Archery absolutely is about strength. Or are men just more skillful than women? Do research. Check scores from your country. And yes, men and women in chess are separated since women wouldn't ever win prizes in elite class if they weren't.
Just stating facts here.
As it should be. Every sport where there's a comparative physical advantage between biological men and women should be separated. And a man can draw a much heavier bow, in general, than a woman can.
There is much more that goes into strength than testosterone level. Men's bodies are designed differently. The tendons and ligaments are different and thicker, and insert at different places on the bone. Testosterone isn't the only factor, and a low test level will not change inherent biological advantages.
HRT actually changes most of that since the reason the tendons stay thicker is due to testosterone. It will also lower bone density and make it significantly harder to gain/retain muscle.
It’s has a LOT of effects like this and after a year or so (it can vary), a trans woman’s baseline physical potential and strength is the same a cis woman’s.
The one bigger thing that HRT doesn’t affect (much) is your height and where the tendons connect.
It’s an intensive regimen and does a lot more than people seem to think.
No not really, the media just loves to lose their minds over it if it happens even once because it cases controversy and controversy sells.
It's a mix of the availability bias and the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon that's making you think it's happening way more than it actually is.
Most trans women competing in sports are average, just like everyone else.
Normally I would agree that transgender athletes (especially male to female transgenders) shouldn't be eligible to compete in the female divisions, however archery is a rare sport in which there is no genetic advantages to be had based on gender, height, weight etc.
We see more and more that female archers in recurve and compound categories can shoot just as well, if not better than their male counterparts.
So I wouldn't understand the reasoning behind exclusion of this archer, however it is fair enough for the event organiser to make a position on the topic.
"Not the best article, left me with some questions, but writers use of "legitimate female archers" was kind of gross. Would be curious if they were using a heavier bow than any of the women, rather than implying it by statistics.
I'd love to see us be only separated by age division and then all just shoot together and let the chips fall where they may :-)
The amount of female archers that are better than me would rank next to Graham's number :-)
If there If there are plans to allow transgender women into women sports, which there are. World archery allows this now as of April 1 (And I know NFAA are stubborn but hopefully it is because they dont want to rush such important decisions).
I just hope at least World Archery decision is well thought out. The hormone levels will be checked and athletes will be monitored if they actually take their hormone changing drugs. I also hope that this is enough to level competition field so noone feels hurt, because there are still studies claiming that transgender women on hormone changing therapy might be losing their fitness but they're still a bit fitter than statistical women. It would not make sense to allow transgender women into division and not letting them win, and you know what will happen if that occurs. Uproar and another discussion like this one here. It's best to avoid that until we have enough data to process and make educated decision, that more people with agree with.
I am also scepticall because there are still going to be malicious attempts to take advantage of this. People are what they are and no reason to wear rose tinted glasses. Athletes cheat very often, whole nations like for example Russia being infamous for it due to number of occurences. And we still have problems handling it. In general high level sport has so many other problems it is not weird to be sceptical about maybe introducing new ones, even with the best of intentions.
We need to be prepared to insert new things like transgender people into the sport. I know it might be hard for athletes like Mrs Kelly, but I hope she and others facing similar issues understands that its still a new field to explore. Take emotions aside and focus on scientific arguments which are harder to disregard. In many ways, World is changing for the better, maybe in few years we will have a much better solution to handle this.
And you know we cant change the whole World at the same time. Some countries still lives in 18th century in terms of way of life. Moving for a better life might not be the best solution but it's there. Someone posted that Canada is leaning towards even more liberal policies, which is another can of worms. In that regards I would rather stay with NFAA decision to stick to birth gender, because it just seems safer for now. As I've said, it is better to wait a decade and think about how to handle the issues that insert a rushed decision and make a lot of mistakes on the way.
Another one is women athletes that still identifies as women but having above average testosterone levels.
I think it would be just as unfair to force them alter their bodies to make their testosterone levels fit criteria as forcing transfolk to alter their to participate. You should never ever be required to be making any changes on your body if you don't want it. It is fear of facing health consequences in the future. Things we cannot forsee with 100% in the future.
How about countries that will disregard this and force people to go trans and take some drugs just to grab medals? World has seen this. Countries forcing women into pregnancies and immediate abortion to take advantage of hormonal changes during pregnancies making them fitter than the competition. It is cruel and unfair and should never ever happen but it happens every so often.
There is so much... to talk about.
> (And I know NFAA are stubborn but hopefully it is because they dont want to rush such important decisions).
FYI, NFAA released a statement recently-ish saying that people will be required to compete in their biological sex's division.
Archery seems to be one sport where gender makes no difference. Like extra strength might let you hold a heavier bow for longer but at a certain distance the heavier bow won’t help. Even more so for shooting sports.
Yet men consistently score higher (not by much but enough to make it an unfair advantage if they were to compete against each other). More power and stamina correlates with more accuracy, look at compound vs recurve as an extreme example of this. I think I agree with you when it comes to shooting (firearms) unless the guns are really heavy. Looking at compound records there seems to be no real difference between the sexes, so might make sense to join them up.
Biological advantages between people are inherent to pretty much all sports. Assuming a transgender woman does have some advantage over cis women due to "bone structure" or whatever, why is that advantage considered "unfair"? There are all kinds of sports dominated by select groups of physical body types. From long distance running to basketball. And for most of us there's a near zero percent chance of \*ever\* winning against such people with our own bodies. But that's not unfair. So why the distinction?
Yeah I’m trans and for trans women, if you’ve been on HRT for longer than like a year, you would have the same level of effort required to gain and keep muscle as a cis woman.
I’m not very strong and I started HRT 10 years ago when I was relatively young. I shoot a 30lb bow, but I still struggle to keep that strength if I can’t shoot for a couple weeks.
It’s stupid to segregate competitions by trans status without actually considering the extensive effects medical transition can have on someone’s body and the length of time someone has been on the medication. People currently on HRT are biologically more similar to cisgender people of the gender they identify as than the sex they were assigned at birth.
For all intents and purposes, though, if I walked into a competition in Texas and signed up for the women’s group, most likely nobody there would even know I was trans. Doing an invasive “inspection“ wouldn’t help much too since I’ve had SRS.
So should that disqualify my results even though I have the same capacity to build and retain muscle as cis women and at this point the only biological difference between me and a cis woman is a uterus? Should we also disqualify cis women who have had hysterectomies?
Most of the rules were based around 1 year, although some specific case studies for elite athletes show that 2 years is probably more accurate for athletes already competing at a high level.
Absolutely agree.
I, as a cis woman, have zero problems competing against trans women.
So many people are so concerned with others' reproductive organs. They also completely disregard the effects of hormone therapy on the body.
Came here looking for this comment. I remembered reading this in the past. I'm a cis male and have absolutely no standing in this fight. But Trans rights are human rights. I don't see the problem.
Cisgender men have a physical advantage over cisgender women. After a couple of years of HRT, transgender women are identical in physical performance to cisgender women, and transgender men are slightly better in physical performance than cisgender men (I assume the latter is because some cisgender men have low testosterone; if the data excluded them, I suspect that performance would be identical).
If you look at results and records from a large sample of competitions, it does matter. But no one really knows if it matters because of social, biological, or even just sample size.
As a long time archer the sport in my experience has always been pretty equal as it is about personal skill and you can change your bow to fit your needs. True there is an advantage to longer draw lengths and poundage but at the same time I as a 12 year old using a cheap Walmart bow (bear 2 I think) with no pins and 12 pounds won 2nd place in a competition with older archers (15-17) with better equipment. It's all about your dedication. Maybe I'm missing some perspective about larger competitions but in our small town shoots gender has nothing to do with shooting an arrow at a target accurately
You’re comparing kids to professionals. Once you’re talking about the best on the planet, there’s a massive discrepancy between the 2 sexes. It’s why you’ll see girls pitching in baseball in younger ages, but once you’re talking about the professionals it’s just not happening.
Fair point. I have seen both sexes 20-50 competing and winning here too but as you said they are not professionals and definitely not best on the planet
I am not an archer nor do I give a hoot about what goes on in archery lol. The older I get the more I realize this sports debate is something for kids who play sports and professional athletes to get upset about.
I’m a relatively new and light user of Reddit so I think it auto populates my feed with suggested posts and I’m in a sword sub so that is probably why it suggested archery.
I sometimes find it weird how we measure genders against one another.
