The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
Your argument is “there is natural variation therefore we can’t set limits” could be missing the nuance that there can be a much larger impact from puberty changes than current hormone levels
Another commenter below shared this study that describes the effect of make puberty as being much more impactful on explosive strengthb than current testosterone levels.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289906/
What are your thoughts on this?
From your link
That reminds me of the swimmer Lia Thomas who placed 6th and 2nd before starting HRT. Raced against men after starting, which dropped her down drastically. Then when she raced against women she resumed being a top 10 athlete, winning her race (didn’t even brake female records mind you, just won her race).
The study has some bias imo. For starters most studies I’ve looked at say 2 years is when the strength levels start to even out, while most measurements from this one are from a year. The major exception being a study from 2004 that only looked at mass not strength.
When this study does look at strength it very specifically looked at grip strength and leg strength (this is where I got suspicious of bias). Trans women have larger hands due to our skeletons being forged during male puberty, which could account for the differences in grip strength (easier to grip/more muscles being used when there is more hand to use). And as for the part looking at thigh and quadriceps strength: every cis woman I know has significantly stronger legs than they do their upper body and that is for both the ones that go to the gym and the ones that don’t. It is completely possible (and not even mentioned which is where the feeling of bias comes from) that HRT has less of an effect on leg strength than it does upper body/core. If cis women who go through an estrogenized puberty have stronger legs than arms then it stands to reason that trans women would loose less muscle mass in their legs than their arms.
Edit: bias might be the wrong word here, maybe closer to an oversight than outright bias
Edit 2: found a more recent study that states endurance things like running and swimming level out by around 2 years, with most things level out after about 4 with the exception of upper body strength. Which is still declining in trans women past that point
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgad414/7223439
So the 1 year that is recommended is too soon for trans women athletes to start competing, but for endurance sports like racing and swimming it should be fine by 2 years. Other sports may need more time, but also we shouldn’t be delaying the lives of trans people for so long. We need to find a good middle ground because it’s not like exceptional cis women don’t exist in those same sports.
This is all also completely ignoring that if a trans women starts hrt before puberty then there is no real difference. So the real solution is to let trans teenagers transition.
Thanks for the detailed response! Interesting
That study is irrelevant and their findings don’t change anything about my answer. That study could say “African women have more lean muscle mass and are taller than the average athlete” and you wouldn’t be sharing that study around saying that African women shouldn’t be allowed to compete with other athletes because that’s racist and stupid.
And besides, taking an extreme example and comparing it to the average is dishonest. The best way to determine if transgender athletes are actually dominating in sports is their top level tournament wins. As I said, about 1% of people are transgender, so about 1% of tournament winners should be transgender if everything is even. Anything above, means an advantage and anything below means a disadvantage.
So where are all the transgender people absolutely dominating tournaments above the average of transgender prevalence?
You can’t show me that because it doesn’t happen, and even if it did happen, that’s just sports! You simply can’t ban people for a biological advantage in a hobby where biological advantages are literally everywhere. Height, vision, reflexes, agility, intelligence, etc.
Take a note on how the other user responded to my question. You instead responded with hostility, good luck convincing anyone if that’s how you engage with a genuine attempt to discuss the topic
I apologize if you’re not a transphobe, but you reposted a singular study whose findings are trash at best and outright bigotry at worst. I think it’s natural for me to assume you’re a transphobe trying to troll considering I specifically said:
Of course trying to continue the discourse would make me assume that you’re transphobic. You should have been more clear if that’s not the case. Regardless, it shouldn’t take away from my point. Again though, I apologize if you posted it from a perspective of honest discussion, but I hope you understand that this topic is often a target of trolls who seek to muddy the water by “just asking questions” in bad faith.
You don’t get to decide what people can and cannot discuss. And if someone replying was transphobic then maybe responding calmly and rationally would help change their mind. Just calling people transphobes does more to turn people away from your cause than just not replying
You’re just some person on the Internet arguing for the sake of arguing. For trans people these arguments are used to slowly erase our rights. Don’t demand civility from people you help oppres because you were board.
Removed by mod