If research finds no significant differences for sport for male & female, where will that lead?

[CrazyToast]

I read today that Loughborough has recruited 5 PhD students to research the gender binary in sport. Could be fine, you may think. But look at the advert.

"One of the most influential, powerful and visible institutions upholding the gender binary is sport – where participation is predominantly segregated by biological sex, rooted in the widely-held beliefs about fairness and the biological advantages associated with being male. Such beliefs are over-simplistic, legitimise discrimination, and hinder the sports participation of transgender (intersex, trans, non-binary) individuals. With the rapidly growing societal visibility of transgender people, there is an unprecedented need to address areas where discrimination may arise."

Combining the above statement with other research which suggests 'most policies unfairly alienate transgender competitors based mainly on an unsubstantiated assumption that transgender females possess an unfair sporting advantage.'

NB this is Bethany Jones who recently said that women could just try harder in sports if they didn't want to be beaten by men

There is now a push against testosterone testing in women's sports for trans women, and also to scrap sex categories in sport altogether.

If this happens, then it is essentially saying there is no relevant physical difference between males and females. What could this mean for wider life outside of sport?

Could sport be paving the way to undermining sex-based differences in the same way as self -ID?

What if the research does find that there are no differences? What are we to make of that?

www.researchgate.net/profile/Bethany_Jones5

Aspie

All they're going to conclude is: "sex-segregated schmex-segregated, those sporting records are irrelevant. Segregate by genderfeelz or you're all transphobes. The end."

Done it for them. Can I have the three years of stipend please now, mystery funding body?

Aspie
I don't get the problem at the recreational level.
It's a big deal for age groupers. And even things like parkrun, part of the incentive to get and stay active is to plot your progress and see how you fare against your peers.
Technically I did beat Haile Gebrselassie in the NYC half mara ... because he dropped out mid race. (This statistic is probably being misused at this very moment to prop up some batshit theory.)

I wonder if this breaks rules?

1, The result they want is stated in the brief - so its biased from the beginning. That will go against good research practice

1. The research is clearly to be used to inform legal policy
2. The proposed outcome would lead to significant damage to the sporting prospects of a protected group (sex, women.)
3. The knock on effects of it could be used to replace sex with gender.

So we have public money supporting research that’s biased, possibly fraudulent (because there IS a huge sex difference and many years of data to prove it) and intended to force a change in the law that would actively harm half the population.

And yes, meanwhile, people I know working on childhood cancer, blood cancers and rare developmental syndromes are fighting for research money. Utter madness.

It's not a "bit" Stalinist: this is metaphorically but even to an extent literally Lysenkoism.

Yup.

The world record for 100m is 9.58 seconds (Usain Bolt ) and female 10.49 seconds (Florence Griffith-Joyner).

Bolt is probably clean, and ran his record time in 2008, in an era of extensive in and out of competition testing. His record is only 0.11s faster than the next fastest runner, although it is worrying that Tyson Gay has been banned for doping later in his career. Bolt's records are not beyond all questioning, but no-one has made a serious case that Bolt is doping beyond the circumstantial observation that he has trained with, and beaten, a lot of people who most certainly were doping (for example, Tyson Gay). Even then, Gay certainly wasn't doping on the scale of the 1980s.

Griffith-Joyner was almost undoubtedly doping, her record is 0.25s faster than the next fastest runner and has stood since 1988. The 1980s, right? No-one takes records from that era seriously. Carmelita Jeter's 10.67 looks a lot more credible, so you're talking about a difference of 10.2%, which is entirely in keeping with the general "men's records are 10-15% faster/further/higher than women's records" theme of most track and field.

The crazy thing is that there’s SO much data. Literally decades of club, county, national, international and Olympic times. Across countries, ages... really so so much data. And all of it shows men faster, stronger etc than women.

The data is there. How could any research prove the opposite? Since the brief is clearly to do so, how would that be done?

So we have public money supporting research

Is it public money? I would be absolutely astounded were some fringe research group in a minor university to get five research council funded studentships for something as batshit crazy as this. That's just not the way that research funding works. I would suspect it's some rather more convoluted route to get funding.

So the research findings will be ‘stop crying like a girl and try harder’?

Dammit if only I’d known...

This is such bad research, I can't see how there can be any dignity in doing it. I also don't believe they'll get unbiased candidates applying. It seems ridiculous, as I work in medical research and by coincidence developed a condition related to the one I study. I have to prove this doesn't bias my work, repeatedly, for ethical approval etc. I don't understand how trans people are paid to study themselves this much, like Rachel McKinnon, it seems so far removed from the hoops I have to jump through and I have no agenda as my work is genetic so I can't actually change anything.

I think the right thing to do is to petition and argue for a category in the paralympics for people with endocrine disorders (including intersex and trans). Then these people can study how to level the playing field within that group. This also shuts down the argument that trans people are being prevented from taking part.

I do think sport would help people who have a disordered relationship with their body (my idea of help is prob different than the TRAs, however) so this is an area we should focus on suggesting solutions and not an area we should appear to be saying "keep out."

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/46521987
Seen this?

reflectant I think its ESRC money ? So yes, public.

There was a thread a while back...

What about it Beamur?

Beamur

There is a thread on it.

Proves no more than Billie Jean King beating that bloke years ago.

