Thread by @KirstiMiller30

Elite women athletes are considerably stronger than the average cis man, and certainly the average trans woman.

The average height of the 2016 Rio Olympics women’s high jump podium was 6’1.7”. The 10th place woman in the final is 5’5”; the gold medallist is 6’3.6” and was the tallest in the competition.

The global average height for men is around 5’9”. Moreover, height is not uniformly distributed around the world. The average Dutch woman is 5’6.5”, whereas the average Indonesian woman is 4’10”.

We permit huge differences in natural physical traits within sport and call that “fair.” So even if we say that the average trans woman is 4” taller than the average cis woman, we already permit much larger height differences within women’s sport and call it fair.

This is true for any natural physical trait one selects, including endogenous T. And while there’s no evidence of a relationship between endogenous testosterone & performance, my point is that even if there were, it’s insufficient to justify excluding trans women.

Claims like “men are stronger than women” are, strictly speaking, false. There are many women who are stronger than many men.

These claims, instead, are either: the average man is stronger (taller/faster/etc) than the average woman; or the best man is stronger (taller/faster/etc) than the best woman.

At present, these latter claims are true. But both ellide the massive ranges within men and women. The shortest, weakest, slowest man is often the same as the shortest, weakest, and slowest woman.

We demonstrably permit competitive advantages within women’s sport that are far greater than 10-12%. ‘Fairness’ does not require that no athlete have a competitive advantage. In fact, that’s the entire purpose of training, coaching, equipment, nutrition, & so on.

And fairness does not require us to exclude those who have considerable performance advantages.

The default is inclusion, not exclusion. We don’t need ‘more study’ or ‘more evidence’ in order to decide to grant what is everyone’s human right: the right to participate in competitive sport.

So the scientific evidence is irrelevant. No competitive advantage that could ever be found to be attributed to trans women will be enough for an exclusionary policy to be both necessary and effective at promoting fairness in sport,...

Given the massive competitive advantages we already permit in women’s sport. The human rights argument is the one that controls this “debate.”

And there is no debate.