Testosterone Significantly Boosts Women's Athletic Performance, Study Shows (theguardian.com) 280
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Boosting testosterone levels significantly improves female athletic performance, according to one of the first randomized controlled trials. The findings come as the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced on Monday it would impose an upper limit for testosterone levels on trans female athletes competing in middle-distance events. The latest research confirmed that testosterone significantly increases endurance and lean muscle mass among young women, even when given for a relatively short period.
In the study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 48 healthy 18- to 35-year-old women were randomly assigned to 10 weeks of daily treatment with 10mg of testosterone cream or 10mg of a placebo. The scientists tested the hormone's impact on aerobic performance measured by how long the women could run on a treadmill before reaching the point of exhaustion, and leg power, muscle strength and lean muscle mass. Circulating levels of testosterone rose from 0.9 nmol/litre of blood to 4.3 nmol/L in the women given the hormone cream. This was below the recent 5 nmol/L IAAF limit and below the normal male range of 8-29 nmol/L. Running time to exhaustion increased significantly by 21.17 seconds (8.5%) in the testosterone group, compared with those given the inactive substance. The group given the hormone also had significant changes in lean muscle mass, gaining 923g vs 135g overall and 398g vs 91g in their legs. "The IAAF ruled this week that trans female athletes must keep their levels of natural testosterone below 5 nanomoles per liter of blood to compete in the female category," the report adds. "The new regulation follows a similar limit imposed on athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD), including the South African Olympic gold medallist, Caster Semenya."
In the study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 48 healthy 18- to 35-year-old women were randomly assigned to 10 weeks of daily treatment with 10mg of testosterone cream or 10mg of a placebo. The scientists tested the hormone's impact on aerobic performance measured by how long the women could run on a treadmill before reaching the point of exhaustion, and leg power, muscle strength and lean muscle mass. Circulating levels of testosterone rose from 0.9 nmol/litre of blood to 4.3 nmol/L in the women given the hormone cream. This was below the recent 5 nmol/L IAAF limit and below the normal male range of 8-29 nmol/L. Running time to exhaustion increased significantly by 21.17 seconds (8.5%) in the testosterone group, compared with those given the inactive substance. The group given the hormone also had significant changes in lean muscle mass, gaining 923g vs 135g overall and 398g vs 91g in their legs. "The IAAF ruled this week that trans female athletes must keep their levels of natural testosterone below 5 nanomoles per liter of blood to compete in the female category," the report adds. "The new regulation follows a similar limit imposed on athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD), including the South African Olympic gold medallist, Caster Semenya."
No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Funny)
Captain Obvious Pagin Rick Romero!!!!
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Why is this just been discovered again?
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It is being discovered again because the narrative for the past decade was "there are no differences between men and women", a theory that must not only ignore, but must fully deny, science.
I've never heard that theory presented except as a straw-man.
The question was never "are there differences between men and women?" since everyone agreed there were.
Nor was it "does testosterone contribute to the male advantage?" because again, everyone agree it did.
The debate was "how much of an advantage does testosterone contribute to a woman?" Because the answer isn't obvious. How much of the male advantage comes from testosterone vs other factors? How does the female body respond to elevated testosteron
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It worked as expected until it got detected.
Why was testosterone allowed to return and not be detected again?
Re:No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Interesting)
If testosterone did not work to help win in sport it would not have been used.
Again, that's not the question that was being asked.
Why was testosterone allowed to return and not be detected again?
That's covered in the (lengthy) article I posted. But long story short, the IAAF set a policy for women with high levels of testosterone, one of the affected women sued saying "you don't actually have sufficient evidence to justify that policy". The judge looked at the evidence and said "she's right, we all know testosterone matters but you haven't done your homework to determine just how much it matters so you can make appropriate regulations, therefore you can't use that regulation".
Then they did their homework and got to impose a regulation.
Note, that new policy (relevant to this published study) went in a while ago. The new regulation is allowing trans women to go in if they stay below 5nmol. Which actually seems like a more interesting discussion than fighting strawmen.
I'm fine with transgendered athletes competing... assuming advantages from their previous gender are neutralized.
I'm not sure if testosterone levels alone do that, I'm also not sure that a 5nmol threshold is appropriate. I doubt an XX woman could use a testosterone cream to raise her levels right to 4.9, I'm not sure that a trans woman shouldn't go down to something more typical like 0.9.
