Woman’s Hour now on Trans athletes

[GoodbyePorpoiseSpit]

Discussion now - focused on the benefits /strength of male puberty despite testosterone levels later

Thanks nauticant, wonder why the other two were listed, maybe they are on the podcast or something.

@AmericanSlang

Ted agreed it's about fairness, maybe they should have Sharron Davies on. If anyone knows about fairness in sport, it's her - she lost out to countries who were unfairly doping women athletes and can give a very valuable insight on this topic

Absolutely agree, Sharron Davis would have been an amazing guest, taking silver place in the 1980s Olympics 400 IM, second to to a doping cheat. I remember watching it as a child. The agony of knowing you lost to a cheat and will never get the chance to stand on the winner's podium and hear your national anthem and say you are an Olympic champion. Happened more recently to Jessica Ennis-HIll in the Worlds in 2011, I think, but she at least had the gold medal awarded retrospectively at a later World Athletics Championships in front of the crowd.

To be fair to harper, she has never been a proponent of #nodebate. I know that's not much but in the climate there are not many advocating for tw in w sport who have gone for research and public discussion as the way forward. Maybe it's been forced on her i don't know. If everyone on that side had been of that stance we would not be in this mess. She presented the poor research to the ioc, but it was the ioc's responsibility to decide what voices to seek out, what research to listen to, and whether to change policy based on current research, commission more, or commit to single sex sport for women. It's at their door.

That aside. I'm not kean on barnett's adversarial style usually, but the interview really showed the position's flaws. Many ears will have pricked up and will be thinking wtf?

Was it Joanna Harper whose research was based on eight non-elite trans athletes self-declaring?

Gosh. Why can't they see that an athlete who was pretty rubbish when they were male, can give themselves a leg up by transitioning, and yet still be pretty rubbish. They're just further up the ladder than they were before. They don't have to win to be problematic.

@AmericanSlang

Ted agreed it's about fairness, maybe they should have Sharron Davies on. If anyone knows about fairness in sport, it's her - she lost out to countries who were unfairly doping women athletes and can give a very valuable insight on this topic

And Lynsey Sharpe who was robbed of a medal in the Rio 2016 Women’s 800 metres.

Was it Joanna Harper whose research was based on eight non-elite trans athletes self-declaring?

Yes. But they've now done a much wider review, which shows the continuing male advantage.

twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1368175117356916743

@Shedbuilder

Here's Joanna Harper arguing for trans women's inclusion in rugby:

www.outsports.com/2020/8/28/21405145/joanna-harper-world-rugby-transgender-athlete-ban-science-research-transphobia

I found it very illuminating: JH's bias shows quite clearly in the picture.

Thanks for that link Shedbuilder.

What's clear after reading the article is that at the heart of Joanna Harper's work is the fervent desire to be accepted as a woman. And I can't blame anyone for having such a human need.

The onus was and is on the sports bodies to evaluate the science and the data before opening up a female sport to male participants. And on that JH fails. Badly.

For starters, JH doesn't understand risk analysis. Take Ross Tucker's statement that a Rugby tackle from a male transgender player against a female player presents a 20 to 30% increase to the latter compared with being tackled by another female player.

JH claims once you take into account how few male transgender Rugby players there are, the increased risk of such a tackle is just 1%. But that's JH getting confused about two risks - the risk of a male-on-female tackle occurring and the risk of the tackle to the female player.

Because Rugby is so physical, and past injuries have had serious consequences including paralysis and death, risk analysis must consider the risk of the moves themselves, not just how often they might happen.

Then JH shows a lack of understanding of valid comparisons when claiming that it isn't valid that emerging research considers male transgender athletes who have not yet started a medical transition to be comparable to all other male athletes, because male transgender individuals often starve themselves to achieve a female model look. I'm not sure where the data is on that as JH presents none, but someone who is not eating is unlikely to be training as an athlete and so not a valid comparator for the purpose of deciding access to sports categories. Especially since we could simply compare a male transgender individual who is not eating with all other male individuals who are not eating and would find neither of them would be the same as a female individual who is not eating.

And of course the bulk of Joanna Harper's male transgender study subjects are of an age where their female peers - in addition to menstruation and fluctuating performance levels due to their natural hormonal cycles - would have experienced various additional strains on their performance due to being female, such as childbirth, nursing or the menopause, whether peri or full-blown. Harper's male subjects do not experience any of that because they are male. So it is fair to compare them to other males when establishing the baseline parameters of their physiology and their performance advantage.

Ted absolutely! I attended the WPUK meeting on sports (A Woman's Place is on the podium) in 2019, and there were some brilliant women speakers including Sharron and Emma Hilton, who could have contributed a great deal more to this debate than Adam Wagner (a lawyer) or some random philosopher bloke

@titchy

Is JH still a PhD student, or a post-doc now?

The article Shedbuilder links to is dated 29 December 2020 and says JH is still working on the PhD (only started in 2019). In the article JH also says the 2015 paper which the IOC based their decision on, was just "a hobby" at the time.

Nothing against hobbyists though, and like I say, the onus to ensure a fair and evidence-based decision was on the IOC and not an understandably biased hobby researcher.

Harper sounds a bit unfocused tbh. Normal for Portland Oregon I guess. EB laughed in her face when she claimed Hubbard wouldn't win so it doesn't matter! She has a PhD? To quote Father Ted : did it come in a packet of cornflakes?

