Citation? I asked because I'm curious, and Googling just gives opinion pieces and not data.
[Edit] Currently -3 but no study referenced. Do people just not like the idea of providing evidence for their position? The women I've spoken to about this article cite men being the problem, whether its sexual harassment, or other sexist attitudes. Not one felt that trans participation in their sport of choice was in their top ten complaints.
Considering I was asking whether there was evidence on trans-performance, sure it matters a little.
That's fine if they don't want to compete with men, but the statements were because "it's unfair". I was curious if there had been any studies on this.
> Considering I was asking whether there was evidence on trans-performance, sure it matters a little.
Well, (and I hesitate to say this because of HN guidelines, but) it was in the article, which I assumed you read. It was this assumption that made me think you wanted evidence that it is women who are complaining about competing against men.
FTFA
> Late last year Dr. Jane Thornton, the I.O.C.’s medical and scientific director and a Canadian former Olympic rower, presented the initial findings of a review of athletes who are transgender or have differences of sexual development, known as DSD, and are competing in women’s sports. That analysis, which has not been made public, stated athletes born with male sexual markers retained physical advantages, including among those that had received treatment to reduce testosterone.
The linked article is to the nytimes. I dunno which article is the yahoo one. This story was on the nytimes, it's the one under discussion.
> Does it have a link to any of the findings?
The findings I posted where from the linked article, to the nytimes. The findings were exactly as I posted them; in brief, athletes born with male markers retain their physical advantages.
> You can debate what policies are the most fair without calling trans women "men."
You're correct - man/woman are gender identities, male/female are biological facts. The more accurate version of that statement (which, btw, is not mine, I am just repeating what the complaints are) is:
That's a misleading way to talk about "outperforming". When the US brings over 200 people to the olympics, then if cis and trans athletes have exactly the same performance and without other bias you'd expect to see 1-2 trans US olympians every year just by chance. And you'd expect them to have the same medal rates as anyone else from the US. When someone asks if there's evidence of trans athletes outperforming cis athletes, that's not what they're asking for.
Look up Elizabeth Swaney, she got to the Olympics by not falling off her skis. And I mean that quite literally: Ignoring DNFs she was dead last in all the qualifying events, but by doing a massive amount of them she somehow managed to get enough points in total to qualify.
Or there's Eric Moussambani, who participated in the 100 meter freestyle swimming without ever having seen an Olympic-sized swimming pool before. Similarly with a Jamaica bobsleigh team: horribly equipment, very little experience, still at the Olympics.
At the top it is indeed about being the absolute best, but at the bottom it is very much about being a competition between nations, and for some countries being the best at an obscure sport can still mean being pretty bad at it.
Exactly my point, your country is only sending you to the Olympics if you are their absolute best.
The competitive part does not start at the Olympics. The Olympics are already the price.
Citation? Data? Let's take Paris 2024 track and field 800 m as an example, I won't do all the googling for you. In men's heats, the slowest clocked time was a hair under 1:55. In women's finals (consequently the fastest time of the competition), the winner clocked in at a bit under 1m57, whereas the men's final was won with 1:41 and change. You may look up other competitions by yourself. The reason for the lack of "citation", or "data" as you call it, is because men typically are not allowed to enter women's competitions, for that - rooted-in-reality reason I just demonstrated.
Well, trans women given current regulations that allowed competition with cis women, would have had to be on hormone replacement therapy for 3-5 years depending on the sport. So the data and context does matter, because the intuitive conclusion you came to isn't touching a dataset to find the rooted-in-reality conclusion. The question is 'is a male with a female hormone balance for over X period time with in a fair difference in biological function to females.'. Which is a complex question, since so many things are at play. How much does fast twitch muscle fiber is retained? How much does that even matter for the sport in question?(ballet vs sprinting) Did they go through male puberty? Where are they working out to retain their muscle mass through their 3-5 year transition period and not losing any of their originally gained muscle? What would it look like if they intentionally lost the muscle mass and then retrained it back?
I find those to be fascinating questions, the later we have little research on, currently, and it could enlighten so much more of exercise science especially for cis athletes as well.
A YEAR of hormone therapy. Meeting a required measured threshold of testosterone.
