Vorpal wrote:thelawnet wrote:There are some rather basic pieces of science which are not affected by any gender transition:
1) biological males are exposed to large volumes of testosterone from puberty, which virilise the male body and make it significantly and permanently stronger than the female body
2) we don't have ovaries, which produce oestrogen which restricts female height compared to male
3) we have bigger lungs than females, in part because the female thorax is designed to accommodate the growth of a baby and the male thorax is not
No peer-reviewed study is ever going to show that a transgender woman has anything other than a male skeleton and male lungs.
I don't doubt that you could produce a study, and find people to peer review it to show that 'in general a transwoman loses x% strength following a gender transition with hormone restriction', and somehow to use this to suggest that there are no fairness issues.
That doesn't change the fact that multiple mediocre male athletes have transitioned to female and CRUSHED all-comers.
Except that hormones vary hugely. Some women produce high levels of testosterone, and some men produce high levels of estrogen. There is relatively little difference in height between men and women, and most of the differences in strength are differences in how women and men culturally have learned to use their bodies.
The quantity of male oestrogen produced is irrelevant in that oestrogen isn''t performance-enhancing, so we'll ignore that.
Women do not, in fact, produce high levels of testosterone. I'm not sure where this has come from, but it's completely untrue.
The normal female level of testosterone is 0.3-2.1 nmol/l. The normal male level of testosterone is 10-41.6 nmol/l.
https://education.endocrine.org/system/ ... Ranges.pdfIt is possible, for example, for a man to have lower testosterone than this range without requiring HRT, but that does not mean they are elite athletes!
In terms of women, the primary cause of hyperandrogenism is polycystic ovaries. This is a condition linked to genes, environment, and other things resulting in testosterone being produced to excess. Common effects including hirsutism ('bearded ladies' and infertility). Very severe PCOS can result in testosterone as high as 6.9 nmol/l, but this level would be considered an indicator of ovarian tumours.
This large (600 women) study of women with PCOS found a peak value of ~7 nmol/l, which is well below the bottom of the normal male level.
These are the testosterone levels respectively of female and male athletes:
The median female athlete has 0.67 nmol/l testosterone, the median male athlete has 15.6 nmol/l.
The male & female ranges are completely separate.
In terms of height, it's not true either that there is little difference. The male & female skeletons are different,
and if we look at what it means to be an elite athlete, then height is very important. If we look at the height of the male gold medal winning coxed 8 in 2016 Olympics:
6'9", 6'5", 6'5", 6'5", 6'6", 6'6", 6'4", 6'4"
and the female:
6'2", 6'0, 5'11", 5'11", 6'1", 6'0", 6'2", 5'11"
You can easily see that an average man, at say 5'10" has the height to be an elite (far out of the ordinary) female rower, whereas NONE of the world's best female rowers even have the height to get into a male boat, let alone the other physical attributes.
And obviously the 6'9" man, say, becoming transgender and competing on the female team would be ludicrous. The average British man is 5'9", the average British woman is 5'3". That's an 8% difference, which is huge in sporting terms. And the ranges are also different.
As a basic point, the shortest man on the men's team at 6'4", is at the 99.174th percentile. That's a pool of out of let's say 5 million men of the appropriate age etc., 41,300 men. 41,300 men of that height and taller to decide to become elite rowers, rather than other things, or not at all.
What percentile is 6'4" on the female side? It's basically at the 100th percentile. Out of 5 million women, there would only be 28 that tall.
28 women vs 41,300 men you literally could not make a rowing team of 6'4" women. It's not that 6'4" women would not be good at rowing! It's that 6'4" women are so rare as to be almost non-existent.