Max testosterone level for trans athletes to be halved

[EmpressOfJurisfiction]

Open access link: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-athletes-face-tougher-entry-rules-in-female-events-wrrmm7vcz?shareToken=49299dde905a975d619c3b6b581b4b38

& so can other women take testosterone up to this level?

Here's another study but only taken on long distance running where it followed trans women before and after transition, and their rankings as men, where pretty much the same as they were for women post transition.

So the author states, someone who is ranked around the top 20% as a male, after transition seems to end up around the top 20% for female, they didn't suddenly jump up to the top 5%....

"Conclusions
Despite the fact that transgender women have been allowed to compete against cisgender ones
since 2004, there has been no study used to justify this decision beyond the original work of
Gooren and Bunck. It bears repeating that this original study was not undertaken on athletes, nor
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JOURNAL OF SPORTING CULTURES AND IDENTITIES
did it directly measure any aspect of athleticism. In fact, this is the first time a study has been
developed to measure the performance of transgender athletes. The author overcame two
significant barriers which have prevented any previous study from being performed, i.e. the
difficulty in determining an appropriate metric to measure athletic performance both before and
after testosterone suppression, and the difficulty in finding enough willing study participants in
any given sport.
The author chose to use the standard age-grading methodology which is commonly used in
master’s (over forty) track meets worldwide, to evaluate the performance of eight distance
runners who had undergone gender transition from male to female. As a group, the eight study
participants had remarkably similar age grade scores in both male and female gender, making it
possible to state that transgender women run distance races at approximately the same level, for
their respective gender, both before and after gender transition.
It should be noted that this conclusion only applies to distance running and the author makes
no claims as to the equality of performances, pre and post gender transition, in any other sport.
As such, the study cannot, unequivocally, state that it is fair to allow to transgender women to
compete against 46,XX women in all sports, although the study does make a powerful statement
in favor of such a position.
It should also probably be noted that the publication of this study will likely not appreciably
change the resistance faced by transgender women who compete against cisgender ones. There
will continue to be strong opposition by athletes, parents and fans to the inclusion of transgender
women. It will take many more years before the average sports enthusiast understands that
transgender women who have undergone testosterone suppression will not dominate women’s
sports."

The full article can be found here, but it can be heavy going..

jrci.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.301/prod.4

crispbuttyfan Isn't long distance running a bit unusual though? Some of the top long distance runners (especially ultra-marathoners) in the world are women. For most other sports having increased height and muscle is a major advantage.

There could be a whole new Trans category, which would solve the problem completely. Still really pissed off with the idea that any men should compete against women. I am talking about competitive events...for fun I guess it really doesn't matter if everyone chooses to be inclusive. However I would also be pissed off if a women's walking netball team for example had to include men too, because we just can't say no.

That looks like an impartial source, lol.

www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201710/profiles.cfm

"Harper is a competitive runner and for over 40 years she has been competing in races that range from 1500 meters on the track to road marathons"

"Thirteen years ago she started thinking about fitness levels of male and female athletes and wondered if anyone had studied how a person’s fitness changes when they change genders. The catalyst for this musing was her own gender transition from male to female in 2004."

And the study

"Race times from eight transgender women runners were collected over a period of seven years and, when possible, verified. "

Eight is a pathetic sample size.

If you look at the actual data they are so variant as to be obviously worthless in the context of the tiny sample. Some of the comparisons are obviously ridiculous, such as comparing the 5km time of the 24 year old biological male with the 5km time of the same person post-transition aged 53.

Others present different issues, e.g., runner Five goes from 19:39 running as a man to 23:43 as a woman over the space of some time between 1 day and 23 months (they just give the ages at the time of running rather than the actual dates, so you can't tell whether 1 day has elapsed or potentially 729 days), at the same distance (but you'd need again to adjust for weather conditions, track, etc. - the author compares to an arbitrary best ever time, without considering this), however potentially this person has undergone genital surgery - it's not stated, from which there would be a fairly long recovery period.

The evidence is right before our eyes - third-rank men become world-beaters when they transition. Trying to draw conclusions from amateurs who inevitably will be under different training, diet conditions, etc., before and after transition is thoroughly wrong-headed. The relevant question is peak performance, not a bunch of amateurs. (And that's assuming you accept that sex separated sport should be open to people of the opposite biological sex if only they comply with some arbitrary criterion, that 'inclusion' in elite sport is somehow priority (surely not - Man Utd. are not trying to 'include' everyone who is shit at football in their team).)

IF you could INTENSIVELY monitor a male athlete subject to testosterone suppression for, say, one year, and see what happened to their times subject to the same training regime, diet, etc. then that might be interesting. But this, this is worthless.

Oh hey, look at that! A sports governing body being flexible, making changes they deem appropriate, acting in the best interests of competitors and acting on advice. You'd have thought it couldn't happen!

Well I'm pleased to see it, but then I always had a good amount of faith in the governing bodies.

I think someone upthread said they started out with with the 10mol limit; in fact they started far lower than that and actually raised the limit so as to not exclude certain intersex athletes - nothing to do with trans at all. Just as a point of accuracy. It was contentious as to whether they should have raised it in the first place; not surprised it's come back down.

Hopefully everyone's a little less apocalyptic about the sports situation now, seeing that governing bodies are demonstrably prepared to take the steps they deem appropriate to ensure fair and safe competition.

I mean how do you adjust for it? It's madness.