Re: No Shit Sherlock! (Score:2, Funny)
Previous gender? Shoving feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
Re: No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh man..that one almost had me cleaning my screen, read it while drinking morning beverages....
Yep, the problem, and man, I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime.....is having men either pretending to be women with dicks, or cutting them off and pretending to be women, and then actually trying to compete with them in sports.
I know....let's do this for them.
We'll have traditional Men's sports.
We'll have traditional Women's sports
And let's put a 3rd catch all category for those confused, altering themselves, etc....and use some fscking pronoun that makes them all happy...the new traditional "They's" sports.....
Keeps everyone on a level playing field in their category.
Re:No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also not sure that a 5nmol threshold is appropriate.
If you fix a "permitted level" then all you do is force all women athletes to use testosterone just to have a chance of competing, whether they want to grow beards and turn themselves into men or not.
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Testosterone is a natural hormone that all humans have. So you are going to detect it in every athlete.
At the very top of athletics, like the Olympics, you are going to find a lot of people with levels of hormones higher than the average. They are the most extreme examples of human beings, the fastest and strongest in the world, so of course they are going to have physiology that is outside the norm.
So the question becomes where you set the limit. The IOC and other sporting bodies have been trying to find w
Re:No Shit Sherlock! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been a very good women for transgender athletes. Transgender weight lifter Mary Gregory has been stripped of the women's world records she won when the mandatory drug tests she still had high testosterone levels. See https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/c... [cnsnews.com] and https://www.aol.com/article/ne... [aol.com] .
From watching her lift, it's apparent that she still has the body, especially the shoulders, of a male powerlifter and her transition to a woman is not complete. Even the best female lifters are not that heavily muscled without steroid abuse. The performance differences for transgender athletes were already well documented by Joanna Harper's study: Joanna Harper is, herself, a transgender athlete and did an excellent study of 20 world class transgender athletes. She found that testosterone levels led directly to hemoglobin levels, which were the key predictor for their athlete's change in performance before and after their transgender treatment.
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No-one is saying that there isn't an issue, the problem is that there is no agreement over what should be done about it.
What?
>
As I said elsewhere the only solution that seems workable is to abandon gender classification and use something else. Otherwise it will just be an endless debate about what biological attributes are important, what the limits are, how much someone has to nerf themselves to get into a category.
So your workable solution is eliminate normal girls from sports? And it also sounds like you are approving of life shortening drugs?
All of this to satisfy some sort of appeasement, some sort of Male and female are identical in every way.
I suspect that your "solution" won't go over very well with much of the world. Eliminate almost 100 percent of women from sports participation is kind of callous. Being fair by making half of humanity not have a point in competition is hardly being fair.
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No-one is saying that there isn't an issue, the problem is that there is no agreement over what should be done about it.
As I said elsewhere the only solution that seems workable is to abandon gender classification and use something else. Otherwise it will just be an endless debate about what biological attributes are important, what the limits are, how much someone has to nerf themselves to get into a category.
That's an absurd proposition. There was a workable policy in place for hundreds of years and it was fine. Now you have a small population, less than 1%, that insist on a change. Is it worth it is certainly a fair question given the small population and the extreme level of changes being proposed. To the left though no cost is to high to accommodate this group. To the center and right having men in women's sports is absurd plain and simple. The media will have to push extra hard to get this level of de
Re:No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Funny)
We should give testosterone injections to girls and see if it makes them interested in coding.
Re: No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Funny)
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You mean to see if it makes them stupid enough to want to sit staring at a screen all day?
I recall a comment much like this from Dr. Jordan Peterson on why there are so many more men as leaders, engineers, etc. He said something like men have a wider bell curve on anti-social behavior (although I'm not sure if that's how he phrased it, that's how I heard it) and so when it comes to making the sacrifices to their mental health, work/life balance, etc. it's simply more men that are willing to do this. In essence he's calling these exceptional performers in various fields mentally ill. Whether o
Re:No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, there is a fair amount of claiming that there's no difference between men and women. It's generally not within sport - women know perfectly well that testosterone is a way to cheat - but there are many places online where saying "the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman" will get you banned (voice of experience).