Dr Emma Hilton was waiting to be called by WH this morning apparently as she had been asked to contribute. I guess they ran out of time. I didn’t see her name on the list of invited guests on the sounds app though.

As others have said JH certainly will have contributed to many an epiphany on this topic, particularly with Emma Barnett’s interview style.

@MaudesMum

Emma Barnett made it very clear at the end that they'd approached a wide range of people, including current female athletes, female weightlifters, representatives from IOC and British sport bodies, and none had been willing to take part.

They are not terrified. They are BANNED from saying anything publicly that goes against the policies of their governing bodies.

They will be deselected ( if athletes ). That’s why only retired athletes can speak out.

It’s censorship.

They are BANNED from saying anything publicly that goes against the policies of their governing bodies.

But they're all involved in the decision making internally. Right? Right?

Dr Emma Hilton was waiting to be called by WH this morning apparently as she had been asked to contribute. I guess they ran out of time. I didn’t see her name on the list of invited guests on the sounds app though.

There is something odd here when you compare it to:

Emma Barnett made it very clear at the end that they'd approached a wide range of people, including current female athletes, female weightlifters, representatives from IOC and British sport bodies, and none had been willing to take part.

The article Shedbuilder links to is dated 29 December 2020 and says JH is still working on the PhD (only started in 2019). In the article JH also says the 2015 paper which the IOC based their decision on, was just "a hobby" at the time.

If they're still a student then why is this person's apparently flawed research being given such prominence. While it's not that common, PhD students do publish and have often expertise in an area, but that expertise has to have been externally validated and peer reviewed. Has JH's?

Secondly - who'd like to be a fly on the wall at their viva? Wonder if they'll consider it literal violence?

I fully expect one of them to have a Benjamin Cohen radio tantrum about no women being included in a discussion about women's sport- not
Nobody cares if women are excluded

Emma Hilton has said on Twitter that she had cleared time for this and was waiting by her phone to be called. How can Woman's Hour claim nobody else would speak to them when they have basically stood up an expert?

Good interview. Illuminating.

I found that interview quite funny. It started well, JH and EB discussing coherently the research that had been done.

Then JH went on to say that TWs should be included in women's olympics categories despite no evidence showing their advantages as males had been removed. The decision about how to include them had to be made despite insufficient information being available. It was obvious to me at that point that they should therefore not be included in women's categories, and that further research needs to be done.

JH became much less coherent and far less fluent at that point. Almost as if they were aware that they didn't have a leg to stand on.

I am sure that I was not the only person yelling 'how many of the 25 people discussing women's sports at the OIC committee meeting were female', was I ?

Well, I went and had a look. There was 20 listed on the committee document

Males 16 (including one with AIS and a transwoman)
Females 4

yep.... fairness and equality was at the heart of that decision.

stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Medical_commission/2015-11_ioc_consensus_meeting_on_sex_reassignment_and_hyperandrogenism-en.pdf

That Harper kept repeating so many old tropes was funny.

• elite athletes have physical advantages anyway
• on testosterone those males are more like females than males so should be in female sports
• not going to win anyway, so why is this a problem
• if it was fair, there should be 50 transwomen among the 5000 female Olympic hopefuls, that there are so few shows this is not an issue and that those are going are 'fair'
• the science doesn't matter, it is about inclusion
• the females not selected were obviously not good enough

It is really quite wonderful to hear it all come out and for an interviewer to hold their line.

This was excellent.

I thought Harper was an excellent choice of interviewee (encapsulating both ends of the argument in one personage!), brave to do it and gave a very good interview. Emma was on excellent form and never an easy interviewer to face, when in investigative mode. Harper did a good job of staying calm and offering carefully considered words. Few people could do that so well.

The argument was given space to show itself so clearly for what it is.

Part 1, the science: There are significant biological differences between males and females, even after hormone reduction, especially in terms of strength. TW, post-hormone-reduction, are closer in terms of ability to women than to men, though distinct from them.

Part 2, the humanity(ies): TW athletes want to compete. They believe they should be allowed to compete in the closest available category to their socio-biological status, which is women's sport.

The idea that women athletes might have different wants, or that their wants might count for anything, is simply not considered.

I think sport needs its own 'super-straight' moment. For women athletes to show up the stupidity of the whole thing by declaring themselves 'super-femme', powered by female talent alone.

Just listening this on catch up. Go EB! She really had JH bang to rights. "Not markedly unfair" said JH regarding the transwomen's advantage. So it's okay then to be what, a bit unfair?

Just listened, I heard Joanna Harper is still slickly sliding away from the fact that even with two years of hormone treatment transwomen testosterone levels are at least twice the permitted amount that women’s naturally occurring testosterone levels are allowed to be. So Joanna, would it be “fair” and reasonable to propose that all female athletes in sports where transwomen are accepted are given the option to up their testosterone levels? Of course it wouldn’t, and you know it. And it wouldn’t work anyway because the other differences in male/ female physiology , the ones you ignore because they are harder to measure , would still be there, and always will be , because you can’t reduce bone length, lung and heart size, pelvic formation, muscle size, muscle twitch response etc etc

I would also like Johanna to answer whether or not the difference in blood volume level in men (+ 6 to 8 % ) and the larger size of blood vessels in men- presumably leading to a more efficient system of oxygenation - is also worth investigating rather than just looking at the haemoglobin levels which they have done.

Well done Emma, you gave them the rope and they used it and sounded like a person skating on ice so thin you could see the sharks circling underneath.