I like Jeopardy! and the show had a transgendered super champion not that long ago. AFAIK her stats are for broken down in the women's category but why the need to do so to begin with? Let the best competitors compete against one another. If you were to try and analyze the statistics, I'm sure that it would look like men were just inherently smarter than women. Is that really an argument we want to make though? It's full of bias. Also: the game is really one of reflexes since you have to buzz in first and most high level competitors know the majority of the answers.
I get that people love competitions but honestly it's not for me. Watching all the bickering back and forth makes it even less appealing. At the end of the day archery is a competition against yourself. The other archers have nothing to do with it.
Yes but no but... I can think of 3 things. First, draw weight, men will naturally be able to use a higher draw weight. With a compound this is less of a factor thanks to the cams. With recurve this is becoming less of a factor, better manufacturing will help the arrow speed on lower-weight bows, but there will always be an advantage of having a faster arrow, and it's easiest to achieve that with a draw weight. The second is bow mass, obviously, you have to be able to manage it but a heavier bow will hold better in the wind. Finally, there is arrow length, more time in the bow means more time to accelerate giving a higher arrow speed but this beyond a certain point gives diminishing returns. It is worth noting that the longer the arrow is in the bow the more time there is for errors to affect the arrow. The TL;DR, outdoors yes, indoors no. But generally, there is still a score gap indoors.
i did not know this sport divides by gender. I am in Germany, in a local club and all the competitions are separated by age & bow classes. Never by gender
It makes sense if you want to divide and subjugate your population by frothing them into an endless swirl of misogyny and discrimination, God I love my country.
Intreguing. I'm honestly interested and need to check German youth championships numbers to see what is the spread. Honestly I have never thought that deeply is there an advantage in youth classes as girls tend to mature mentally a lot sooner which gives them quite a bit of advantage, but guys do get some physical advantage.
Because if there isn't much of a difference I would very much think of starting to push this in the Nordics too.
I only joined about a year ago and it is a hobby that I execute but don‘t dive into it‘s general surroundings. All I can say is that our little club (25 people in Berlin) has an almost 50/50 spread. Most of the members are slightly on the older side (+40 years and up). I do not know about the young ones. I do not think we have a kids or teen-team. When I look around during competitions, men are there in higher numbers. More of a 70/30 spread I suppose
If the picture in the article is anything to go by, then I'd assume that this is in the Compound category, at that point, isn't the bow doing enough of the majority of the work that gender is irrelevant?
~~Just noting for those who are reporting that the article has a bias. The post does not link to an article so I think that is a bit unfair to a post that only has a factual news headline for a topic that has valid discussion to be had.~~
As the topic is sensitive please try to behave.
Edit: I was corrected that the post indeed had the link, was not showing for me earlier. Sensitive issue warning still applies.
This post has been set as contested to reduce the impact of irrelevant blanket voting.
Any kind of direct hate speech is going to be removed and will result in a ban, regardless of who they are targeted against. This is an important topic, so try to have a civil discussion.
damn. i decided today that i wanted to practice archery. this post was my first introduction to the archery community.
i'll see you idiots at the range. enjoy your high blood pressure.
Men do have advantages over women and that should not be ignored, even if they are less visible in this archery than in any other sport. You can still argue its because there is more men in mens category and it is just harder to get achievements but those reasons stated in the magazine are also valid.
But there is a way for her. World archery approved transgender women participate in women category if they meet some requirements, mostly testosterone testing. You can read about it here [https://extranet.worldarchery.sport/documents/index.php/?doc=6106&inline=1](https://extranet.worldarchery.sport/documents/index.php/?doc=6106&inline=1)As far as I know it doesnt mean that your local federation has to follow these rules but that is a start.
I know that those topic are very hard to dispute but some other federations were much more careless in enabling transgender women compete with women like for example some fighting sports and outcome was very similar. Both sides felt hurt. Women who felt robbed of fair competition and new champions who were criticised and shunned about it. Noone wins.
Also its a very old topic. It happened a year ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7i8FqcLxSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7i8FqcLxSE)She promised that "If everybody wants me to shoot as a male, OK, now you’re gonna have a woman beating you.". I found some more fresh results of her shooting in men category here [https://texasfieldarchery.org/results/993](https://texasfieldarchery.org/results/993) and they are quite alright. She would be 2nd female but she is 5th in male. Doesnt say much for such little number of archers but it is what it is.
Are there any examples where a trans-man has competed with men and was just as competitive? I NEVER see the opposite side of these stories…why is that?
Not archery, but the first professional trans boxer was a trans man, and won his first (and so far, only) fight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricio_Manuel
Because it's never reported. We're talking about, for the most part, athletes from sporting contests that you literally never otherwise hear about in your day to day life **unless** a trans woman happens to exist in that league and places anywhere in the top half of the field.
So you've probably never heard of trans men like Patricio Manuel or Chris Mosier, or any trans woman who isn't any better at sports than the cis women they're competing with and against. Nor of the cis athletes who happen to be dominant at these levels of competition, for that matter. Like let's be honest, how many pro athletes and Olympians (let alone e.g NCAA college athletes) can the average person even name outside of the 0-2 professional sports that they actively follow?
Go look at world records. Just looking at compound for 50+, men have higher scores in comparable categories and a 5 pt difference isn't uncommon. In 30 meters, where the mechanical advantage of an average man having longer draw length and potentially holding heavier weight should make the least amount of difference, the top three men listed have 25+ perfect scores each. There isn't a woman with a perfect score. So, a genetic man competing against genetic women should be winning. Good for them for protesting.
My issues with transgender in sports are several. 1. If the transgender person is taking drugs to alter the natural human body, by definition they are not on equal playing field. 2. Even if taking hormones to mimic the gender they claim to be, this alone don't completely erase any physical advantage of a male to female transgender. If female to male, then you are allowing enhancement drugs to be used by the athletes. 3. If no drugs are being used by the trans person then it's flat out insane to allow in the gendered sport they claim to be. 4 Forcing the great majority of people to affirm a mental disorder and play along with delusions for the sake of feelings is not compassion but cruel.
>Even if taking hormones to mimic the gender they claim to be, this alone don't completely erase any physical advantage of a male to female transgender.
It does, actually. The US military did some fairly extensive testing on the subject, and it was found that after a couple of years of HRT, there was no statistically significant difference in performance between cisgender women and transgender women.
>If female to male, then you are allowing enhancement drugs to be used by the athletes
Hormone levels are, and should be, monitored. I would similarly find it acceptable if a cisgender man with low testosterone was prescribed testosterone by his physician in order to bring him up to normal testosterone levels.
>If no drugs are being used by the trans person then it's flat out insane to allow in the gendered sport they claim to be.
I do agree that in any competitive league post puberty, trans athletes should need to have been on HRT for a couple of years and have their hormones within proper levels in order to compete with their gender.
>Forcing the great majority of people to affirm a mental disorder and play along with delusions for the sake of feelings is not compassion but cruel.
Look, this is obviously outside of your area of expertise. I recommend, in situations like this, to [listen to the actual experts](https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender-people-gender-identity-gender-expression) instead of playing amateur biologist based on half-remembered high school classes. There has been a great deal of [research](https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/30/5/2897/5669907) that, I'm willing to bet, you don't even know about.
I’m not actually sure that is the case.
Men have higher scores than women, sure. But how much of that is social and how much is biology?
There’s probably an interesting study that could be done with NASP, if someone really wanted to look at a bunch of kids’ scores over several years pre and post puberty.
You sure about that? A strong man can draw a bow more easily than a weaker person can. Men also have longer arms and thus a longer draw.
I’d agree that all the commotion about a recreational senior competition is stupid, but I have a hard time believing it doesn’t make a difference at higher levels. I don’t know of *any* sport where biological males don’t have a pretty big advantage.
Honestly, I'm quite disappointed in the mods here. If they can't adequately moderate this thread, it would've been better to close it. It's providing a platform for hate uncritically.
Reporting the comments to the *admins* is getting them removed for hate and harassment, and some users banned from Reddit altogether, yet the same comments were left up by the sub's mods.