The denial of any meaningful difference between men and women has become an article of faith for a disturbingly large number of people.
Re:No Shit Sherlock! (Score:4, Interesting)
but there are many places online where saying "the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman" will get you banned (voice of experience).
Where? We should be able to verify this claim easily by looking at some public postings.
Re:No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where? We should be able to verify this claim easily by looking at some public postings.
If they've been banned there's nothing to see anymore.
That's the thing with censorship: you can claim everyone is on your side by simply removing any dissent.
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When banning people they rarely nuke the whole thread.
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The males with autogynephilia want to cheat. The transwomen are women people want validation. Men are not women, women are not men. No transman will ever be able to compete against a natal male, the male advantages are too much, so this is just about men wanting to cheat and pretend to be women. Women are adult human females. Males cannot be females.
I don't know how you deal with DSDs but allowing men to compete against women is not it.
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At the most extreme end there was a movement to say that pretty much anyone that was raised as a woman should be allowed to compete as is. It's actually a pretty justifiable perspective, the athlete is born as a women, raised as a woman, looks like a woman, and then she is told she can't compete without medical intervention because she's not really a woman.
To me, the fundamental question is there some limit to what a natural advantage an athlete has in a sport due a vary rare so that extreme cases are prohibited from competing? Do you take out the best performers because nature and genetics gave them an unfair advantage?
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To me, the fundamental question is there some limit to what a natural advantage an athlete has in a sport due a vary rare so that extreme cases are prohibited from competing? Do you take out the best performers because nature and genetics gave them an unfair advantage?
+100000 Informative.
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Just in the first minute we're presented with a professor of "trans-gender studies".
You can't make this shit up.
Re: No Shit Sherlock! (Score:3)
Average strength upper body male to female 3 to 1. Lower body 2 to 1.
Born man transitions. Gets hormone treatment. Physical strength decreases 10 to 12 percent. Conclusion - let's allow him to compete against born women. The therapy weakened him, he is a woman now.
Woman transitions. Strength increases 10 to 12 percent due to hormones. Conclusion- she is strong as a man now. Let her compete against born men.
That's the game. You do the math.
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Even if your numbers were correct (they aren't) it clearly depends on the sport as much as anything else. Women have proven to be able to out-perform men in some endurance races like ultra-marathons, for example.
Maybe the solution is to forget about gender divisions and move to some other method. In some sports weight divisions are used.
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If you swallow the transwomen are women mantra then you need to allow them to be 'valid women'. The whole identity politics is a sham, males are not and can never be women, humans cannot change sex (and there are only 2 sexes, large gamete producers and small gamete producers). Women have been screaming about this for years. Transwomen are men and always will be (Twitter will ban you for this) women are being silenced by the idpol nonsense. Sport may well be the thing which brings the whole edifice down.
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There are choices in life. If you choose to mutilate your body because you are mentally ill, you should not be competing in sports at all.
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Actually sex is defined by gametes, and there are only 2 different types. I get that some people don't produce gametes and whatnot, but those discrete 20 or so conditions which affect maybe 1% of the population are outliers. They can be dealt with. Putting XY males into competing with females just because they lowered their T is fucking insane and sexist nonsense. DSDs present problems but TIMs (trans identified males) should compete against men.
Re: No Shit Sherlock! (Score:2, Insightful)
The "irony" is that the same crowd who deny differences between sexes clamour that we have to "believe the scientists" when it comes to clinate change.
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We should listen to scientists when they are speaking about science.
They should have no more credibility than anyone else when they are speaking out on other matters, such as public policy.
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We should listen to the scientists. For example, in this study it doesn't say quite what the summary is suggesting.
They used "normal" women for the study, i.e. average women not top athletes. As they note this will have resulted in a greater change than it would for athletes who already have highly developed and trained muscles and often higher than average testosterone levels.
Unfortunately a lot of people just hear it as confirmation of their existing opinion and ignore the detail, the caveats.
Re: No Shit Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
They used "normal" women for the study, i.e. average women not top athletes.
I agree that these were not top athletes. I disagree that these were "normal" women, or even "average" women.
A "normal" woman would not subject herself to a double blind test where she'd potentially be given a body altering hormone. The test selected for women that wanted to compete in athletics, and were willing to bend the rules a bit towards that goal. They had to select for the not-so-average woman because they needed women willing to compete until exhaustion.
