Singletrack World Response to Nadine Dorries’ Comments on Trans Athletes

The science seems to me far from settled

In addition, as women have broken down barriers to participation, there are an increasing number of sporting instances where they are challenging – and sometimes beating – male counterparts, over the same courses.

Nonsense. It’s only in non-athletic sports (such as driving or darts) that women aren’t significantly disadvantaged. One may also add ultra-endurance events I would concede too.

For example, the fastest women’s 100m ever wouldn’t even qualify for the men’s olympics.

The only science that isn’t settled is how to classify intersex edge cases and the residual advantage of male athletes who’re suppressing their testosterone.

@kelvin

The science of male advantage is settled, as you say, so there can be no ‘fairness/advantage’ argument to justify including trans women in female sport without settled science showing that male advantage can be undone.

I’m happy that there seems to be a creeping acceptance that it is complex and there’s more to understand on a case by case or sport by sport basis. Which will take time.

Next question then is that some seem to be favouring exclusion until case is made for inclusion rather than three other way round. I’ll concede there’s a weight of opinion, even if I don’t think there’s weight of evidence; is that correct? Better 99 guilty man goes free than one innocent man is hanged, etc.

Yes I think a principle of exclusion unless proven otherwise is necessary. Otherwise you have people winning medals and setting records because there hasn’t been sufficient accumulation of evidence to prove otherwise. It takes time and effort to accumulate evidence especially when the athletes are few in number.

No-one’s suggesting putting them in prison and there’s no presumption of innocence, it’s more of a precautionary thing IMO, or balance of judgement. I don’t see a problem with individual sports setting their own rules as they see fit, in fact a diversity of approaches is probably valuable as it allows for testing different systems.

I realise this probably sounds exclusionary and anti-trans for those on that journey. I’m absolutely fine with the idea of them presenting themselves how they like and taking part in more participatory and recreational level sports (I’ve mentioned parkrun which has a very clear position). But when you get to elite level, it cuts to the very essence of why we have women’s categories in the first place.

But the case for exclusion has already been made: it’s male advantage, and it’s why we have separate male and female sporting categories today.

Point missed though……The case for male vs female is pretty clear. My point is that the case for trans woman vs woman is not as clear. Meanwhile there’s vocal opinion to exclude the transwomen while we work out whether we should include them. Is that the right way round?

The 99 guilty vs 1 innocent; of course not literal and no-one’s going to prison, just whether being an inclusive society should be the presumption. ‘Beyond all reasonable doubt’ rather than ‘on balance’ should be the benchmark?

@riklegge – good luck. As I posted above, I’m lost at times but trying to do the best I can. I wish there was a clear what to do manual but there just isn’t. Like most of parenting.

If you want to over simplify … pr is not a constant, it varies depending on many variables… many of which will be different between sports, even once more is know about them, that’s what organising bodies are grappling with.

If pa is +ve, then a permormance advantage remains. This has been the basis of the science done so far by number of parties arguing both sides.

The science we have shows that pa does remain significantly +ve, so we know that inclusion would come at the cost of fairness.

I don’t yet hold that opinion, I believe it to be more nuanced, and may be sport by sport or individual by individual – maybe that’s where we disagree.

The Pippa York interview suggests that for her pa is negative. So why should she be excluded?

(OK it’s not a scientific study per se but I don’t have reason to doubt her knowing her numbers or lying about them, but I accept that evidence would need to be more robust. I also accept she doesn’t want to compete, it’s just an example)

Side note – how could we assess Pa fairly? Of course by regular pre and post testing and comparison, but how do you test robustly, when if someone was gaming the system to win medals, then wouldn’t be beyond gaming the ramp test or whatever as well.

It’s a very complex system and again for avoidance of doubt, I personally think fina have on balance got it right. I’m not arguing for inclusion above all, I am presenting a counter view because I too can see both sides and feel the debate is needed.

This is an interesting thread for context on sex

That’s excellent, thanks for posting.

I have never understood why people feel so fearful of and threatened by trans people.

Because it’s just a bloke wearing a dress in order to get all rapey and / or cheat at sports. Obvs.

It’s ridiculous when you think about it. Eddie Izzard kinda spoke about this forever ago, people used to beat him up for being TV and then go “he started it.” Like, ‘I’m going out for a fight, best get my heels and a nice frock.’

It’s HL Mencken who has a lot of other pithy one-liners.

Tar, I shall do some googling.

Thanks. Absolutely no chip in this game; as a FTM transition he’s on the side of the disadvantaged by virtue of being FAB. He’s also lost interest in sport although he was a talented ‘baller ‘BITD’. And I recognise this is complex and see both sides.

I do have a chip in the overall fairness game, and will stridently stand up to folks that are using the sport argument as a proxy for ‘not really women’, those that repeatedly misgender, and so on.

I can do both. I’m clever enough to detach one from the other

@kelvin well test levels certainly aren’t a good measure – the best women in the world wouldn’t even qualify if pitted against boys pre puberty.

Was that humour ? Hard to tell.

did you read the rest of my post? The bit about my sister being a rugby player?

Just incase…. for clarity I was talking about womens rugby the game not not the women who play rugby.

I have never understood why people feel so fearful of and threatened by trans people.

Neither fearful of nor threatened by trans people.

But if trans women are taken to be women then the concept of womanhood has no meaning and the concept of sex based rights disappears.

