Transwomen in sports, and testosterone levels

[Scrumplestiltskin]

It seems a little silly to make a thread just about this (sorry!) but I came across this very interesting study earlier. It seems to tie in with feminist concerns around transgender males in sports - and in situations where women are vulnerable - and I haven't seen it linked before Apologies if it has been!
Only a quarter of transgender women taking a regimen of spironolactone and estrogens were able to lower testosterone levels within the usual female physiologic range. Another quarter could not achieve female levels but remained below the male range virtually all of the time, while one quarter was unable to achieve any significant suppression.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180220143424.htm

They don't have to lower it to the "normal" female range.

They only have to lower it to the "much higher than possible for any born female to achieve without doping, but a teeny bit lower than most men" level that the IOC have picked as an arbitrary level and which may be based (sort of) on the type of levels some intersex people have.

Not to mention the fact that testosterone levels isn't a good way of categorising people for sport. If they don't want to categorise by "female body" and "male body" (as in XX and XY chromosomes) which is a specific and easy to diagnose difference, they should give up on pretending to categorise at all.

Because "people who think they are women (but let's not define women, ffs, because that's transphobic) and who have a testosterone level less than [arbitrary]" in one category and "people who don't specifically think they are women and have a testosterone level greater than [arbitrary]" is pretty fucking stupid.

Especially when you add it "people with XY chromosomes but low natural testosterone aren't allowed to take testosterone, nor are people with XX chromosomes who think they are women (see above definition), but people with XX chromosomes who think they are men (don't define men either) can take testosterone to whatever level they like" as a doping rule and the whole thing is a teeny bit confusing.

What Maryz says!

The obsession with T confuses me - there are so many other aspects of male physiology. Pelvis, q angle, vo2 max etc plus the massive advantage of not having a menstrual cycle to contend with!

surprised to get here before Rat

The vast majority of sports favour the tall at competitive levels, on average men are taller and that height advantage is kind of obvious in transwomen

Male target reduction is 3.8nmol/l. IOC/IAAF requires reduction to 10nmol/l for most sports. I assume the recent change to 5nmol/l for 400m/400h/800m/1500m for females is also applied to males.

A study last year of androgen levels in elite track/field athletes showed average female levels around 1nmol/l, steady across disciplines studied. In males, average levels decreased as the athletic intensity decreased. 100m males were around 18nmol/l. Hammer throwers averaged less than 10nmol/l.

The threshold set by the IOC was, I believe, in good faith. It was intended to be deliberately broad enough to include any ‘natural’ female (PCOS level + 5SD), but low enough to detect doping cheats. I don’t think they could predict the invasion of males that has subsequently occurred.

I am in two minds about T limits in females. I don’t think we should be sanctioning females who, by quirk of their bodily makeup, have high T. Sport is full of people of both sexes who have physical advantage.

Unlimited T for females means a hardline on male entry though. As in, no males AT ALL. Otherwise, those males will complain about limiting T (and are already doing so - some of Caster Semenya’s biggest champions are transwomen ayhletes) when females don’t have to.

Scrumple very interesting post - and may have more implications for life outside sport than sport....

i.e. this is what Transwomen are walking around with and may be part of the explanation why they continue committing crimes at the male violence level ... as well of course as male socialisation/sense of entitle meant

I had not realised so few could significantly reduce their testosterone levels

Unsurprising results since spironolactone is a weak testosterone blocker. Decapeptyl and similar are the preferred medications but I understand that spiro is still occasionally used in the short term and can be favoured by some people who have to pay for their own drugs because spiro is much cheaper than Decapeptyl.

So the applicability of the study is fairly narrow.

Correction to my previous post: the average male level in hammer was around 12. The lower value for range was less than 10.

Hannah Mouncey.

Yeah sure, that looks like a really fair match

Not only height and testosterone, but as I've said before, men and women's bodies just work differently. Women cycle. Women have to optimize their training regimes for their cycles. Men never do. It's not about more or less, bigger or smaller, stronger or weaker, it's a whole different deal. It's like letting a doberman compete in a cat show - you're measuring totally different things so whether it 'wins' or 'loses' makes no sense because you're not comparing like with like.

@Scrumplestiltskin woman who have had surgery have the same female T hormone levels or less and most do not have very much strength at all

I struggled to carry the shopping after I had surgery and lost mussle mass

I know this through blood tests and talking to others who have blood tests which monitor such levels

J4nice
Do you mean a man who has had SRS?

Female is not a weak version of male.

Struggling to carry the shopping indicates at most that you were weaker than prior to surgery it doesnt suggest it is safe or fair for you to compete in sport against women.

I don't know why anyone would ever play a sport

What a peculiar comment ibaker

Let's not worry about sport.

It's all ok, it doesn't matter if girls walk away from sport because they are being beaten by/forced to change with boys.

I mean, who cares, it's not important.

Aornis
Sports have lots of rules, and none of them are fun, and it's so easy to get hurt, and you have to forget about things in order to focus.

I think that's just a bit vapid. Not all sports are contact. Swimming for example. That's a sport. There are all sorts of options available.

Aornis

Swimming is not fun. It also hurts, holding your breath and having to use all those muscles. I sing sometimes and I am holding my breath for lyrics but singing is fun and the feeling of my throat from having a pitch is nice.

Really? I'm disabled and swimming is the one sport I find easy. Practice helps. You don't have to hold your breath. Lots of people do breast stroke with their heads above the water. If you're worried about your hair the #ManFriday originals could recommend a nice flowery swim hat...

Oh and if you want to chat sport in a genuine way, perhaps try a less specific board on MN. It might look a bit disingenuous picking a trans in sport type thread. Wouldn't want people to think you had an agenda...

Aornis

Lots of people play sports and I don't know why they would. What is your disability?

None of your business is what it is.
Lots of people do things other people don't like.

For a Male to compete in the women’s olympics they must prove they have a T level of 8noL

This also doesn’t take into account the different ways Males and females create and process T.

Women have as much T in rest as they do in sport
Men’s T increases if they are winning or in sport. So a mans T count taken at rest could be far more realistically than a woman’s.

I hope this makes some sense, it’s a big topic but I did my dissertation on it. Quite hard to condense downS

Hi all, it's pretty clear that we have picked up a derailer. We're on the case, but we'll leave the posts so that the thread makes some sort of sense. No need for further reports on this one, thanks!

Testosterone is important, but it really is not the full story, and reducing this argument down to hormones is ignoring lots of other problems.

I play a full contact team sport that has female only, male only and mixed teams. I choose to only play against women because I find that kind of aggressive and frankly violent hands-on and physical contact with men to be extremely upsetting. I guess I could say it is triggering for me based on sexual assault and other trauma I have experienced, but I don’t think it is necessary to have experienced assault to find this distressing.

TIMs are now being widely accepted into women’s only teams and are competing as such. Yes this gives them and their teams a physical advantage, but it also, and no less importantly, pushes out women like me who find it distressing to be expected to compete against anyone who is more-or-less male bodied and male socialised. Their testosterone levels is of no consolation to me in that situation.

I am not the only woman who has had to withdraw from teams because of this.