NO TROLLS Transgender Discrimination AFL Lawsuit

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And what happens if it goes her way and WAFL clubs refuse to sign her up, more law suits? Common sense must prevail.

There is no law of regulation or rule that says a Club is compelled to sign a player just because they want to be signed - AFL and AFLW aren't compelled to make up lists according to some social engineer's vision of Utopia.

The above is quite a different thing to the AFL imposing its own view on transgender people - if the view is out of step with Law. That would be foolish and doomed to fail.
 
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In the UFC they used to allow TUE (therapeutic use exemptions) for TRT (testosterone replacement therapy), fighters naturally abused this legal doping loophole and it was finally banned in 2014.

I remember part of the furore that lead to it's ban was the ALLOWABLE testosterone levels were 4 times (from memory) an average man's T levels.
Not surprisingly once the TRT loophole became illegal all the big name fighters plummeted in ability and their physiques diminished (notable names such as Dan Henderson, Chael Sonnen, Forrest Griffin etc).

I'm just wondering what the ALLOWABLE testosterone levels would be in AFLW, or women's sport in general.
If it is anything like other sports then it may still be multiple times the amount of a regular female. Which of course is going to equal strength, muscle and aggression advantages far exceeding an average female even though the original testosterone levels of the person have been reduced.

So if the allowable levels are quite lenient someone born male who is now identifies as a female and wants to play women's professional sport may still have quite the testosterone advantage.

If trans athletes do want to play in women's sport (which personally I am not for atm) then at least a small compromise could be that they must medicate in such a way that their T levels must be the AVERAGE level of a female and not the ALLOWABLE level.

I'm certainly nowhere close to an expert on testosterone levels etc so am happy to be educated if I have read any of this wrong.

The allowable level depends on the sport with the AFLW's limit being 5 nmol/L but some sports allow 10 nmol/L.
 

causeANDeffect

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If Hannah is allowed to play, I wonder if the female players would have a case under Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic)?

Section 21
Duties of employers to employees
(1) An employer must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain for employees of the employer a working environment that is safe and without risks to health.

and

(2) Without limiting subsection (1), an employer contravenes that subsection if the employer fails to do any of the following—
(a) provide or maintain plant or systems of work that are, so far as is reasonably practicable, safe and without risks to health;
...
(c) maintain, so far as is reasonably practicable, each workplace under the employer's management and control in a condition that is safe and without risks to health;
 

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Roby

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If Hannah is allowed to play, I wonder if the female players would have a case under Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic)?

Section 21
Duties of employers to employees
(1) An employer must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain for employees of the employer a working environment that is safe and without risks to health.

and

(2) Without limiting subsection (1), an employer contravenes that subsection if the employer fails to do any of the following—
(a) provide or maintain plant or systems of work that are, so far as is reasonably practicable, safe and without risks to health;
...
(c) maintain, so far as is reasonably practicable, each workplace under the employer's management and control in a condition that is safe and without risks to health;

That's any AFL player playing. On that argument you could sue for been hit the head multiple times.
 
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Isn’t the easy solution to simple have female sport and “open” sport

gender can be assigned by how someone identifies, biological sex can’t

so if you’re female - ie xx chromosomes - you can play female sport. If you’re not you can’t

with open sport anyone can play - including xx or xy (or the other extremely rare variantsif they so choose

no one is being excluded then
Nobody is excluded? Removing sex-segregated leagues effectively does exclude women, particularly at the professional levels where women simply won't be selected. Not for AFL, anyway.

You'd be creating a bigger problem than we started with.
 
Nobody is excluded? Removing sex-segregated leagues effectively does exclude women, particularly at the professional levels where women simply won't be selected. Not for AFL, anyway.

You'd be creating a bigger problem than we started with.

I'm not sure you read what I wrote.

I specifically stated that there would be a league for females.
 
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I'm not sure you read what I wrote.

I specifically stated that there would be a league for females.
My apologies, I missed that.

Regardless, the same issue being discussed here would still exist, i.e. should trans-women be allowed to play in said women's league and what should the rules be associated with that?
 
My apologies, I missed that.

Regardless, the same issue being discussed here would still exist, i.e. should trans-women be allowed to play in said women's league and what should the rules be associated with that?

Again - I specifically stated it was for sex segregation, not gender segregation.

ie - I specifically used the word female as it relates to sex. The word woman it appears has been assigned based on gender, not sex.