If you’re not ultimately looking at whether Trans Women athletes have an unfair advantage over other Women athletes, then it’s not “fairness” that is your real concern, is it.

Other women? What are they and how are they different to trans women?

Trans women are male and so the question of fairness arises as we ask if women have the right to sex based spaces.

Trans women are male

You really should read that Twitter link on the previous page.

Further reading in case you missed it first time around, this was our Rachel’s exit interview:

It hurts. It really bloody hurts.

You really should read that Twitter link on the previous page.

I did, and linked to a rebuttal. In brief, the thread is about those who are intersex, not (necessarily) trans.

Further reading in case you missed it first time around, this was our Rachel’s exit interview:

I did. I’m sorry she was made to feel this way. I would not knowingly misgender anyone, nor use hurtful terms to describe anyone, nor do I discuss womens rights issues as they relate to trans women except in relevant threads.

Thanks, but comparing women’s records against the US High school national championships is not backing up your assertion that

the best women in the world wouldn’t even qualify if pitted against boys pre puberty

I just did a quick google to find the competiton to check ages, the record holders and most competitive athletes are 18 and 19 years olds. Of course they are beating women, they are at that point post puberty young men. Not only that they are the best of a large country with a very well developed HS T&F system.

Here’s data on the age group world records. This is not representative necessarily of average times of future elite athletes, they are the best ever. There is a step change in these records at around 12/13/14 years old, which is I think reflective of the medals and times going to obviously supremely talented athletes but also those that have developed earlier.  Genuinely prepubescent males (10-11 year olds) are still frighteningly fast but 15% slower. The WR for a 10yo 100m is 12.06s, for an 11yo is 11.86s, for a 12yo is 11.22s. The 12yo would scrape into top 100 times vs women last year, the 11yo wouldn’t make top 1000.

Prepubescent males are not competitive against women. Post pubescent, even adolescent males can be, but that’s not in dispute.

sources:

http://age-records.125mb.com/

https://www.worldathletics.org/records/toplists/sprints/100-metres/outdoor/women/senior/2021?page=1

[Also quite interesting to me is dominance at earlier age groups and then disappear. Willie Washington dominated from 6-10 and then disappears…. could be several reasons, injury, lost interest, or developed later than his peers and stayed a kid?]

You’re changing the goal posts, your original claim was that:

the best women in the world wouldn’t even qualify if pitted against boys pre puberty.

Now you are trying to change that to pubescent.

also as ‘warped perspective’ I didn’t go back to 8 yo’s; I was perfectly even handed and said that around 12 was where the change comes; you counter with a 14 yo’s time.

I think my perspective is entirely unwarped on this, and you need to look at yours.

I’m late to this discussion so forgive me if my points have already been covered and I’ve missed it. I should also say as a heterosexual cisgender male who is a father to 3 heterosexual cisgender males I’ve not got any skin in this game.

Anyhow, my 1st point is that competitive sport is open to all because of exclusion and segregation. The categories based upon gender, age and competence are there to make sure that competitors are as closely matched as possible so that participation is interesting and engaging. Competitors would soon lose interest if there was no categorisation and therefore regardless of the % of their improvement in physical performance it made little to no difference to their results from one event to the next. Anyone who thinks that sport is segregated due to politics or a perceived fairness is wrong, it’s to keep it as competitive as possible so people come back for more.

I’m pleased to say that by reading this thread I’ve learnt more about transgender participation in sport than before I started. What is apparent to me though is that the science with regards to whether a transgender-woman has an advantage over cisgender-woman is not conclusive, yet the weight of evidence presented in this thread leans towards the potential for a transgender-woman to have an advantage. For me then the way forwards seems obvious, if a sport segregates competitors through gender then it’s the gender at birth that is used until the science arrives at a common consensus. Once the science is conclusive then that is what’s used instead.

Before I get shouted down remember that sports are segregated to keep them competitive, it’s got nothing to do with gender politics.

For me then the way forwards seems obvious, if a sport segregates competitors through gender then it’s the gender at birth that is used until the science arrives at a common consensus. Once the science is conclusive then that is what’s used instead.

If only it was that simple. I’m not convinced that sport is segregated to keep it competitive and science has already proven that not everyone is born as a girl body or a boy body.

rainper – yep I used the word gender where I should have used the word sex. By your response though you appear to have have understand the point I was making regardless of my grammatical error.

With regards to your point about self-id in grass roots competition I wasn’t 100% sure that happened but I presumed it did. At grass-roots level they also take your word that you aren’t using banned performance enhancing substances and that your stated competence level (Sport, Expert, Elite, etc) is also the truth. At grass-roots level they have to take a competitors word as they can’t afford to test it. In UCI and BC accredited races the same rules apply regardless of whether it’s a grass-roots or professional level race, it’s the testing to make sure that rules are adhered to that’s different.
I think it’s a bit disingenuous of you though to link junior and grass roots sport together. To give you some additional background about myself I was a quite good junior cyclist and raced at a high level (NPS, Worlds, etc) and occasionally got drug tested at events. At high-level junior sport there is testing to make sure that rules are adhered to. If there are rules in place with regards to transgender competitors then there will be testing at high-level junior races.

With regards to your point about self-id I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. Are you stating that because rule adherence can’t be tested at a grass-roots level that they shouldn’t be tested at an elite level?