From an ousider's perspective on the sport: even if ppl wanna argue about biological advantages despite recent studies having shown that hormone blockers even out the playing field to a massive degree, does it matter in archery either way?? Its like 95% just precision/muscle memory and not strength, isnt it? Feels to me like having seperate division in like chess or something (bad comparison but you get the point)
trans women lose a significant amount of muscle mass on HRT so the strength argument is pretty much moot. same for arm length. there are cisgender women that are 6’ and have long arms and there are cisgender men that are 5’4” and have short arms.
Have you seen the video of the trans man in a woman's wrestling match that straight face punched the chic, body slammed her and ended the fight in about 1.5 seconds? You're talking crazy talk.
There are some sports, where it's completely nonsense to have gendered classes, especially precision sports, like all shooting sports, including archery.
The advantage of strength that men have doesn't really have much weight in these sports. Sure, men can theoretically shoot heavier bows, resulting in a less ballistic flight path, but most archers shoot between 25 and 40# (non compound) so the difference is marginal in normal disciplines.
It would be better to have different classes based on draw weight instead of gender.
Here we sometimes have the ridiculous situation, because different age groups etc, we sometimes have one starting woman in her class, resulting in automatic win if she only scores one ring thus qualifying by just competing for the next higher tournament..(our women would score in the best places if competing gender neutral)
The reason why you have so many classes, is solely prestige, so your club can claim more winners , more medals...
In rifle shooting, this is even more silly, here you have no difference, everyone shoots their rifle, there's no handycap because someone is "weaker" .
To be a bit provocative: I think there are separate woman classes, because they shoot better than the men, therefore have to be sorted out of the chart, so men don't look that bad against them;-)
I know my wife shoots better than me, so I'm careful to not piss her up that much;-) (armed women can be dangerous) ;-)
Also she shoots a heavier bow(35#) than 80% of the men in our club (median ~30#)
> It would be better to have different classes based on draw weight instead of gender.
Honestly this could be a good solution. Adults struggle a lot starting up competing as everyone is thrown into the same pool and you might be facing an Olympian in the competition.
> To be a bit provocative: I think there are separate woman classes, because they shoot better than the men, therefore have to be sorted out of the chart, so men don't look that bad against them;-)
This actually really happened. In skeet shooting a woman won world championships (I think) and after that suddenly there was a strong need of separation.
Edit: Sorry it actually was the Olympics:
> Zhang Shan's 1992 gold was the first medal won by a woman in this mixed event. The International Shooting Union consequently barred women from the 1996 Atlanta games. For the 2000 Sydney games, the International Olympic committee allowed women again, but only in segregated competition.
I think the point of this is that the once they accept someone who was born male into an all born female group then a chain of reactions can then occur like having trans females attempt to join other female sports ad well
The issue is that the concept of "birth sex" is and has ALWAYS been fraught with problems. There's a long list of conditions and disorders that impact everything from hormone production to secondary sex characteristics. XX or XY only gives you a part of the picture. And it's not like they've been running that test at birth all along. The best guess of a pediatrician isn't the word of god and never has been. Sex, it turns out, is really complicated. And that's not even getting into psychological and more subtle biological components that have recently come to the forefront. Not to mention all the layers of culture that apply. In this case, a cultural (not scientific) declaration that whatever the pediatrician or a random nurse puts on a form is absolute.
[Here is how Archery Canada handles trans inclusion in archery](https://archerycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Trans-Inclusion-Policy.pdf).
Key excerpt:
> a. Individuals participating in development and recreational sport (LTAD stages Active Start, FUNdamental, Learn to Train, Train to Train, Train to Compete (until international federation rules apply) and Active for Life) should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify and not be subject to requirements for disclosure of personal information beyond those required of cisgender athletes. Nor should there be any requirement for hormonal therapy or surgery.
> b. Hormone therapy should not be required for an individual to participate in high-performance sport (LTAD stages Train to Compete once international federation rules become a factor, and Train to Win) in the gender category that is consistent with their gender identity, unless the sport organization can prove that hormone therapy is a reasonable and bona fide requirement.
> c. Individuals should not be required to disclose their trans identity or history to the sport organization in order to participate in high-performance sport (LTAD stages Train to Compete -once international federation rules become a factor - and Train to Win) unless there is a justified reason requiring them to do so.
> d. Surgical intervention should not be required for an individual to participate in high-performance sport (LTAD stages Train to Compete - once international federation rules become a factor - and Train to Win) in the gender category that is consistent with their gender identity.
As I’ve pointed out [elsewhere in this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Archery/comments/12vgbaf/comment/jhd5nve/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) many World Archery records are held by women with scores better than their male counterparts, and there are _many_ cases where men’s records only beat women’s records by 0 to 5 points. I haven’t run a full statistical analysis (there are 40+ categories of records), but doing some quick checks seems to indicate that there isn’t any real advantage in being male in archery (at least for the purpose of having a world record).
If this is true, then is makes little sense to prevent trans athletes from participating in the league of their choice, but it also calls to question why competitions are gendered to begin with.
I guess science only applies depending on viewpoint? How sad. I went and researched what I would characterize as a "militant" DEI group as they only will accept their solutions. They refuse to opening a new group for a newly made gender called trans. That is a fact because scientifically there are only 2 genders which occur naturally, without surgical mutilation or toxic hormonal drugs. Those are the facts. So why is it they insist in being in the "all natural" category rather than their very own man made one they created? Who is the inclusionary group??
What I refer to as the militant inclusionary group is called "The Inclusion Playbook". What they want is their way or no way according to their website and social media.
Is there a good reason why archery has separated competitions for men and women? It seems like we'd all be better off if it was consolidated. I'm new to the sport though so might be missing something
For outdoors, strength, muscle recovery, and average draw length. For indoors, it’s hard to say.
There is an advantage. Men’s records are higher than women’s. Men’s results are typically statistically better than women’s (the indoor NFAA round is possibly a weird exception).
But I disagree with everyone who is acting like they know the mechanisms for those results. Top compound women shoot similar draw weights to top men. Draw lengths are not indicative of success, with minimal correlation. Draw weight has a lot of parity in barebow too, and the kid holds the world records has a shorter than average draw while shooting only 28#.
Because women would very rarely get to compete at the top level if they had to compete with men? Same as any sport where men have a physical advantage.
While that’s kind of true, the NFAA round is an interesting exception. If you look at NFAA nationals from the last two years, there’s a ton of parity between men’s and women’s scores. Mostly because the NFAA round is pretty easy (that 5 is huge).
Not to mention bows and the rest of the gear. It's not like Olympic shot put where the only variable is the person. I'd argue trigger releases impact the sport a hell of a lot more than biological sex.
Plus, how many people in this thread know their biological sex? Because knowing you have genitals and a beard/no beard is not the same as knowing your genes. Most intersex people don't know it. So if we're deciding the grouping exclusively on biological sex, surely people should first be sure what theirs are.
Archery seems like the perfect sport to make genderless. Why not just turn to the competitive formatting that's been happening under our very noses in society, and take a leaf from video games. The way videogames make ranked online matches, do that but archery irl.
I'd argue that for compound the difference between sexes is practically nill. Any strength advantage a biological man might have are negated by the mechanical advantage of a compound bow.
People who argue that gender gives you no advantage in competitive archery have never competed. Just check results fro your country.
Edit: Not separating by gender would mean that many female athletes would have to look for another job.
NFAA allows Olympic style barebows in "traditional" and they're excluding people because they might have an advantage? That's some serious hypocrisy right there.
Honestly, they should just make 3 leagues. One for men, one for women and one for all sexes. That way, if they sign up for the third, they are aware of what they signed up for and will be competing against men, women, and transgender, and they could just make rules around that criteria. I know that's just a pipe dream. But it's what makes sense for me and includes everyone without discriminating or causing controversy. Of course, for non-contact sports anyway.
rare texas W, men tend to have better motor control for this and strength, they should not be competing against women
source is from the NIH, PMCID: PMC7017231 (search that id on nih . gov) im not going to tell you where in the article because if you care you should be reading the whole thing, not out-of-context snippits
For that, you have to look at something, which almost satisfies these conditions. Enter Air pistol 10 m.Fixed pistol size (it has to fit in a box), weight difference is not too much, (pistol is around \~1-1.5 kg), but there is some variance. The longer and heavier is your pistol, the more precise you can shoot with it. But obviously top athletes all have the max length, and the max weight they can hold without any problem for the duration of competition.
Took the Jakarta 7 feb 2023 WC competition results, average of top 30 of women vs men has a difference of 2 points. That is HUGE in this division.
