this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.

The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.

It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sorry dude, but you're objectively wrong. There is a wealth of academic studies demonstrating that transgender players have an advantage in women's divisions, and that gender-affirming treatment fails to rectify that.

Testosterone drives much of the enhanced athletic performance of males through in utero, early life, and adult exposure. Many anatomical sex differences driven by testosterone are not reversible. Hemoglobin levels and muscle mass are sensitive to adult life testosterone levels, with hemoglobin being the most responsive. Studies in transgender women, and androgen-deprivation treated cancer patients, show muscle mass is retained for many months, even years, and that co-comittant exercise mitigates muscle loss. Given that sports are currently segregated into male and female divisions because of superior male athletic performance, and that estrogen therapy will not reverse most athletic performance parameters, it follows that transgender women will enter the female division with an inherent advantage because of their prior male physiology.

Heather AK. Transwoman Elite Athletes: Their Extra Percentage Relative to Female Physiology. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 26;19(15):9103. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159103. PMID: 35897465; PMCID: PMC9331831.

Transwomen retain an advantage in upper body strength (push-ups) over female controls for 1–2 years after starting gender affirming hormones. Transwomen retain an advantage in endurance (1.5 mile run) over female controls for over 2 years after starting gender affirming hormones.

Roberts TA, Smalley J, Ahrendt DEffect of gender affirming hormones on athletic performance in transwomen and transmen: implications for sporting organisations and legislatorsBritish Journal of Sports Medicine 2021;55:577-583.

[T]he transgender woman swimmer experienced improvements in performance for each freestyle event (100 to 1,650 yards) relative to sex-specific NCAA rankings, including producing the best swimming time in the NCAA for the 500-yard distance (65th in the men’s category in 2018–2019 to 1st in the women’s, 2022). Similarly, NCAA-ranked male swimmers had no improvements in rank in the men’s category during the same time frame. Our findings suggest that the performance times of the transgender woman swimmer in the women’s NCAA category were outliers for each event distance and suggest that the transgender woman swimmer had superior performances relative to rank-matched swimmers.

Case Studies in Physiology: Male to female transgender swimmer in college athletics Jonathon W. Senefeld, Sandra K. Hunter, Doriane Coleman, and Michael J. Joyner Journal of Applied Physiology 2023 134:4, 1032-1037

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

honestly his use of the term superhuman athlete makes the whole thing just silly. men are not automatically superhuman athletes either but in many physical sports they might as well be compared to women. Mens sports generally allow both sexes so are open to all, womens are basically so that women athletes have an outlet where they can reasonably succeed. Otherwise its like chess tournaments always allowing computers.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Women are not in any way less athletically abled than men are. I've seen men gymnasts that could outdo women and women football players than could outdo men. It's not about who is better abled to do something - sports is about having inclusion for everyone no matter their level of talent or ability.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yes the best female athlete can beat some male athletes but the best male will always outperform females where physical strength is an issue. Just look at any olympic events male/female side to side or that one male tennis pro while a pro was ranked something like 100 and smoke serena who was ranked 1 among women. Look at all the olympic races, weight lifting, etc male/female side by side.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree with that idea - that the best male will always outperform females where physical strength is concerned. And even if this is true, sports should not favor those with the greatest physical strength, to me the best athletes are those with the drive and determination to participate. Trans, straight, bi, gay - those things are only relevant off the field, not on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

this is not an idea, its just facts plain and simple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_athletics# your physical strength idea only works if you put forth the idea that pretty much every competition is reliant on it. strength speed endurance. its all men. its not about willingness to be an athlete its just about having a doable categorization. This is why combat competitions besides having seperate mens and womens also have weight classes.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No it's not "facts." It's your acceptance of bigoted and chauvinistic ideas about women and men based on outdated stereotypes. Men are NOT inherently stronger than women are, and I've even go so far as to suggest that women are many times stronger in the realms of emotional stability and reliability than men could ever be. You can have whatever bigoted ideas you want - but dont try and pass them off as "facts" just because you were never taught any other way to see the world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Nope. Actual. Measured. Performance metrics. Are. Facts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're talking about sports here - men, on average, have more muscle mass than women, on average, have. So in most sports men will have a higher average and peak performance than women with otherwise the same physiology. This isn't to say that men are better than women, they simply have a higher physical capacity in this regard.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If your idea of strength is only measured by muscle mass instead of by qualities like perseverance and speed and agility, then it's true that men have an edge over women. I happen to think that strength can be measured in other ways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not my idea, no - but different sports are biased in different ways. Something like a shot put is all about raw muscle mass while billards is all about fine motor control and spacial reasoning. No skill is more valuable than another but certain sports and competitions emphasize different things.