If only women had realised we just needed to try a bit harder.

Exactly - what is this magical power of "trying a bit harder" in the face of the documented differences that we can see when athletes dope?

Sharron Davies is still calling for the medal tables to be revised but it doesn't look like it will ever happen:

She took the silver medal in the 400 m individual medley behind East German Petra Schneider, who later admitted that the victory was drug enhanced.[5]
...
Davies has been very vocal in the calls for a reallocation of medals and titles at the various games where East German athletes won using illegal, drug-supported development techniques. Sports bodies have recognised the superior achievement of athletes like Sharron who shunned the use of performance-enhancing substances but have fallen short of rewriting the medal tables.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharron_Davies#Swimming

Right: the sport stuff was

www.findaphd.com/phds/project/the-critical-issue-of-gender-and-sport-in-a-changing-world-examining-how-the-participation-of-transgender-people-is-represented-in-the-media-and-the-public-discourse/?p97224

Here. The work is being done at the national centre for sport and excercise medicine Loughborough branch. The centres (there are three) were established with a 30mil grant from the department of health. However, that amount would be unlikely to provide running costs for long so it’s possible thatvthese studentships are funded by a research council or similar body. I think someone found the source funding on another thread but I’m not 100% sure.

here’s one (not the sport one) looking at how to replace sex with gender. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3274586-Big-research-project-to-decide-if-we-still-need-sex-as-a-legal-category

That’s ESRC funded.

The precursor to that was this: kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/86823522/If_the_State_Decertified_Gender_COOPER_Published1December2016_GREEN_AAM.pdf

The whole thing is an agenda driven piece of work, designed to produce a specific outcome that can be used in support of changing the law. It flies in the face of research ethics and it’s deeply worrying that research is being abused in this way.

I think the right thing to do is to petition and argue for a category in the paralympics for people with endocrine disorders (including intersex and trans). Then these people can study how to level the playing field within that group. This also shuts down the argument that trans people are being prevented from taking part.

that is an interesting idea. i've been exasperatedly thinking that maybe the condition of being born with a female sexed body needs to be considered a paralympic category.

www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2017/july/is-male-female-gender-outdated/

Openly stating the aim is to produce a draft bill. I’m quite surprised at that. Still looking for funding on the sport stuff. If anyone would like to politely email the institution the funding should be a matter of public record.

In 1993 at the age of 40, long after he had retired from top class athletics, David Moorcroft ran a 1 mile race in 4m 02s, which is still 10 seconds faster than the current fastest time by any women.
Why on earth Loughborough needs to waste time and money employing 5 PhD students to research the blindingly obvious is beyond my understanding and a complete insult to women.

I think the right thing to do is to petition and argue for a category in the paralympics for people with endocrine disorders (including intersex and trans).

They would still be beaten hollow by club-standard natal men with an unprincipled eye on the main chance.

Why on earth Loughborough needs to waste time and money employing 5 PhD students to research the blindingly obvious

This is the sort of stuff which brings the social "sciences" into disrepute. They aren't interested in facts and numbers and shit. Those baskets won't weave themselves, you know. You can get published in that territory with nonsense like this:

Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for women and "pro-choice", so liberal (and even some socialist) mathematicians are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo–Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice. (Sokal 1996).

Sokal, Alan D. (1996). "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Social Text. 46–47: 217–252.

Dave Moorcroft went to Loughborough - as did Paula Radcliffe and about a gazillion other elite and sub-elite athletes. It’s pretty shocking that the university appears keen to associate itself with such nonsense.

(This one might require you have university credentials):

Going in Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria, Transhysteria, and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use

It's the best of Grievance Studies Affair's spoof papers. This is the sort of shit you can get published once you enter the world of Social "Science": spoof nonsense which the august journals and their reviewers can't spot as spoof. The abstract gives you the general tone:

To date, very little research literature exists concerning receptive penetrative anal eroticism in straight men. Of particular interest are its impacts upon other factors relevant to masculinities, sex roles, and the study of sexualities. Several co-constituted features of masculinity are likely to be relevant to straight-male anal sexuality, including masturbatory play with penetrative sex toys. Specifically, this study seeks to explore, “Do men who report greater comfort with receptive penetrative anal eroticism also report less transphobia, less obedience to masculine gender norms, greater partner sensitivity, and greater awareness about rape?” This study uses semi-structured interviews with thirteen men to explore this question, analyzed with a naturalist and constructivist grounded theory approach in the context of sexualities research and introduces transhysteria as a parallel concept to Anderson’s homohysteria. This analysis recognizes potential socially remedial value for encouraging male anal eroticism with sex toys.

Surely if TW take drugs that potentially reduce performance but give them womanly features so they can compete with women, it's reverse doping

Dave Moorcroft went to Loughborough - as did Paula Radcliffe

And Sebastian Coe, who has some heft in these sorts of things.

It is bizarre that Loughborough - know as the university for top student athletes - is supporting this work taking place. They have years of data from their coaching staff that surely proves this is garbage. I can’t work out if they are allowing it to happen as they are so confident that the results will prove that there is a difference, or if they are going to just ignore all previous knowledge because it isn’t ideologically correct. Very like Lysenko as mentioned by a pp. That resulted in mass starvation, this will just kill women’s sport.