People keep telling me that some female athletes partially went thru "male puberty" & this should weigh into their qualification for the women's category. There is a huge amount of variation in many aspects of puberty & not a sharp line dividing all girls from all boys.
I don't think athletes should be eliminated based on testosterone levels in the first place. Given this rule exists, we should note it 1. only affects female athletes (cis or trans) & 2. is selectively applied to *testosterone* & not any number of other physiological differences
If the logic is that some women produce too much testosterone & that this gives them an unfair advantage over other women, this same rule should be applied to men. Men vary widely in testosterone production. More testosterone confers certain advantages.
Perhaps we should compare men who produce exponentially more testosterone than the average value & then eliminate them from competition, given this unfair advantage. But we don't do this, afaik. Men are allowed to have limitless natural advantages relative to the average value
And, further, if the issue is natural advantage, I don't see why it doesn't apply to lactic acid production or lung capacity or height or weight or any other physical category that could potentially confer an advantage or even correlate w/ differences between genders.
There's no way to regulate all physical advantages in athletics. The concept of "fairness" in such a domain is very murky, but, at the end of the day, it's more unfair (& sexist!) to eliminate women based on hormonal differences they do not control than it is to let them compete.
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