Female athletes and testosterone

[Queuingroundtheblock]

Just musing with a friend and we wondered - is the 10 nanomole testosterone limit for Olympic trans women athletes only for tw? Could women take testosterone to boost performance? I mean, obviously it's a really bad idea but just wondered if it's now allowed?

[quote Ekofisk]@Helleofabore

I believe some high profile recent transitioners are currently still competing in their own sex class.[/quote]
This should be publicised in whatever sport they are in. It’s true inclusion, gender diverse people being welcomed into their own sport by their peers. Why haven’t we heard about this in the news?

Hmmm. I suspect just now it’s for convenience, rather than “true inclusion”.

That’s a shame. It would encourage sports to take a fair, common sense approach rather than the extremist, gender identity approach.

And also in the news:

Namibia's Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi have been withdrawn from the 400m race at the Olympics by World Athletics, as testosterone levels are too high.

It’s unclear if they are 46XY or are female with PCOS or similar.

www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/athletics-namibia-contenders-withdrawn-olympic-400m-race-2021-07-02/

A quick Google Image search on those athletes was interesting.

Yup. Still able to compete in the 100m / 200m.

@Cyclingmum50

I suggest you read the links on this thread and please ask any women here for more links.

My understanding (based on a substantial amount of research) is as follows.

1. Biological males that have gone through male puberty has a significant advantage over biological women which never goes away, regardless of whether they lower the current testosterone level or not.

2. Testosterone (current) levels provide an additional advantage. Biological females who increase their testosterone levels 4x whilst still below the max threshold which transwoman often fail, increase their performance of more than 8%.

3. testosterone has significantly negative effects on biological females (not naturally occurring at high levels).

So where does that leave us? Well

a) if mediocre male borns identifies as women, just having gone through male puberty is enough to threaten female sports regardless of current testosterone levels.

b) if elite athlete women were allowed to increase their testosterone levels 4x (still below transwomen) they would be able to beat mediocre male borns but at a serious health risk.

c) even if elite female athletes were allowed to take testosterone, they would not be able to beat elite male borns.

Does this make sense? Please let me know if you need any links and women here will provide them.

@BatmansBat

I have no doubt that cyclingmum50 is fully aware of all the evidence.

Just trying to be helpful and really lay out a summarised version of the relevant evidence. #BeKind

And encourage cycling mum and any lurkers to ask questions and get links.

Info is always useful for lurkers 👍

So it is seeing the snide, unfounded and hugely hyperbolic and emotional rhetoric used by posters who cannot provide any counter studies or any logical discussion.

It is very illuminating.

I am just hoping that cyclingmum has a look at my summary and ask any questions.

I am trying to understand this better as well and I do think that there seems to be som many interesting studies out there, both about the advantages of current testosterone levels and of male puberty.

It does seem that women’s sport is under threat by male borns who were mediocre in the male category but regardless of testosterone levels can beat females due to male puberty.

If it wasn’t so dangerous for women, increasing their testosterone levels to exactly the same as those people would probably hold off the threat, but at what cost .

Luckily it seems that no male born who is at the top of their game would identify as a woman and compete in the female sex class. Not even the theoretical possibility of doping would help then .

It does seem that women’s sport is under threat by male borns who were mediocre in the male category but regardless of testosterone levels can beat females due to male puberty.

Yes it is.

If it wasn’t so dangerous for women, increasing their testosterone levels to exactly the same as those people would probably hold off the threat, but at what cost.

That’s called doping.

that is called doping

That is what is so weird Ekofish, don’t you think??

Even if women are doping themselves which had those awful effects on the Eastern European women in the quotes articles…. they still have lower current testosterone levels than transwomen . And that is disregarding male puberty .

I am still shocked at realising this!

Ekofisk

"Yup. Still able to compete in the 100m / 200m."

Sadly, in other women's sports as well.
As a bloke, I think this is abolutely obscene.

Not read the whole thread yet.

The lower limit of 10 is just within the normal range for men.

Men with low testosterone are not women. That idea is very insulting to both men and women, and especially men with naturally low testosterone, or who have low testosterone for another reason.

It's shit all round.

Google

Normal ranges

Males 50 years 5-31 nmol/L
Females < 1.8 nmol/L

The weightlifter is in their 40s I think?

Essentially men with testosterone levels in the normal range would not need to do anything to meet the Olympic rules to compete against the women.

[quote Ekofisk]And also in the news:

Namibia's Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi have been withdrawn from the 400m race at the Olympics by World Athletics, as testosterone levels are too high.