Unfortunately a lot of people just hear it as confirmation of their existing opinion and ignore the detail, the caveats.
Everyone has a bias that they will want to defend, even you.
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Testosterone in sport goes back to the 1980s and gets talked about well before. Why is this just been discovered again?
Agreed, it's a non-issue. I only clicked as I misread the title as Toblerone.
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Why is this just been discovered again?
It hasn't, it's just that there have been a whole bunch of men self-identifying themselves as women so they can beat women at athletics lately. Political correctness lets them get away with it.
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I believe the performance enhancing effects of testosterone supplementation in men is well studied. The effects of hyperandrogenicity (that is, increased natural production of male hormones, including testosterone) among women athletes has been studied. This appears to be (one of?) the first studies on testosterone supplementation in women. I'm sure it was assumed that women respond to supplemental testosterone similarly to men, but hasn't been experimentally proven before this.
It may seem a small distincti
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I believe the performance enhancing effects of testosterone supplementation in men is well studied. The effects of hyperandrogenicity (that is, increased natural production of male hormones, including testosterone) among women athletes has been studied. This appears to be (one of?) the first studies on testosterone supplementation in women. I'm sure it was assumed that women respond to supplemental testosterone similarly to men, but hasn't been experimentally proven before this.
It may seem a small distinction, but there has long been an assumption (particularly in pharmaceutical studies) that women are just like men only different, which has led, for example, to drug trials being run on only men--and then much later, we discover that the drug works differently in women. So it's important to actually do the experiment, rather than just assuming.
Yeah, testing things that "everybody knows", but it's not actually verified and the size of the effect is unknown, is actually pretty valuable research.
Not to mention testosterone creams do have potential medical uses, it's good to understand how they affect women.
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Not to mention testosterone creams do have potential medical uses
For instance, you can rub the cream on your scalp if you want to be balder.
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They have been. But the levels deemed appropriate for someone who is chromosomally female to be compelled as male due to high natural testosterone levels has never been determined, nor have the levels needed to compete appropriately in someone's target gender for transgender people have not been well studied.
Not really news (Score:5, Interesting)
The restrictions on trans athletes thing is interesting though, seems like sports organizations are finally taking a stand against rampant progressiveness that puts natural women at a major disadvantage.
Re:Not really news (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh. Go full progressive and stop having gendered sports entirely. None of these "women's" or "men's" events. True equality for all.
Re:Not really news (Score:4, Insightful)
But when it comes to physical activities women and men arent equal. The average woman is weaker than the average man. And (gender neutral) world records in physical activities are predominantly held by men.
It doesnt mean exceptional women cant exceed men. It does mean they have a natural disadvantage they need to overcome though. And all things being equal men will beat women in physical activities.
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And women will beat men in the physical activity known as child birth.
Re:Not really news (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it does mean that exceptional women can’t beat men. Take for instance Serena Williams who was beaten by a 200 something out of shape player. He smoked her and by all accounts was a terrible player. She didn’t do that again and joked about not remembering the event. To deny the disadvantage is criminal.
Re: Not really news (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Gymnastics is an outlier in the sports because the events aren't equivalent. Men's gymnastics events focus heavily on strength where women's gymnastics events focus heavily on agility and balance. Women don't do the rings and pommel horse which are all core and arm strength, and men don't do the balance beam or floor event, as an example.
Honestly, if this were applied to other sports it would make them more entertaining or compare more equivalently to men's sports. Field size, hoop height, and so on have
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A more interesting question is if men's or women's tennis is more interesting to watch. I'm not a huge tennis fan but people tell me that the women's game is more fluid and less reliant on serving aces, and thus more interesting.
Certainly women's football tends to be very enjoyable at the World Cup, with less of the BS that has ruined the men's game. How much of that is due to the women's game being less developed and thus less corrupted by money is hard to say.
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Re: Not really news (Score:2)
And "trans women" are still biologically men. Having genitals removed does not change that.
Organs (Score:2)
Having genitals removed does not change that.
Have you checked which body parts happen to be responsible for testosterone secretion ?
Hint: the gonads happen to contribute the larger part of this secretions.
If you remove them, you change the amount of testosterone.
The article is one study about the effect of increasing testosterone level on the performance (here in women).
