The fastest girl in Conneticut. Unless you count males.

[Jimmy Higgins]

Female Olympic gold medalist records are routinely beaten by high school boys. Like, hundreds of times over.

Exactly! The women are better than billions of men. Not all of them, just most of them.

Can't tell if serious or sarcastic...

Seriously sarcastic. As in agreeing with what you said within a context that provided support for my statement. It's complicated for some to get.

Women sprinting in the Olympics can outrun most men on this planet. They are not "inferior".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here's a rebuttal:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/

Quite frankly, all the arguments made in there in defense of allowing transwomen to compete with ciswomen seem to apply to all sex-based segregation in sports.

In fact, the entire thing is pretty worthless. The main argument seems to be, "well not all transwomen have high levels of testosterone because they may be on puberty blockers, and anyway, testosterone doesn't matter".

This apparently, from a Stanford MD. Pretty weak and intellectually dishonest.

“Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.

In other words, there is a relationship but there's some other factor involved, also.

I see two problems:

1) Yes, there's no question they aren't competitive on boys teams. That doesn't automatically mean that putting them on girls' teams is fair.

2) The issue is that testosterone has a lasting effect--once you build up your muscles as a man you will have a permanent advantage over those who didn't. Note that this has no effect on those who haven't gone through puberty as a male. Thus there are two cases that need to be evaluated separately:

2a) Those on puberty blockers and those who were on puberty blockers then went to female. As far as I'm concerned this is a total non-issue, they won't have gotten any testosterone advantage, I can see absolutely no reason they shouldn't compete as females.

2b) Those who were male for some time after puberty. We need to evaluate this case separately, but nobody seems willing to. I strongly suspect this group gets an unfair advantage.

 

[J842P]

Pretty weak and intellectually dishonest.

Yeah, I'm going with dishonest too.

This comment really got me:

The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels.

The author makes it sound like somehow, women with PCOS have testosterone levels similar to that of males... but that's not the case.

Normal ranges for males and females are:
Male 19 and older: 240-950 ng/dl
Female 19 and older: 8-60 ng/dl

With PCOS...
Female with PCOS: <150 ng/dl

If Testosterone levels exceed 200 ng/dl in a female, it's an indicator of an ovarian or adrenal tumor.

Even with PCOS, female testosterone levels are considerably lower than the levels seen in normal males. In addition, this ignores the effect of testosterone during puberty - which has long-term physiological effects. During puberty, T levels in males reach as high as 1200 ng/dl... and in females they are normally below 75 ng/dl. During puberty, males experience testosterone at 10 to 16 times the level that females get. In adulthood, males run at about 5 to 10 times the amount of T that females get.

Yes. And again, an MD. Child psychiatrist, but still and MD.

 

[Emily Lake]

Here's a rebuttal:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/

Quite frankly, all the arguments made in there in defense of allowing transwomen to compete with ciswomen seem to apply to all sex-based segregation in sports.

In fact, the entire thing is pretty worthless. The main argument seems to be, "well not all transwomen have high levels of testosterone because they may be on puberty blockers, and anyway, testosterone doesn't matter".

This apparently, from a Stanford MD. Pretty weak and intellectually dishonest.

“Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.

In other words, there is a relationship but there's some other factor involved, also.

I see two problems:

1) Yes, there's no question they aren't competitive on boys teams. That doesn't automatically mean that putting them on girls' teams is fair.

2) The issue is that testosterone has a lasting effect--once you build up your muscles as a man you will have a permanent advantage over those who didn't. Note that this has no effect on those who haven't gone through puberty as a male. Thus there are two cases that need to be evaluated separately:

2a) Those on puberty blockers and those who were on puberty blockers then went to female. As far as I'm concerned this is a total non-issue, they won't have gotten any testosterone advantage, I can see absolutely no reason they shouldn't compete as females.

2b) Those who were male for some time after puberty. We need to evaluate this case separately, but nobody seems willing to. I strongly suspect this group gets an unfair advantage.

The article is also misleading. The reference to testosterone as a driving factor for athletic performance is within same sex categories. So within the category of elite male athletes, the variations in testosterone between those elite male athletes doesn't correlate with performance. It glosses over the very clear correlation between testosterone in males versus females with respect to performance.

It's disingenuous. It's like saying that "Studies of estrogen levels don't show a clear correlation with breast size". Which is true, when you're looking at the variation in breast size among female subjected to estrogen. But it's idiotic to use that statement to imply that estrogen is NOT correlated with breasts when comparing males and females.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

What about hyper-androgenism?

 

[Trausti]

 

[Emily Lake]

What about hyper-androgenism?

Hyperandrogenism is a symptom, not a disease. It's what is caused by PCOS, as well as a few other things. In either case, the levels of testosterone found in women with the symptom of hyperandrogenism are still considerably lower than those found in normal males. The they start getting close to the low-end of the normal male range, it's considered an indicator of a severe illness, usually cancer of the adrenal or pituitary gland.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Women with hyper-androgenism are over-represented in athletics, especially at the Olympic level.

 

[J842P]

Women with hyper-androgenism are over-represented in athletics, especially at the Olympic level.

Shocking.