Trans athletes research - Brighton

Yes that's true, my DH has since informed me that the FA is run by 'stupid old men in tweed suits' and you 'couldn't rely on them to find their arses with both hands' and expecting a sensible response from them will be in vain.

But if the organisations that run sports are not ensuring fair play to sportswomen then there will have to be protests, or rival organisations set up that exclued men pretending to be women from competing against women.

I am not a sports fan, and no doubt I will be told why this cannot happen by someone who understands it. I just hate injustice and unfairness.

Probablymagrat The FA won't let you talk about Blair being male. Google www.thefa.com/-/media/cfa/sussexfa/files/about/discipline/ or Blair Hamilton. The same FA who banned women's football for about 50 years.

Naw.

I suspect that’s where the line is because it allows for XY DSD people with a female phenotype to compete (eg those born with CAIS). These are children who look entirely female from birth and usually only find out that they have XY chromosomes around the age of 16 when they are taken to the doctor for investigations as to why no Menarche has occurred.

There was some data that suggested athletes with CAIS might have an advantage but it’s flawed and DSD athletes such as Duttee Chand clearly have a very different developmental pathway compared to DSD athletes such as Caster Semenya (who has had a male puberty). Obvs there is a practical advantage in no menstrual cycle/contraception/pregnancy issues to affect training schedules but that’s offset somewhat by needing to manage DSD symptoms/treatments. These children are socialised as female from birth and thus have the same access to sports limitations as XX children.

Theoretically we could eventually see a high profile trans athlete who experienced total pubertal blockade in childhood, but so far the data suggests these children have myriad health problems ranging from obesity to impaired bone density so it seems rather unlikely.
As an example, Jazz Jennings was pretty sporty in childhood (swimming and soccer) and after medical and surgical interventions is no longer capable of anywhere near the same level of physical activity.

Plus a childhood/teen years full of transgender medical appointments wouldn’t leave enough time and focus for the sort of training activity that elite athletes are usually engaged in from primary school age onwards (eg my friend has had to put her foot down and insist on scaling back on gymnastics for her Team GB scouted 9 year old because they wanted her in the gym 6 days a week).

I didn't say anything for a long time, then something came up in my sport that I couldn't ignore. There have been good and bad consequences to speaking up, but it got a lot of people talking about the issue in an informed way for the first time. I also stumbled across someone at work who feels the same way I do and we've been starting to challenge some things in our workplace (so far unsuccessfully, but it's early days!)

I don't judge anyone for not being ready to stick their head above the parapet, when there are likely to be real world consequences, but you may eventually find a way to challenge this ideology in small or big ways.

I have certain, very close friends I would be likely to lose over this issue if they ever knew how I felt. It may come to that one day, but I'm not rushing into it.

Researchers should, and typically do, spend a great deal of time and effort trying to see what confounding variables affect tests. The cold pressor test for example (how long can you stand your hand in a bucket of ice water) is affected by lots of things.

Money and sex and how pretty the researcher is (straight male participants) and whether there's an audience. Whether women and men feel it's useful or they are being compared to others and on and on. Money motivates people differently, so does prestige, or an audience. So you have to try multiple motivators to get a 'clean' result. And preferably it should be double blind.

You cannot expect people to behave as they would in a study where they know the results will affect their lives adversely depending on performance. Even subconsciously that would skew your results terribly.

there's that cricketer, Maxine whatshername, whose batting average is over 100 in women's county cricket, has also played for a men's club second xi with a batting average of about 10. she has what looks like fairly typical male height (maybe about three standard deviations above the female average, so rare but far from unheard of) but is slim, plausibly female in her build, and claims to in effect have a DSD which meant she never went through male puberty. I wouldn't pretend to know the truth of it, e.g. I've never heard her speak or anything.

No I don't think there have been but what I meant was that even if in the future there are TW athletes who have not been through male puberty they have not been through female puberty and all of the disadvantages that gives to women and girls who have to endure periods and train.

I'm sorry I wasn't really clear in what I meant.

The whole thing just annoys me, the point isn't just that males have an advantage it is that they also don't have the disadvantages that being female brings.

My daughter is quite serious at her sport, periods do affect training and I think this is overlooked as is women having babies.

Are there any transwomen athletes that haven't gone through male puberty? I don't know of any, but I'm not involved in any sports.

These studies massively miss the point anyway.

A person who doesn't go through male puberty through choice will never be disadvantaged by female puberty which is something that female athletes have to endure and still train.

A transwoman will never have to choose between having a baby or sport. A transwoman will never have to have time off to gestate and have a baby and then get back on track.

The only purpose of these studies is to destroy sport for women.

Makes me sick.

There's a required annual fitness test (running, sit ups, pull ups, etc) which participants have a very strong incentive to pass strongly, since failure can see you lose your job. My recollection of the evidence is that it shows that some advantages are significantly eroded over time whilst others seem to be mostly permanent.

I vaguely recall this - some comment from Emma Hilton on this thread:

twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1555566362625548290

One particular bit on "strong incentive to pass strongly"

I spoke with military people about these tests. They are not, for the typically fit officer, massively onerous. I couldn’t do them, of course, I’m not saying they are easy! But the people I spoke to - officers and testers - say most finish with time to spare.

And there's an outstanding uncertainty about whether the "transwomen" were being asked to hit male or female targets. If the latter, then clearly their performance would drop...

As I understand it there's some modestly useful evidence out there from US soldiers who've transitioned. There's a required annual fitness test (running, sit ups, pull ups, etc) which participants have a very strong incentive to pass strongly, since failure can see you lose your job. My recollection of the evidence is that it shows that some advantages are significantly eroded over time whilst others seem to be mostly permanent.

Expecting to get useful evidence from male athletes who are going to compete in women's sport is beyond stupid. Expecting Emily Bridges to try her best in the trials isn't expecting her 'not to cheat', it's expecting her to do the equivalent of a would-be lightweight boxer to step onto the weigh-in scales wearing a 10kg diver's belt, to deliberately do herself out of a job.

I have very strong worries about sport, schools etc but cannot speak to anyone about it.

Why not?

Transwoman. The word trans is not an adjective to describe women.

There is zero incentive for a transwoman involved in sport to try their best in a study like this. I can't see anyway that it would be scientifically viable, unless you could prove that they are not interested in competing against women. There is no test that could prove that.

Was the person who took part male or female? trans?

This must be a wind up

Is this a "friend"?

Who is this person telling you these things? It's a straight up lie. Even Dr. Harper has admitted performance is still elevated even after 3+ years of hormone therapy and now instead focuses on mental aspects, claiming that being trans puts you at other disadvantages that negate the remaining physical advantages post hormone therapy. Still nonsense of course, but it shows how strong the evidence is that physical advantages can not be gotten rid off.

In the US 1% of women are 6' tall or more. A similar proportion of men are 6' 4".

The average height of an NBA player is over 6' 6". The WNBA average is around 6'.

What do post-puberty hormones do to that?