Emma Hilton Profile picture
Oct 2, 2021 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
This is Lisa Carrington. She is a New Zealand canoeist.

She won three gold medals at Tokyo 2020 and became NZ’s most successful Olympian ever. Image
This is Caitlin Regal. She is a New Zealand canoeist.

She won her first Olympic gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Image
This is Emma Twigg. She is a New Zealand rower.

She won her first Olympic gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Image
These are Kerry Gowler and Grace Prendergast. They are New Zealand rowers.

They both won their first Olympic gold medals at Tokyo 2020. Image
These are the New Zealand women rugby 7s.

They won gold medals at Tokyo 2020.

Michaela Blyde
Kelly Brazier
Gayle Broughton
Theresa Fitzpatrick
Stacey Fluhler
Sarah Hirini
Shiray Kaka
Tyla Nathan-Wong
Risi Pouri-Lane
Alena Saili
Ruby Tui
Tenika Willison
Portia Woodman Image
These brilliant female athletes gave New Zealand their highest number of gold medals in nearly 30 years.

Well done!
More brilliant NZ sportswomen!

The current netball world champions (and I've seen them play live!)

This is Tupou Neiufu. She is a NZ paralympic swimmer. At two years old, she was injured in a hit a run, and left with a permanent brain injury causing hemiplegia.

She won her first Olympic gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Image
This is Lisa Adams. She is a NZ paralympic shotputter. She has left hemiplegia.

In 2020, she won her first Olympic gold medal and, in separate competition, set the world record for her event. Image
This is Sophie Pascoe. She is a NZ paralympic swimmer. At 2 yrs old, she suffered severe leg injuries, resulting in left amputation below the knee, in an accident.

She did not win her first gold medal at Tokyo 2020.

She joined an elite club of 40 athletes with 10 Olympic golds. Image
This is Anna Grimaldi. She is a NZ paralympic sprinter and longjumper. She was born without a functional right forearm/hand.

She jumped her way to her second Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. Image
This is Holly Robinson. She is a NZ paralympic javelin thrower. She was born without a left forearm/hand.

She won her first Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. Image

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More from @FondOfBeetles

Apr 8
A cell layer that has developed to protect your body from the outside doesn’t work like a cell layer that has developed to protect your body from the inside.

The cells lining my vagina are not the same cells, and they don’t have the same function, as the ones wrapping your penis.

There’s a name for what happens when you subject dry-adapted “outside skin” to wet-adapted “inside conditions”.

Further reading: trench foot.
My vagina - “inside skin” - hothouses a healthy microbiome that promotes health and healing, and imparts immune function onto small humans that happen to come out of it.

Yours? Less so.
My vagina is a muscular organ, adapted to my healthy female function of receipt of peen, expelling menstrual products and pushing out small humans.

An inside out penis? Less so.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 3
Let’s move the discussion from available techniques for sex screening and to matters of process.

Ross @Scienceofsport has described the need for detailed technical documents that inform sports federations in robust implementation of a sex screening policy. I’ll link to his video next.

But here, I’m going to take a wander through running an assay, highlighting standards and procedures.
First, this is Ross’ video of the overall process, highlighting the need for coherent implementation practices. He - correctly - evokes the reams of technical documents used by WADA in their anti-doping programmes.

Even the simplest of lab assays can have pages of instructions associated with it.
So, the assay for sex screening will be detection of the SRY gene. This is the ‘make male’ gene that is the master switch for testes-not-ovaries.

The assays out there are very sensitive and specific. That means they can detect SRY when it’s present, and they don’t give a signal when it’s absent. They aren’t 100% on either metric, but near as dammit.

This itself may be a problem…
Read 18 tweets
Mar 26
In 2025, Jon Pike and I argued that exclusion of athletes with androgenising XY DSDs from female athletics is justified, because these athletes are male, not female.

@runthinkwrite

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…Image
@runthinkwrite This followed a 2024 paper where we, along with Ross Tucker, Tommy Lundberg, Cathy Devine and many others, argued for a return to sex screening to secure eligibility for female sport.

@Scienceofsport @TLexercise @cathydevine56

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…Image
@runthinkwrite @Scienceofsport @TLexercise @cathydevine56 This followed another 2024 paper where we critiqued the (now former) IOC policy on inclusion of trans-identifying males in female sports.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…Image
Read 5 tweets
Feb 6
I am starting to pull out details of this "meta" review that says trans-identifying males don't have advantage over women in sports.

I need a sanity check, because I'm only at Figure 1 and already there's an issue.

bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/…
So this is Figure 1A: fat mass (kg).

Alvares 2025, n=7, fat mass is higher in females as both absolute and relative values. This is logged as "favours cisgender", which is kinda odd because high fat mass isn't usually considered favourable for sports, but whatever.

TIMS: 16.2 kg (24%). F: 19.5 kg (26%).Image
But Ceolin 2024 is also logged as "favours cisgender" when their values are:

TIM: 18.2 kg (24%). F: 15 kg (25%). Their n = 47.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 4
What an insane bunch of cherry-picked metrics, cobbled together to try and argue that trans-identifying males should be in female sport.

bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/…
There are little-to-no controls for physical fitness in the individual studies.

Yet they conclude: “transgender women do not exhibit significant differences in upper-body strength, lower-body strength or maximal oxygen consumption relative to cisgender women after 1–3 years of GAHT.”

You haven’t controlled for fitness!!!
Their "performance" data. Can you see one study that really sticks out as an outlier? Image
Read 10 tweets
Nov 4, 2025
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.

So it's fair to have them in female sport, right?

Wrong.
Read 10 tweets

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