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

Can we not select/bold just the bit we want to respond to now?

In this case, it's this bit: "There are few transgender people" (therefore it doesn't matter that they are taking women's places in sport) - I disagree strongly that girls don't matter.

There may be very few (although recent reports disagree on that, as far as young people are concerned anyway https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/trans-schools-students-research-england-b2025994.html

and https://www.economist.com/britain/2017/03/04/how-british-schools-are-adapting-to-growing-numbers-of-transgender-pupils) but more importantly, every place a transidentified male takes in a women's category is not only a place taken from a biological woman but it also has a chilling effect on girls at all levels when considering sport at all.

Girls not practising sports other than obligatory PE classes is already a problem. No need to create an atmosphere where even the naturally talented ones feel they can't possibly ever be any good anyway.

"it is the release of hormones in the womb that triggers a fetus 'becoming' male" - I seem to have missed this gem. Could you clarify please? Why the scare quotes around 'becoming': are you suggesting that it's something that the female body does, possibly at random, or perhaps depending on an algorithm of male:female ratios in the population that makes an asexual fetus 'become' male?

Only you'll have to pardon my female ignorance, merely having gestated and given birth to a number of babies, which of course makes me less of an expert on the matter than a man such as yourself (guessing here, but pretty sure all the same, going by the utter certainty with which you proffer such nonsense) but I foolishly thought it was the fetus itself, specifically those with a Y chromosome, that triggers the development of the testes within the fetus - and that these then produce testosterone. Since that's what testes do.

So the (male) fetus itself produces the testosterone, not the womb (as an aside, I see the old "disappearing woman" trope strikes again here). That would be amazing if the woman could produce enough testosterone to "make" the baby into a male without suffering masculinising effects herself. At least for those of us who think that biology is determined by our cells, and not something within our minds. Still, I think you'll find that's ALL actual scientists.

Perhaps you'll be able to point out where I've got that wrong though. 😉

So you agree that it’s the male fetus that produces the testosterone then, nd not the womb - or rather the woman - that makes it “become” male?

As for snarky comments Im only replying in the same tone as you. Except mine are factually correct whereas yours…..

There wasn’t previously any category for biological women in sport distinct from biological men though. That was the whole point of why the previous chromosome sex testing was discontinued, while the female athletes were determined to be female. It didn’t deter other women from competing, and they weren’t excluded from competition -

Use in Olympic screening

One of the most controversial uses of this discovery was as a means for gender verification at the Olympic Games, under a system implemented by the International Olympic Committeein 1992. Athletes with an SRY gene were not permitted to participate as females, although all athletes in whom this was "detected" at the 1996 Summer Olympics were ruled false positives and were not disqualified. Specifically, eight female participants (out of a total of 3387) at these games were found to have the SRY gene. However, after further investigation of their genetic conditions, all these athletes were verified as female and allowed to compete. These athletes were found to have either partial or full androgen insensitivity, despite having an SRY gene, making them phenotypically female. In the late 1990s, a number of relevant professional societies in United States called for elimination of gender verification, including the American Medical Association, stating that the method used was uncertain and ineffective. Chromosomal screening was eliminated as of the 2000 Summer Olympics, but this was later followed by other forms of testing based on hormone levels.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testis-determining_factor

I think that also what’s meant by suggesting that the foetus develops as female and would develop female sex characteristics without the interaction caused by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome, providing it hasn’t mutated or doesn’t get activated.

But it doesnt. It produces testosterone because it is already male.

Your way of expressing that was frankly bizarre and misleading, which looked to me as though you do you didn't actually know. Turns out you were being deliberately misleading. Funny that you think that's better, but okay.

There was though, as far back as 1926. But it’s true too, it’s also fair to say that most people didn’t make the same distinction there is now between sex and gender - the understanding of both concepts has evolved in the meantime -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weston_(athlete)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdeněk_Koubek

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema

Nobody needed to qualify it with the word biological any more than is there is any need to qualify it with the word biological now. The understanding that it refers to women as a social class distinct from men is still the same. No need to complicate anything unnecessarily, and I doubt it will be complicated unnecessarily either when the rules already reflect the idea that they refer to transgender females.

This idea that womens sports will go into terminal decline on the basis that transgender women aren’t prohibited from participating just hasn’t been borne out by evidence from history, and a couple of women threatening to protest is hardly an indication that women’s sports are suddenly in decline as if it’s happening already.

