Biological males in women's sport

Gruffalux

suicide_circus wrote: »

Hole of colour

Visionary.
Your idea of a LOT FANCIER and mine may never match. :P

iguana

Gruffalox wrote: »

Fascinating.

It is pretty interesting. Afaik, there has been quite a bit of evidence emerging over the last few decades that women are less susceptible to muscle fatigue during exercise than men. Possibly because we use less power to begin with, so at extreme levels of endurance, we can just keep going for longer. So once you get into ultra-endurance sports, the longer the distance, the advantage men have starts to wane and the playing field levels. When the distances are even longer, the scales seem to tip and women appear to maybe have an advantage. I think it's something that will become clearer over the coming decades as more women take part in what is still a fairly male dominated field of sport.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

iguana wrote: »

It is pretty interesting. Afaik, there has been quite a bit of evidence emerging over the last few decades that women are less susceptible to muscle fatigue during exercise than men. Possibly because we use less power to begin with, so at extreme levels of endurance, we can just keep going for longer. So once you get into ultra-endurance sports, the longer the distance, the advantage men have starts to wane and the playing field levels. When the distances are even longer, the scales seem to tip and women appear to maybe have an advantage. I think it's something that will become clearer over the coming decades as more women take part in what is still a fairly male dominated field of sport.

The extra fat might help too. A lean woman will still carry more fat than a lean man.

astrofool

Dante7 wrote: »

Some gymnastic events.

The Men's gymnastics have different marking schemes and have a much higher routine difficulty than female. A female poster who does gymnastics filled everyone in when Outlaw_Pete suggested Simone Biles could effectively compete in the men's competition.

It's also essentially:
Open category (anyone can compete in this, but it's generally men)
Limited category for able-bodied females (because they aren't competitive with men, but could compete against the men)
Disabled categories (paralympics which have various degress of disability, but still have arguments over the "natural height" of someone when replaced by prosthetics).

Then safety categories in most one on one combat, which can be done by weight and gender, to avoid people dying too often (rugby looks like adopting this).

Enduro

iguana wrote: »

It is pretty interesting. Afaik, there has been quite a bit of evidence emerging over the last few decades that women are less susceptible to muscle fatigue during exercise than men. Possibly because we use less power to begin with, so at extreme levels of endurance, we can just keep going for longer. So once you get into ultra-endurance sports, the longer the distance, the advantage men have starts to wane and the playing field levels. When the distances are even longer, the scales seem to tip and women appear to maybe have an advantage. I think it's something that will become clearer over the coming decades as more women take part in what is still a fairly male dominated field of sport.

It's a nice theory, but its just wrong. The reason that a few extremely talented female athletes sometimes win ultra endurance events outright is due to field depth, not inherent advantages in female physiology. It actually makes those wins even more impressive. I speak as the male athlete who came second in one of the most high profile examples in recent years, and whose record was smashed in the process. It was a female who is one of the top athletes in the world at her sport beating a male hundreds of places down the list (i.e. not world class).

Also, only very few people make it to the start of these events, as opposed to something like sprinting which nearly everyone on the planet will try at some point. So the chances of someone with genuine world class ability getting to these events is much smaller. Hence when one does, they can achieve outlier results as a result of the depth of the field they are competing in.

iguana

Enduro wrote: »

It's a nice theory, but its just wrong.

The thing is, it's not something we know yet. As I said it could be a case of outliers in a very niche field. But it may be more than just that. It's been theorised for a couple of decades that over massive distances women may level up with men and possibly even outperform them due to our greater distribution of twitch muscle fibre. Your theory doesn't quite hold true either. Jasmin Paris was expressing breastmilk at rest stops when she won the spine race. As someone who has had many years of her breasts filling up with milk and the utter physical discomfort and just utter heaviness that causes, I can pretty much guarantee that woman was not capable of her athletic best running over fells as she neared each point where she had to express. (Though possibly as the mother of a breastfed baby she was just significantly more capable at the time of functioning well on less sleep, which was a major factor in her victory.) Katie Wright is a junior doctor, not a professional athlete but she still beat 40 men at the Riverhead Backyard ReLaps Ultra-marathon.

