Thread by @Scienceofsport

On transgender women & performance advantages. One thought - isn’t it astonishing that given “lots of aspects…physiology & anatomy & the mental side”, that NO female has EVER come within 10% of the best 1000 males?

Or…is this an irrelevant distraction given that BOTH males...

…and females already possess the physiology & mental side necessary to be champions within their respective characteristics? So what is the source of the huge gulf in performance?

This is, in fact, the most direct journey to saying a women’s category is not necessary in sport

That is, if elite performance is a result of "a lot of aspects", we can crown a single “human” champion in all events

But where are women among the top 1000 humans in the world right now? Is it a co-incidence that they never have these aspects?

Or…maybe they’re different?

Yes, a lot of aspects make champions, but androgens differentiate M and F performance. And this is what necessitates a closed, protected category for fairness & safety. A category that is ESSENTIAL for their sporting performances to be celebrated as EQUAL to those of males.

Another way to approach this, by the way, is to list the physiological or anatomical attributes possessed by males that enable them to significantly outperform females in almost all sports. Make the list, then ask WHY males have those specific advantages? Do they train harder?

Are they just luckier in the genetic lottery? Or can we identify a root cause or determinant of pretty much all those factors that has some biological origin? Failing to appreciate this is like saying that adults are better at sport than children because they’re stronger,…

…more powerful, taller, heavier, have more muscle, and then forgetting to mention that these differences exist because they’re adults being compared to people in a protected category (or do it with weight in boxing). But hey, maybe it’s all mindset!!