In most competitive sports, men do have an edge because they're sports that men were traditionally good at.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe men only have the edge in being "traditionally good at" some sports because women were excluded from them for so long. Not because women are inherently weaker. And (this isn't about your comments) again I state that it's imbecility to say that transgender males have some kind of an "edge" over other athletes - suggesting that being trans imbues you with all these amazing supernatural athletic abilities!

I still say that sports is about one thing only - all people of all walks of life having the right to participate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Just to clarify, transmen are almost never an issue people care about. This debate is usually focused on transwomen who may have even gone through puberty before transitioning.

If we accept that cismen have more muscle mass than ciswomen and that transitioning, physically, is a gradual process then there are two questions 1) after transitioning will transwomen ever be indistinguishable from ciswomen when it comes to sports and 2) how quickly does that happen.

We've only got a few pretty flawed papers to go by but they say that ciswomen and transwomen will always be distinguishable when it comes to sports. If those papers are wrong then it'd still be good to know how long it takes and what factors effect it (I.e. it's likely that someone who fully went through puberty will take longer to adjust to the new hormones).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[1] If this issue is so clear cut, then I wonder why like any guidance by medical organizations for transitioning people state clearly "expect muscle and strength loss at the level that it might affect your grocery carrying experience" (like this https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc ). [2] Don't forget junk science has targeted women of color, intersex women, and even normal women with high testosterone levels https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/07/sport/athletics-testosterone-rules-negesa-imali-running-as-equals-dsd-spt-intl-cmd/ for exclusion from female sports. [3] Now to your "academic" points. Your first reference is written by an inarticulate person reciting long debunked gender stereotypes in some third-world journal, without even backing it up. Low quality article all around, appears like a targeted attempt to give academic substance to age-old stereotypes. In contrast Scientific American has published that "trans girls belong to women's sport" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/ since "there is no scientific case for excluding them" and "a visualization of sex as a spectrum" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/ which I guess debunks all certainties of the said article. [4] Your second reference is a cherry pick from an article that states exactly the opposite "The 15-31% athletic advantage that transwomen displayed over their female counterparts prior to starting gender affirming hormones declined with feminising therapy." (from the abstract), so what you have written might be just a little bid ...dishonest? [5] And the third is a N=1 case study of one champion? It compares a single person before and after hormones to the "established sex differences"? Come on! I could even bring in articles on your side of the argument that could be more hard to debunk. The Karolinska Institute study is one for example http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/782557, who went to great lengths to skew the sample to make a seemingly neutral contribution. [6] Look for systematic studies, cherry picking is cheating: Here is a systematic review https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357259/ It is inconclusive whether testosterone drives athletic performance, and studies are inconclusive about trans women having unfair advantages. But they do point out that prejudice stigma and violence is a factor for transgender athletes. If anyone wants to be fair has to factor in the shit trans women will take in male sports, plus that some male athletes may find it unfair to compete them in case they recognize them as women. Also some athletes and commentators have switched sides about their prior strong rhetoric on the matter https://www.thedailybeast.com/mma-fighter-rosi-sexton-apologizes-to-fallon-fox-for-transphobic-comments and I think Joe Rogan himself apologized to.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

[1] Because while strength decreases, empirical research shows that it does not decrease to the level of removing the competitive advantage in women's sports.

[2] This article contains utterly no discussion about transgender athletes that have already undergone male puberty.

[3] You're relying on ad hominem attacks instead of actually addressing any of the substantive findings. Moreover, your articles do not contain a single empirical study.

[4] If you read the full article, you would see that it doesn't decline to the point of removing the advantage, as my quoted sections show. In fact, the very next sentence after the one you quote reads "However, transwomen still had a 9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events." Your claim of cherry picking is ironic.

[5] Yes, the meaning of a case study is that it studies a single case. Notably, there are only five known transgender swimmers in the NCAA's Division I, which was the subject of the study. I'm not sure what you're trying to do by citing another study (ultimately finding that transwomen "were still stronger and had more muscle mass following 12 months of treatment") in support of my point, but go off I guess.

[6] Your "systematic review" is close to a decade old and, unsurprisingly, doesn't address any of the studies I cited. Moreover, the study you're citing consistently admits that it doesn't have enough information to really make any judgments - and its conclusion is based on the importance of sports for the physical and mental health of transgender people. To the extent it discusses competitive advantage, it does so entirely within the context of androgenic hormones, and contains no discusses of anatomical differences (e.g., larger bodies, longer legs, bigger bones, larger lungs). In addition to citing an outdated study in a rapidly evolving field of research, you then you cite a Daily Beast article -- lmfao.