Max testosterone level for trans athletes to be halved

all those girls who would be coming up through the ranks will just stop

Exactly. Think I said something to this effect earlier in the thread. You don't just turn up in elite sport. You do school sport, university sport, grass roots sport, minor leagues, county leagues, nationals. If you have males in all those progression areas, it won't just be males winning elite competitions in women's categories - the entirety of competitive women's sport, already underfunded and underpromoted, will be destroyed.

Shame on any woman arguing in favour of this.

The BBC headline "Take drugs or race men" does seem remarkably blunt to me!

Seeing that, I have to say I do feel sympathetic towards Caster Semenya and others like her, not that there are many international athletes in that situation! Her characteristics are her characteristics and none of that is her choice. Also, obviously for absolute clarity, Caster Semenya isn't trans.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/43890575

So, according to this BBC report today female athletes like Caster Semenya with high testosterone levels will, from Nov 2918, have to take drugs to lower their levels or compete against men (or move up from sprinting distance to middle or long distance events).

Meanwhile, back at the insanity farm, men can compete against women as long as they lower their testosterone levels to a level that is still higher than most women's.

The only conclusion you can draw from this is that testosterone is the sole reason, according to the powers that be, that men and women should compete separately.... so nothing to do with muscle strength, lung capacity, heart capacity, blood volume, height or weight advantage, longer levers, different pelvic formation etc.

You couldn't make it up.

Sorry - irrelevant is too strong. For now anyway. In a few years' time, when mediocre boys like Yearwood realise they can still win by calling themselves a girl, they will do. And all those girls who would be coming up through the ranks will just stop.

The thing is, arguing about testosterone levels in elite sport is irrelevant. If boys like Andrea Yearwood are allowed to compete as girls in high schools and universities, then girls just drop out of sports. They won't get to the elite because they'll just get disheartened.

Except absolutely none of that was necessary to qualify as a woman in the Boston Marathon. No sterilization, no sacrifice of any male physical potential, no adrogynizing of hormonal makeup. Just identifying as a woman. men who had not undergone even one of the things you list identified as women, qualified and took spots from women.

Exactly! We don't call it Self ID but that's what it is.

By the way, I can only see that I've mentioned you on half a dozen threads, RatRolyPoly - and on all of them you have been very reticent with specifics. Wishy-washy make up as you go along definitions for woman and man won't work in international sport; nor will they work in any other arena, simply because it's impossible to actually apply ever-changing criteria for anything.

The only thread I've mentioned you on that you weren't posting on was on a continuation thread where you were very present on the original thread. So I'm hardly following you around

I quoted you as saying "... we wholeheartedly reject externally-imposed gender stereotypes and we believe in the immutability of biological sex. We also believe transgender women and men when they tell us they are women or men."

I presume you still stand by that - any man who says he's a woman is a woman, in your view? If so, I do catch your drift, and you and I will never agree, because I will never agree that a man should be allowed to compete with women simply because he says he is one.

So that's a great answer [baffled]

You have no idea how to divide men from women, you think that all sports organisations should have their own rules but you don't know what they are, and you think that two people with the same bodies (both male) and the same testosterone levels (under 5, let's say) should be split into two different categories on their own say so, with the one who says he's a woman competing with women, and the one who says he's a man competing with men.

Is that correct?

What about a man who isn't trans, you ask? Well he would simply be a man. Only trans athletes can compete under the rules for trans athletes. How can you prove they're really trans, is that where this is going? Well seeing as we can't very well read their minds we rather have to go on the evidence. I suppose androgynising one's entire hormonal makeup, sterilising oneself and sacrificing a large chunk of your male physical potential with unpredictable consequences might be some such evidence.

Except absolutely none of that was necessary to qualify as a woman in the Boston Marathon. No sterilization, no sacrifice of any male physical potential, no adrogynizing of hormonal makeup. Just identifying as a woman. men who had not undergone even one of the things you list identified as women, qualified and took spots from women.

