Academics in Tennessee say that trans women should be allowed to compete with biological women in sport, because it boosts their mental health and self-esteem.
According to The Mail Online:
Transgender youths should be allowed to compete in women’s sports at school and college level to protect their health, physicians say.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, said participating in sports had many benefits, including boosting mental health, self-esteem and lowering the risk of obesity and chronic diseases.
They advocated for trans people to be allowed to compete in their desired gender category at elementary, middle, high school and college. But they admitted competitive sports were a different matter because participants had invested their whole careers in the game.
They warned that a wave of 22 bans on transgender athletes at schools and colleges was harming the mental and physical health of the group and discouraging them from competing in sports.
In an interview, lead author and sports medicine expert Dr Alexander Sin said: ‘Does it matter who gets a medal at a third-grade competition?’
About 300,000 13 to 17-year-olds in the US are transgender, estimates suggest, equivalent to 1.7 percent of the high school population. Of these, roughly half are biological men who identify as women.
Writing in an opinion piece for JAMA Pediatrics, researchers urged for transgender youth participation in sports as well as the ability to compete.
They said primary care sports medicine physicians, pediatricians and families should take an ‘active role’ in promoting this.
The research team was from Vanderbilt University, which is currently under fire for allegedly sharing the health records of transgender adults with the state without removing their identities.
A federal investigation has been launched, with some of those affected alleging that the state had requested the information in an effort to ‘negatively target the transgender community’.
One researcher was also from the University of Rochester, New York, which has also attracted controversy for offering a ‘gender-affirming’ care course for teachers who have students as young as five years old. It has been accused of training staff at local schools in ‘transgender ideology’.
Asked whether trans women have an advantage over biological women in an interview with STAT News, Dr Sin said: ‘[Some research has found that] trans women are superior to cis women because of certain strengths and speed measures.
‘But the problem with this is that it doesn’t translate to sports performance.
‘It’s not like you squat more and that translates to you jumping higher, or you can do a heavier bench press, so you can throw things further.
‘There are also techniques and other parts that play into it, because otherwise the strongest person would just win all the medals, and that’s not true.’
