echappist

Why would a transgendered man (viz. woman who transitioned into a man) want to compete as a woman?

Given that the bolded part is not a conditional but a prerequisite for a transgendered female athlete to compete, the hypothetical situation you posited in your previous post is not only moot but also ignorant.

also, great for whom? The governing body, the transgendered female athletes? Someone else?

spdntrxi

I just mean a man competing as a women.. I don't have the terminology down.

2nd part : governing body.

Doge

Taking any substance allowed only to an individual is a bad idea and fundamentally changes the sport by inserting judgement into the process, where winners were previously based on factual data. Or - how much T should we allow Chris to take?

TUE/PED levels are set by medical doctors and researchers based on general population or their view of what something should be. It may be a carbon fiber foot, a dose of insulin or the T. It introduces human judgement to sports that were previously based on absolutes such as who crosses the line first, who lifts the most weight etc.

Doge

To win?
But a woman on the right combo of drugs and hormones may surpass the abilities of a man - that without those drugs they would not have.

In all cases there is no genetic change that takes place in any gender change, only chemical and surgical ones.

The fair way to divide for gender is those with Y chromosomes compete in this group, those without compete in either - without surgery or banned PEDs.

Any woman (XX) that wants to compete against men (XY) without banned substances or sports enhancing surgery should be welcome. And I believe they are now.

spdntrxi

even the Olympics is having issues with T testing...

Testosterone Testing May Unfairly Target Female Olympians | Breaking Muscle

Andy STi

There is a local racer in OR who used to be a national level u23 male racer who quit and underwent gender reassignment surgery and is now racing as a woman. She has done well and even won a couple PNW stage races along with multiple one day races in OR and WA. This has angered a few other women in the area. Interesting.

Doge

Ya Think...

echappist

Completely off topic and red herring (to be expected coming from you). My initial retort did not concern transgendered men taking T but the issue of transgendered women taking T, which is completely not allowed.

Trangendered women have to have T below a threshold in order to compete as women. iI she had undergone physical transition (as in castration), this naturally comes as a result of that. If not, enough medicines must be taken to reduce T level in the body. In other words, the poster to whom i responded is addressing a situation that could not possible be condoned by the current rules.

Do please expressly point out where in my post i addressed the issue of trans men taking T

canuckbelle

Just an FYI, just use 'trans' (or less preferred, 'transgender'), but trans people really disprefer 'transgendered' (that's like saying 'lesbianed').

Trans men are permitted currently to compete with women provided that they aren't on HRT (testosterone). The day they take testosterone, they have to compete with men.

The rules for trans women are ever shifting (and likely to shift again soon, given a big court case in Canada). Right now, surgery is *not* required for trans women to compete as women. What's required is at least reducing their endogenous testoterone levels below 10nmol/L (which is at the upper end, even just above, the 'normal' female range). Currently, trans women are not permitted to take testosterone. As already noted, estrogen isn't a WADA substance, so no TUE is required. It's also not performance enhancing.

The science on trans women is clear: there is no competitive advantage. That's why the IOC, IAAF, and other sports groups are all permitting trans women to compete as women.

Here's an interesting study on runner race times pre vs post transition: https://www.dropbox.com/s/23wlaub9f1...letes.pdf?dl=0

Here's the lawsuit in Canada:
Sport?s gender policies: an affront to human rights | Sports Integrity Initiative

Just the other day it got cleared by the human rights court to proceed to a full hearing (which the court only does if it thinks the case has a good chance of winning--and a better chance of winning than losing).

tommyrod74

Not being disingenuous here, I honestly don't know the answer... but if current science shows that prior use of anabolics has a lifelong effect on performance (long after cessation of drug use), then wouldn't a trans woman (with normal male levels of testosterone during and after puberty) have a lifelong advantage in muscle mass, etc. over someone who never had that (performance) advantage?