So in order to make a minority (trans woman athletes) happy we should put female athletes at a disadvantage? A man transitioning to be a woman would have a physical advantage (more lung capacity, muscle etc) over female athletes born female. There's a reason why most competitive sporting events have separate gendered events. Might as well just have mixed sex competitions for every sport and athletic event

AssassinatedBeauty yes I said expected but i should have specified not required

RatRolyPoly

The bigger problem may be that if at international levels transwomen are seen completing then the expectation is that unregulated unmodified men who dont have dysmorphia but are transwomen under self id will compete too with none of the assessment.

This implies that if someone can get a GRC they can walk straight into women's sport without having to achieve the stringent participation criteria; is that what you mean?

Because that's not right; sports are specifically excluded under the GRA, so they have the right to set "discriminatory" criteria for transwomen that they don't set for other women, even if they have a GRC.

So it won't matter how easy it is to get GRC, it will still be equally as hard to qualify to compete in sports.
No I mean that when we're all watching transwomen at Wimbledon or whatever then the local tennis club is going to have a problem with men declaring they are women (or at least on tuesdays or whatever). What does a local club do? Say no you're clearly a man. Say show me your birth certificate.
And i have no faith at all that the exclusions will be used any way. Equality act exemptions arent used well currently.

Once a governing body gets it wrong a few times then the records for women's sports will be unbreakable by (xx - sigh I hate having to specify) women in the future.

Well look, a transwoman isn't going to walk into sport and set a record right off the bat. They will have been competing their whole life, most likely, and I would expect they would at least be training whilst working to lower their levels and achieve anything else required of them. The criteria placed on them really are quite challenging to achieve, and by all accounts they really do have a huge impact on their performance.

Well Laurel Hubbard may have been competing for their whole life but mostly as a man. LH did pretty much just walk into women's competition & set records...

We're not going to reach a middle ground because there isnt really one. I think we should have sport divided into male humans & female humans. You think we should have mixed sex sport of males/doped (T) females and females/doped (anti T) males.

They don't have to wear those high leg leotards according to the rules. They can wear full leg length tights either under or over the leotard, and the leotard can have shorts style legs. However, I've never actually seen a female gymnast wearing anything other than the typical high legged leotards.

Regarding gymnastics- these are amazing athletes who commit hours & hours of training day after day for years.
Only the women are expected to wear no underwear, trim/wax as "necessary" & glue the high rise (is that the right term for lots of hip on show?) leotards to themselves. Apparently the high leg holes(? There must be a better term) are to provide a long leg line but the men seem to manage in shorts or narrow legged trousers....

I've asked you on more than one occasion to define exactly how you think people should be categorised for sport.

Honestly Maryz, I don't know if we're just two people who cannot for the love of God communicate or what, but how you think my answer to this question isn't patently clear is beyond me. I think each sport should be in control of their own entry criteria for trans athletes. Just as they currently are. Haven't I said that a thousand times? Am i really being so cryptic?

I do genuinely apologise if we're somehow just failing to catch each other's drift Maryz, really I do.

What about a man who isn't trans, you ask? Well he would simply be a man. Only trans athletes can compete under the rules for trans athletes. How can you prove they're really trans, is that where this is going? Well seeing as we can't very well read their minds we rather have to go on the evidence. I suppose androgynising one's entire hormonal makeup, sterilising oneself and sacrificing a large chunk of your male physical potential with unpredictable consequences might be some such evidence.

And not to bicker, but you really have dropped my name on a good number of threads I haven't even been posting on. Not recently, granted. But seriously, me not seeing questions?? I will let the word count of my answers to, er, questions, speak for itself.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. Okay with you if I come back hours later? Baffling.

Elite sports are about pushing the body to the limits of its possibility. To achieve and exceed records is the peak of aspiration. In the case of women's records it looks increasingly likely that a record will be held by someone who has actually handicapped themselves. How is that awesome?

I am interested in getting to the bottom of it rat, as you well know, but I see you are resorting as usual to dis-ingenuousness and sarcasm, with a bit of faux-naivety thrown in [hmm[

I've asked you on more than one occasion to define exactly how you think people should be categorised for sport. You don't seem to think it should me "men" and "women", you seem to support some sort of testosterone cut-off point, but won't clarify how you think it would work - for example, if a man (who didn't claim to be a woman) got his testosterone level down by taking drugs, could he compete in the women's category? And if not, why not?

