Transgender man wins women's 100 yd and 400 yd freestyle races.

It’s perfectly reasonable to posit lots of things, using science to address these hypotheses is precisely what it’s used for, but when there is insufficient evidence to support a hypothesis, claiming that there is evidence that not only supports the hypothesis, but that the evidence is so overwhelming that it swamps everything else, is taking liberties in order to support policies which it was already argued were necessary to maintain fairness in women’s sports. Same arguments are still being made based upon ethnicity too, but those kinds of advantages among athletes are overlooked, whereas the idea of portraying transgender athletes as a threat to women is a much easier bogeyman to sell to the public.

I don’t know that it’s true most trans people are on hormones these days either tbh as the waiting lists for just for diagnosis through the NHS run into thousands, just in the UK alone, and those are only the people who are willing to be diagnosed (some people aren’t only self-diagnosing, they’re self-medicating with hormones bought online). No idea how many people among the population in any country could actually be transgender, but it’s a fair assumption to suggest that there are more people who are transgender in some countries than others, and with cultural variations and values and so on, they may not even recognise or acknowledge the concept of gender or what it means to be transgender from a Western perspective.

In India for example, the concept existed for millennia in literature and religion, but it was only in recent times that the idea of people who don’t fit in with traditional ideas about the roles of men and women in society, being recognised in law and given protection, became a national issue, and a Supreme Court decision meant the introduction of similar legislation to Ireland… sort of -

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/04/784398783/india-just-passed-a-trans-rights-bill-why-are-trans-activists-protesting-it?t=1648025183368

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/05/indias-transgender-rights-law-isnt-worth-celebrating

You can see now why the IOC were keen to wash their hands of any association with having to determine an actual policy, and instead chose to issue guidelines instead to national organisations and federations, let them look like they’re not being inclusive and fluffy and all the rest of it.

I’ve no doubt you know how science works, no need to be snippy about it. I’ve no doubt you also know how medical ethics and laws and national selection committees work too in order to arrive at a favourable outcome in terms of who should join a team to participate in international sports competitions, as opposed to the idea that the only criteria that is relevant is biology.

That’s why an athlete studying an academic discipline in the US loses out on a position on the team because they fail to meet the qualifying time in the heats, but they can still compete in the Olympics and represent their country, Hungary in this case, whereas the athlete who is born in the US, is excluded from competing in the US, and cannot represent another country at the Olympics, effectively ending their athletic career before it’s even begun.

Science can’t determine fairness in sports, which is the crux of the issue for ALL athletes, not just current athletes, but those young athletes who will hope to participate in competitions and represent their countries in the future. In America, being regarded in sports as an All-American athlete is kind of a big deal.

Btw the proposition is that a different set of rules applies to a particular subset of athletes, while there is insufficient scientific evidence to support what is regarded as discrimination which is unfair to them and a disproportionate measure which inhibits their participation in sports. Science doesn’t decide a person’s gender either. For that the only thing that is relevant is the law, and upholding their rights to autonomy and to participate in sports.