The embryo doesn’t produce testosterone because it’s already male. That’s kinda the whole point of the interaction between genetics and hormones which determine the sex of the foetus. ‘Foetus’ referring to the stage of human development between 8 weeks and birth. Females still produce testosterone too, but testosterone is known as the male hormone, even though both males and females produce testosterone and oestrogen.

That’s why what’s misleading is to refer to females with disorders of sex development as males as determined by the idea that they have a Y chromosome. It’s why the chromosome sex testing was abandoned by the Olympics committee as unreliable - it was detecting an inordinate amount of women with Y chromosome who were previously unaware of the fact, and only became aware of it after sex testing -

No governing body has so tenaciously tried to determine who counts as a woman for the purpose of sports as the I.A.A.F. and the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.). Those two influential organizations have spent a half-century vigorously policing gender boundaries. Their rationale for decades was to catch male athletes masquerading as women, though they never once discovered an impostor. Instead, the athletes snagged in those efforts have been intersex women — scores of them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html

It doesn’t matter what I think personally, because biology doesn’t have the capacity to care for mine or anyone else’s feelings about our observations of phenomena in nature, but no, I don’t think the embryo is either male or female before the genes which determine sex are actually activated.

It’s precisely for this reason that there IS such controversy about the ethics of PGD testing for intersex conditions and the effects of being able to detect these, and a whole host of other genetic conditions, before implantation -

In 2015, the Council of Europe published an Issue Paper on Human rights and intersex people, remarking on a right to life:

Intersex people's right to life can be violated in discriminatory "sex selection" and "preimplantation genetic diagnosis, other forms of testing, and selection for particular characteristics". Such de-selection or selective abortions are incompatible with ethics and human rights standards due to the discrimination perpetrated against intersex people on the basis of their sex characteristics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diagnosis_of_intersex

The whole ethics of PGD testing are still hotly debated because of the potential issues which arise as a consequence of being able to determine and select the sex of the foetus. It doesn’t play out in women’s favour in societies where males are of greater value in those societies.

Ahh sure you might as well, seeing as you’re going to continue to misrepresent what I actually said to suit your own narrative.

For what it’s worth, I haven’t given birth either. It’s probably worth mentioning as you appear to imagine that’s also a relevant criteria as to whether or not anyone’s opinion is either valid or invalid depending upon your own entirely subjective standards (though it appears to be more based upon whether or not they agree with your already held beliefs which are based upon sociology, not biology).

I’ve already addressed the distinction between genetic and phenotypical sex in my previous post, no need to go over the same thing again.

There’s no meandering linguistic maze run in acknowledging that nature doesn’t have the capacity to care for classifications as determined by humans, and certainly you won’t ever find me arguing that humans have the ability to change sex at will, because that would just be silly 😒

I might as well add that if anything should be considered meandering, it’s the attempts by some people falling over themselves to invent new terms such as “biological males”, “biological females”, “trans identified males”, “trans identified females”, in an attempt to distinguish between men and women according to their own personal beliefs. I prefer to keep things simple and just say men and women, but for the purposes of being reasonable, I’ll make accommodations for people who don’t refer to people using basic terminology.

Ahh there’s no need to be so dramatic - nobody is telling anyone, effectively or otherwise, to get rid of female sports. Competitions, associations and organisations which provide for and promote opportunities for women, men and children will always exist and aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

But in the spirit of funny stories about unfair advantages in sports, one of the better and more recent ones was the whole furore over running shoes which some athletes claimed gave their wearers an unfair advantage in competition -

Usain Bolt said that advances in spike technology that could help wipe out his world records are laughable and that the new shoes also give an unfair advantage over any athletes not wearing them.

After athletes ripped through the record books in distance running with carbon-plated, thick-soled shoes, the technology has now moved into sprint spikes, where – although there is less time in a race for the advantage to make an impact – it is still enough to make a difference.

…

Weighing in on developments in shoe technology, World Athletics said: “The current regulations [July 2020] were designed to give certainty to athletes preparing for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, to preserve the integrity of elite competition and to limit technological development to the current level until after the Olympic Games in Tokyo, across all events.”

It said a working group on shoes aimed to set parameters to achieve a balance between innovation, competitive advantage and availability of the products.

