Laurel Hubbard debuted in the female category in 2017, and posted a new world record in the W35/super heavyweight category at the IWF Masters that same year.
For this performance, she was named the best lifter in the entire female competition (all ages and weight categories).
Her lift total of 280 kg absolutely smashed her category competitors.
It wouldn’t have been out of place in the corresponding male category.
In fact, Hubbard’s 2017 lift was entirely routine over ten years of the male competition, and a huge outlier in the female competition over the same ten years.
For those asking, this first (incomplete) part of the story shows how, controlled for age, Hubbard is lifting well outside female range.
The second part is, of course, that Hubbard has earned an Olympic spot, despite her advanced age.
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"This model of estradiol’s role in improving resistance to wound sepsis predicts at least four “sexes” across two treatment groups: females who are in the proestrus phase, females who are in the diestrus phase, females who are postmenopausal, and males."
This is Sarah Richardson, of the Fuentes review.
Four "sexes", three of them female and the other male. JFC.
Apparently-female athletes who test positive for SRY will have a consultation with WA, with a view to medical assessment to better understand any medical conditions (DSDs) they have.
It is this diagnosis that will determine eligibility (or not).
After a primer on sex development, Sinclair tries a gotcha.
Describing Swyer Syndrome and CAIS, he argues these athletes would be unfairly excluded.
But WA makes it clear that CAIS is exempt from exclusion. It’s in both the policy and the press release. I doubt Swyer would be excluded either.
Five years ago, I gave a speech comparing sex denialism to creationism.
At the time, my partner-in-crime, Colin Wright, and I were near-lone academic voices willing to stand up and say “Biology! We have a problem!”
@SwipeWright
Reflecting, back in 2020, on that state of affairs:
“[That] there are two sexes, male and female is apparently something that biologists do not think needs to be said.
I think they are wrong.”
Since then, biologists with far more authority than an unknown developmental biologist who was trying to work out how nerves navigate over muscles and an unknown evolutionary biologist who was studying what makes insects mad have spoken up.
Several people argue that if the metrics of a trans-identified male fall "within female range", it is fair for that male to compete in female sport.
But we need to look at what's typical .v. what's exceptional.
Male traits often overlap with female traits. Height, muscle mass and so forth all generate normal distributions within sex (bell curves), where the lower end of the male range overlaps with the upper end of the female range.