EDIT: just skimmed the article on race times pre- and post-transition. Seems to support the point of no competitive advantage, but N=8 (very low power) and the runners were sub-elite level - basically age-groupers. Seems hard to generalize this particular study to apply to other sports that aren't endurance based, but where height, hand size, and other gender-related differences could be more advantageous.

canuckbelle

There are two important things. First and foremost (and most directly to your totally appropriate question): all the science shows that they lose those features you name. Muscles atrophy, recovery times plummet, bone density decreases, hematocrit goes down (I think), all into normal female ranges.

I suspect that the research you're pointing to is about people who take more T than their bodies naturally produce...and that there are holdover effects of that. But the body chemistry involved there vs trans women is likely totally disanalogous. Trans women, especially those who go through surgery (and not all do!), go from producing both sex hormones...to basically producing neither. So they have to switch from endogenous to exogenous, and we know that exogenous hormones don't have the same efficacy of endogenous hormones.

Second, and slightly less important, but still very important: people often forget the natural huge variation within each sex/gender. The *average* differences between sexes is way smaller than the range of differences within a sex. People often assume that all trans women are 6'2" stocky people...when there's huge variation. Some are <5'0", some are 6'3". Women (cis women) show just as wide a variation in traits.

canuckbelle

A couple comments. First, it's the first study of its kind that's *longitudinal.* That's a very big deal. N=8 isn't huge, but it's a tiny population. Trans women athletes aren't very common. So getting a group *in the same sport* and being able to follow them and their performances longitudinally is VERY (extremely!) difficult. So this is a powerful study.

Second, again, 'height, hand size, and other gender-related differences' are found in wider variation within a birth-assigned sex than the averages between the sexes. Does Stephen Curry have an unfair advantage over the average male? His height, hand size, and other gender-related differences are much farther above the average for men than a trans women is likely to have over cis women.

On this latter point, here is a great paper: https://www.dropbox.com/s/in3vxbe31r...ounds.pdf?dl=0

Andy STi

@canuckbelle thanks for the well thought out and informative posts, it's nice to have.

canuckbelle

You're most welcome! It's an area of expertise, and I'm very happy to share it. I think a lot of the opposition to trans women's sports participation is based on simply not knowing the science of it all. I've been following Worley's case closely (I've also happened to have spoken to her a few times). Here's a good recent blog post: https://heatherjross.wordpress.com/2...ng-institions/

(My small, but important objection here is that she wasn't "born a man." I'm pretty sure she was born a baby.)

globecanvas

Totally unrelated to your point, but say LeBron James there instead of Steph Curry, who is small for an NBA player and not even an outlier among the general population.


Well, there's the standard deviation, and then there's the mean. The mean birth-assigned man is 6 inches taller than the mean birth-assigned woman, regardless of gender identity. Gender in sport is obviously a complex and evolving issue, but I think you have to accept that that mean difference exists, and that it can confer a competitive advantage in many sports.


[edit] I suppose the response is that the advantage may exist, but is not unfair. 6'3 cis women exist; the fact that many more 6'3 cis men exist does not necessarily mean that an individual 6'3 trans woman has an unfair advantage over an individual 6'3 cis woman.

Ygduf

Steroids can benefit athletes for a decade after use - BBC News

reconcile that for me. hormone levels <today> do not tell the entire story with muscle response to training?

canuckbelle

Shows how closely I follow basketball. I picked Curry because I was watching Olympics coverage where he was LOL-taller than the Argentinian(s) guarding him.

I certainly do recognize that the mean difference exists. OK: this is important. Saying 'but I think you have to accept that the mean difference exists' communicates that you think that I don't, which is a problem. The question is not whether it exists, but how much it *matters*, and how much it matters morally.

These are two entirely different questions. We allow some 'natural' physical differences that matter in terms of performance to NOT matter morally in terms of whether an athlete is permitted to compete. As you helpfully suggest, LeBron has HUGE physical advantages over the average man. But we say that that real physical difference doesn't make a moral difference.