So that's literaly one of the situations where removing the testis is actually entirely relevant to the discussion about biology.
This research is part of a general discussion in sports
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It might make sense to switch to something like weight divisions in some sports. I guess the question really is what are sports about. If the only thing that matters is being the best in the world then everyone except Usain Bolt is a worthless failure, but clearly that isn't good for sport as it needs audiences and sponsors to stay interested in everyone but the very best.
Team sports are a good example of how that can work. Most people support teams who don't win the league or tournament. The enjoyment come
430 decades, to be exact (Score:2)
> The fact that testosterone helps increase athletic abilities hasn't been a secret for decades. That's absolutely non-news.
Indeed, eunuchs were a thing over 4,000 years ago, and very popular at times in ancient history, so the effect of testicular secretions has been known for hundreds of decades.
By the mid 1800s, if not before, I was known that low resulting testosterone was best treated topically rather than orally, because disgestion destroys testosterone.
In 1935, eight decades ago, testosterone was
Re: 430 decades, to be exact (Score:2)
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The fact that testosterone helps increase athletic abilities hasn't been a secret for decades.
For anyone who might not be aware why, it's because testosterone is a steroid. So it's essentially a performance enhancing drug in a certain sense.
Women's bodies produce testosterone. (Score:2)
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Re: Not really news (Score:3, Insightful)
The very idea that having an operation or not identifying as your biological gender somehow changes your gender is insane. The people pushing this nonsense have a mental disorder.
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Fallon Fox IIRC. And he desrtoyed a woman. Males punching women used to be looked down on, now it is celebrated by the idpol lot.
Breaking news (Score:4, Insightful)
Sunlight helps plants grow.
Water is wet.
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Water is wet.
Water is not [ucsb.edu] wet.
No room for transgender in competition (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, there's no good way for transgender people to do competitive gender-segregated sports. Due to hormone differences, they're somewhere between male and female, competing in one they get dominated and competing in the other they dominate. And making a third, transgender competition would have too few participants, and would still not be balanced because some would be further toward the male or female side.
Also, trying to be inclusive here could backfire and result in massive resentment. I don't think they should fight this particular battle, when social acceptance and other forms of equality are more important. As it is enough people seem to think transgender are somehow trying to take advantage of something, rather than trying to make the best of a bad situation.
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It's simple.
Reclassify the sports to XX or XY chromosome competitors.
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People with a disability usually do not compete in professional sports. It is a sad reality, but so is disability in general.
And please don't claim a missing, surplus or damaged chromosome is not one of the most serious disabilities anyone can have.
The same applies to physically disabled athletes, who in most cases would not stand a chance against able-bodies athletes except in the case of modern running prosthetics that would actually enable them to outperform able-bodied runners.
Everyone must accept that
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And please don't claim a missing, surplus or damaged chromosome is not one of the most serious disabilities anyone can have.
Actually, sometimes it's not that serious. Look up XYY. Surplus chromosome. It's not the greatest thing, but it's also not "one of the most serious disabilities anyone can have." It's a disorder that requires some extra attention, but it's typically recoverable. Actually, physically, people with XYY wind up a little taller than they probably would have, if they'd been XY. It's a 1/1000 disorder for male children, so it's not all that rare.
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You're mistaken, or at least not fully informed. Down syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21.
There are many chromosomal disorders (including extra chromosome disorders) that are not Down Syndrome. There are a number of chromosomal disorders that do not lead to significant mental or physical disability. Some people with chromosomal disorders are never diagnosed because their chromosomal abnormalities never interfere wit
Re:No room for transgender in competition (Score:5, Informative)
There are a number of chromosomal disorders (and other disorders) that people can have and still be in a physical condition to compete at sports.
- XYY syndrome occurs in 1/1000 male births and its effects can be mild enough that a person might not know they have it
- XXY (Klinefelter) occurs in 1/1000 male births and typically has more significant effects, but is not physically disabling
- X (Turner) occurs in 1/2000 female births and has even more significant effects, but may not interfere with participation in sports
- Androgen insensitivity occurs in ~1/20000 male births and can cause an XY male to physically develop as apparently female--it may not be reasonable for such a person to compete in men's (or XY) athletics, but they might fit in well in women's (or XX) athletics.