It’s unclear if they are 46XY or are female with PCOS or similar.

www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/athletics-namibia-contenders-withdrawn-olympic-400m-race-2021-07-02/[/quote]
Women.
Born girls. Now young women.
Thought to have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone.

Not dissimilar to Phelps' "genetic advantages" (lactic acid, etc), for example.

The misogynoir implicit in some of the comments on here, such as images of the women being "interesting" is not okay.

Oh give over! They have been subject to the same rules as Caster Semenya so it’s fair to extrapolate they have similar DSDs to Semanya as those rules only apply to athletes with that medical condition.

Not dissimilar to Phelps' "genetic advantages" (lactic acid, etc), for example.

Nope, it’s nothing like Phelps.

If a female swimmer had the same physical dimensions as Phelps, then Phelps would still be much faster due to all the advantages of being male (greater VO2 max, larger lung capacity, larger heart, lower body fat, higher muscle mass, more fast twitch muscle, broader shoulder girdle etc).

Even with his morphological advantages, Phelps had some pretty narrow victories, winning the 100m fly by between 0.01 and 0.23 seconds at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Some wins were down to just being better at starts, turns and finishes than his competitors (Cavic actually touched first in the 2008 final, but didn’t hit the timing pad hard enough).

If you want to talk about misogyny then look no further than the biological males that are knowingly using their physical advantages to take women’s (biological females) competition places, scholarships, medals, records etc.

Born girls. Now young women

But if subject to the test for differences in sex development, they are likely to be male. And if they have ‘failed’ the testosterone test, they have had the advantages conveyed by that elevated hormone.

Male.

Thought to have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone.

That are much higher than the female levels of hormones, even those females with health conditions where they have elevated testosterone don’t have as high as the levels these athletes are ‘failing’ at.

Oh, yeah. The ‘Phelps’ move.

It is not ‘just like’ Phelp’s advantage. At all. Repeating trope that has been said by misinformed people on the internet does not mean you are presenting a great ‘gotcha’. It shows you have a very superficial understanding of the situation.

If you want to talk about misogyny then look no further than the biological males that are knowingly using their physical advantages to take women’s (biological females) competition places, scholarships, medals, records etc.

I think with modern techniques, it is unlikely that people have unknown DSDs these days. So, these athletes know exactly what their advantages are.

It is just another way to use a loop hole to win.

People who bring up “misogynoir”, athletics and Phelps clearly have no understanding of biology, sex, sport, swimming, or likely anything.

Bhooks
I actually agree it's not helpful or kind to comment on the appearance of female athletes. Some women do have a very masculine appearance.

If Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi are women who have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone then they certainly should be allowed to compete in the female category.

However, I don't think this supports the point you're trying to make. Surely if they are 'born female' then that fact supports the GC argument that the testosterone rules are ridiculous and unworkable.

The only criteria for inclusion in the female category should be that you are of the female sex. If that were the guiding principle then a woman with higher testosterone would, indeed, simply enjoy a natural advantage, similar to Michael Phelps' and his ginormous feet.

What is interesting (or should I say 'surprising'?) is that the IOC changed their policy to allow transwomen to compete in female categories based on the appalling data presented by Harper in the 2015 paper. This was a methodologically poor study of only 8 transwomen runners, with no proper controls, no accounting for many of the confounders and also removing the results of one runner whose performance improved after transition. The IOC and other governing bodies have now seen several much better quality papers, including one by Harper, which show that the performance advantages conferred by going through male puberty cannot be removed by lowering testosterone afterwards, even to near zero levels. There is evidence that with appropriate training, transwomen athletes could see only a minimal drop in performance despite lowered testosterone levels. At the same time, studies suggest that transmen on testosterone are highly unlikely to achieve such an increase in performance that they could be competitive in men's categories. The result is that a relatively mediocre male athlete could be competitive at the highest level in female sports, despite complying fully with the IOC rules, while an elite level male athlete could be expected to completely wipe out the women's category. If lowering testosterone genuinely brought performance down to the level of a comparable female, a mediocre male would remain mediocre in the female category, but that isn't what we see in reality and the evidence shows why.

Joanna Harper doesn't like it, going by the interviews I've seen and read, but has accepted that doing the science properly shows that the male advantage cannot be removed by reducing testosterone. I think it's interesting that Harper seems to get nowhere near the vitriol directed at other researchers whose work shows the same thing such as Emma Hilton.

So why haven't the IOC and other governing bodies taken on board the new evidence, some supplied by a transwoman researcher, showing that female sports need to be female only? The new evidence is far superior to what they acted on before. World Rugby have looked at the evidence in a fully transparent way and based their policy on that evidence. The longer the other sports bodies ignore the evidence, the more misogynist they look.