If research finds no significant differences for sport for male & female, where will that lead?

Though I do suspect the bubble of trans nonsense will have burst before these students finish their PhDs and then their CVs will be worse than useless. Can't say I'd have much sympathy.

(Does anyone else mentally model the trans stuff as being like a stock market bubble? Almost everyone knows it's bullshit and there's nothing real underneath, but as long as some people are true believers, or believe that everyone else believes, the bubble will keep growing. So I'm reasonably optimistic about this. All bubbles pop eventually.)

Are they basically just hiring people to write enough nonsense to gaslight the entire world? Everyone can look up the differences between male and female sports performances for themselves. The issue's clear as day.

But if TRAs can point at actual published papers (in trans-studies journals but nevermind that) that obfuscate the issue, they can use that to bamboozles people into thinking they've misunderstood something or it's all much more complicated than they thought before they "educated themselves."

If they add in some guilt tripping about trans suicides and how trans people will literally kill themselves if they can't win gold medals against women, (just conduct an online survey, I'm sure that's what it will find!) then people will want to believe that it's complicated because they can't handle the cognitive dissonance of being "mean" to an oppressed group. So most people won't question it too hard.

Basically, the same strategies TRAs always use, but it's a new territory to conquer. Fuck these people.

I agree. It's callous to waste a student's time, effort and hopes on this.

It will be interesting to see, in three years’ time or so, how many have submitted and who the external examiners are. Even in the intellectual wasteland of post modern basket weaving in third tier institutions it’s going to be a challenge to find an external who their central administrators will sign off as qualified but who will put up with this sort of nonsense. Alternatively they will find an echo chamber, and it will be obvious. Externals are not always a matter of record (there was a scandal at SOAS recently) but the theses themselves are, so the quality of the work will be visible.

I have no sympathy for the students. The6 know what’d they are getting into or, if they do not, don’t deserve a PhD anyway.

It's as if mountains of data doesn't already exist on the differences between elite male and female results at all ages and events.

It's not that complicated. Just have a look at all the current world records. The top men at their sport will always beat elite women in a physical sport.
Of course a random woman can beat a random but that proves nothing.

They've been trying to eliminate women in sports ever since women began competing, so this shouldn't be a surprise.

I read an article on one researcher in this field, working hard to "make space" for transgender athletes in women's sports who believes that since their own personal race time decreased once they started hormones, it proves something.

That and the "Billy Jean King won" references. No one ever points out that Bobby Riggs was over 50 years old at the time and took the match so unseriously he didn't both to train....

The bias is very clear from the framing on the research. Why bring transgender in to it at all. If the issue is sex segregation in sport, examine the appropriateness of this and do not contaminate it with notions of gender.

Exactly. If there’s no difference between men and women you can demonstrate that simply by comparing the achievements of natal men and women.

You’d have a much larger pool to draw on and you can just google the world records without spending a penny.

The brief makes it clear what the findings are intended to be and the purpose they are wanted for. Worthless before it even starts.

I agree. It's callous to waste a student's time, effort and hopes on this.

Five good scientists, all working on sea ice, or ocean acidification, and similar stuff, have lost their jobs there this year, but there is money somewhere to fund this sort of bollocks

Impending climate catastrophe can't be allowed to interrupt capitalism. Much better to distract the left with gender wars while flogging as much off-label medication as possible in the time available.

I agree, Ifonlyus

All this is about power.

The annoying thing is, there are so many sports one can participate in that are not segregated by sex. I don't get the problem at the recreational level. Which leads me to believe it is about power and infiltrating the top level sports to knock females out the way and put us back in our place. How dare we do well at something when there are makes 'failing ' at being males. We need to make sure they can feel superior by being better 'women' than us.

It's incredible how this drive for stopping sex segregated sports is taking off. I've seen right-wing men push it with a sneer - 'well you wanted equality didn't you' - but most of it is from the left, in the name of 'trans equality '. If it happens, sport will be destroyed for women. Right now, even mixed competitions like marathons have male and female categories.

Bold fail.

Five PhD students? Are they fully funded?
In the meantime I watch an Institute I have a close association with going through yet another round of redundancies in a desperate attempt to balance the books. Five good scientists, all working on sea ice, or ocean acidification, and similar stuff, have lost their jobs there this year, but there is money somewhere to fund this sort of bollocks.

It's maddening when considered like that.

I haven't read other responses but my first thought is, haven't they already got loads of data to show the effect of the biological differences between men and women?

The bias is very clear from the framing on the research. Why bring transgender in to it at all. If the issue is sex segregation in sport, examine the appropriateness of this and do not contaminate it with notions of gender.
If the issue is what to do with people who modify their sex characteristics through medical intervention, explore the ethics of that but don't pretend it is an issue relating to innate sex based differences!

The brief makes it clear what the findings are intended to be and the purpose they are wanted for. Worthless before it even starts.

What's the point of this?

If it proves there are differences it wont ever be allowed to be published .

And if it says anywhere that there's a drop in performance it wont matter if they are proven to still be different because thatbone sentence will be all TRAS need....