- Other disorders I haven't listed here
Even though the chance of any of these occurring is very small in an individual, these rates combined with the population of the US imply that there are hundreds of thousands of people here with chromosomal disorders (and perhaps tens of thousands with AIS ) who are physically able to competitively participate in sports from childhood through adulthood. Where do they fit in your simple solution?
Re:No room for transgender in competition (Score:4, Informative)
- X (Turner) occurs in 1/2000 female births and has even more significant effects, but may not interfere with participation in sports
I doubt if anyone with Turner's Syndrome will win any olympic medals. They tend to be small and sickly, with weak hearts and not much stamina.
When I was a kid, I had a heifer named Sandy that was abnormally small, didn't have much energy, and seemed to have a runny nose all the time. My neighbor was a vet, and he took a blood sample to his lab, and the following week he told me she had Turner's syndrome. She had a sweet disposition, but I couldn't afford to feed her if she wasn't growing, so she was off to the hamburger factory.
A few years later, when I turned 18, I decided to become a vegetarian. Sandy was part of the reason for that.
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Who said anything about Olympic medals? Athletic competition exists at a lot of levels below that. In fact, practically all athletic competition exists below the Olympic level.
Maybe most people with Turner's Syndrome aren't great athletes; it's still possible that some are competitive even so.
Cherry picking Turner's out of everything else I said doesn't prove your point. Just because you witnessed a particularly bad case of (bovine) Turner's Syndrome doesn't mean everyone who has it is useless. My point is
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Sports (Score:2)
Ah yes.. The "lets reorder society based upon something that affects 0.1% of the population" argument.
The problem is that, for various reasons (some reasons are biological, like the physical advantage that higher testosterone give. Other reasons are psychological, sports giving an outlet where the individual can try to excel at and be cheered for their performance, instead of the usual bullying they had experienced before for their unusual body type / andoygyne aspect / etc.) sports will tend to disproportionnally attract that subset of the general population.
To the point that these are discussion that are
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DSDs present a problem, but the discrete nature of DSDs (there are about 20, total) means you could deal with them individually. Sport needs some type of level field, if that means excluding some people with DSDs from competition against females (they can compete against males) then so be it.
Trans athletes (cheating men, no transman would ever beat a male) are not people with DSDs.
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SRY translocation (Score:2)
And then the high stakes competitions in the "XX" category will be dominated by men who have a translocation of the SRY (Sex determining Region or Testis determining Region) from chromosome Y to chromosome Y.
Biologically, they are basically men, but the genetic part that causes them to be men has been grafted on "the wrong" chromosome.
It's not frequent as a mutation, but if there are high stakes in a competition (think Olympics gold medals) it will become a natural honey pot that attract such exceptions to
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They tried that. The IOC looked at it and realized that it wouldn't work. There are still lots of women with XX who are still abnormally strong/fast, and of course being so are often interested in competitive sports.
Whatever division you come up with will be arbitrary, and that's the problem.
Re:No room for transgender in competition (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Sadly, there's no good way for transgender people to do competitive gender-segregated sports."
Indeed. And that is where it should end. Instead of the media and far left obsessing over the barely-an-issue of this super-small fraction of the population (maybe 0.3 percent), most of whom probably have little interest in competitive sports.
It is about as silly as it would be to try and fundamentally transform major sports to tailor to those who have no hands, or have asthma, or who are blind, or who have mental problems. If you want to create new leagued or categories or teams... sure, fine. We have done this for many years (special Olympics is a great example, wheelchair basketball, etc). But why does this now require ruining normal gender-segregated sports? Almost nobody would support allowing non-trans use of hormones in professional athletes.
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It is an issue because there have been several female athletes who won events, and then turned out to have unusual chromosomes [wikipedia.org]. It's entirely possible to have an issue that gives a competitive advantage without knowing it.
Are you proposing mandatory chromosome tests for all female athletes?
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It's not just about trans athletes. As the summary notes, Caster Semenya is not trans but is controversial because some people claim her natural biology gives her an unfair advantage.
She is a cis woman, born female. She just happens to have an exceptional body, like most athletes at the top of their game since anyone with a non-exceptional body is unlikely to win an Olympic gold medal.
Her testosterone levels are naturally high. Some are arguing that she should take medication to reduce them. That seems a li
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If you're born a female
That's the problem, some people are saying these people are inter-sex, some are saying they are female, and there is no objective way to decide because biological sex is not as binary as some people like to think.