Performing in the Nike Air Zoom Maxfly, Jamaican two-time Olympic gold medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce clocked the fastest 100m time in 33 years on 5 June in Kingston with a career-best 10.63s.

Only American world record holder Florence Griffith-Joyner has gone faster – 10.49s in Indianapolis in 1988. But Fraser-Pryce was unwilling to discount the work she has done to become the fastest woman alive, even as she trains and competes in the spike.

“You can give the spikes to somebody else and they’ll probably not do the same things that I’ve done, so I’m not counting myself out of the hard work me and my coach has put in,” the four-time 100m world champion said.

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/20/weird-and-unfair-usain-bolt-criticises-advances-in-spike-technology

There are no rules in nature plodder, but apart from that, all the rest of it sounds perfectly reasonable, as long as you’re prepared to ignore the fact that it changes nothing and still permits treating athletes unfairly on the basis of either gender or sex. That might fly in countries where they have a very different concept of human rights than we do here in the West, where it wouldn’t matter what the world sees as fair or unfair, but what matters is what is determined as fair or unfair by the courts in accordance with law.

Sports organisations have had nearly 100 years to acknowledge that they needed to change their rules to actually be fair to everyone and promote the sports and competitions and so on, but they chose instead to try and exclude people for as long as they could possibly get away with it, and worse - they chose to exclude people knowing what they knew long before it was generally known about chromosomes and gender identity and all that stuff, ensuring that people wouldn’t be given a fair opportunity. The whole sex verification testing is done in anything BUT good faith, it’s done on the presumption that it’s capable of confirming suspicions that athletes are cheating.

All your suggestions are doing is upholding that same presumption that athletes intention is to cheat, and innocent athletes must be punished by being excluded in order to maintain the impression at least, of fairness, integrity, competition etc in women’s sports. I’m not a woman, but I’m still capable of smelling BS off that one! 😂

And if everyone has the same opportunities to participate in the Olympics, then of course that applies to everyone, as that is everyone exercising their right to participate in sports, as opposed to the idea of some people having the opportunity to exercise a right, and other people being denied the opportunity to exercise the same right, because of claims of needing to maintain competition and fairness and all the rest of it, by regarding women as if though they are nothing more than congenitally defective men.

I completely understand that it would be infinitely more convenient for you if you could ignore the relationship between gender incongruence and intersex conditions as though people with these conditions actually should be regarded separately in terms of the discrimination and prejudice against them that they share in common… but that’s just not going to happen.

The discrimination faced by both groups is based upon all sorts of negative assumptions based upon innate characteristics which are part of their unique makeup as human beings.

Do I personally think genetic males should compete against genetic females? Not if they don’t actually want to. I’d apply the same standards to genetic females - they don’t have to compete against genetic males if they don’t want to either. To those cyclists and runners who thought to protest unless they could decide who should be permitted to compete against them, they’re more than welcome to exclude themselves from competition if they want to, there’s no shortage of women who will be eligible to participate in their place and will be only too happy to be given the opportunity to do so.

Do I think transwomen and athletes with DSD retain any advantages after puberty? No idea, I don’t know them all personally, I’m sure there are no shortage of disadvantages either in finding themselves in the position they do, but there are organisations like the International Federation of Sports Medicine are interested in collecting more data to determine whether the exclusion of transwomen and female athletes with DSD from women’s sports is actually justifiable based upon scientific evidence and data, or should these characteristics be regarded as advantages unique to each individual athlete.

There simply isn’t enough data or scientific evidence available to determine anything one way or the other about integrating transwomen and female athletes with DSD into Elite competition -

Conclusions

Ultimately, even the most evidence-based policies will not eliminate differences in sporting performance between athletes in the elite category of female sports. However, any advantage held by a person belonging to an athlete in this category could be considered part of the athlete’s unique individuality. Whatever the solution, there is an urgent need for a well-coordinated multidisciplinary international research program, backed by appropriate research grant funding and athlete participation, to generate the evidence to inform future objective policy decisions. Such decisions should be based on the best available scientific evidence from the best available scientific practice and the decisions made will also require a firm political resolve to fairly integrate transwomen and DSD women athletes into elite female sport.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-021-01451-8

Surely there's a stronger argument for athletes with DSDs to participate as disabled athletes than to change the whole definition of female sport on the basis that some athletes with congenital issues don't fit easily into the traditional system for able bodied athletes?