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

Waddle I hope that helps allay any of your fears re: doping cheats.
It doesnt (but i do appreciate that you seem to be coming at this from a position of extraordinary faith in sports people/sports governing bodies which i dont share) because people who want to cheat will find a way & this seems like an easy way (especially while it's new).

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.

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. (And those same men will be expected in the communal changing rooms.)

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.

Apologies if I've misunderstood.

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.

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.

Transwomen are not women.

No amount of messing with the data is going to change that and this whole reversal of the definition of a woman is incredibly foolish and of course excludes women and revokes the recognition and equality women have fought for.

There are only men's sports and mixed now, that's right. Women's sport is finished and it was really only just getting started. What next, do away with age qualifiers so teenagers can compete alongside younger children and see who wins all the medals and who gets injured?

sports.vice.com/en_uk/article/vv95a4/what-actually-happens-when-a-trans-athlete-transitions

I'm linking this because it's something I read a while ago about a transwoman's experience of trying to qualify to play football under the FA's 1.5nmol rule (I said 1nmol earlier - it's 1.5). I found it interesting to hear her talk about what her doctors wanted her to achieve regarding testosterone, and what sport needed from her; that's to say the level was much lower!

Anyway, it's clearly a pro trans perspective article and does use the inflammatory "cis" word (sorry!!), but I found it interesting simply to get a bit of insight into what it actually feels like - as a sportsperson - to try and hit the criteria. It's really tough to find that sort of information anywhere. Hopefully someone else will find it a bit illuminating too, maybe.

((I said 1nmol earlier - it's 1.5)

• at least it was at the time of this article. Disclaimer: article from May 2017. Shouldn't affect the context in which I've posted it!

As others have said, anyone who knows anything about sport and training knows that focusing on the testosterone levels alone is ridiculous.

It is evidently now ok to take drugs to compete in sport. Inclusion and encouraging people into sport should be by sex alone.

I think there is a difference between competitive sport, where sports men and women win medals, major competitions, and money (either in the form of direct payment or sponsorship or scholarship).

Rat's quote "Women's sport is a sporting institution, and was created to further the fundamental sporting aim of inclusivity - allowing as many people to participate as possible" - shows that she isn't interested, as many sportswomen are in the competition element. She appears to think that women should just play for fun and therefore shouldn't mind being beaten by anyone else (including men).

She's also happy to trust sports governing bodies to make the "right" decisions on fairness, which is really odd as it is quite clear that when it comes to "trans inclusivity" it's crazy for women to trust any institutions (including the government) to make a decision to prioritise women and girls.

But there is no arguing with RatRolyPoly, it's like wrestling jelly. She talks round in circles asserting she wants fairness, then demonstrating that the only fairness she is interested in is letting anyone compete in women's events who wants to.

it won't matter how easy it is to get GRC, it will still be equally as hard to qualify to compete in sports.

And as I mentioned above, for at least some university sports teams, that's not hard in the slightest: in fact you just need to say 'I'm a woman'.

Caveat: I don't know how widely this applies to university teams.

And the last link - yet again, decisions made on testosterone levels alone.

It's time to decide - is it only testosterone levels that should be measured or should we consider going back to [siob] segregation of sport by sex ?

One or the other. It's impossible to regulate for a wishy-washy in between. There has to be a dividing line - is is XX vs XY or Under 5 vs Over 5?

OK, I was interested enough to look at the British Unis and Colleges Sport guidance, which includes the splendidly muddled phrase 'Does this student have more physical capacity than is possible for anyone of their gender?'

Lancelottie, similar for schools - it seems boys just have to say "I'm a girl" (in some schools at least) and they are in

Well, that's not what I think Maryz, but by not directing that comment to me you're clearly not interested in getting to the bottom of it or seeing where our similarities and differences might lie.

I'm not sure the point of your post really, other than to convince people I'm not a worthy source of interesting debate, and of course you can hold that opinion. But it doesn't really make for much of a contribution to debate, so seems mildly disingenuous to me.

But such is life.

I've said on other threads that the very top and the very bottom (i.e. school sports) are the pinch points for inclusion are require special considerations, not really covered broadly here. But most of sports participation is in the middle ground.

If you ever fancy talking those through by all means address me specifically. I'm happy to discuss and be right or wrong in whatever measure is appropriate and hey, we might actually get somewhere :)

Oh good, we're getting onto schools! But I have to go get the dc from nursery now :(

The FA doesn't publish a testosterone level, what they say is

"results in blood testosterone within natal female range"
"Blood testosterone within natal female range for an appropriate length of time so as to minimise any potential advantage
"Hormone treatment to be verified annually "

It's not at all clear that the number in that Vice article is accurate or consistently applied. The subject of the article is playing at a low level, and it's not obvious to me that it would always be applied that way, especially if a player challenged them, as presumably you could argue that some higher level was still within the natal female range (irrelevant though this ultimately is). If you look at other cases like Hannah Mouncey, I guess this could have gone a different way.

www.thefa.com/-/media/files/thefaportal/governance-docs/equality/lgbt/the-fa-policy-on-trans-people-in-football.ashx

So I don't think we should say that the FA is more stringent, because tbh it's left very vague, and I believe that any attempt to be more stringent than the IOC would be open to challenge

I don't understand why you need to be addressed specifically in order to comment, Ratty? I never expect anyone to know who I am and invite my comments, I just dive in.

That football player was 33! Not surprising that she wasn't as strong!

TerfinUSA exactly!! Women don't just want to participate, they want to compete !! and that needs a level playing field that allows fair competition.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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!

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 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.