Gruffalux

iguana wrote: »

The thing is, it's not something we know yet. As I said it could be a case of outliers in a very niche field. But it may be more than just that. It's been theorised for a couple of decades that over massive distances women may level up with men and possibly even outperform them due to our greater distribution of twitch muscle fibre. Your theory doesn't quite hold true either. Jasmin Paris was expressing breastmilk at rest stops when she won the spine race. As someone who has had many years of her breasts filling up with milk and the utter physical discomfort and just utter heaviness that causes, I can pretty much guarantee that woman was not capable of her athletic best running over fells as she neared each point where she had to express. (Though possibly as the mother of a breastfed baby she was just significantly more capable at the time of functioning well on less sleep, which was a major factor in her victory.) Katie Wright is a junior doctor, not a professional athlete but she still beat 40 men at the Riverhead Backyard ReLaps Ultra-marathon.

:eek::eek::eek:

That is simply incredible. I read up on her here - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/18/ultrarunner-jasmin-paris-montane-spine-race-winner-mens-record-express-milk

Enduro

iguana wrote: »

The thing is, it's not something we know yet. As I said it could be a case of outliers in a very niche field. But it may be more than just that. It's been theorised for a couple of decades that over massive distances women may level up with men and possibly even outperform them due to our greater distribution of twitch muscle fibre. Your theory doesn't quite hold true either. Jasmin Paris was expressing breastmilk at rest stops when she won the spine race. As someone who has had many years of her breasts filling up with milk and the utter physical discomfort and just utter heaviness that causes, I can pretty much guarantee that woman was not capable of her athletic best running over fells as she neared each point where she had to express. (Though possibly as the mother of a breastfed baby she was just significantly more capable at the time of functioning well on less sleep, which was a major factor in her victory.) Katie Wright is a junior doctor, not a professional athlete but she still beat 40 men at the Riverhead Backyard ReLaps Ultra-marathon.

Well no, it's not actually that unkown and mysterious. There are plenty of us out there competing after all, so we have a lot to go on. Theorising is not necessay when there is actual data and experience to go on.

For example, to my mind the best current female ultra endurance athlete would be Camille Herron. And a useful thing about Camille's top achievements (multipe world championship wins, world records etc) is that they can be directly measured against equivalent male performances, both current and historic. Indeed, she tends to do that herself, and set her targets benchmarked against the best male performances, but -10% (or something like that, I can't remember exactly). She can generally hit those targets, smashing records along the way. But the same fundamental male/female difference is there when measured like for like. Best ever male versus best ever female. The gap is still pretty much the same.

Similarly on the most competitive ultra endurance races around (UTMB for example) where you get the deepest fields, you still get the usual expected male-female gaps, when you compare the best against the best.

Jasmin's performance was amazing. Truely world class. And that's exactly the point. Being the second place runner to her and previous record holder I know the difference in standard more than anyone else. There is no mystery there. In fact in my pre-race blog I actually predicted she could win.

On the non-physical aspects of ultra endurance running there is definitely a much more level playing field. Sleep deprevation, and how to deal with it, plays a big part in multi-day racing. I've never seen a male handle it better than Jasmin, and only one or two who would be her equal in that regard.

(Obviously I have no idea about the physcial impact of needing to express, so I wouldn't even begin to theorise. Again, for me it just makes her performance all the more impressive.)

Katie Write is not a professional athlete, but then there are almost no professional athletes in the ultra endurance world, so really that's completely irrelevant. Were ANY of those 40 men she beat professonal athletes? BTW Maggie Gutterl has gone further than Katie and won the big race in the backyard world. The backyard formula is definitely an equaliser, since speed and power don't play any real role in determining who survives. Bringing it back on topic (Yay), that's one format where everyone competes in the same category irrespective of gender. So there should be no issue with biological males competing as females, since gender is ignored anyway.

Gruffalux

^^congratulations on your own performance in the race. Incredible thing to do.

iguana

Enduro wrote: »

Well no, it's not actually that unkown and mysterious. There are plenty of us out there competing after all, so we have a lot to go on. Theorising is not necessay when there is actual data and experience to go on.

I'm not saying that you are wrong but often in science what we see in the early instances of a fairly new phenomenon isn't all there is to it. It's so unusual in almost all sports for even professional, top-level female athletes to outperform and win against even moderately talented males that, when women start beating men on a number of occasions in a relatively new field that it is actually something that warrants further study.

