Trans ppl in women's sport - what are your opinions?

[Hazza000]

Trans cyclist Rachel McKinnon defends her right to race in women's competitions news.sky.com/story/trans-cyclist-rachel-mckinnon-defends-her-right-to-race-in-womens-competitions-11838131

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3720069-Should-transgender-women-be-allowed-to-play-womens-sports

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3718860-Manchester-World-Masters-Track-Cycling-Results

Just saw that 😳 thanks

I am very uncomfortabel with his description of a female cyclist's 'teeny tiny skinny legs'. Seems incredibly rude.

Beyond that - hooray, get it out there, the more Rache does TV the better.

I couldn't agree more. Rachel, you go gurl. Just keep talking.

Yeah I think it's great that penis people should be free to compete in anything they want. Really, really fair.

These female athletes should just be kinder, gentler and especially more compassionate to their larger sized trans opponents - after all no one wants to hurt any feelings (especially when it's a penis person).
Women know your place.

(SARCASM BY THE WAY)

Another women's record stolen by a male, eh?

If this continues, women will eventually hold no records in their own sports.

Whatever sex you were born should be the team you compete in. Your body structure doesn't change when you transition, it just doesn't. It's unfair advantage

Trans people in women's sports? Fine, so long as they're transmen or nonbinaries who don't dope with T.

Blue haired hundred-yard dash.

Female nonbinaries, I meant there, obviously.

"Another women's record stolen by a male, eh?"

Don't worry just yet, although RM is claiming it as a World record, it is simply a "Masters best time".
A real woman called Simona Kuprackaite of Lithuania is 36 years old and recorded a much faster time than that at the REAL World championships earlier this year.

I thought Rache looked irritated by Sky News' questions.

Could be because strangely the ratio on the tweet isn't going in Rache's favour. Happy Friday, all!

twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1185123776935145473

Ratio City, Arizona.

Great...

Super.

www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/15/testosterone-boosts-womens-athletic-performance-study-shows

Also happy to see Zuby on that thread, defending his British women's deadlift record.

Haha, added some insulting comments of my own. Everyone thinks he's a pathetic joke

www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/201[9/09/26/782557.full.pdf

An interesting new piece of research. Can anyone with research experience have a look and say how viable it is?

www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/09/26/782557.full.pdf

See if this link works

Conclusion: Cross-sex hormone treatment markedly affects muscle strength, size and composition in transgender individuals. Despite the robust increases in muscle mass and strength in TM, the TW were still stronger and had more muscle mass following 12 months of treatment. These findings add new knowledge that could be relevant when evaluating transwomen’s eligibility to compete in the women’s category of athletic competitions.*

So transmen (ie women), had an increase in strength and muscle mass after 12 months on testosterone, which is hardly news - it’s the reason steroid use is so prevalent in female powerlifting and body building competitions.

What’s more pertinent is that transwomen (men), showed around a 5% decrease in muscle mass, but not density. Since men are generally around 50% stronger than women, even with the volume decrease due to the influence of female hormones, they are still stronger than transmen, who are taking testosterone, and obviously still much stronger than biological women.

”The TM increased strength over the assessment period, while the TW generally maintained or slightly increased in strength. Baseline muscle volume correlated highly with strength (R>0.75), yet the relative change in muscle volume and strength correlated only moderately (R=0.65 in TW and R=0.32 in TM). The absolute levels of muscle volume and knee extension strength after the intervention still favored the TW.”*

“The TM increased strength over the assessment period, while the TW generally maintained or even slightly increased in strength. Despite the robust changes in lower-limb muscle mass and strength in TM, the TW still had an absolute advantage following 12 months of gender-affirming hormone treatment.”

So basically, even women taking testosterone are still not as strong as men taking oestrogen.

It’s there in the title:

“Muscle strength, size and composition following 12 months of gender-affirming treatment in transgender individuals: retained advantage for the transwomen”

I know it’s in the title - I just wanted someone who knows something about this type of research to assess how well done the piece of research is I guess.

Anyway, thanks for having a look.

I wasn’t having a go at you, I’m sorry if it came out like that. II was just channeling how cross I am that we’re having to keep discussing something which we already know, and have known for a millenia, that men are stronger and faster than women. It’s an interesting study and it’s good that you found it - this won’t be the last time we have this discussion.

It seems a well-designed study, although the sample size is small and the participants are not athletes and selected because they showed up.

I’d expect that, for example, strength training, would increase the muscle mass of both TM and TW, but the ratio difference would remain the same. But testing athletes to see if that holds true would be the next step.

Although since men are winnining in women’s sports, we already know the answer to that question.

FedaFrogspawn I’ve got lots to say about this article for you, just don’t know if I’ll get time to finish this morning.

First thing, that anyone can do when assessing the quality of an article , is:

1. I look at the journal.
   In this case, it is biorxiv (pronounced bioarchive). This is not a peer reviewed journal. It must be viewed with caution but certainly not suspicion., as in one should be extra careful to look at the data for themselves.
   BiorXiv is a perfectly reputable, normal way for scientists to get their information out there quickly and to get comments before submitting to a journal.

2. I look at the authors. These are scientists from well-reknowned scientific institutions and from departments of biology, whom I would expect to have the right expertise to conduct the research they are describing.

3. I look at the year. This is extremely recent, so taking into account the latest data.

4. I look at the back of the paper, just before the references, to see any declared sources of funding or conflict of interest. In this case, I see no conflict of interest. The funders make sense to this group of researchers in general, I don’t see there is any agenda for this particular article.

Back with more on the article itself in a bit.

Take into account that the study population is small, but also to be expected. They are comparing trans women (TW) and trans men (TM)

It is perfectly normal and legitimate to only have small numbers in this case, due to getting enough people with the right inclusion criteria into the study and also bearing in mind the expense, level of involvement and invasive ness of the study, and that this is a new thing to investigate really. but one just has to bear this small size in mind when interpreting the results.

I can’t comment on whether they are using the gold standard measurements for physiological changes and strength , when investigating athletic ability. They are certainly thorough though (mri and ct as well as other measures)

The one thing that jumps out so far is the control cohorts from another study. They call these “cis” women (CW) and “cis men (CM).

Nothing wrong with using controls from another study, but you have to tread very very carefully.

I think the controls were chosen under different criteria (they were “recreationally active). So just based on their weights, I can guess they might have more muscle mass than their trans counterparts. Or another way of putting it is that even before the start of the study, including any hormone treatment at all, the trans men and women are smaller than the “average” men and women.

Please can someone copy over the n, height and weights for the TW, TM, CW and CM? So people can see what I mean?
Can’t do it right now from my phone...

spectator.us/face-women-suck-sports/

*Trigger warning: satire.

If men as a class were not stronger, faster, and bigger than women as a class, women would not have been forbidden education, the right to own property, or the right toseld-sufficiency, even the right to their own children for —

Most all of human history but the last 100 years and only in some parts of the globe.

Women didn’t submit because we were fools or because we liked it. We submitted because just about every man can kill a woman with his bare hands, and the reverse is not true at all.

To deny the truth of that on the playing field is to deny the very foundation of patriarchy: might makes right.