For example, it's believed that elite sprinters have tended to dope off-season. In other words you build muscle using testosterone supplements when you're not competing, and then during competition you still have that extra muscle but your levels have fallen.

However a hypothetical transgender person who has not been subject to castration (which is no longer a requirement I understand) is INHERENTLY doping if they stop taking testosterone-blocking hormones. In other words by NOT doping themselves with anti-androgens, and allowing their body to produce its natural male sex hormones, they will gain the advantage from that. Are we to subject these 'dopers' to lifelong bans from competition, on the basis that 'whoops', they 'forgot' to suppress their hormones all year round, as would athletes who supplemented hormones? Or is in fact the standard much more lenient.

It's bonkers. Everyone knows you can gain massive benefit from testosterone doping, even if you don't do it in competition, so how on earth are we supposed to deal with people who have - in effect - been 'doping' since puberty, and have the consequent extra muscle mass, etc. There can be no fairness because any standard is by necessity arbitrary because there is no biological transgender marker, it's just a self-declaration.

Male athletes shouldn't be competing against female. That's it as far as I'm concerned.

Male athletes shouldn't be competing against female. That's it

Exactly^^

Male athletes shouldn't be competing against female. That's it as far as I'm concerned

I have to say that seems far simpler and fairer than worrying about testosterone levels, or whether the heavier skeleton and musculature is an advantage or a disadvantage... After all sports that are split are split by sex, not gender.

Well I'm pleased to see it, but then I always had a good amount of faith in the governing bodies

Are you a competitive athlete? An elite one?

Believe me, ngb’s are out for one thing, medals. They don’t give a flying fuck about individuals, or athletes in general.

If putting men in womens competition will bring GB medals, and therefore lottery funding, they will have no hesitation in changing whatever rule they need to.

Campaigning for an 'extra' gender in sports seem at least as Bloody Sensible as as an 'extra' toilet or changing room. That would be a level playing field. Bonus - No end to the punditry of Trans vs.Women Vs Men , but it moves from the Feminism debate to the Sports pages.

Micah, I'm a competitive athlete. Not an elite one. Think national leagues rather than international.

What have the IOC rulings got to do with GB medals? And seeing as the NGBs can set what they like for national competitions, but on the international stage it is the IGBs whose rules will apply, how do you think the NGB rules will advantage GB?

I should say sportswoman - athlete implies athletics. My apologies.

I was perusing PhD places last week and saw that Loughborough Uni (iirc) are advertising several places to research gender/ sex and sport. If anyone fancies applying.

An extra gender is ridiculous.

Who will go to the trans games? Who will sponsor it? Etc

The testosterone level halving is a good thing. The studies need to be done (there was one mentioned in the same article) and unbiased conclusions need to be drawn.

If it is fair, they should compete in women’s sport (subject to rigorous testing, like all athletes). If they are seen to remain closer to males in muscle and stamina profiles, despite reduced testosterone, they should compete with the men. They won’t win anything, but nor will 99.9% of the rest of us.

Above all there should be a proper scientific process without bias in either direction.

Yeah, can't argue with that larry. And of course in my opinion the sports governing bodies should continue to set limits on the basis of the best scientific evidence available, and should be flexible to account for any new research or advice as it emerges. So... pretty much what we have now it would appear.

We could just class athletes according to xx or xy, can't see that scientific fact changing any time soon, no confusion, no level setting.

Just for context on levels, being 42 years post op my T level has never been above 2.5 nanomoles since it has been measured annually.

That's interesting Jaycee, thank you. Does rather beg the question why a level of 10 nmol was thought to be appropriate in the recent guidance... Seems very high.

Does rather beg the question why a level of 10 nmol was thought to be appropriate in the recent guidance... Seems very high.

As I understand it it was so as to not exclude genuinely intersex athletes; Caster Semenya for example had testosterone levels higher that 10nmol prior to the Rio Olympics.

But they used to insist on surgery at first, I think. Removing the main source of the testosterone permanently will clearly be the most effective way to bring numbers down.

I think the guidelines should be different for intersex and for transgender competitors. They are not the same thing so should have different rules.

I would think several things could be taken into account with trans competitors - whether surgery has or has not occurred, the T levels, a measure of height/weight/muscle mass scale which should also be within an accepted range and a time period of stability of levels within the accepted range.

Here you go Jaycee, if you're interested; this is a (slightly out of date now) factual assessment of things as they stand for a good number of sports. The "rules" are different for each sport, which I guess makes sense as the type of physical activity will obviously make a difference as to how safety and fairness can be achieved.

www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2016/uk/the-participation-of-trans-athletes-in-sport-a-transformation-in-approach

Perhaps I should say "sought" rather than "achieved" in my last sentence.

We could just class athletes according to xx or xy, can't see that scientific fact changing any time soon, no confusion, no level setting

If only it were that simple. The IOC basically did that for many years and it caused a lot of problems for intersex athletes - many were forced to retire. Hence the move to testosterone levels as being the fairest way to allow intersex athletes to compete.

For transgender athletes, they have looked to loosen restrictions to make it easier for athletes to compete. The standard range of testosterone in women is roughly 0.3-4nmol or so. So I never understood why it was pushed up to 10nmol rather than 5nmol which matches a lot better.

I don't know which conditions should be in place to enable both intersex and transgender athletes to be able to compete fairly - I can only hope the sports governing bodies will take an evidence led approach.

But one final point - transgender athletes or intersex athletes who follow the rules are not cheating. A lot of the coverage around Caster Semenya and Laurel Hubbard has implied the opposite.