Woman’s Hour now on Trans athletes

I fully expect one of them to have a Benjamin Cohen radio tantrum about no women being included in a discussion about women's sport- not
Nobody cares if women are excluded

The article Shedbuilder links to is dated 29 December 2020 and says JH is still working on the PhD (only started in 2019). In the article JH also says the 2015 paper which the IOC based their decision on, was just "a hobby" at the time.

If they're still a student then why is this person's apparently flawed research being given such prominence. While it's not that common, PhD students do publish and have often expertise in an area, but that expertise has to have been externally validated and peer reviewed. Has JH's?

Secondly - who'd like to be a fly on the wall at their viva? Wonder if they'll consider it literal violence?

Dr Emma Hilton was waiting to be called by WH this morning apparently as she had been asked to contribute. I guess they ran out of time. I didn’t see her name on the list of invited guests on the sounds app though.

There is something odd here when you compare it to:

Emma Barnett made it very clear at the end that they'd approached a wide range of people, including current female athletes, female weightlifters, representatives from IOC and British sport bodies, and none had been willing to take part.

They are BANNED from saying anything publicly that goes against the policies of their governing bodies.

But they're all involved in the decision making internally. Right? Right?

They will be deselected ( if athletes ). That’s why only retired athletes can speak out.

It’s censorship.

Dr Emma Hilton was waiting to be called by WH this morning apparently as she had been asked to contribute. I guess they ran out of time. I didn’t see her name on the list of invited guests on the sounds app though.

As others have said JH certainly will have contributed to many an epiphany on this topic, particularly with Emma Barnett’s interview style.

Harper sounds a bit unfocused tbh. Normal for Portland Oregon I guess. EB laughed in her face when she claimed Hubbard wouldn't win so it doesn't matter! She has a PhD? To quote Father Ted : did it come in a packet of cornflakes?

Nothing against hobbyists though, and like I say, the onus to ensure a fair and evidence-based decision was on the IOC and not an understandably biased hobby researcher.

Ted absolutely! I attended the WPUK meeting on sports (A Woman's Place is on the podium) in 2019, and there were some brilliant women speakers including Sharron and Emma Hilton, who could have contributed a great deal more to this debate than Adam Wagner (a lawyer) or some random philosopher bloke

What's clear after reading the article is that at the heart of Joanna Harper's work is the fervent desire to be accepted as a woman. And I can't blame anyone for having such a human need.

The onus was and is on the sports bodies to evaluate the science and the data before opening up a female sport to male participants. And on that JH fails. Badly.

For starters, JH doesn't understand risk analysis. Take Ross Tucker's statement that a Rugby tackle from a male transgender player against a female player presents a 20 to 30% increase to the latter compared with being tackled by another female player.

JH claims once you take into account how few male transgender Rugby players there are, the increased risk of such a tackle is just 1%. But that's JH getting confused about two risks - the risk of a male-on-female tackle occurring and the risk of the tackle to the female player.

Because Rugby is so physical, and past injuries have had serious consequences including paralysis and death, risk analysis must consider the risk of the moves themselves, not just how often they might happen.

Then JH shows a lack of understanding of valid comparisons when claiming that it isn't valid that emerging research considers male transgender athletes who have not yet started a medical transition to be comparable to all other male athletes, because male transgender individuals often starve themselves to achieve a female model look. I'm not sure where the data is on that as JH presents none, but someone who is not eating is unlikely to be training as an athlete and so not a valid comparator for the purpose of deciding access to sports categories. Especially since we could simply compare a male transgender individual who is not eating with all other male individuals who are not eating and would find neither of them would be the same as a female individual who is not eating.

And of course the bulk of Joanna Harper's male transgender study subjects are of an age where their female peers - in addition to menstruation and fluctuating performance levels due to their natural hormonal cycles - would have experienced various additional strains on their performance due to being female, such as childbirth, nursing or the menopause, whether peri or full-blown. Harper's male subjects do not experience any of that because they are male. So it is fair to compare them to other males when establishing the baseline parameters of their physiology and their performance advantage.

Was it Joanna Harper whose research was based on eight non-elite trans athletes self-declaring?

Yes. But they've now done a much wider review, which shows the continuing male advantage.

twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1368175117356916743

Gosh. Why can't they see that an athlete who was pretty rubbish when they were male, can give themselves a leg up by transitioning, and yet still be pretty rubbish. They're just further up the ladder than they were before. They don't have to win to be problematic.

Was it Joanna Harper whose research was based on eight non-elite trans athletes self-declaring?

To be fair to harper, she has never been a proponent of #nodebate. I know that's not much but in the climate there are not many advocating for tw in w sport who have gone for research and public discussion as the way forward. Maybe it's been forced on her i don't know. If everyone on that side had been of that stance we would not be in this mess. She presented the poor research to the ioc, but it was the ioc's responsibility to decide what voices to seek out, what research to listen to, and whether to change policy based on current research, commission more, or commit to single sex sport for women. It's at their door.

That aside. I'm not kean on barnett's adversarial style usually, but the interview really showed the position's flaws. Many ears will have pricked up and will be thinking wtf?

Thanks nauticant, wonder why the other two were listed, maybe they are on the podcast or something.

It was only Joanna Harper who was interviewed DaisiesandButtercups. Unless I was sleepwalking through part of it.

Emma Smith and Katy Jon were both listed as interviewed guests for Women’s Hour this morning, I assume on the Laurel Hubbard story.

Did anyone hear their interviews? I didn’t manage to catch the whole programme.

JH is hoping that the numbers of trans competitors are going to be very low, in the order of a handful, meaning that the public continues to be unaware. The goal is to have the low numbers for several Olympics so that a hugely significant change happens in a boiled frog kind of way. But they know that this could easily tip over into a great deal of awareness and anger

Yes they will want a very low number of very mediocre athletes and then they can say "see if there was an advantage they would have won"

I was expecting Russia and China to have a few trans competitors. Does anyone know if trans athletes are required to be "out" or are they able to compete without publicly disclosing their trans status? I can imagine a really negative consequence for women's sports will be constant speculation about whether or not people are actually male or female.

Ted agreed it's about fairness, maybe they should have Sharron Davies on. If anyone knows about fairness in sport, it's her - she lost out to countries who were unfairly doping women athletes and can give a very valuable insight on this topic

Hubbard's selection is going down very badly in some African nations where it is being contrasted to the ban on Caister Semenya competing in her favoured event.

www.timeslive.co.za/amp/sport/2021-06-22-why-cant-caster-compete-social-media-questions-transgender-athlete-competing-in-olympics/

The IOC cannot possibly be unaware of the implications for the future, if males can compete in women’s categories. There are plenty of countries and individuals who absolutely will take advantage of that to the point where it will be pointless being a female athlete at all.