Hence you would need to be XX to compete in that segregation.

The open league therefore caters to trans women, it also caters to those rare cases who don't fit into male or female.
 
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Again - I specifically stated it was for sex segregation, not gender segregation.

ie - I specifically used the word female as it relates to sex. The word woman it appears has been assigned based on gender, not sex.

Hence you would need to be XX to compete in that segregation.

The open league therefore caters to trans women, it also caters to those rare cases who don't fit into male or female.
I'm not having a go at you here, but I just want to confirm how I see your proposal actually working: all that would be achieved with your idea would be the banning of trans-women from competing with biological women at all, and maintaining a men's league that is notionally an "open" league. It's not really a solution, unless that's really what you want.
 
I'm not having a go at you here, but I just want to confirm how I see your proposal actually working: all that would be achieved with your idea would be the banning of trans-women from competing with biological women at all, and maintaining a men's league that is notionally an "open" league. It's not really a solution, unless that's really what you want.

its very simple and inclusive

trans ideology gets all the attention, but there are (admittedly rare) non trans people who are non binary

it respects gender identification by giving them a league that promotes itself as “open”

you are right in it’s not greatly different from now - other than how it’s marketed/pitched
 
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its very simple and inclusive

trans ideology gets all the attention, but there are (admittedly rare) non trans people who are non binary

it respects gender identification by giving them a league that promotes itself as “open”

you are right in it’s not greatly different from now - other than how it’s marketed/pitched
If the end result is exclusion I'm effect - which your idea would produce - then it's not inclusive.

Don't get me wrong, I think a women's league should be protected. I'm just approaching this from the point of view of someone wanting to find a place for trans-women in leagues. From that perspective, your solution is not one, nor is it what it sells itself as.
 

g_TRAIN

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The science is fairly clear. Be warned - long post incoming!
__________________________________________________________________

A few tidbits from https://fairplayforwomen.com/biological-sex-differences/

WOMEN ARE SHORTER
, about 9% on average. Nigerians have the smallest recorded height difference between the sexes at 4%, while men of the UAE are 11% taller than their women.

MALE BONES ARE BIGGER AND STRONGER, in both size and density. Peak male bone mass is around 50% more than women’s, and women lose bone faster as we age. Black people have significantly stronger bones than whites: black women’s peak bone mass is the same as white men’s.

women are around 30-35% muscle by weight, while men are 40-50% muscle. This varies a lot by age, health, fitness, body type and genetics. Any averagely healthy person can build more muscle by exercising and, to an extent, change the composition of their muscles. But women can’t match the bulk or strength of men’s skeletal muscles – unless they artificially raise their androgens by a significant amount, which would be dangerous.


male/female grip strength distribution Male vs female grip strength

Hand grip is one of the most widely-used markers for strength. The strongest 10% of females can only beat the bottom 10% of men! Weight for weight (lean body mass only), women’s grip remains pretty feeble compared to the men. These were large samples that included plenty of fit, young sportswomen with good upper body strength. Taking the 60 elite women separately, they were still only as good as an average to weak man.

In Olympic weightlifting, the biggest total weight achieved by a woman was 333kg by Zhou Lulu in the heaviest women’s body weight category, 75kg+. She also won the Clean & Jerk with 187kg, while Tatiana Kashirina lifted 151kg in the snatch.

You have to go down to men under 62kg to find a champion Zhou Lulu could beat, and under 56kg for a male champion Tatiana Kashirina could beat in the Snatch. Women of less than 75kg couldn’t beat any of the male winners, not even the smallest men.
_____________________________________________________________________

A great piece by Dr Emma Hilton here: https://fondofbeetles.wordpress.com...r-stronger-why-we-must-protect-female-sports/

No female has broken the 100m ’10 second barrier’, or even been close. Males, however, have a list of sub-10 seconders. There are 136 men who have run sub-10 second 100m sprints (2, 7). One naturally wonders how populous a list of males running faster than 10.49s would be. Well, it’s a long list, too extensive to plot from 1988 onwards. But in 2017 alone, the last full season of races, 744 senior males ran 100m faster than 10.49s for a combined total of 2825 runs

Figure 2. In 2017, 744 senior males ran 2825 100m races faster than 10.49s.
View attachment 1041735
But forget 58 senior males running at Olympic level. She’s [Florence Griffith Joyner - fastest ever woman at 100m] not beating [the] 64 junior UK males who have run under 10.49s. The most well-tuned, explosive woman who ever trained her eye down a 100m track is beaten by 64 bumfluffed British juniors.

