Something keeps coming up in the discussions about women’s sport, fairness and advantages for transwomen. It’s that there is an overlap in the physiology affecting performance between males & females, which some say makes arguments about unfairness irrelevant. Here’s a thread (1/
First, the start point is saying that physiological attributes that drive performance overlap between M & F. This is definitely true - many women are stronger, faster, more powerful, muscular, leaner etc, than many men. Nobody would dispute this - just join a race to find out (2/
Next, this observation - a spectrum for the secondary sex characteristics - is used to argue against a sex binary, which is disingenuous. They’re different things. But it evolves into saying that because there is overlap and because sport is all about “natural advantages”, the...
…issue of fairness is moot - just as Fast twitch fibres or bigger lungs give people advantages, why should we care if those who get testosterone’s effects on physiology win women’s sports events? Theirs is a “natural advantage”. That’s the part that needs discussion. (4/)
Take the 100m Olympic title. We crown two champions - Bolt and Frasey-Pryce. Why do we do this? Because Bolt, and hundreds like him, are 10% faster than FP. That’s the effect of androgens on physiology. If we didn’t crown a women’s champ, only men would win anything in sport
The thing about them is that Bolt and FP are already exceptional within their respective groups as different, which is the very thing that sport is trying to do - it wants to find exceptional athleticism. In some sports that means FT fibres, biochemistry, neurophysiology etc
In other sports it’s about endurance (heart, lungs, mitochondria), in others it’s power/strength/biochemistry etc. Thing is, sport tries to find exceptionalism, that’s why it’s great. But the key here is that Bolt & FP are basically IDENTICAL in all these physiological respects
The system that allows Bolt to reach the Olympic podium is the same as the one that ‘finds’ FP atop hers. The point is that they have emerged from their respective populations with the best possible combinations to make them both champions. Equal. But different. By 10 - 15%. Why?
That difference is where biological reality of being male comes in. The effect of androgens, from early development through puberty and into adulthood creates such profound differences that 2 people who possess the same “important” physiology in a given sport are 10-15% different
In fact, the T effect is so powerful that a huge number of biological males who have ‘inferior physiology’ compared to Usain Bolt are still vastly superior to Fraser-Pryce, with her “optimal” physiology. They are 1% - 11% worse than Bolt but still faster than her. This is the key
There is no other physiological attribute that does this. The effect is so powerful that thousands of men who lack ‘perfect combinations’ of attributes are faster than the best woman. That doesn’t happen for big feet, long arms, high LT or whatever ‘advantaged’ group you compare
The beauty of sport is that it rewards exceptionalism, but ONLY IN ELEMENTS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER TO THE SPORT. That’s why we have age & weight categories. They protect integrity and safety of the ‘disadvantaged’ groups (young or light) to allow us to celebrate boxing (eg) prowess
If we allowed biological sex to become one of the elements sport rewards, it would mean rewarding ONLY people with functioning androgen physiology. The champions in EVERY SINGLE event would be male. In fact, the top 3000 (at least) would be. That’s not how it’s meant to be.
So we have this category for females, because the BIOLOGICAL implications of NOT having T contribute to development are so enormous that we realise that without this separate category, sport would not have meaning for that whole group. It doesn’t matter than FP is faster than me
It doesn’t matter that Serena Williams would hammer 90% of men at tennis or that Katie Ledecky swims better than almost everyone I know. What matters is that within a matched group (elite, club, state, high school), the best females have NO chance against identical/matched males
And so if you need to reach down and find inferior males to compare to the very best females within each band, then you’re deliberately distorting the meaning and value of sport in order to make the argument. It’s irrelevant though, because FP isn’t competing against me!
All this said, a biological argument that writes T out of performance determinism in sport needs to end. It has no value for the debate, it’s frankly stupid and/or dishonest. A human rights arguments I get, but we can’t deny biological reality for the sake of a desired position