As to the subject of the thread. It's certainly a field of sport where there are no issues currently with anybody of any sex or gender identity competing together. Because women stand a chance of winning so it's apparently fair. If it ever did turn out that women have a biological advantage, then it would actually be fair for men's competition to have a protected status, to allow men to compete for male titles and records. It may never be necessary as women having a biological advantage is far from proven and may not be reality. But if it did turn out to be something real, then the same standard that should apply to nearly all women's sports, should also apply to men's.

I'm also curious as you say Paris shattered your record. Are you still recorded as the male record holder? Afaik, records for sports are generally recorded as male and female, rather than best and female.

Dave0301

From BBC Sport in relation to World Rugby and trans players

Twelve months into her gender transition, Grace McKenzie was recruited out of the blue to join the Golden Gate Women's rugby club in San Francisco.

McKenzie says playing rugby has given her a platform to "just focus on living and enjoying myself" - but a new proposal to ban trans women from women's contact rugby could bring that to an end.

"There's a lot of rhetoric out there about where trans people fit into sports overall, and it really makes you question whether you have a place, especially as a trans woman playing women's sports," McKenzie told BBC Sport.

"I was really certain that team sports were out of the question for me until rugby found me."

McKenzie, 26, had never picked up a rugby ball before until she was approached at a tech conference, but was soon hooked and says that for the first time in a long time, felt that she belonged. As she embarked on this new stage of her life, the club also provided a safe space from transphobia.

"It's very taxing to go through that on a daily basis - you begin to live in anticipation and fear of the sorts of things happening," she said.

"Whereas in rugby, especially when I'm on the field, those things go away. I get to forget about that for a least a short amount of time."

Full article here

On the face of it, this is very reasonable and it would be hurtful to exclude this player from her club and team.

What it doesn't delve into though is if she has the potential to put other players at a greater risk of injury. That is before the consideration of inherent physical advantages that may occur due to the timing of transition.

The final decision taken by World Rugby looks like it may well be setting up to determine a precedent, whichever way it falls.

Gruffalux

Dave0301 wrote: »

From BBC Sport in relation to World Rugby and trans players



Full article here

On the face of it, this is very reasonable and it would be hurtful to exclude this player from her club and team.

What it doesn't delve into though is if she has the potential to put other players at a greater risk of injury. That is before the consideration of inherent physical advantages that may occur due to the timing of transition.

The final decision taken by World Rugby looks like it may well be setting up to determine a precedent, whichever way it falls.

Yes, on the face of it the possibility of being excluded looks mean to Gracie. But even though Gracie is a slighter looking build than the transwomen in other contact sports they still have had the benefit of male puberty, bone strength, testosterone, higher blood oxygenation capacity, Larger lungs, pelvic and hip bone differences etc. There is no mention of what hormone constraints Gracie has experienced. It would take a long while of estrogen to undo the testosterone benefit. There is something a bit disingenuous about an article with a wee person being disadvantaged when on average males are about 15 - 20% bigger than women and in a Rugby setting a lot of the male bodies are ..well let's just say beefy. :P

mohawk

Dave0301 wrote: »

From BBC Sport in relation to World Rugby and trans players



Full article here

On the face of it, this is very reasonable and it would be hurtful to exclude this player from her club and team.

What it doesn't delve into though is if she has the potential to put other players at a greater risk of injury. That is before the consideration of inherent physical advantages that may occur due to the timing of transition.

The final decision taken by World Rugby looks like it may well be setting up to determine a precedent, whichever way it falls.

The leaked report states there is an increased injury risk to women playing against transwomen. So if world rugby decides not to ban transwomen in women’s rugby and a woman is left with a horrific injury following a tackle from a trans woman then they have zero defence. They would very likely be open to being sued.