But every time anyone asks you to answer a direct question you disappear and come back hours later twittering on again about "fairness" and "inclusion" and all sorts of fluffy, totally non-defined, ways of running sport. It's baffling.

And I have never talked about you - I've simply, often, wondered where you have gone and pondered on what your answers would be to the questions you never seem to see.

I understand that the numbers are so low for transwomen that it'd be pointless starting whole teams or races exclusively for transwomen / transmen.
So it needs to be accepted that maybe the medical intervention of becoming a transwoman or transman means that you are unable to compete in sport completely. Such as it is for people who have other medical interventions like chemotherapy or steroids or those who need high doses of asthma medication which are performance enhancing.

Some circumstances lead to some people being unable to compete in sport.

If transwomen so desperately need to compete in women's sport I would suggest there is a seperate winning category created for them so that both women can win 1st prize and TW can win 1st prize based on overall performance in the same competition.

All this searching around for some kind of criteria that would make it fair is ridiculous. There is already a criteria. Men compete in men's sports and women in women's sports. It's so simple, why make it complicated.

There are para Olympics for a fairer competition for athletes with disabilities and I don't see why there couldn't be transwomen sports for transwomen and transmen sports for transmen. That way everyone gets to compete. It's inclusive, it's competitive and it's fair.

I don't understand why you need to be addressed specifically in order to comment, Ratty?

Me and Maryz got history Lancelottie She doesn't like to talk to me but she has been known to talk about me a fair amount.

Not saying that's not okay, it's totally fair na forum, just saying I wasn't being a weird diva just right off the bat!

Men's vs women's gymnastics is one that's quite interesting.

www.elitedaily.com/sports/difference-womens-gymnastics-vs-mens-gymnastics/1582261

Going back to testosterone levels (apologies if this has been answered already), if a female athlete took drugs to increase her natural level of testosterone to the lowest level allowed for a trans woman athlete, would she then be deemed to be doping and facing a ban, when what she had done was to try and achieve a level playing field with a trans woman?

That's not to say no records will ever be held by transwomen - because to me, why shouldn't they be? But what those records will be is not unbeatable, because you'd have to get it quite spectacularly wrong in the face of everything you know of a transitioning athletes performance for that to be the case.

But @RatRolyPoly you've literally just said, in response to me, that 'everything you know of a transitioning athlete's performance' could be the square root of bugger all!

So you pretty much always have to go on the best evidence you can gather at the time, and be prepared to roll with advances later down the road.

Unless you're suggesting that you look at every single person who wants to complete at elite level as a woman, their performance history and competition positions and say 'this person is clearly still too much like a man [i.e. too good at their sport] to be considered a woman and they can't compete' - and who on earth will be qualified to make that decision, or feel comfortable doing so?

Not to mention the messages that sends about women's sport compared to men's, and the fact that someone could slip through the net and set an unbreakable record because we didn't know that the factor giving them an advantage is, in fact, giving them an advantage. NOT TO MENTION the problem of trying to do this at non-elite levels within the training pipeline.

Obviously, I agree that there will never be enough evidence to comprehensively 'prove' that something is fair, and I understand the need to continually review and revise policies in the face of evaluation (this is what I do for a living). I just think the line is drawn in the wrong place. In sport, why have we decided that testosterone is the be-all and end-all? And what commitment is being made to evaluate the impact of the changes in practice, reported anecdotally on this thread and in governing policies - especially at non-elite levels - on natal women and girls' participation and progression?

Again, square root of bugger all, as far as I can tell. In sport, and in everything else.

For people like Rat, it boils down to the simple fact that women need to just be quiet and accept any disadvantage as a natural and reasonable consequence of inclusion, which is the most important thing. The inclusion and feelings of trans women outweigh any possible impact on women's sports. And, if you feel this is unfair you're probably just transphobic, bigoted and out of date/on the wrong side of history. That's all it is.

Men of course don't have to worry about any impact of this vital inclusion.

I bet if there was a sport women ruled at, and they started taking wins from men, that there would be absolute outrage.

Is there one? Am I wrong here?