Male puberty and testosterone. Testosterone, the androgen driving male physical development, is a wonderful hormone. It is responsible for advantageous skeletal features that develop during male puberty, such as increased height, increased bone size and density, longer limbs, wider hand spans and a narrower pelvis, all of which make a 100m sprint or a slam dunk far easier. It also directs hugely increased muscle building capacity, allowing higher absolute masses to be achieved in shorter training times, mass which, by the way, contains a higher proportion of fast twitch fibres (responsible for explosive power) than observed in female muscles. To support this superior physicality, males have greater lung capacity, a higher VO2 max (the amount of oxygen consumed during high intensity exercise), a bigger heart with faster stroke rate and higher levels of haemoglobin, and thus can oxygenate their muscles more efficiently.

Analysis of adult/senior female sporting performances demonstrate parity with males around the age of 15 years old for individual events, and perhaps younger in team sports.

But males are harder. Males are better (at sports, at least). Males are faster. Males are stronger. The performance gap between male and female athletes is utterly astounding; it’s not a “gap”, it’s the Grand Canyon. Without sex-segregated sporting categories, the most wonderful 10.49s that female athletics has ever seen would be a footnote in history. We owe it to the female sports stars of today and to the girls who aspire to be tomorrow’s sporting heroes to fight for their right to take home gold.
_____________________________________________________________

And finally, a peer-reviewed paper by the same author that was published less than two months ago: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3

From the abstract:

We report that the performance gap between males and females becomes significant at puberty and often amounts to 10–50% depending on sport. The performance gap is more pronounced in sporting activities relying on muscle mass and explosive strength, particularly in the upper body. Longitudinal studies examining the effects of testosterone suppression on muscle mass and strength in transgender women consistently show very modest changes, where the loss of lean body mass, muscle area and strength typically amounts to approximately 5% after 12 months of treatment. Thus, the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.

Performance Differences in Non-elite Individuals:
The male performance advantages described above in athletic cohorts are similar in magnitude in untrained people. Even when expressed relative to fat-free weight, VO2max is 12–15% higher in males than in females [48]. Records of lower-limb muscle strength reveal a consistent 50% difference in peak torque between males and females across the lifespan [31]. Hubal et al. [49] tested 342 women and 243 men for isometric (maximal voluntary contraction) and dynamic strength (one-repetition maximum; 1RM) of the elbow flexor muscles and performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the biceps brachii to determine cross-sectional area. The males had 57% greater muscle size, 109% greater isometric strength, and 89% greater 1RM strength than age-matched females. This reinforces the finding in athletic cohorts that sex differences in muscle size and strength are more pronounced in the upper body.

From the conclusion:
We have shown that under testosterone suppression regimes typically used in clinical settings, and which comfortably exceed the requirements of sports federations for inclusion of transgender women in female sports categories by reducing testosterone levels to well below the upper tolerated limit, evidence for loss of the male performance advantage, established by testosterone at puberty and translating in elite athletes to a 10–50% performance advantage, is lacking. Rather, the data show that strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected. The reductions observed in muscle mass, size, and strength are very small compared to the baseline differences between males and females in these variables, and thus, there are major performance and safety implications in sports where these attributes are competitively significant. These data significantly undermine the delivery of fairness and safety presumed by the criteria set out in transgender inclusion policies, particularly given the stated prioritization of fairness as an overriding objective (for the IOC).

This.

I'm more left-leaning than most but the science seems to support the fact that there is still a significant advantage for biological males who have transitioned to women in the ways you have pointed out.
 

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madrigal

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This.

I'm more left-leaning than most but the science seems to support the fact that there is still a significant advantage for biological males who have transitioned to women in the ways you have pointed out.
Even if physical advantage was completely negated it still would not be fair. If Magnus Carlsen transitioned would it be fair if she was allowed to compete in women's tournaments ?
 

g_TRAIN

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Even if physical advantage was completely negated it still would not be fair. If Magnus Carlsen transitioned would it be fair if she was allowed to compete in women's tournaments ?

