When you think you have seen everything

As my regular readers certainly have noticed I am a great fan of the south-African sport physiologist Ross Tucker and from time to time I go through his tweets, in order to catch up. This time I was looking for news on the transgender front (more on this in some future post) and stumbled upon something I could not even imagine would have existed. 

The key word is "transage". Here is a summary of what is meant by this. (Apparently the non-transage situation is not cis-age, as in the case of gender, by chrono-age. Well, live and learn).

In the urban dictionary, where I looked up the term transage, they write "Transage is NOT [emphasis in the original] a term used to justify the abuse of children. The term has never been used this way by real transage people". (I, somehow, am not convinced by this last statement. "Never" is too strong a word and should not be used lightly).

Transage activists claim that age is a social construct and, according to them, transage individuals need to be accepted into society. This started with transgenderism. First transgender people claimed that they should be allowed to use any toilet room they liked. And the whole thing mushroomed to the point that it is now frowned upon to speak about pregnant women. 

I don't really care about what people are doing with themselves. If they feel more at ease with a sex different than the one they were born into, well, why not. But there is a line that I draw somewhere and I have a zero-tolerance on this point: men who transition to women should never be allowed to participate in sports as women.

And, if transage people feel that their age is not their "chrono" one, well, in for a penny in for a pound: let them behave as toddlers or nonagenarians if they feel like. But, again sports, are a no-no. Otherwise we could have a 25 year old transage person decide that he is 18 and demand that he be allowed to compete in the U20 category. Or declare that he feels like 60 and vie for the world title in the corresponding master's age group.

And of course some transage people fluctuate between ages, so what is there to prevent somebody to compete both as a junior and as a master. We live, alas, in an era where the idea that things can be objective and are not a matter of personal decision is considered totally "passée". So, since we should not presume an advantage (as per the IOC guidance), let us welcome the future transage champions.