The way the article is written it does seem unfair on Grace but you can’t defend transwomen in contact sports against women. Testosterone alone is not responsible for all the differences between men and women.

jam_mac_jam

Gruffalox wrote: »

Yes, on the face of it the possibility of being excluded looks mean to Gracie. But even though Gracie is a slighter looking build than the transwomen in other contact sports they still have had the benefit of male puberty, bone strength, testosterone, higher blood oxygenation capacity, Larger lungs, pelvic and hip bone differences etc. There is no mention of what hormone constraints Gracie has experienced. It would take a long while of estrogen to undo the testosterone benefit. There is something a bit disingenuous about an article with a wee person being disadvantaged when on average males are about 15 - 20% bigger than women and in a Rugby setting a lot of the male bodies are ..well let's just say beefy. :P

It would be hurtful to that particular player however that needs to be balanced against physical harm to women playing in contact sports.

Gruffalux

Gruffalox wrote: »

It is because of post structuralist quantum gender black holes. Simple.

( Is black hole okay to say anymore? Anyway I think it is time they came up with something a lot fancier to call a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it. )

suicide_circus wrote: »

Hole of colour

NASA reads Boards :eek:

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1291138415342354433?s=20

suicide_circus

Gruffalox wrote: »

NASA reads Boards :eek:

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1291138415342354433?s=20

Profoundly depressing

Quantum Erasure

is this April Fools...??

As an initial step, NASA will no longer refer to planetary nebula NGC 2392, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star that is blowing off its outer layers at the end of its life, as the “Eskimo Nebula.” “Eskimo” is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the indigenous people of Arctic regions. Most official documents have moved away from its use. NASA will also no longer use the term “Siamese Twins Galaxy” to refer to NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, a pair of spiral galaxies found in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Moving forward, NASA will use only the official, International Astronomical Union designations in cases where nicknames are inappropriate

“I support our ongoing reevaluation of the names by which we refer to astronomical objects,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters, Washington. “Our goal is that all names are aligned with our values of diversity and inclusion, and we’ll proactively work with the scientific community to help ensure that. Science is for everyone, and every facet of our work needs to reflect that value.”

Nicknames are often more approachable and public-friendly than official names for cosmic objects, such as Barnard 33, whose nickname "the Horsehead Nebula" invokes its appearance. But often seemingly innocuous nicknames can be harmful and detract from the science.

Horsehead Nebula? that's got ties to the mafia, that's got to go...

da_miser

Is no one looking forward to this?
I cant wait to see the carnage this will bring to womens sports, the controversy and all round śhit show it will be, will make must see TV.

c.p.w.g.w

suicide_circus wrote: »

Profoundly depressing

So it will now me...

Coloured Hole

Coloured Matter

Enduro

iguana wrote: »

I'm not saying that you are wrong but often in science what we see in the early instances of a fairly new phenomenon isn't all there is to it. It's so unusual in almost all sports for even professional, top-level female athletes to outperform and win against even moderately talented males that, when women start beating men on a number of occasions in a relatively new field that it is actually something that warrants further study.

As to the subject of the thread. It's certainly a field of sport where there are no issues currently with anybody of any sex or gender identity competing together. Because women stand a chance of winning so it's apparently fair. If it ever did turn out that women have a biological advantage, then it would actually be fair for men's competition to have a protected status, to allow men to compete for male titles and records. It may never be necessary as women having a biological advantage is far from proven and may not be reality. But if it did turn out to be something real, then the same standard that should apply to nearly all women's sports, should also apply to men's.

I'm also curious as you say Paris shattered your record. Are you still recorded as the male record holder? Afaik, records for sports are generally recorded as male and female, rather than best and female.

In reality its not early either. Just most people are not aware of the history, especially events like "pedestrianism" back in the 19th century. This is a good site for history if you're interested. I definitely would like to see more scientific investigation (unfortunately most sports science/medicine tends to follow the money and concentrate on ball sports etc, whereas I think there is more interesting things to be discovered at the extremes).

I agree with everything you say on the categories if the advantage were to go the other way. I'd actually love there to be a sport where females would have a natural advantage over males, for a change.

In the context of the thread it would be great to see trans/intersex athletes competing at the highest levels in sports where gender makes damn all difference, of which there are quite a few (equestrian sports, pure skill sports such as darts, snooker,, curling etc etc). Nobody would lose out.

I'm not recorded as the men's record holder since my time got beaten by John Kelly (Most recent Barkley Marathons finisher) in January. But to really answer your question, yeah I was recorded as the male record holder (and male category winner of the race the year Jasmin won overall). I used to explain that I was the record holder in the weaker sex division

It is one of the great things about athletics/running in general that the male and female categories for the most part get equal recognition in almost every respect, even mainstream media, which is rare. Possibly that's why athletics has been at the forefront of the whole trans/intersex debate for the most part.

