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Emma Hilton Profile picture
Emma Hilton
@FondOfBeetles
Wrong person clapping. Developmental biologist. Sex Matters trustee.
57 subscribers
Nov 13 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
Why male advantage in sport is not a social construct: height.

Height is a key difference between males and females. What is nature v nurture? What does that mean for sport?Image Bigger skeletons are most obviously driven by longer bone growth. Key bones like those in your thigh (“long bones”) grow from their end to get longer, making you taller. Image
Nov 11 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Ok, my charity wears off.

Bekker’s presentation of the “Hilton and Lundberg” argument is nonsense.

At no point have either of us, or anyone else we work with, reduced male advantage to simply muscle mass/strength. @TLexercise @Scienceofsport Image In the contrary, we have consistently argued that male advantage stems from many physical then functional outcomes of male development.

We spent hours (actually days 😂) creating this graphic, trying to highlight key areas of physicality that underpin male advantage.

HowTF is this reduced to “it’s all muscle”?Image
Nov 11 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
I’m going to put my charitable hat on, and try to elucidate - maybe even, as good practice, steelman - an opposition argument.

Specifically, this one: Image Let’s set a concrete example: the 10 second barrier (100m sprint).

Wiki - allowing for small errors - tells me that around 200 male sprinters have broken it. We know, of course, that no female sprinter has been close (Flo Jo record 10.49s).
Nov 4 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
As the latest on Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is reported, a diagnosis of 5ARD is almost certain. I and others first raised the likelihood of this DSD a few months ago.

Understanding how the developmental biology of DSDs interacts with sports categorisation is crucial. I spoke about this with Andrew Gold during the competition:

Nov 4 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
In August, we were invited by the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports @WileyGlobal to make an argument for screening for eligibility into the female category.

We proposed a cheek swab screen of DNA, performed before an athlete is thrust into the spotlight, with follow up care in the case of unexpected results. @WileyGlobal This month, two responses to this editorial have been published side-by-side.

The first was an argument against our proposal:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
Oct 29 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Ricin is extremely bad for people.

So bad, it’s a viable way to way to wipe out populations.

So bad, it’s regulated at the same level of weapon as sarin and mustard gas.

So bad, the ricin lab at my alma mater was more heavily-regulated than the HIV (live, infectious) lab. Anyone found with some home stash of ricin has no defence.

It comes from castor beans (common enough). But you don’t accidentally grind them up and extract the toxin as a kitchen experiment.
Sep 23 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
“Sex allocation” is a term used to describe how the two sexes - male and female, binary - are distributed within a species.

Humans are gonochorists. This means that the two sexes are divided between two classes of individual, with each class specialised for either the male or female reproductive role. In fact, almost all animals are gonochorists. It is a remarkably stable evolutionary strategy, given that all individual resources can be directed into one role, rather than split - and perhaps compromised - by division across both roles.

It is not better to be a jack of all trades but master of none…
Aug 13 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Lots of genuine people asking questions and less genuine people building hilarious strawmen about sex screening in sport.

Another thread, on SCREENING. Sex categories in sport are built around sex, which is anchored in your gonads.

Sports federations that have grasped this issue are equally clear that categories are concerned with physical development that starts with gonads.
Aug 9 • 16 tweets • 9 min read
OK, science geeks. Sex testing and sport.

There are many people spreading misinformation about the reliability of sex testing, repeating arguments made for its abolition some 25 years ago.

I don’t know if they have noticed that we’ve undergone something of a genetics revolution over the past few decades 😀Image So let’s look at some chromosomes.

Historically, chromosomes were analysed by adding a chemical dye to cells and looking at their shape and size. Given that most animals have two copies of each chromosome, the pairs could be lined up by matching their shape and size.

These are chromosomes stained with a dye called hemotoxylin. I still use this dye in the lab today.Image
May 2 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
I blocked Dope because he could not entertain a discussion that wasn’t on his terms within his framework.

I don’t accept his framework. And because he wouldn’t discuss a single thing within mine, it was pointless. Image Because he wouldn’t discuss anything outside of his own narrow ideology, I am left with no idea whether he even understands that my framework is different to his.

His repeated questions indicate he seems to think they were natural progressions of my framework.

They were not.
Apr 8 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
Let’s examine this list of “tranimals”.