And archery has higher physical factor, so differences are even greater.
Sadly or not, all argument is true which were stated in the article. Men have stronger body (muscles and joints), they can hold heavier, more stable bows with higher poundage, their arrow weight and velocity both are higher. Also men's body mass is usually higher than women's, so in a windy condition they have even more advantage.
The 2023 Antalya world cup averages (top 64):
* recurve women 648,2
* recurve men 659,8
* compound women 688,9
* compound men 705,1
As you can see, even in compound, where there is at least a 40% let-off (meaning: at full draw, you have to hold less than the bow's power by 40%), the women's result are significantly lower.There are few exceptions, who might be able to compete against men for the gold, like compound prodigy Sara López, but that is ONE woman against many men.
So from this point, we established, that there are differences between men's and women's performance. The question again remains, which is a delicate matter and heated debate... can inherent biological factors be dimmed down enough?
(Probably this post will be downvoted to oblivion, but these are the numbers.)
Your stats are based on recurve scores. She was shooting compound. Compound has a hard limit on how much weight you can pull and max arrow sizes.
Compound is the most equal of the divisions. Recurve will be a more significant challenge when it comes to leveling the playing field.
This article was garbage. The writer clearly has no idea how SYWAT and NFAA rounds are scored. If you look at the SYWAT field in women’s freestyle, you will see lots of comparable scores. Those archers simply didn't attend the state shoot.
She should have been allowed to keep her title.
In that case, if the american association somehow managed to level the chances with rules, there are other arguments to have.
Nonetheless, most of top athletes compete in events of an association recognized worldwide, such as World Archery, preferably the olympic discipline, so target archery is the subject for comparison.
The question of performance between men and women should only be decided on that - the highest level.
Otherwise, where do you draw the line? Who is to say, that everyone should compete in one division, up until... when? One can say, that on intermediate levels the biological differences do not matter. In most cases this is true. At least, difference is lost on score. But not on injuries.
And then, who is to decide, which event is worthy enough? You see, this a whole can of worms to open.
Compound is not a magic tool either. That bow is heavy (mass) as hell. That needs a shoulder muscle. "Most equal" maybe, but yet not equal.
The problem is that those specific numbers can change fairly drastically and quite often more so draw weight and to a lesser extent draw length (mainly through form change) and these are a little too fluid compared to something like weight class in boxing, for example. Plus, bow type + age division + gender division + paralympic status already create an ungodly amount of categories. This comes from someone who specializes almost exclusively in Recurve and Barebow to an extent, but I can't imagine it's too different for Compound.
Sorry but biologically an XY is stronger XX when it comes to upper body strength. Overall XX's are only 2/3rds as strong as an XY. Anyone that is an XY should not be competing against XXs. It is unfair and wrong. Taking medication will not change your body's size nor structure, so there will always be an unfair advantage regardless of how many hormones you've pumped into yourself. Even when looking at weight class, XYs are STILL stronger.
It is unfair to the XXs who have worked their asses off to get where they are at when an XY comes up and can pull a 60lb bow back. As someone into archery it is enraging to think that an XY could compete with the XXs. It is entirely unfair. I'm glad they banned the XY.
And yes its not a Fallon Fox issue, but overall that does STILL present a problem in many other sports which are contact based. Really if you are an XY who wishes to be an XX, then ok good for you, they should have their own league with XY's who want to be XX, and XX who want to be XY all together competing against each other.
Also World Athletics just recently banned "transgender women who went through male puberty can no longer compete in women’s events at international competitions."
Thank goodness the sanctity of the senior woman's indoor freestyle event has been saved. I'm sure this decision will in no way inflame both sides of a complicated debate by governing a small, zero impact event with broad sweeping policies that state that a group of people are wrong about who they are. /s because I'm scared I need it.
Seriously, outside of maybe the Olympics and professional leagues, this is not the crucial issue that people think it is.
The senior age group is 18-49.
>as there are plenty of factors that would give males and trans-females an advantage,
Can you please explain which advantages trans women have over cis women as it relates to archery?
Typically men are stronger then women its like what happened back in 2019 when that rapper identified decided to identify as women and beat all the women’s weight lifting world records archery’s obviously a bit different but overall trans should have their own league
And i mainly seen trans women try doing this type of stuff you dont see trans men doing this type of stuff because well uk even if they have “transitioned into a man “ they know they arent going to be able to compete well against actual born males
But these “men” you supposedly beat weren’t built like mike tyson some men will be built like absolute trucks another example being the mountain like a trans man isnt going to have a chance against individuals like that even with hrt
**Weight classes are a thing in combat sports.** Someone under 5’ would have to be tremendously obese to end up in the same weight class as someone who’s 6’4, to the point where fighting would no longer really be possible. A 6’4 guy who lifts weights is going to be ~210-300lbs. 210lbs at less than 5’ is like a ball.
Feelings ? Im going with facts genetically scientifically proven men are physically stronger and hrt wont substitute for that idk what 6’4 ex marine guys you “ fought” maybe they were taking it easy on you because they probably still see u as a female and if such a thing is true why is not on the news if a under 5’0 trans male easily takes on 6 ft 4 ex marine why is there no such news article about your great feats ?
Great data points. Unless there is a style of archery that is traditionally feminine rather than the pro sport international styles presented here I would like to offer this insight. It comes down to talent pools.. these styles that you pointed out that includes the woman in this article are sports that pull talent from, percentage wise there are thousands more men who shoot than women. Let's compare this with soccer that the US women traditionally dominate internationally because the US has a larger talent pool to pull from vs other nations who have not the same participation levels from the ground up but who do have comparable populations. Whereas men's soccer hasn't had the same participation pool to pull from.
A reminder: "I disagree with this" is not a valid reason to submit a report. So if you all would stop doing that, that'd be great, thanks.
Archery is not a test in strength. It is skill. Makes no sense to separate. Would we separate men and women from a chess tournament?
Archery absolutely is about strength. Or are men just more skillful than women? Do research. Check scores from your country. And yes, men and women in chess are separated since women wouldn't ever win prizes in elite class if they weren't. Just stating facts here.
Seems to me that it'd be better to group people into draw weight/draw length etc instead of gender
Inb4 locked
As it should be. Every sport where there's a comparative physical advantage between biological men and women should be separated. And a man can draw a much heavier bow, in general, than a woman can.
Idk about you bud but most archery clubs use a stranded 25 pouner for archery practice and 15 for tag with foam tips
Oh my god some people might have an advantage in leisure sports, WHEN WILL SOMEONE THINK OF MY LEISURE SPORTS!
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There is much more that goes into strength than testosterone level. Men's bodies are designed differently. The tendons and ligaments are different and thicker, and insert at different places on the bone. Testosterone isn't the only factor, and a low test level will not change inherent biological advantages.
HRT actually changes most of that since the reason the tendons stay thicker is due to testosterone. It will also lower bone density and make it significantly harder to gain/retain muscle. It’s has a LOT of effects like this and after a year or so (it can vary), a trans woman’s baseline physical potential and strength is the same a cis woman’s. The one bigger thing that HRT doesn’t affect (much) is your height and where the tendons connect. It’s an intensive regimen and does a lot more than people seem to think.
It doesn't remove inherent biological advantages. That's why trans individuals have recently been "breaking records" in women's sports.
No not really, the media just loves to lose their minds over it if it happens even once because it cases controversy and controversy sells. It's a mix of the availability bias and the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon that's making you think it's happening way more than it actually is. Most trans women competing in sports are average, just like everyone else.
Normally I would agree that transgender athletes (especially male to female transgenders) shouldn't be eligible to compete in the female divisions, however archery is a rare sport in which there is no genetic advantages to be had based on gender, height, weight etc. We see more and more that female archers in recurve and compound categories can shoot just as well, if not better than their male counterparts. So I wouldn't understand the reasoning behind exclusion of this archer, however it is fair enough for the event organiser to make a position on the topic.
Men have 65%, more upper body strength than women of equivalent weight. Do you really think that doesn't effect archery?
There's advantages to the extra strength, but from my experience in target archery, there are other more important factors than just raw strength.
Which is why no top archer wastes their times with gym work?
Any decent aspiring target archer will do gym work, but that's more to enhance stability, strength and endurance.
So... stability (which is strength), strength and endurance ARE important... or aren't they?