And that's not even the controversial stuff. A man and a trans-woman are different. hell, one has (generalizing here) boobs: come on... don't be dense/obtuse! Have you tried running fast suddenly having boobs when you did not before?!?! ...one is way easier.
The problem is that someone who's transitioned is no longer a man. After undergoing surgery and hormone treatment for a long period of time, a trans athlete falls somewhere between men and women in terms of capability. They'd have no more success competing against men than naturally born women would, yet they still have advantages when competing against naturally born women.
Unfortunately, while the most equitable solution might be to create a separate category unique to trans individuals, there aren't enough trans athletes to make it feasible (yet?). It's rather sad that transitioning means a person can no longer compete in sports, but I'm not sure there's a better alternative.
You still have your larger bone structure. Larger musculature structure and different muscle insertions. different ligament structure. different skin structure. different grip strength. Broader shoulders, narrower pelvis, different angled limbs. all of that isn't going away even if it atrophies. And you aren't going to let it atrophy because you are an athlete in training managing your dietary macros. Maybe recovery isn't as efficient lacking so much excess testosterone but you still have some.
Starting out with this: are you proposing a height limit on female athletes? If having a larger bone structure is an unfair advantage, surely tall women should be banned from competing?
It comes down to where we draw the line. We limit healthy women from competing in paraplegic games for example, because of inherent advantages.
In certain sports, height might not be formally regulated, but weight classes are regulated. And in those sports it is arguably an advantage to be shorter, as you can be bulkier overall and dedicate more of the limited weight to pure muscle mass vs your skeleton. Although there are also considerations for things such as reach in some circumstances.
Overall though, the difference between a slightly taller athlete of a given sex is nowhere near the athletic prowess differences between a given athlete of the same height and of different sex. A 5' Lebron James would still dominate a 7' Caitlin Clark. Maybe there would be height classes just like there are weight classes and sex classes, if height were such an influencing factor.
It's your decision to take drugs that destroy your bodies ability to compete. It's the same as people who decide to eat way too much and similarly destroy their bodies ability to compete. They don't need to make new 'fat person's divisions for people who eat too much. If you want to compete in sports at a high level taking female hormones is detrimental to that.
Is there actually an advantage? that's toted. but no one can ever point to real data about it... and all the data suggests the exact opposite... that for most cases: cis-women out-compete trans-women.
They list their findings but no data. They effectively are just issuing an opinion. The opinion may be more considered than the rest of ours, but it’s not data.
> Late last year Dr. Jane Thornton, the I.O.C.’s medical and scientific director and a Canadian former Olympic rower, presented the initial findings of a review of athletes who are transgender or have differences of sexual development, known as DSD, and are competing in women’s sports. That analysis, which has not been made public, stated athletes born with male sexual markers retained physical advantages, including among those that had received treatment to reduce testosterone.
I would be interested to see that analysis, and it's unfortunate that it is not publicly available in some fashion. I'm mainly curious about the number of DSD-expressing vs transgender athletes they reviewed. Trans athletes in the Olympics or even competing at an Olympic level are vanishingly rare.
That very quoted section indicates the analysis has not been made public. IMO that's very fishy and makes me question the authenticity of the source. What is Dr. Thornton hiding, exactly? Why conceal the review, methodology and data? Even if preliminary it should be released.
Multiple reasons, but leg placement on the hip means direction change at pace puts more stress on joints, and the cycle appears to cause problems for reasons that AFAIK are still unknown.
It wouldn't shock me if some sports are impacted, but I also know that there are some vocal people on both sides of the opinion that would scream regardless of the outcome.
However we have examples like Ellia Green who, if we used "conventional wisdom" wouldn't have won in the mens Rugby Olympics.
The one thing I've learnt is that things that sound important rarely are.
I mean yes but why keep the analysis private? I can think of very few reasons to do that, and one of them is because they know their methodology or data is flawed or inaccurate and they don't want people figuring that out. Obviously this is speculation but I would think they would want data like that to be public, since we want more data on things like this, not less.
A source is not required, taking part in the Olympics alone, means outperforming your countries other athletes. If that doesn’t happen there wouldn’t be a reason for the article.
Regularly. It's the competing women who are complaining, though. They feel it is unfair to compete with men.