There is a national debate regarding males who now identify as a female, who wish to participate in women’s sporting events under the guise of inclusiveness. Let us take a look at the normal policies of all sport governing bodies to see if this position holds water, or if it’s the equivalence of condoning Performance Enhancing Drug (PED) use.
PED use by athletes is well-established to be excluded from all athletic competitions because they provide an unfair advantage for those who use them. The significant changes in muscle size, strength, speed, oxygen-carrying capacity, etc. provide a significant performance advantage in any given sporting event, and those who have been determined to have used PED are immediately disqualified. There is no governing body that internationally allows their use. However, there is one PED that appears to be well accepted, regardless of the insanity of it, and that is the transgender “woman” competing in woman’s sports. Here is the irony of this issue, illustrating the hypocrisy of the sports governing bodies.
Let’s take any female athlete, and in the spirit of inclusiveness allow her to use a PED. This would:
- Increase the number of her fast twitch muscles, enabling her to increase her sprinting speed and explosiveness.
- Significantly decrease her body fat percentage.
- Increase her lower body muscle mass by 33%, and her upper body mass by 40%.
- Change her skeletal geometry so her arms and legs are longer, allowing for greater leverage, which is a benefit in most sports such as swimming, runner, cycling, etc.
- Increase her lung ventilation by 48% by increasing her lung size, larger airways and a greater number of alveoli.
- Increase her heart size, allowing for a greater stroke volume, increasing circulation and oxygenation.
- Increase her oxygen-carrying capacity to working muscles, by increasing her hemoglobin levels by 11%.
Now, anyone with any reasonable level of common sense would agree that this type of artificial advantage should be excluded from competition. If not, then in order to level the playing field, all other athletes competing in the same competition would be forced to use PEDs in order to be competitive. So, any sports governing body policy that allow for male athlete’s, under the guise of inclusiveness, to compete with women has just excluded any female athlete, which would be the majority of them, from competing on the same level, unless they decide to use PEDs, which would violate the PED rules of performance.
Insanity is a total loss of reality and results in unreasonable behavior and folly, which is exactly describes the tolerance of males who believe they are a female competing in female athletics. To call this inclusiveness, while simultaneously excluding PED use, is idiocy.
ICONS is the newly formed Independent Council on Women’s Sports. It has drafted a position statement on this issue, which can be found here. Some of the points it makes are as follows:
- National governing bodies of sports exist to create rules for their sport. These rules should, first and foremost, promote integrity of competition.
- Allowing transgender males to compete as females is blatantly discriminatory to females and destroys fairness in women’s sports.
- Policies which require 12 months of continuous testosterone suppression to blood levels not greater than 5 nmol/l, remains discriminatory. This level is twice the high-end of the normal range for females.
- Each person is born with a sex. Sex is genetic.
- Each cell in our body has a sex. While sex hormones such as testosterone and estrogen are well known to strongly influence the body, it is critical to appreciate that there are sex differences completely unrelated to hormones.
- Not every difference observed between male and female cells can be attributed to differences in exposure to sex hormones.
- Sex differences between males and females begin during development in the womb and continue throughout the lifespan.
- Sex differences which can impact athletic performance occur even prior to puberty.
- In the absence of pathology (namely disease or abnormal development), testosterone levels never overlap between males and females. In healthy males, 95% have circulating testosterone concentrations of 7.7 to 29.4 nmol/l. In healthy premenopausal females, 95% have circulating testosterone concentrations of 0 to 1.7 nmol/l. So, to suggest that having a male reduce his testosterone levels to 5nmol/l, or even 2nmol/l for 12 to 24 months levels the playing field is absurd.
- Male advantage is not erased even with over a decade of testosterone suppression.
- Individuals are born with genetics that cannot be changed. Sex is immutable.
- Medical therapy to suppress testosterone will impact the body but does not make a male into a female or level the athletic playing field. Puberty blocking medications in boys will limit the growth of the penis and scrotum, decrease the growth of facial and body hair, and prevent deepening of the voice. However, puberty blocking medications will not change the genetics of that individual or eliminate the physiologic advantages of being male which are unrelated to testosterone.
- The science is brutally clear: no amount or duration of testosterone suppression can erase the advantage of being born male.
- As concluded by an independent think tank group in the United Kingdom, “governing bodies cannot secure both transgender inclusion and fairness for female athletes within the female category.”
Stop the idiocy. Transgendered athletes need mental health counseling, not a green light to compete in women’s sports.
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