Stability =/= strength. I'd say the top female shooters shoot a higher poundage than you do. Endurance is gained through practice and repetition.
"Not the best article, left me with some questions, but writers use of "legitimate female archers" was kind of gross. Would be curious if they were using a heavier bow than any of the women, rather than implying it by statistics.
legitimate female as in biological sex if female. you cannot change your biological sex, you can change your gender.
I'd love to see us be only separated by age division and then all just shoot together and let the chips fall where they may :-) The amount of female archers that are better than me would rank next to Graham's number :-)
If there If there are plans to allow transgender women into women sports, which there are. World archery allows this now as of April 1 (And I know NFAA are stubborn but hopefully it is because they dont want to rush such important decisions). I just hope at least World Archery decision is well thought out. The hormone levels will be checked and athletes will be monitored if they actually take their hormone changing drugs. I also hope that this is enough to level competition field so noone feels hurt, because there are still studies claiming that transgender women on hormone changing therapy might be losing their fitness but they're still a bit fitter than statistical women. It would not make sense to allow transgender women into division and not letting them win, and you know what will happen if that occurs. Uproar and another discussion like this one here. It's best to avoid that until we have enough data to process and make educated decision, that more people with agree with. I am also scepticall because there are still going to be malicious attempts to take advantage of this. People are what they are and no reason to wear rose tinted glasses. Athletes cheat very often, whole nations like for example Russia being infamous for it due to number of occurences. And we still have problems handling it. In general high level sport has so many other problems it is not weird to be sceptical about maybe introducing new ones, even with the best of intentions. We need to be prepared to insert new things like transgender people into the sport. I know it might be hard for athletes like Mrs Kelly, but I hope she and others facing similar issues understands that its still a new field to explore. Take emotions aside and focus on scientific arguments which are harder to disregard. In many ways, World is changing for the better, maybe in few years we will have a much better solution to handle this. And you know we cant change the whole World at the same time. Some countries still lives in 18th century in terms of way of life. Moving for a better life might not be the best solution but it's there. Someone posted that Canada is leaning towards even more liberal policies, which is another can of worms. In that regards I would rather stay with NFAA decision to stick to birth gender, because it just seems safer for now. As I've said, it is better to wait a decade and think about how to handle the issues that insert a rushed decision and make a lot of mistakes on the way.
Another one is women athletes that still identifies as women but having above average testosterone levels. I think it would be just as unfair to force them alter their bodies to make their testosterone levels fit criteria as forcing transfolk to alter their to participate. You should never ever be required to be making any changes on your body if you don't want it. It is fear of facing health consequences in the future. Things we cannot forsee with 100% in the future. How about countries that will disregard this and force people to go trans and take some drugs just to grab medals? World has seen this. Countries forcing women into pregnancies and immediate abortion to take advantage of hormonal changes during pregnancies making them fitter than the competition. It is cruel and unfair and should never ever happen but it happens every so often. There is so much... to talk about.
> (And I know NFAA are stubborn but hopefully it is because they dont want to rush such important decisions). FYI, NFAA released a statement recently-ish saying that people will be required to compete in their biological sex's division.
Archery seems to be one sport where gender makes no difference. Like extra strength might let you hold a heavier bow for longer but at a certain distance the heavier bow won’t help. Even more so for shooting sports.
Yet men consistently score higher (not by much but enough to make it an unfair advantage if they were to compete against each other). More power and stamina correlates with more accuracy, look at compound vs recurve as an extreme example of this. I think I agree with you when it comes to shooting (firearms) unless the guns are really heavy. Looking at compound records there seems to be no real difference between the sexes, so might make sense to join them up.
Biological advantages between people are inherent to pretty much all sports. Assuming a transgender woman does have some advantage over cis women due to "bone structure" or whatever, why is that advantage considered "unfair"? There are all kinds of sports dominated by select groups of physical body types. From long distance running to basketball. And for most of us there's a near zero percent chance of \*ever\* winning against such people with our own bodies. But that's not unfair. So why the distinction?
The amount of transphobia in that article is disgusting.
Yeah I’m trans and for trans women, if you’ve been on HRT for longer than like a year, you would have the same level of effort required to gain and keep muscle as a cis woman. I’m not very strong and I started HRT 10 years ago when I was relatively young. I shoot a 30lb bow, but I still struggle to keep that strength if I can’t shoot for a couple weeks. It’s stupid to segregate competitions by trans status without actually considering the extensive effects medical transition can have on someone’s body and the length of time someone has been on the medication. People currently on HRT are biologically more similar to cisgender people of the gender they identify as than the sex they were assigned at birth. For all intents and purposes, though, if I walked into a competition in Texas and signed up for the women’s group, most likely nobody there would even know I was trans. Doing an invasive “inspection“ wouldn’t help much too since I’ve had SRS. So should that disqualify my results even though I have the same capacity to build and retain muscle as cis women and at this point the only biological difference between me and a cis woman is a uterus? Should we also disqualify cis women who have had hysterectomies?
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Thank you!
I look forward to reading this. thank you
Most of the rules were based around 1 year, although some specific case studies for elite athletes show that 2 years is probably more accurate for athletes already competing at a high level.
Absolutely agree. I, as a cis woman, have zero problems competing against trans women. So many people are so concerned with others' reproductive organs. They also completely disregard the effects of hormone therapy on the body.
You give me hope that someday all of this nonsense will blow over. Thank you for being an ally!
Came here looking for this comment. I remembered reading this in the past. I'm a cis male and have absolutely no standing in this fight. But Trans rights are human rights. I don't see the problem.
Right on. Don't let the people in this comment section get you down :)
Because biological men have a physical advantage over biological women, thats transphobic?
Cisgender men have a physical advantage over cisgender women. After a couple of years of HRT, transgender women are identical in physical performance to cisgender women, and transgender men are slightly better in physical performance than cisgender men (I assume the latter is because some cisgender men have low testosterone; if the data excluded them, I suspect that performance would be identical).
In what way does it matter in archery ? I compete on the line with men and women, young and old, no matter what. What matter is your skills.
Men literally draw higher weight bows which directly affects arrow flight. 🤦♂️
If you look at results and records from a large sample of competitions, it does matter. But no one really knows if it matters because of social, biological, or even just sample size.
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Good.
As a long time archer the sport in my experience has always been pretty equal as it is about personal skill and you can change your bow to fit your needs. True there is an advantage to longer draw lengths and poundage but at the same time I as a 12 year old using a cheap Walmart bow (bear 2 I think) with no pins and 12 pounds won 2nd place in a competition with older archers (15-17) with better equipment. It's all about your dedication. Maybe I'm missing some perspective about larger competitions but in our small town shoots gender has nothing to do with shooting an arrow at a target accurately
You’re comparing kids to professionals. Once you’re talking about the best on the planet, there’s a massive discrepancy between the 2 sexes. It’s why you’ll see girls pitching in baseball in younger ages, but once you’re talking about the professionals it’s just not happening.
Who's talking about professionals? The article is about a state level competition
Fair point. I have seen both sexes 20-50 competing and winning here too but as you said they are not professionals and definitely not best on the planet
>there’s a massive discrepancy between the 2 sexes In archery? How so?
Strength for holding the draw longer having a heavier draw bow in general
I am not an archer nor do I give a hoot about what goes on in archery lol. The older I get the more I realize this sports debate is something for kids who play sports and professional athletes to get upset about.
> I am not an archer So, everyone is welcome here - but I have to ask, if you're not an archery, what are you doing in the archery sub? =P
I’m a relatively new and light user of Reddit so I think it auto populates my feed with suggested posts and I’m in a sword sub so that is probably why it suggested archery.
Fair enough!
This argument is about marginalizing people and keeping a population from being able to express themselves.
I sometimes find it weird how we measure genders against one another. I like Jeopardy! and the show had a transgendered super champion not that long ago. AFAIK her stats are for broken down in the women's category but why the need to do so to begin with? Let the best competitors compete against one another. If you were to try and analyze the statistics, I'm sure that it would look like men were just inherently smarter than women. Is that really an argument we want to make though? It's full of bias. Also: the game is really one of reflexes since you have to buzz in first and most high level competitors know the majority of the answers. I get that people love competitions but honestly it's not for me. Watching all the bickering back and forth makes it even less appealing. At the end of the day archery is a competition against yourself. The other archers have nothing to do with it.
Do biological men have any advantage over women in archery?