Trigger warning: includes clownfish.
Image Clownfish. Some dominant males can change their biological sex to female. We know they have switched sex because they change their gonad tissue, stop making sperm and start making eggs.

Two sexes? Yes.
Sex change? Yes.
Trans Nemo? He’s way down the pecking order of “dominant male”. Doubtful clownfish have gender identities.Image
Mar 21 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Here, we argue:

1. We disagree with the assertion that the IOC framework [fairness, inclusion, and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations] is consistent with existing scientific/medical evidence and question its recommendations for implementation. 2. Testosterone exposure in male development:
--> physical differences between male and female bodies
--> male athletic advantage in muscle mass, strength and power, and endurance and aerobic capacity.

The IOC's “no presumption of advantage” principle disregards this reality.
Feb 21 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
You know that story about breast milk from a man being as good - BETTER - than that from a woman?

telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/1… You know it, the one informing policy in at least one NHS trust?

thetimes.co.uk/article/transg…
Jul 31, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Yo @neiltyson

What does “feeling 80% female” actually feel like?

Is it only 80% of your clitoris being sliced off in childhood? Maybe 80% probability of being kidnapped to warlords? You bleed through your knickers 4/5 periods? Only 80% of men try to control your fertility? Female people - women - are real human beings, my friend.

We aren’t a feeling, whether 100%, 80% or 0.01% of the time.

We are not 80% of a skirt, or 80% nurturing, or 80% good at fucking handwriting.
Jul 11, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Semenya does not have unusually high amounts of testosterone. Semenya has amounts of testosterone entirely congruent with being male. ⁦⁦

@SkyNews⁩ ⁦@SkySportsNews⁩
news.sky.com/story/olympic-… Here @SkyNews repeat one of the most pervasive lies in sport, and one that has held back honest (and admittedly often uncomfortable) discussion about male bodies with male advantage in female sport.
Jun 13, 2023 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
The argument that because males suppressing testosterone often have very low testosterone levels (duh, the drugs typically work), it must therefore be fair or just for those males to compete in female sports is painfully misguided.

Here’s why. Let’s take a thought experiment, starting with the current male 100m Olympic champion, Lamont Marcell Jacobs. He won gold in Tokyo in 9.8s. He’s not Usain Bolt speed, but Bolt is retired and probably eating chicken poppers on a beach right now. Image
Jun 5, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Women have, for time immemorial, sought abortions. If abortions are safe and legal, women seek safe and legal abortions. If abortions are not safe and legal, women seek unsafe and illegal abortions. For thousands of years, women have sought abortions. They have done so with an arsenal of ingested or inserted toxins, with the forceful wielding of sharp tools, with the blunt trauma of heavy tools, with dodgy internet pills.
May 4, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Revisiting a previous thread of mine on sexual dimorphism.

Sexual dimorphism: Systematic differences between the two sexes of a gonochoristic species of a physical characteristic (or set thereof), not including reproductive anatomy. Some sexually dimorphic characteristics are non-overlapping (e.g. green duck heads) while some are very overlapping (e.g. human height). The extent of overlapping observation/measurement is irrelevant. The only requirement is a robustly-detectable difference between sexes. Image
May 2, 2023 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
Like others, I have been eagerly awaiting the publication of Professor Fuentes’ much promised piece on sex and binaries.

However, @hoovlet appears to have linked to an article that is no more than five year old, Facebook-level attempts at gotchas.

I’m a bit confused. Fuentes: “There are those, politicians, pundits and even a few scientists, who maintain that whether our bodies make ova or sperm are all we need to know about sex.”

Correction: whether our bodies make ova or sperm are all we need to know to identify which sex we are.
Apr 1, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Denying that there are two sexes is the equivalent of flat earthing. It’s so laughably nonsense that we need to look deeper into the why. Why are apparently sensible people (not Monty) saying that sex is: not noticeable, not relevant, not real?
Mar 23, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I am getting a lot of love right now (and that’s lovely). There is no single person who Hadoukened this. It took a lot of work from many people, and it’s great news.

But let me tell you about Cathy, @cathydevine56, whose work with female athletes has become so important. Cathy has tirelessly sought and surveyed female athletes, diligently collated data and published them in rocking journals.