truth is that trans women have been allowed to compete on the collegiate and international stages for almost two decades at this point. Where are all the transgender athletes dominating competition. Why doesn't Janae Kroc have a Olympic gold medal? This fear is mostly unfounded.

EDIT: I did a little more research after posting and I will refer you to the words of Kroc herself[1]:

> And yes as hard as it is to believe for some people one year is a sufficient amount of time for HRT to completely eliminate any advantage that person had and there is significant evidence to back this up. This is also why even though trans women have been able to compete in the Olympics since Athens in 2004 we have not had one single trans woman medal at the Olympics...

>As far as going forward is concerned it's all about education. This is so much misinformation out there and so many people talking about how transwomen will dominate all women's sports and yet that has never happened. It's very similar to the threat of transwomen in bathrooms concerning child safety. No recorded incidents ever but it was used as a scare tactic to enact laws.

[1] - https://old.reddit.com/r/powerlifting/comments/75rd7q/janae_...

[imgabe]

According to the Wikipedia page, it seems Janae only competed before transitioning in men's weightlifting, at which point he[1] held several world records.

So, to answer your question, the reason Janae does not hold a gold medal in women's weightlifting, is that she never competed as a woman.

It is not really comparable to an average, non-professional athlete competing against a professional athlete. A fair comparison would be Lebron James competing against Breanna Stewart (WNBA Finals MVP) or the LA Lakers competing against the Houston Comets.

And hey, that might be interesting! But it's not currently what we're doing. Again, if biological sex doesn't make any difference in sports, then why even have separate men's and women's competitions at all?

[1] The Wikipedia page notes she uses male pronouns when referring to the time before transitioning.