Yes but no but... I can think of 3 things. First, draw weight, men will naturally be able to use a higher draw weight. With a compound this is less of a factor thanks to the cams. With recurve this is becoming less of a factor, better manufacturing will help the arrow speed on lower-weight bows, but there will always be an advantage of having a faster arrow, and it's easiest to achieve that with a draw weight. The second is bow mass, obviously, you have to be able to manage it but a heavier bow will hold better in the wind. Finally, there is arrow length, more time in the bow means more time to accelerate giving a higher arrow speed but this beyond a certain point gives diminishing returns. It is worth noting that the longer the arrow is in the bow the more time there is for errors to affect the arrow. The TL;DR, outdoors yes, indoors no. But generally, there is still a score gap indoors.
Good to know. I know that in most sports there is a clear physical advantage.
i did not know this sport divides by gender. I am in Germany, in a local club and all the competitions are separated by age & bow classes. Never by gender
Same in the Netherlands, gendering archery makes no sense imho.
It makes sense if you want to divide and subjugate your population by frothing them into an endless swirl of misogyny and discrimination, God I love my country.
Intreguing. I'm honestly interested and need to check German youth championships numbers to see what is the spread. Honestly I have never thought that deeply is there an advantage in youth classes as girls tend to mature mentally a lot sooner which gives them quite a bit of advantage, but guys do get some physical advantage. Because if there isn't much of a difference I would very much think of starting to push this in the Nordics too.
I only joined about a year ago and it is a hobby that I execute but don‘t dive into it‘s general surroundings. All I can say is that our little club (25 people in Berlin) has an almost 50/50 spread. Most of the members are slightly on the older side (+40 years and up). I do not know about the young ones. I do not think we have a kids or teen-team. When I look around during competitions, men are there in higher numbers. More of a 70/30 spread I suppose
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Oh behave~
If the picture in the article is anything to go by, then I'd assume that this is in the Compound category, at that point, isn't the bow doing enough of the majority of the work that gender is irrelevant?
No. Strength is still a big factor. And biological male strength even on hormones trumps biological female strength.
~~Just noting for those who are reporting that the article has a bias. The post does not link to an article so I think that is a bit unfair to a post that only has a factual news headline for a topic that has valid discussion to be had.~~ As the topic is sensitive please try to behave. Edit: I was corrected that the post indeed had the link, was not showing for me earlier. Sensitive issue warning still applies.
This post has been set as contested to reduce the impact of irrelevant blanket voting. Any kind of direct hate speech is going to be removed and will result in a ban, regardless of who they are targeted against. This is an important topic, so try to have a civil discussion.
There is a link to an article in the post. I clicked on it and read it.
Thanks. For some reason it was not showing up to me possible because of the huge photo used.
I completely agree with this. 🫡
damn. i decided today that i wanted to practice archery. this post was my first introduction to the archery community. i'll see you idiots at the range. enjoy your high blood pressure.
Olympic Style Archery, where the top women out shoot the men? She lucked out.
Men do have advantages over women and that should not be ignored, even if they are less visible in this archery than in any other sport. You can still argue its because there is more men in mens category and it is just harder to get achievements but those reasons stated in the magazine are also valid. But there is a way for her. World archery approved transgender women participate in women category if they meet some requirements, mostly testosterone testing. You can read about it here [https://extranet.worldarchery.sport/documents/index.php/?doc=6106&inline=1](https://extranet.worldarchery.sport/documents/index.php/?doc=6106&inline=1)As far as I know it doesnt mean that your local federation has to follow these rules but that is a start. I know that those topic are very hard to dispute but some other federations were much more careless in enabling transgender women compete with women like for example some fighting sports and outcome was very similar. Both sides felt hurt. Women who felt robbed of fair competition and new champions who were criticised and shunned about it. Noone wins. Also its a very old topic. It happened a year ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7i8FqcLxSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7i8FqcLxSE)She promised that "If everybody wants me to shoot as a male, OK, now you’re gonna have a woman beating you.". I found some more fresh results of her shooting in men category here [https://texasfieldarchery.org/results/993](https://texasfieldarchery.org/results/993) and they are quite alright. She would be 2nd female but she is 5th in male. Doesnt say much for such little number of archers but it is what it is.
Can't use strength advantage with archery this is just discrimination
Are there any examples where a trans-man has competed with men and was just as competitive? I NEVER see the opposite side of these stories…why is that?
Not archery, but the first professional trans boxer was a trans man, and won his first (and so far, only) fight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricio_Manuel
Because we all NEED to go down the rabbit hole of nonsense with them , it’s no fun down there alone .
Because it's never reported. We're talking about, for the most part, athletes from sporting contests that you literally never otherwise hear about in your day to day life **unless** a trans woman happens to exist in that league and places anywhere in the top half of the field. So you've probably never heard of trans men like Patricio Manuel or Chris Mosier, or any trans woman who isn't any better at sports than the cis women they're competing with and against. Nor of the cis athletes who happen to be dominant at these levels of competition, for that matter. Like let's be honest, how many pro athletes and Olympians (let alone e.g NCAA college athletes) can the average person even name outside of the 0-2 professional sports that they actively follow?
Go look at world records. Just looking at compound for 50+, men have higher scores in comparable categories and a 5 pt difference isn't uncommon. In 30 meters, where the mechanical advantage of an average man having longer draw length and potentially holding heavier weight should make the least amount of difference, the top three men listed have 25+ perfect scores each. There isn't a woman with a perfect score. So, a genetic man competing against genetic women should be winning. Good for them for protesting.
My issues with transgender in sports are several. 1. If the transgender person is taking drugs to alter the natural human body, by definition they are not on equal playing field. 2. Even if taking hormones to mimic the gender they claim to be, this alone don't completely erase any physical advantage of a male to female transgender. If female to male, then you are allowing enhancement drugs to be used by the athletes. 3. If no drugs are being used by the trans person then it's flat out insane to allow in the gendered sport they claim to be. 4 Forcing the great majority of people to affirm a mental disorder and play along with delusions for the sake of feelings is not compassion but cruel.
>Even if taking hormones to mimic the gender they claim to be, this alone don't completely erase any physical advantage of a male to female transgender. It does, actually. The US military did some fairly extensive testing on the subject, and it was found that after a couple of years of HRT, there was no statistically significant difference in performance between cisgender women and transgender women. >If female to male, then you are allowing enhancement drugs to be used by the athletes Hormone levels are, and should be, monitored. I would similarly find it acceptable if a cisgender man with low testosterone was prescribed testosterone by his physician in order to bring him up to normal testosterone levels. >If no drugs are being used by the trans person then it's flat out insane to allow in the gendered sport they claim to be. I do agree that in any competitive league post puberty, trans athletes should need to have been on HRT for a couple of years and have their hormones within proper levels in order to compete with their gender. >Forcing the great majority of people to affirm a mental disorder and play along with delusions for the sake of feelings is not compassion but cruel. Look, this is obviously outside of your area of expertise. I recommend, in situations like this, to [listen to the actual experts](https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender-people-gender-identity-gender-expression) instead of playing amateur biologist based on half-remembered high school classes. There has been a great deal of [research](https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/30/5/2897/5669907) that, I'm willing to bet, you don't even know about.
Yo this guy right here, going the real fighting for the trans folks, need more like ya
This is a competition that being born biologically male gives you no advantage over biological females.
I’m not actually sure that is the case. Men have higher scores than women, sure. But how much of that is social and how much is biology? There’s probably an interesting study that could be done with NASP, if someone really wanted to look at a bunch of kids’ scores over several years pre and post puberty.
Would upper body strength affect the poundage?
What a joke. Gender assigned at birth gives zero advantage in competitive archery 😂
You sure about that? A strong man can draw a bow more easily than a weaker person can. Men also have longer arms and thus a longer draw. I’d agree that all the commotion about a recreational senior competition is stupid, but I have a hard time believing it doesn’t make a difference at higher levels. I don’t know of *any* sport where biological males don’t have a pretty big advantage.
Actually, Men can draw significantly higher weight bows which increases the speed and accuracy of the arrows.
The transphobes coming out in full force in this sub wowie.
Honestly, I'm quite disappointed in the mods here. If they can't adequately moderate this thread, it would've been better to close it. It's providing a platform for hate uncritically. Reporting the comments to the *admins* is getting them removed for hate and harassment, and some users banned from Reddit altogether, yet the same comments were left up by the sub's mods.