Hey BlindYeo maybe their point about para olympics is that those should be abolished and all those athletes with a handicap should just try harder in the standard competitions?

Five PhD students? Are they fully funded?
In the meantime I watch an Institute I have a close association with going through yet another round of redundancies in a desperate attempt to balance the books. Five good scientists, all working on sea ice, or ocean acidification, and similar stuff, have lost their jobs there this year, but there is money somewhere to fund this sort of bollocks.

I should add that the age difference was deemed acceptable because the author used a statistical method that allows the comparison of results across different ages, ie the 24yo result was compared to other 24yolds men and the 53yo was compared to 53yo women. BUT the point is that as we age, we tend to perform worse. So the study tells us little about how elite male athletes transitioning in their prime may compare to female athletes in their prime.

There is already a vast body of international research into the physiology of males and females, of male and female athletes, of performance and the success of training methods and so on. Our elite sportsmen and women are supported by sports scientists who are drawing on this research and once this becomes a mainstream concern (once we reach critical mass where speaking up doesn't cost you sponsors or funding or your reputation or selection to the team), these athletes and their national teams will fight back.

Secondly, the existing research on the issue at hand - how males who claim womanhood fare after they start taking testosterone suppressants and/or cross sex hormones - to date is extremely limited and does not currently meet the criteria of properly controlled studies.

Take for instance the study that has caused most of the problems to date - the one involving eight (!) runners and self-reported competition results.

Race Times for Transgender Athletes by Joanna Harper, 2015

All eight and the author are men claiming womanhood (MCW), non-elite runners and were/had medically transitioned. Although the author detailed the shortcomings of the study (of which there were many), shortcomings which should result in understanding this study as an interesting perspective on the issue and a starting point for much better research, it has actually been used both by the author and various other people to claim that once MCWs take testosterone suppressants ALL of their advantages over women are erased and therefore MCWs should be allowed to compete against women. The author seems to be an adherent to the belief that the only advantage men have over women is testosterone.

If you look at the study, it's actually horrifying anyone should have taken this seriously for even a second. Self-reported race times over a period of seven years from eight runners. Half of the reported times could be verified online.

No information is supplied on exactly what the medical transition entailed, how much or how long for the testosterone was taken, the fitness levels and training regimes prior to transitioning etc. Although there is an acknowledgment that some participants didn't train as hard after medical transition, lost motivation etc., this is glossed over in favour of stressing that collectively all eight were slower after transition. The hypothesis here is that these eight runners lost their male advantage after taking hormones.

One of the most striking aspects is that it compares race times posted at different ages. For instance there's the time posted as a 24 yo being compared with the race times posted after that individual transitioned and competed again age 53. 26 yo vs 53, 22 vs 36, 49 vs 56 and so on. Performance levels do actually drop off substantially as we age, so it's surprising that this wasn't discussed. Instead one individual who started training a lot after transitioning and then performed better after transitioning is discussed, of course (probably with a view to explain away that fact).

Hardly surprising - even I managed to run the 2K faster aged 35 than aged 18 because I started running three times a week and walking on the other days whereas as an 18 year old I tried everything to get out of having to run which in any case happened at most once a week and I never tried to get a good time. But to ignore the age aspect with the other runners who were stated to train to the same extent, is just one problem of many with this study.

And yet, it was used to inform IOC policy. (But it flew under the radar then while awareness is growing now.)

If research finds no significant differences for sport for male & female, where will that lead?

(Proper peer reviewed research). This won't happen, because there is already a wealth of information to show that there are significant differences.

Testosterone has been shown to affect a minority of cellular transcript types. In other words, most sex-based differences are actually to do with the presence of XX vs XY chromosomes (the presence of particular genes in single or double copy) rather than to do with how testosterone modifies the expression of those genes. There are exceptions, mostly to do with secondary sexual characteristics, which testosterone/oestrogen powerfully regulate.

Like the "transed" children who will sue their doctors in ten years' time, the takeover of women's sport by men is a problem that will come home to roost in ten years' time.

I'll be up there with you Hestia. I'll settle for silver.

They've started. blog.lboro.ac.uk/doctoral-college/2018/11/15/doctoral-researchers-represent-lboro-at-diversity-in-sport-conference/

I can't see who's funding them. Perhaps someone else can have a hunt. Usually funding bodies' names are slapped on everything, aren't they? But as we know, there's a lot of trans money sloshing around. Now they're going to try and get faux respectability through 'research'?

Is trans is latching onto disability/para sports for this latest chapter? The poster for the conference the students attended has a picture of athletes in wheelchairs at the top. Does anyone else think that's odd and not a little offensive? Or maybe it's about time those with physical disabilities realise they're not as disadvantaged as transgender people.

It was also a free conference. Interesting.

Perhaps they're just going to avoid the basic male/female sports stats deepwatersolo and go for the oppression olympics approach. And yes, I can imagine they will start saying male/female stats are hate speech or something.

I am so angry on behalf of female athletes.

The state of research in this country is in a dire state and everyone knows it. This needs raising with someone not sure who.