Confronting a New Threat to Female Athletics

Confronting a New Threat to Female Athletics

"At the BBC, meanwhile, producers allegedly rescinded an invitation to a guest who sought to defend Navratilova, and instead gave the air time to McKinnon, who declared that having a debate on the issue was tantamount to “a black person [debating] a KKK member on civil rights.”

Navratilova’s flip claim that “there must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard” stood out not just because she is a tennis legend, but because she represents the constituency most significantly affected by these recent developments (even as activists seek to quash such voices through harassment and mobbing): female-born, female-identified athletes...

Legally, boys cannot compete with girls according to CIAC (Connecticut InterScholastic Conference) rules. But self-identified trans girls are allowed to compete with females simply by filling out a form.

High-school sports present a particularly charged environment when it comes to gender issues, because children’s bodies typically are undergoing rapid changes. Once male bodies begin puberty, they gain physical advantages that female bodies can never attain, no matter how much training girls do. Testosterone affects the body permanently during puberty, increasing height, augmenting the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood, making male bones denser and organs (including heart and lungs) larger than those of females. So it is no surprise that top high-school male sprinters fare better than almost every top-ranked Olympic female athlete. The top 10 times of New York state’s male high-school 100-meter dash runners since 2006, for instance, range from 10.48 to 10.79 seconds. For the world’s top females, on the other hand, the top three times at the last 10 Olympics ranged from 10.54 to 11.19 seconds.

Kate Hansen, a Canadian roller derby competitor, offers her own story as an illustration of what’s at risk for women who challenge the inclusion of natal men in women’s sport. In 2017, she received a number of friend requests on Facebook from a local transgender-identified skater named Kather Anne Bickford. When the two got into a disagreement over whether Bickford should be competing in a woman’s league, Bickford circulated Hansen’s message on social media. As a result, Hansen was targeted by a campaign of threats and harassment—which included people circulating her home address and the name of her children’s school. Even some of her former friends joined in the mob attack...

We don’t know how many women are in Hansen’s position, because many simply keep their mouths shut, lest they be accused of contradicting the “correct” opinion about trans athletes. When women were fighting for the right to win inclusion in the sports world, their activism was celebrated by progressives. Now, ironically, those same progressives remain silent (or even partake in the mobbing) when women seek to protect the safe sporting spaces they have created...

The IOC came under fire due to New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard—who’d been competing internationally as a man under the name Gavin Hubbard until the age of 35. Hubbard’s inclusion in women’s competitions caused outrage among both male and female athletes, who called for a separate division for transgender athletes. (In January, USA Powerlifting, the American organization in charge of powerlifting competitions in the United States, finally had enough, and announced it would not permit transgender women to compete as women. This decision has been challenged by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who described USA Powerlifting’s policy as “discriminatory” and “unscientific.”)

Alison Heather, a professor of physiology at Otago University in New Zealand who has researched the science of transgender physiological changes, has concluded that professional male athletes who trained and competed before receiving gender-related medical interventions will always retain certain advantages, regardless of their testosterone levels or subsequent gender identification. Heather notes, for instance, that Hubbard’s years competing as a man served to increase the quantity of muscle fibres, which in turn allowed Hubbard‘s muscles to develop more effectively, even after transitioning. Heather also notes that questions remain as to how hormone therapy may or may not reduce muscle fibres. Available studies already suggest that most changes associated with male puberty present irreversible advantages vis-à-vis biological women, regardless of subsequent hormone regimens...

The 5nmol/L limit prevents certain women from competing because of their naturally high testosterone levels, while also green-lighting trans women who pass the test despite enjoying locked-in physical advantages accrued over many years in a male body. (The IAAF’s rules on this are currently being challenged by Semenya at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.)

And it gets worse. In 2017, Stéphane Bermon and Pierre-Yves Garnier examined serum androgen levels in track and field performances of males and females in the 400m, 400m hurdles, 800m, hammer throw, and pole vault competitions. They found that altering testosterone levels had a much stronger effect on female performance levels than they did for males. So by lowering the maximum allowable levels of testosterone from 10nmol/L to 5nmol/L, the IAAF disproportionately penalizes women with naturally occurring hyperandrogenism (i.e. excessive hormone levels) versus trans-identifying biological males who are required to reduce their own testosterone levels. (Moreover, even at their reduced level, trans athletes’ levels would still be higher than those for the average female athlete, which is about 0.7 nmol/L).

While I know of no single comprehensive study in this area that examines all components of strength (including bone density, muscle mass and muscle endurance), several published studies show how the bodies of male-born transgender-identified athletes retain physical advantages later in life. In 2015, for instance, researchers studied 49 “normally active” trans-identified natal males (with an average age of 33) over two years of testosterone suppression, before and after one- and two-year periods of cross-sex hormonal therapy. The results were compared to an age-matched control group of males. Evaluation consisted of measuring such indexes as grip strength, bone density, body fat and lean mass, and bone geometry. The study concluded that a man’s skeletal status is well preserved during hormonal treatment, despite substantial muscle loss...

Channeling a theme that has become strangely popular on social media of late, Harper suggested that it was physical biology—not gender identity—that is a social construct. Specifically, Harper suggested that it is stodgy “traditionalists” who push for biological categorization in sport competition, while “progressive” factions embrace the idea that one can simply self-identify out of one’s physical advantage.

Siddhartha Angadi, a cardiovascular physiologist at Arizona State, has been emphasizing a potentially more important aspect of research in this field—whose implications extend well beyond sport, and into the domain of life-and-death health considerations. Studies have long shown that hormone replacement therapy trials in post-menopausal women are associated with higher morbidity and mortality outcomes...

Rachel McKinnon won the gold medal at the UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championship in Los Angeles, where, controversially, McKinnon competed in the women’s 35-44 age bracket...

McKinnon... took to Twitter daily to celebrate the victory, which McKinnon describes as one of historic proportions. As for the critics, McKinnon compared them to Nazis: “’Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, looking at Jesse Owens, and he says, you know, quite openly, I think it’s unfair, to have people like Jesse Owens competing, because you might as well have deer or gazelle on your team.’ Sound familiar, transphobes? Not a good look.”"


Related:

Female athletes take a stand after transgender athletes dominate track event: 'We're facing the end of women's sports' - "“I know that I’m not the only girl who has missed out on opportunities. There are countless other girls who have lost meets, and titles, and their drive to compete as hard as they can because they know that they’ll never be good enough to compete against these athletes.”Thankfully, Selina is taking a stand. With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Selina filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, who has agreed to investigate."