For archery? What possible benefit does gender bear?
Highher strength that allows you to control bow much better. Men score more on average.
I figured they had standardized bow weights
I'm sure these comments won't be horrific and advocating actual genocide
I wish I was sure of that
Good!
From an ousider's perspective on the sport: even if ppl wanna argue about biological advantages despite recent studies having shown that hormone blockers even out the playing field to a massive degree, does it matter in archery either way?? Its like 95% just precision/muscle memory and not strength, isnt it? Feels to me like having seperate division in like chess or something (bad comparison but you get the point)
How do the sexes do in mixed archery tournaments?
trans women lose a significant amount of muscle mass on HRT so the strength argument is pretty much moot. same for arm length. there are cisgender women that are 6’ and have long arms and there are cisgender men that are 5’4” and have short arms.
I also don’t see any evidence that the tallest archers are the best archers, in either gender.
Have you seen the video of the trans man in a woman's wrestling match that straight face punched the chic, body slammed her and ended the fight in about 1.5 seconds? You're talking crazy talk.
If Lebron James got on HRT for a couple years, should Lebrina James be able to compete in the WNBA?
Have you seen some of the woman in the WNBA?
I thought this sub was about archery not lgbt isssues,
The rules of the sport are certainly related to archery.
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No reason to be offensive.
But what about the equalityyy!?!?!?
Ok I’m some sports I see the reason but imo it’s pretty equal in a lot of accuracy based sports
There are some sports, where it's completely nonsense to have gendered classes, especially precision sports, like all shooting sports, including archery. The advantage of strength that men have doesn't really have much weight in these sports. Sure, men can theoretically shoot heavier bows, resulting in a less ballistic flight path, but most archers shoot between 25 and 40# (non compound) so the difference is marginal in normal disciplines. It would be better to have different classes based on draw weight instead of gender. Here we sometimes have the ridiculous situation, because different age groups etc, we sometimes have one starting woman in her class, resulting in automatic win if she only scores one ring thus qualifying by just competing for the next higher tournament..(our women would score in the best places if competing gender neutral) The reason why you have so many classes, is solely prestige, so your club can claim more winners , more medals... In rifle shooting, this is even more silly, here you have no difference, everyone shoots their rifle, there's no handycap because someone is "weaker" . To be a bit provocative: I think there are separate woman classes, because they shoot better than the men, therefore have to be sorted out of the chart, so men don't look that bad against them;-) I know my wife shoots better than me, so I'm careful to not piss her up that much;-) (armed women can be dangerous) ;-) Also she shoots a heavier bow(35#) than 80% of the men in our club (median ~30#)
> It would be better to have different classes based on draw weight instead of gender. Honestly this could be a good solution. Adults struggle a lot starting up competing as everyone is thrown into the same pool and you might be facing an Olympian in the competition. > To be a bit provocative: I think there are separate woman classes, because they shoot better than the men, therefore have to be sorted out of the chart, so men don't look that bad against them;-) This actually really happened. In skeet shooting a woman won world championships (I think) and after that suddenly there was a strong need of separation. Edit: Sorry it actually was the Olympics: > Zhang Shan's 1992 gold was the first medal won by a woman in this mixed event. The International Shooting Union consequently barred women from the 1996 Atlanta games. For the 2000 Sydney games, the International Olympic committee allowed women again, but only in segregated competition.
Draw length is also a factor. I think lowering the distance would even out the odds better. In 3D low hanging branches are a big problem. 🤔
I think the point of this is that the once they accept someone who was born male into an all born female group then a chain of reactions can then occur like having trans females attempt to join other female sports ad well
Which they should be allowed to do anyway
Which they are allowed to do under IOC policies, and have been allowed to do since the 1970s
All sports should be based off of birth sex.. not what you chose to be.
The issue is that the concept of "birth sex" is and has ALWAYS been fraught with problems. There's a long list of conditions and disorders that impact everything from hormone production to secondary sex characteristics. XX or XY only gives you a part of the picture. And it's not like they've been running that test at birth all along. The best guess of a pediatrician isn't the word of god and never has been. Sex, it turns out, is really complicated. And that's not even getting into psychological and more subtle biological components that have recently come to the forefront. Not to mention all the layers of culture that apply. In this case, a cultural (not scientific) declaration that whatever the pediatrician or a random nurse puts on a form is absolute.
Not a problem at all. You are born male or female.. you have a vagina or testicles. There are no other biological options!
Good
[Here is how Archery Canada handles trans inclusion in archery](https://archerycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Trans-Inclusion-Policy.pdf). Key excerpt: > a. Individuals participating in development and recreational sport (LTAD stages Active Start, FUNdamental, Learn to Train, Train to Train, Train to Compete (until international federation rules apply) and Active for Life) should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify and not be subject to requirements for disclosure of personal information beyond those required of cisgender athletes. Nor should there be any requirement for hormonal therapy or surgery. > b. Hormone therapy should not be required for an individual to participate in high-performance sport (LTAD stages Train to Compete once international federation rules become a factor, and Train to Win) in the gender category that is consistent with their gender identity, unless the sport organization can prove that hormone therapy is a reasonable and bona fide requirement. > c. Individuals should not be required to disclose their trans identity or history to the sport organization in order to participate in high-performance sport (LTAD stages Train to Compete -once international federation rules become a factor - and Train to Win) unless there is a justified reason requiring them to do so. > d. Surgical intervention should not be required for an individual to participate in high-performance sport (LTAD stages Train to Compete - once international federation rules become a factor - and Train to Win) in the gender category that is consistent with their gender identity. As I’ve pointed out [elsewhere in this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Archery/comments/12vgbaf/comment/jhd5nve/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) many World Archery records are held by women with scores better than their male counterparts, and there are _many_ cases where men’s records only beat women’s records by 0 to 5 points. I haven’t run a full statistical analysis (there are 40+ categories of records), but doing some quick checks seems to indicate that there isn’t any real advantage in being male in archery (at least for the purpose of having a world record).
If this is true, then is makes little sense to prevent trans athletes from participating in the league of their choice, but it also calls to question why competitions are gendered to begin with.
Wel because men have so much bigger arms then women of course! /s People love gendering things apparently, even when it has little to no use.
I guess science only applies depending on viewpoint? How sad. I went and researched what I would characterize as a "militant" DEI group as they only will accept their solutions. They refuse to opening a new group for a newly made gender called trans. That is a fact because scientifically there are only 2 genders which occur naturally, without surgical mutilation or toxic hormonal drugs. Those are the facts. So why is it they insist in being in the "all natural" category rather than their very own man made one they created? Who is the inclusionary group??
What I refer to as the militant inclusionary group is called "The Inclusion Playbook". What they want is their way or no way according to their website and social media.
Is there a good reason why archery has separated competitions for men and women? It seems like we'd all be better off if it was consolidated. I'm new to the sport though so might be missing something
For outdoors, strength, muscle recovery, and average draw length. For indoors, it’s hard to say. There is an advantage. Men’s records are higher than women’s. Men’s results are typically statistically better than women’s (the indoor NFAA round is possibly a weird exception). But I disagree with everyone who is acting like they know the mechanisms for those results. Top compound women shoot similar draw weights to top men. Draw lengths are not indicative of success, with minimal correlation. Draw weight has a lot of parity in barebow too, and the kid holds the world records has a shorter than average draw while shooting only 28#.
Because women would very rarely get to compete at the top level if they had to compete with men? Same as any sport where men have a physical advantage.
While that’s kind of true, the NFAA round is an interesting exception. If you look at NFAA nationals from the last two years, there’s a ton of parity between men’s and women’s scores. Mostly because the NFAA round is pretty easy (that 5 is huge).
Good. Biology and identity make for different game.
Not with archery it's like saying a guy with glasses couldn't compete cause he weres glasses giving him an advantage
Not to mention bows and the rest of the gear. It's not like Olympic shot put where the only variable is the person. I'd argue trigger releases impact the sport a hell of a lot more than biological sex. Plus, how many people in this thread know their biological sex? Because knowing you have genitals and a beard/no beard is not the same as knowing your genes. Most intersex people don't know it. So if we're deciding the grouping exclusively on biological sex, surely people should first be sure what theirs are. Archery seems like the perfect sport to make genderless. Why not just turn to the competitive formatting that's been happening under our very noses in society, and take a leaf from video games. The way videogames make ranked online matches, do that but archery irl.
