@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: Oh look, half the people have a dangly thing between their legs and the other half are way less weird looking. I wonder if this division is important?
RW: Nah, I don’t think so.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: But look, the majority of the little people seem to be associated with two big people, one of each type, and the really little people spend a lot of time inside then fixed via their mouth to just one type of big person.
RW: I don’t see it.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: If you look at all the other life around these parts, they also seem to be divided into two main groups of body type. This seems pretty universal, now I look deeper. Are you sure this isn’t important?
RW: Ignore it.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: I really think I should consider whether I’ve discovered something fundamental here. Someone might give me a prize.
RW: I think we should group people not according to whether they *have* dangly or undangly bits, but whether they *want* dangly or undangly bits.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: <doubtful look>
RW: Yes, that makes a lot more sense as a categorisation.
Scientist: OK, but I’m going to carry on studying the Danglies and Undanglies. <gets labcoat on and runs after passing Dangly>
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon RW: <calling> Hang on, how do you know that person is a Dangly?
Scientist: <points to dangly bits>
RW: That’s a bit presumptuous though.
Scientist: <bats dangly bits>
RW: What if this person is really an Undangly?
Scientist: <eyes dart between RW and gently swaying dangly bits>
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: I’ve discovered something cool about Danglies. Wanna hear?
RW: You can’t call them that.
Scientist: W..what? Do you remember back there when I swatted one of them?
RW: That wasn’t a Dangly.
Scientist: It dangled.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon RW: That’s not how we recognise Danglies. We recognise them by their internal sense of Dangliness.
Scientist: I can’t see inside their heads.
RW: They don’t have Dangly brains.
Scientists: <backing away slowly> But you clearly have a lot of dangle going on in your head. I’m off.
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The claim that won't die: trans-identifying males are "underpowered" and therefore "disadvantaged" in sport.
"One can imagine a large car with a small engine competing against a small car with a small engine, and that summarizes the playing field." Joanna Harper, Huff Post, 2016.
"You have a bigger body, and you have a smaller engine to move that vehicle around." Yannis Pitsiladis, BBC, 2019.
"giving trans women the disadvantage of having to power larger skeletal frames with reduced strength and aerobic capacity." Jamie Agapoff, 2025.
What happens when a trans-identifying male suppresses testosterone?
They lose a bit of muscle mass.
Their haemoglobin drops to female-typical levels.
The claim that won't die rests on the idea that trans-identifying males retain their skeletal frame and most of their muscle mass, but become unable to move it around a sports fields, rendering them "disadvantaged".
The words "underpowered" and therefore "disadvantaged" are carefully chosen, and typically leave the reader to infer that this means "underpowered" and therefore "disadvantaged" compared to females.
“Most of the studies used to ban transgender women so far are based on the performances of cisgender men, which scientists have argued is not an appropriate comparison.”
That’s me, @TLexercise and others.
“Others” including the ones moaning about not having their say. You know, the say they took for granted. The one they didn’t tell @nrarmour about.
Ever read their archery paper?
“Other studies have compared the performances of transgender women athletes with sedentary cisgender women, also argued as an inappropriate comparison.”
NGL, bit flummoxed here. Any ideas?
If you want inappropriate comparisons, try the Fat Bloke Study. Written by the scientists moaning about being excluded.
Nancy @nrarmour links to it. Fails to care that the reason why trans-identifying males can’t jump as high as the female comparators is that they are 20kg heavier, carrying way more fat, and are far less fit.
For disclosure, I have not been part of this IOC working group.
So the actual paper is fine. I’ve only skimmed, but it looks at gene expression between male and female humans and mice, to answer questions about the evolution of genes associated (or not) with sex.
The authors - who admit in peer review that these graphs exaggerate overlap - suggest in discussion that if one were to look at gene expression in, say, the skin from an individual within the overlap, you could not identify whether that individual was male or female.
It’s a high-level take on a more simple principle in this debate: overlapping height, and is a 5’8” individual male or female?
The authors use the same analogy in the introduction.
Even the ones who said it was “just a few”. They knew the scale.
Even the ones who said “you’re racist” as they fervently argued that black women are fundamentally different to white women. They knew the scale.
Also a poorly kept “secret” is that the majority of this cohort are 5ARD, where males can appear to be female at birth but have male-pattern athletic advantage.
Birds use genetic sex determination, just like humans.
The "make male" gene for humans is called SRY, and it lives on the Y chromosome.
If you have functional SRY and its downstream transcriptional storm, you will make testes and make male.
Birds differ. Their "make male" gene is called DMRT1.
It pretty much works like SRY, in that it's immediate downstream target is the parallel gene in both humans and parrots, and the ensuing transcriptional storm triggers testes development (testes being male, of course).