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Listen to the @bbcworldservice today 10-11am. Scientific debate of the key issues and evidence for and against the rules with scientists Dr Nicola Williams and Joanna Harper. @sharrond62 @damekellyholmes @Tanni_GT @paulajradcliffe @AnaPaulaVolei @Martina bbc.co.uk/programmes/w17… 
2) Interview recording here. Listen to the discussion and make up your own mind whether the IOC was right to relax the eligibility rules for female competitive sports fairplayforwomen.com/world-service-…
3) Harper agrees that female sport should be protected from athletes who have a a male like advantage but contends that after 1 yr of hormone treatment transgender women no longer have male-like advantage.
4) Harper "there are admittedly some advantages that remain but these advantages are fairly minor and will not lead to transwomen taking over women's sport" "Transwomen will be taller, bigger and stronger... but they will also have disadvantage"
5) The argument male-like disadvantage rules out any advantage is flawed. If it did then we wouldn't need male & female sports and mixed-sex comp would be fair. Athletes compete in the events their body is best at where their physical advantages count, not their disadvantages.
6) Harper "we should have seen at least 25-40 transwomen in every Summer Olympics. There have been none". This is a totally disingenuous position since there hasn't been a summer Olympic since the rules were relaxed in 2016. Tokyo 2020 will be the first test.
7) Dr Williams "There is a complete lack of robust, relevant and independent scientific research saying that male performance advantage is fully eliminated [following transition], and there is both theory and observation that tells us that it is not fully eliminated"
8) "For those simple reasons is it simply unfair on female athletes to allow male-born athletes who have transitioned to compete against them"
9) Dr. W "If we start to call facts transphobic then it stops us having a debate and stops us getting to a fair solution for all".
10) Harper "Male-like advantage should not be allowed in female sports" "After 9 months of hormone therapy I was running 12% slower than I was previously". "I started to look at other athletes and this 10-12% change in athletic capability is very common".
11) Dr W "Major scientific criticism here. The study that Harper presented to the IOC involves 6 non-elite athletes and simply a retrospective study comparing the self-reported performance before and after transition, in some cases with 20 years between before and after data".
12)"The confounding variables make that study meaningless. However that study was presented to @IOC and used as the basis of the evidence to open up the category of female sport to males. It's scandalous that the IOC allowed such poor data to influence the future of female sport"
13) "Because we don't know the answers yet we can't change the rules yet. We should do the studies first and then decide what the rules should be" #commonsense
14) Harper "I agree we need to do more research" "I am not a member of the IOC I am an adviser. My voice was only one of 25 scientists and we made this decision and I stand by the validity of that decision" stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Comm…
15) Harper "The 25 people who sit down at the IOC meetings are scientists and we have divergent views and not everyone agrees, we reach a consensus and I stand by that procedure" stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Comm…
16) Harper "when we get more data...there may well be some sports that we need to be more restrictive of transgender athletes"
17) Dr W "Harper has agreed with me on 2 major points. One is that some male performance advantage is retained AND that there needs to be more research" "If we allow male athletes to compete before we know the answer then world records will be broken and medals lost"
18) We need sex based not gender based categories. Why would be separate a performance based sport on someones internal sense of gender identity? Sport is about bodies and performance of those bodies so of course the sex of that body is absolutely relevant.
19) Male-born Laurel Hubbard won Gold at World Masters weightlifting as a woman with total lift of 280kg. Almost DOUBLE the lift of female who got silver. She pulled out of common wealth games due to injury but was favourite to win. Gold was won with lift of only 253kg by female.
20) "The idea that there's no evidence that transwomen are dominating women's sport is simply not true. The test is Tokyo 2020 and we can predict what will happen based on what we already see."
21) Harper "I agree with Nicola. If transwomen would take over women's sports then we shouldn't be allowed in regardless of our gender identity. However that is not likely to happen"
22) Harper ended her arguments by offering a bet for $1000 that Hubbard won't win a medal in Tokyo. We need evidence-based policy so that no one with male advantage takes a place from a female in women's competition. Win or lose, if they compete the injustice is already done.
23) Listen to the whole interview here. fairplayforwomen.com/world-service-…