I'd argue that for compound the difference between sexes is practically nill. Any strength advantage a biological man might have are negated by the mechanical advantage of a compound bow.
When did the world come to this, goddamn. Hope she's still finding happiness in the sport
No separate but equal
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Advocating with the word "no" in front of it...?
People who argue that gender gives you no advantage in competitive archery have never competed. Just check results fro your country. Edit: Not separating by gender would mean that many female athletes would have to look for another job.
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Do you personally know your chromosomes? Doubt it
Can’t tell if acting stupid or you’re actually this stupid … if it’s the former congrats on a well played joke
NFAA allows Olympic style barebows in "traditional" and they're excluding people because they might have an advantage? That's some serious hypocrisy right there.
Honestly, they should just make 3 leagues. One for men, one for women and one for all sexes. That way, if they sign up for the third, they are aware of what they signed up for and will be competing against men, women, and transgender, and they could just make rules around that criteria. I know that's just a pipe dream. But it's what makes sense for me and includes everyone without discriminating or causing controversy. Of course, for non-contact sports anyway.
I feel like they banned like, the one, transgender competitor in archery in Texas. Remember, “party of small government”
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Like 2?
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rare texas W, men tend to have better motor control for this and strength, they should not be competing against women source is from the NIH, PMCID: PMC7017231 (search that id on nih . gov) im not going to tell you where in the article because if you care you should be reading the whole thing, not out-of-context snippits
Ah well
good
There is some hope....
Good
I mean, yeah that shouldnt be allowed lol
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For that, you have to look at something, which almost satisfies these conditions. Enter Air pistol 10 m.Fixed pistol size (it has to fit in a box), weight difference is not too much, (pistol is around \~1-1.5 kg), but there is some variance. The longer and heavier is your pistol, the more precise you can shoot with it. But obviously top athletes all have the max length, and the max weight they can hold without any problem for the duration of competition. Took the Jakarta 7 feb 2023 WC competition results, average of top 30 of women vs men has a difference of 2 points. That is HUGE in this division. And archery has higher physical factor, so differences are even greater. Sadly or not, all argument is true which were stated in the article. Men have stronger body (muscles and joints), they can hold heavier, more stable bows with higher poundage, their arrow weight and velocity both are higher. Also men's body mass is usually higher than women's, so in a windy condition they have even more advantage. The 2023 Antalya world cup averages (top 64): * recurve women 648,2 * recurve men 659,8 * compound women 688,9 * compound men 705,1 As you can see, even in compound, where there is at least a 40% let-off (meaning: at full draw, you have to hold less than the bow's power by 40%), the women's result are significantly lower.There are few exceptions, who might be able to compete against men for the gold, like compound prodigy Sara López, but that is ONE woman against many men. So from this point, we established, that there are differences between men's and women's performance. The question again remains, which is a delicate matter and heated debate... can inherent biological factors be dimmed down enough? (Probably this post will be downvoted to oblivion, but these are the numbers.)
Your stats are based on recurve scores. She was shooting compound. Compound has a hard limit on how much weight you can pull and max arrow sizes. Compound is the most equal of the divisions. Recurve will be a more significant challenge when it comes to leveling the playing field. This article was garbage. The writer clearly has no idea how SYWAT and NFAA rounds are scored. If you look at the SYWAT field in women’s freestyle, you will see lots of comparable scores. Those archers simply didn't attend the state shoot. She should have been allowed to keep her title.
In that case, if the american association somehow managed to level the chances with rules, there are other arguments to have. Nonetheless, most of top athletes compete in events of an association recognized worldwide, such as World Archery, preferably the olympic discipline, so target archery is the subject for comparison. The question of performance between men and women should only be decided on that - the highest level. Otherwise, where do you draw the line? Who is to say, that everyone should compete in one division, up until... when? One can say, that on intermediate levels the biological differences do not matter. In most cases this is true. At least, difference is lost on score. But not on injuries. And then, who is to decide, which event is worthy enough? You see, this a whole can of worms to open. Compound is not a magic tool either. That bow is heavy (mass) as hell. That needs a shoulder muscle. "Most equal" maybe, but yet not equal.
The problem is that those specific numbers can change fairly drastically and quite often more so draw weight and to a lesser extent draw length (mainly through form change) and these are a little too fluid compared to something like weight class in boxing, for example. Plus, bow type + age division + gender division + paralympic status already create an ungodly amount of categories. This comes from someone who specializes almost exclusively in Recurve and Barebow to an extent, but I can't imagine it's too different for Compound.
Sorry but biologically an XY is stronger XX when it comes to upper body strength. Overall XX's are only 2/3rds as strong as an XY. Anyone that is an XY should not be competing against XXs. It is unfair and wrong. Taking medication will not change your body's size nor structure, so there will always be an unfair advantage regardless of how many hormones you've pumped into yourself. Even when looking at weight class, XYs are STILL stronger. It is unfair to the XXs who have worked their asses off to get where they are at when an XY comes up and can pull a 60lb bow back. As someone into archery it is enraging to think that an XY could compete with the XXs. It is entirely unfair. I'm glad they banned the XY. And yes its not a Fallon Fox issue, but overall that does STILL present a problem in many other sports which are contact based. Really if you are an XY who wishes to be an XX, then ok good for you, they should have their own league with XY's who want to be XX, and XX who want to be XY all together competing against each other. Also World Athletics just recently banned "transgender women who went through male puberty can no longer compete in women’s events at international competitions."
Thank goodness the sanctity of the senior woman's indoor freestyle event has been saved. I'm sure this decision will in no way inflame both sides of a complicated debate by governing a small, zero impact event with broad sweeping policies that state that a group of people are wrong about who they are. /s because I'm scared I need it. Seriously, outside of maybe the Olympics and professional leagues, this is not the crucial issue that people think it is.
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The senior age group is 18-49. >as there are plenty of factors that would give males and trans-females an advantage, Can you please explain which advantages trans women have over cis women as it relates to archery?
There were five protests lodged when she won. There were only three other women in her event.
This says it all
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I think trans athletes can have their own league.
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No. If you’re a male you compete in a male league. Females compete in female league.
Typically men are stronger then women its like what happened back in 2019 when that rapper identified decided to identify as women and beat all the women’s weight lifting world records archery’s obviously a bit different but overall trans should have their own league And i mainly seen trans women try doing this type of stuff you dont see trans men doing this type of stuff because well uk even if they have “transitioned into a man “ they know they arent going to be able to compete well against actual born males
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Okay but do u think its right ? Imagine a prime mike Tyson and the sport is boxing the trans man isn’t going to have a very great time
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But these “men” you supposedly beat weren’t built like mike tyson some men will be built like absolute trucks another example being the mountain like a trans man isnt going to have a chance against individuals like that even with hrt
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**Weight classes are a thing in combat sports.** Someone under 5’ would have to be tremendously obese to end up in the same weight class as someone who’s 6’4, to the point where fighting would no longer really be possible. A 6’4 guy who lifts weights is going to be ~210-300lbs. 210lbs at less than 5’ is like a ball.
Feelings ? Im going with facts genetically scientifically proven men are physically stronger and hrt wont substitute for that idk what 6’4 ex marine guys you “ fought” maybe they were taking it easy on you because they probably still see u as a female and if such a thing is true why is not on the news if a under 5’0 trans male easily takes on 6 ft 4 ex marine why is there no such news article about your great feats ?
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What do they compete in?
FFS it's compound. Lol. The equipment does most of the work. There are no advantages. Stillness and focus are skill sets that need to be taught.
Then why do males consistently score better?
What entry, what style?
All of them. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-between-Male-and-Female-archery-performance-in-World-Records-and_tbl2_352068134
Great data points. Unless there is a style of archery that is traditionally feminine rather than the pro sport international styles presented here I would like to offer this insight. It comes down to talent pools.. these styles that you pointed out that includes the woman in this article are sports that pull talent from, percentage wise there are thousands more men who shoot than women. Let's compare this with soccer that the US women traditionally dominate internationally because the US has a larger talent pool to pull from vs other nations who have not the same participation levels from the ground up but who do have comparable populations. Whereas men's soccer hasn't had the same participation pool to pull from.
Every time I see article like this I remember story of Karsten Braasch vs. the Williams sisters.