The ICO spend decades trying to find a workable biological definition of sex, including having athletes go through humiliating medical examinations, genetic testing, hormone testing and more. None of works, there are exceptions to every rule.
Handling things on a case-by-case basis is unsatisfactory
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Female sports are in a tough situation right now, because the podiums are filled with DSD females which means that cis essentially can't compete. There are practically two divi
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Re:No room for transgender in competition (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just testosterone differences *on the date of competition*. A biologically male competitor has all sorts of advantages over biologically female competitors. Longer bones, greater muscle mass, different-shaped skeleton (e.g. males have smaller hips, broader shoulders), greater lung capacity, greater lung efficiency (male lungs get more oxygen into the blood, faster), and bigger hearts. These things don't change just because the competitor artifically lowers his testosterone for a brief period before competing against women. He's been building his advantage since he was in the womb.
Re: (Score:2)
> And making a third, transgender competition would have too few participants,
A new category would mean all brand new records that are open for everything. It would allow the data to be analyzed and see where the ranges lay.
Data (Score:2)
Which Chinese and Russian athletes were used in the studies?
Lesser Known (Score:4, Interesting)
What is less advertised is that for women, a small (not enough to create physical changes) dose can dramatically improve mood.
If your Dr doesn't know this and it's relevant to your situation, find a new Dr.
Unfortunately for them (Score:2)
Unfortunately for them it also increases chest hair and decreases head hair. :-)
It seems, it's time to eliminate gender from sport (Score:4, Interesting)
Just get rid of "women" vs. "men" in sports - it really is that simple and consistent with where this overall debate is heading.
Sure, in some events people who identity as male will dominate, in others those who identify as female will dominate -- and that's okay and why should anyone care?
It was a cute idea decades ago where people didn't assert a right to "decide" each day what gender they are.
However, that distinction is now gone - thanks to SJWs.
So the notion of "men" and "women", and various assertions of individuals on a given day, are sexist. Fine. Simply eliminate gender from all sports. That is the obvious conclusion of where we are are headed, just do it now rather than spending social and political capital on this issue for the next 30 years and reaching the same conclusion we can easily, using logic and data, reach today.
In high school, this would give many boys who couldn't even get close to "men's sports" because they are wimpy and geeky the ability to compete. That would give them confidence and power -- surely that's a good thing.
I have NO problem with a girl who can out block a boy on their JV team winning a spot over the guy - of course she should. If a woman wants to be a linebacker in the NFL, of course they should not be discriminated against based on their gender - nor should they be given any accommodations based on their gender.
Perhaps the NFL (or the NHL) should consider revamping locker rooms if that's an issue. Give every player their own private locker/shower. Then straight, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, and non-binary players can all be comfortable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have an idea! (Score:2)
How about we use SCIENCE?
If you have a Y-chromosome, you cannot compete in female athletics.
If you do NOT have a Y-chromosome, you cannot compete in male athletics.
It doesn't matter what your body looks like or whatever body modifications you may have performed. Your DNA should determine which categories you can compete in.
Difficult problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
The title is fricking obvious. It is equally obvious that m2f transgender athletes have no place in women's competitions - because they benefited from male development their entire lives, with the corresponding skeletal structure, lung capacity and musculature.
However, even after eliminating the obvious stuff, the remaining issues are really difficult. I've had a couple of talks about this with my wife, who has looked into it in some detail.
The underlying problem is that everything is a spectrum - including the natural level of "male" hormones in women. You get the extreme cases, like Caster Semenya, but you have a whole range of values. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot more women athletes at the high end of the range. Most women's sports are - must be - a protected category: no men, no transgenders, no serious hormonal abnormalities (like Ms. Semenya). Define "protected". Which biologically female athletes are we going to bar from which sports?
Consider that it's not only about hormones. There are biological reasons that so many top-end runners are black - nothing to do with skin color, but everything to do with other physical aspects of athletic performance that happen to favor blacks. A spectrum of natural human abilities. Do we need to look at other aspects of nature, and establish other rules for protected categories? People with specific leg proportions, lung capacities, compositions of muscle fiber?
Where, exactly, do you draw the line? What lines do you draw? How can you be most fair to the most people?