XX people do not have a monopoly on the word female & they never have. We do not, nor have we ever, had an agreed-upon definition of what defines a man or a woman that can be applied to all humans.
There is no specific biological characteristic, nor set of characteristics, including genital structures, reproductive organs, or chromosomal arrangement, that can adequately answer the question of what defines a male or a female.
The beautiful diversity of humankind cannot by any scientific metric be divided neatly into discrete "male" and "female" categories.
Any attempt to do so is a SOCIAL project, not a scientific one, & is driven by a political agenda. #TransRightsAreHumanRights
TERFS idea that birth certificates in any country or any global sport or “female-only” social spaces such as bathrooms are segregated on the basis of sex & not gender, leaning on a rigid distinction between sex & gender, is simply not the case.
@BorisJohnson the UK has 39 registered trans rugby players. 35 of them are trans men. Roberts (2020) a recent U.S. Air Force study looked at trans men in 3 fitness tests before & after their transition.
The tests were a 1.5-mile run and the number of situps and pushups that can be done in a minute.
Prior to gender affirming hormones, transmen performed 43% fewer push-ups and ran 1.5 miles 15% slower than their male counterparts.
After just 1 year of taking masculinising hormones, there was no longer a difference in push-ups or run times, & the number of sit-ups performed in 1 min by transmen exceeded the ave performance of their male counterparts.
KIRSTI MILER | AUTHOR’S EVIDENCE IN -Wiik et al – IS “UNTRUSTWORTHY”
I understand that this is such a complex issue that doing the perfect study is impossible. The good research here is unethical and the ethical research is just not good. But, this research from Wiik et al was bad.
Author bias:
The primary author, Dr. Tommy Lundberg does not have a background in sports science.
Unfamiliarity with trans women as a population: Use of terminology ‘Biological Males’
@AnselmD Q angle, lung size and bone density – are commonly thought to confer a performance advantage, there is no support in the literature that these factors confer any such advantage.
@AnselmD The Q angle defined as the angle between a line drawn from the anterior superior iliac spine (ASIS) to the center of the Patella and a second line from the Patella to the Tibial Tubercle and has often been assumed to play a role in generating power during acceleration and
@AnselmD efficiency of a running stride. However, under investigation there appears to be no performance advantage conferred in sport as a result of Q angle, further increased risk of injury attributed to Q angle can be entirely removed with training (Bruton et al., 2013;
The @UCI_cycling do not report on advantages that women have over men, & even more so the advantages over XY trans women who are forced to reduce our haemoglobin levels to unhealthy levels as prerequisite to compete in sport.
The advantages that XX have over XY are salient to the @UCI_cycling argument :Endurance is higher and recovery is quicker in XX women than in men(due to higher proportion of type 1 muscle fibers; Haizlip, Harrison & Leinwand, 2015).
This performance advantage is important, since individual variation is higher than the variation between genders, and individuals with high level of type 1 muscle fibers gravitate towards endurance sport.
Policies determining athletes’ eligibility for men’s and women’s sports should not pretend that every athlete’s sex fits neatly into one of two boxes or that sexual variation is the sole determinant of competitive advantage.
Instead, we must acknowledge the variability between and among the sexes, deescalate overblown concerns about sex and competitive equity in sport, and include as many athletes as possible in the sex category most meaningful to them.