Now, let's assume (and this has NOT been shown scientifically, by the way) that trans women are, on average, larger than cis women. That this may even mean a performance advantage doesn't yet answer whether it makes a moral difference. It's the latter that's largely up for debate. If we allow some 'natural' advantages to not make a moral difference, why does birth-assigned sex/gender matter? Why not treat it like just another part of human variation?

This is an extremely important point, one that people opposed to trans women's participation in competitive sport move past far too quickly. Often, they immediately (and I mean this) move to say "but what about a man putting on a dress and competing with women?" Slow down, there! We're not talking about that. We're talking about trans women--real trans women--and whether they should be permitted to participate in competitive sports as women. This fantasy has nearly never happened (I think that there's *maybe* one or two cases in the history of sport in the past 200yrs). And it's not a legitimate worry. No one undergoes a real gender transition just to win a few cycling races. It has never happened.

So, assuming that trans women 'enjoy' a competitive advantage in some sports (remember: a 6'0" trans woman isn't likely to be a competitive marathoner!). We still haven't answered why that matters, morally, to her participation in competitive sport. Elite athletes ALL have genetic advantages that give them competitive advantages. So LeBron can compete with his genetic advantages, but why couldn't a trans woman? That is not an easy question to answer. And I think that's why sports organizations including the IOC, IAAF, UCI etc have made the policy choices they have: even IF there is a competitive advantage (which is debatable! we have some data on that now!), the moral difference can't be established.

canuckbelle

This begs many physiological questions (in the fallacy sense). Trans women have many physiological disanalogies with the men in these studies. The two cases are not the same, even remotely.

globecanvas

I added to my post after you quoted it, but before you posted your reply. I think we're on the same page with respect to gender-related physical size differences.

canuckbelle

*thumbs up* Yep, looks like we do.

echappist

reconcile what? You are taking my post out of context without the original posts to which i replied. One poster suggested that a lot more people would have issues with trans woman being allowed (as in allowed by the wada guidelines) to take T as part of her transition whereas a trans man apparently taking T as a part of the transition would be deemed in compliance with the rules

Do spot where this poster's suggestion is not factually consistent. Hint: it has to do with a hormone that a transwoman takes, which would make the would suggestion moot.

Just in case what you meant is that a transwoman who took T before the transition but has since stopped, that's a tangent and not germane to the issue here. The issue here is someone being allowed to take T as part of the transition process, and the optics that creates.

globecanvas

I interpret ygduf's question as: if taking steroids gives an advantage long after the athlete stops doping, why is it not the case that a trans woman benefits from pre-transition hormone levels long after transition?

canuckbelle's response was that the question is comparing apples and oranges. Do any other the earlier linked studies address second half of the question, though, specifically with respect to response to training?

canuckbelle

Do I have any such links to studies? I linked the only one that I know exists in print (and I know the literature well). Worley has told me that there will be more coming out soon based on all the research done for her case, but they're not in print yet. What we do have are studies on things like muscle loss, bone density loss, etc that trans women suffer from transition. But there's only the one *so far* on trans women's pre vs post transition performances.

topflightpro

The article I posted a page or two back about steroids offering benefits years after one stops taking them does say that trans women do benefit from years of pre-transition testosterone levels even after they have reduced their testosterone levels. CB has posted arguments that that is not true.

I think at this point, there is not sufficient evidence one way or the other to come to a definitive conclusion. Moreover, the human body is not standardized in any way. There's plenty of scientific evidence that individuals respond differently to medical treatments - there are literally thousands of studies on the effectiveness of drugs in a variety of situations and individuals. I think it is probably fair to extrapolate those findings to hormones as well and agree that some trans women may still benefit from the pre-transition testosterone and some may not.

All that said, I would hate for the world of sport to devolve into some version of Harrison Bergeron.

Doge

Skeletons size and proportion does not change (much) when the hormones do. A different skeleton may fit certain sports better than others. I would expect a hormone leveled Jenner would have a large advantage in the water, or as a women's soccer goal keeper.

I've already posted for the record I don't think any exemptions (TUE's) for anything should be allowed. I don't trust a committee can get what is equal and fair correct.