Well, we're not talking about Chess. (For those that don't know Chess is interesting because men have consistently outperformed women and the reasons are somewhat unknown. Some of it is based on participation rates but it seems clear that it only equates for a portion of the difference)

Where the only advantage is physical then if the advantage is completely removed then sure fair is fair.
 
If the end result is exclusion I'm effect - which your idea would produce - then it's not inclusive.

Don't get me wrong, I think a women's league should be protected. I'm just approaching this from the point of view of someone wanting to find a place for trans-women in leagues. From that perspective, your solution is not one, nor is it what it sells itself as.

bow it not inclusive - there’s an option for literally everyone

by that nature integrated football is not inclusive because abled bodied people can’t play in it

and women’s sport is not inclusive because half the population can’t play in it
U/13 isn’t inclusive because anyone 14 or over is excluded
It is such an extreme and ideological stand point to take
 
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bow it not inclusive - there’s an option for literally everyone

by that nature integrated football is not inclusive because abled bodied people can’t play in it

and women’s sport is not inclusive because half the population can’t play in it
U/13 isn’t inclusive because anyone 14 or over is excluded
It is such an extreme and ideological stand point to take
Mate it's not inclusive if, in practice, it doesn't result in any of the inclusion it's purported to induce.

It's like me declaring that the formula 1 is now officially open to all independent race teams, but with a cap of 25 entries per year that you need to qualify for. Guess who's going to have an F1 team? The same super-rich individuals or brands, even though it's "open to all".

The end result of an open league and a biological-women's-only league is that no trans people would be able to play. As I've argued earlier in the thread, that's maybe just the way it will go for trans people anyway, but some wordplay for faux inclusivity that results in absolutely no change to the status quo doesn't mean anything. It's just weasel words.
 
Mate it's not inclusive if, in practice, it doesn't result in any of the inclusion it's purported to induce.

It's like me declaring that the formula 1 is now officially open to all independent race teams, but with a cap of 25 entries per year that you need to qualify for. Guess who's going to have an F1 team? The same super-rich individuals or brands, even though it's "open to all".

The end result of an open league and a biological-women's-only league is that no trans people would be able to play. As I've argued earlier in the thread, that's maybe just the way it will go for trans people anyway, but some wordplay for faux inclusivity that means there's absolutely no change to the status quo is not achieving anything. It's just weasel words.

of course they can - there’s an option for them - it’s for them to choose

your F1 argument is erroneous - the equivalent would be saying because they can’t compete in F1 - they can’t compete in any motor sport

if F1 doesn’t suit - there’s all sorts of motor sport alternatives

ask yourself this - why as an adult am I not allowed to play under 12s football
 
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of course they can - there’s an option for them - it’s for them to choose

your F1 argument is erroneous - the equivalent would be saying because they can’t compete in F1 - they can’t compete in any motor sport

if F1 doesn’t suit - there’s all sorts of motor sport alternatives

ask yourself this - why as an adult am I not allowed to play under 12s football
My last paragraph is the important one. That's what needs to actually be contended with. Do you think trans-women have a place in professional-level football or not? If so, where and under what conditions?
 

madrigal

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Where the only advantage is physical then if the advantage is completely removed then sure fair is fair.
But we are talking about AFL, where the advantage is not only physical and there is still a disparity in favour of men, which the empirical evidence from less physical competitions demonstrates.
 

g_TRAIN

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But we are talking about AFL, where the advantage is not only physical and there is still a disparity in favour of men, which the empirical evidence from less physical competitions demonstrates.

Mate no disagreement. You were the one who brought Chess into this with Magnus Carlsen.
 

Leeda

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Mate it's not inclusive if, in practice, it doesn't result in any of the inclusion it's purported to induce.

It's like me declaring that the formula 1 is now officially open to all independent race teams, but with a cap of 25 entries per year that you need to qualify for. Guess who's going to have an F1 team? The same super-rich individuals or brands, even though it's "open to all".

The end result of an open league and a biological-women's-only league is that no trans people would be able to play. As I've argued earlier in the thread, that's maybe just the way it will go for trans people anyway, but some wordplay for faux inclusivity that results in absolutely no change to the status quo doesn't mean anything. It's just weasel words.
gorgeous and delusional but we won't hold that against you..
 

Leeda

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But we are talking about AFL, where the advantage is not only physical and there is still a disparity in favour of men, which the empirical evidence from less physical competitions demonstrates.
you won[t get me simpering towards you.. hand to heart you are trying to be genuine..
 

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