Bonniedog

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

is this April Fools...??



Horsehead Nebula? that's got ties to the mafia, that's got to go...

Black hole should become "white privileged hole."

Gruffalux

This is from astronomy.com. It is funny to read while "woke screening"....


"About 2,700 light-years away from Earth, an incredibly rare event is occurring: a white dwarf and brown dwarf are closely orbiting each other in less than an hour and a half.



The white dwarf, which scientists are calling WD 1202-024, was discovered in 2006. WD 1202 became a white dwarf about 50 million years ago when it ran out of usable hydrogen in its core. When a study showed WD 1202 consistently changing in brightness, astronomers assumed it was a variable star. While studying what caused the change in brightness, astronomers were surprised to find that it’s actually caused by a companion brown dwarf.



The pair is only separated by about 192,625 miles (310,000 kilometers), less than the distance between the Moon and Earth. The white dwarf’s gravity is so strong that it's pulled the brown dwarf into an orbit with a period of 71 minutes. That means the two objects zip around each other at speeds of 62 miles per second (100 km/s).



The brown dwarf, like all brown dwarfs, is too big to be considered a planet, but not big enough to sustain nuclear fusion. This brown dwarf is 67 times the mass of Jupiter and about the equivalent diameter. Because white dwarfs are small husks of former stars, WD 1202-024 is much smaller than its progenitor star. The more comparable sizes of these two objects are what cause noticeable brightness changes when the brown dwarf passes between the white dwarf and observers on Earth.



WD 1202 burns at a scorching 40,352° Fahrenheit (22,000° Celsius), making it bright enough to see, while the brown dwarf is too faint to be spotted without the help of its white dwarf companion.



Astronomers believe the brown dwarf was inside WD1202 about 50 million years ago when WD 1202 expanded to become a red giant, becoming bigger than the brown dwarf’s orbital distance and engulfing the entire brown dwarf. But the brown dwarf survived because the density of the gas in the red giant’s outer layers dropped while it expanded, saving the brown dwarf from becoming too hot.



Today, the brown dwarf is orbiting so closely to WD 1202 that it’s slowly getting drawn into its host star. Astronomers believe in about 250 million years the brown dwarf will get so close that the white dwarf’s gravity will draw material from the brown dwarf and eventually flare up as the material just above its surface explodes.



During this explosion, the entire system will flare brighter before cooling and dimming again, to repeat all over again in years to come......"

Reg'stoy

c.p.w.g.w wrote: »

So it will now me...

Coloured Hole

Coloured Matter

I love how people get outraged at the possible words that will be used because some people get outraged at words.

As for 'biological men' in women's sports is there just a wee bit of, I'd rather see Anna Kournikova lose (again) then watch someone I feel uncomfortable about.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Reg'stoy wrote: »

I love how people get outraged at the possible words that will be used because some people get outraged at words.

As for 'biological men' in women's sports is there just a wee bit of, I'd rather see Anna Kournikova lose (again) then watch someone I feel uncomfortable about.

Considering most female athletes are nowhere near as hot as Ms. Kournikova... no? Lots of female athletes aren’t remotely girly even.

Reg'stoy

Reg'stoy wrote: »

I love how people get outraged at the possible words that will be used because some people get outraged at words.

As for 'biological men' in women's sports is there just a wee bit of, I'd rather see Anna Kournikova lose (again) then watch someone I feel uncomfortable about.

I know. It's so silly. Imagine transwomen getting outraged that they aren't called women. Silly people eh? It's only words (and biology).

Limpy

We need more real mean to identify as not real women and beat the not real mean at athletics.

ingalway

https://twitter.com/wimpund4/status/1292397266553233408?s=20

ProfessorPlum

Missed this ruling from Swiss courts in Caster Semenya’s appeal against CAS.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/caster-semenya-loses-appeal-in-swiss-court-over-testosterone-regulations-in-female-athletes/a-54858747

Tough for her, but a fair ruling overall.

ExoPolitic

I think it is great, how men have found a way to dominate women in even their own sports leagues...

suicide_circus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ym42lV1ka8