Transgender sports - yes or no ? What I found out 15 months later ...

 

So we are back with the Olympics again with so many poorly engineered so-called news feeds that does nothing but cause people to post ignorant replies, you know the ones, "men are men, women are women", "men are XY and women are XX", "men cannot be in women's sports", "too many women have lost scholarships", you get the point. These have been repeated over and over ad-nausium. While I am not a medical professional, I have a technical based background in development and diagnostics, so in a nutshell, when I want to know something, I figure it out.

I last wrote a blog August 2024 about whether we should have trans-women in sports. Back then, I didn't know diddly, but I came up with a simple solution then, penalty handicaps.

Part of the entire medical science aspect of sports is technically boys vs girls, and without deep diving into biology, this is something I am writing about in another blog later, there is a huge misconception that we humans are of a binary sex/gender, i.e. two. Science has long shown that men are XY and women XX. But, also some men as XX and some women XY. But we have SRT syndrome, intersex, XXY XYY XXYY combinations too, so chromosomes do not dictate gender. Actually, neither does a vagina or penis, but that isn't what I want to talk about, you can ask a psychiatrist / psychologist those questions and debate a professional if you have doubts.

The effects of estrogen is misunderstand greatly and like I will mention later, not only effects breast growth with potential ability of lactation, hemoglobin changes and DNA. The later isn't a re-write of DNA, but more of a change of the functional execution of instructions from doing male things to female things. The more important result is the hemoglobin.

Fast forward 15 months and I have sifted through the weeds somewhat and dug up a wheelbarrow load of sports medicine related information. Unfortunately I just made basic notes as I read through verses saving links, but safe to say, I you wanted to, go look, the scientific journals are out there on the internet, it's not rocket science. Also some very recent advances in trans-gender research.

Most of my information came from the National Institute for Medicine journals. It is also there and similar from the UK medical journals I obtained information about male ethnicity differences in sports and there being 5%-8% performance difference between European runners and African runners. While this isn't related to trans-gender athletics, it does show that we allow both mixed race males to participate in the same events even with close to sometimes a 10% performance advantage over their peers. Bear that in mind when you balance trans-gender women and cis-women performance differences which is the same or less. Begs the question of are we discriminating and segregating ourselves like the 1960's all over again.

One of the recent events is the banning of trans-gender athletes for the up-coming Olympics, just upfront, we are talking about a single athlete, not dozens or hundreds, but ONE. The IOC stated evidence that there is significant advantages for trans-gender women.  HOWEVER - the IOC also state in another set of tests thee are were cases where biological women performed BETTER than trans-women.  So take the IOC results with a grain of salt.

So is the IOC 'initially' correct ? This is true – kinda, actually, really not really.

Where it's true is in the fact the IOC's data represents adult transitioned male to female. This relates to 39% or barely a third of trans-women (ages 30+). What this means in reality though comes down to many factors, how long did the individual transition on HRT (Estrogen / Testosterone blockers), what is their cardiovascular and pulmonary system capable of over an average cis-woman competitor.

Blanket statements of “trans-gender is just better as they are just men” is blatantly unfair.

You may ask, “what are the differences then ?” Well, a cis-male verses cis-female, is roughly 26%, between ages 18-35. Yes, that is a lot. But, when we take in to account muscle mass loss over 2 years of HRT, that will drop by about 5% minimum to maybe 10%. "Yes" I hear you say, a trans-woman is still maybe 16% better. Well, there is also the matter of effects of hormone therapy on hemoglobin. In trans-women after about 9 months, theirs matches that of cis-women. Hemoglobin is responsible for carrying oxygen from the lungs to the body's tissues and carbon dioxide from the tissues back to the lungs. It's what makes you go zoom zoom. Now we have a problem, that cardiovascular / pulmonary system and muscle tissue remaining “advantage”, uhm, if you ask me, it's somewhat lost with the hemoglobin equation. You can't go more zoom zoom if you cannot fuel your muscles. I saved this till last, so you'd read the medical blurb, “negligible advantages” is generally what happens in trans-female athletes. Now, is there some advantages in some cases ? Yes, we have seen a few high profile cases where that particular sporting discipline just wasn't well managed, such a Lia Thomas swimming, how much and how many athletes, hard to say, but with everything trans-female athlete related, everything is in the realms of 'handfuls'. Given that at any one time there maybe between 15-30 professional trans-female athletes around the world, it makes the entire conversation almost null and void.

If we really then allow a few trans-female athletes to complete, we check their cardiovascular / pulmonary system and figure a simple points penalty.  See how easy that was to solve and understand ? No buts, no hand raising, no men cheating women, just the fact's ma'am.

Oh, there is one other thing, out of the zillions of trans-female athletes in the universe, okay, 30, what about that 61% that were under 30 years old. Wait, so all that wordy medical stuff above was for over 30 ? Yes it was, and relates to 30% of athletes in the Olympics are over 30 years old.

It works out quite well then we have 60% either way.

The other group of trans-gender women, the prepubescent trans-female athletes, are as you can guess, girls that transitioned before maturity and therefore their muscle mass, bone structure and cardiovascular / pulmonary systems are comparable to that of their cis-female peers. What that means in plain English is that they are functionally the same. Therefore the IOC's assessment of medical advantage is fundamentally – wrong.

So then, the conclusion, trans-women athletes are either not better than cis-women, or barely better, or in a rare case (such as a few recent highly publicized cases), significant'ish - then assign a penalty handicap to them. Impact to women's sports, again negligible because … hardly any trans-female athletes in professional sports anyway. Yes, you can continue to argue the fact every which way you like, but science is science and the above is referenced from it, so …. there we go. If I found evidence to the contrary, I'd be saying as much because I have no skin in the game, I watch women's soccer, that is pretty much it.  So walk away with this, does being a trans-woman make a difference in sport overall, no, it's a drop of pee pee in a swimming pool.  Does it effect a single sporting event ? It can, we've seen it, but in reality, not much.  We will continue to see trans-women win, because someone has to win, the problem being, when it's a trans-woman, people will shout 'cheat', but this is why the sports councils for that sport need to ensure trans-women are tested first, then it's fair, otherwise it's unfair on everyone.

While this article is mostly about sports, are there any scholarships being stolen from women. Has there been, yes. How many ? It's not known, but maybe a few hundred over the years that records have been kept, the question is, should they have gone to a trans-female person ? Well, for that you'll have to read another article I am going to write which examines the issue of trans-women being a different kind of woman or not. Given that gender identity and physical gender are developed in the womb and those then result in gender incongruence (brain is a girl, body is a boy), we can certainly argue that in some form, a trans-woman is then "a different kind of woman”, but still a woman. But again, you can read that article later and draw conclusions.  I have spent the last year knee deep in looking at this subject, it's just not as simple as yes and no until you really look at what makes up the equation of what is a man or what is a women.  At that point you are pretty much coming down to ovaries, but even then, some women don't have them, yes I know, I have really boiled down gender to a bunch of yes / no attributes, but that is what they are.

You nearly made me forget, the other huge question people raise, “why don't trans-gender people get their own leagues ?” Well, like I mentioned, just not enough athletes at all, you can't make a league out of barely a few teams worth of people. However, with the evidence above, we shouldn't need to be offering that as a solution should we ? Why ? Like I said, negligible difference or if there is, performance penalty. This is after all a way to be inclusionary of people, not so they can win, but to participate with peers and enjoy the moment and event. It's not a war, don't make it one, the numbers aren't worth it.

So there you have it, trans-gender sports, differences, not enough to get your knickers in a twist, unless you really want to, but you can't argue the science, it's there, go read.