First transgender athlete June Eastwood to compete in women’s DI XC this fall, has pbs of 1:55/3:50/14:38

actually, the article you posted mostly agrees with me, but that doesn't change the fact that it is commercial webMD-like spam (according to ublock origin, it has more than twice as many ads and trackers as letsrun) designed to get you to click with very little substantive information -- as one other poster has already noted, it only cites one study from decades ago that isn't even relevant to the topic at hand.

you almost got it right here -- yes, testosterone is the primary performance enhancer. but what "features" the fact that older men have reduced testosterone is not at all comparable to actually taking testosterone suppressors -- but just to humor that idea for a moment, i wonder if you think it would be "unfair" for a 90 year old man to compete in a women's XC race. clearly, he wouldn't be winning any medals, and a large part of that is due to his decreased T. to be more direct, "lowering testosterone doesn't remove these features" -- no, actually it does remove these features (lung capacity proven to shrink, even pelvis shape changes from T suppressors) and that's what you don't seem to get.

"testosterone is debated by science" this phrasing sounds like it comes straight from Semenya's lawyers, and it shows that you've been brainwashed by their camp to believe that there is no difference between the sexes (the logical conclusion from this ridiculous point of view). no person with a brain can say that T isn't the primary factor for athletic performance. it isn't a linear scale and i never said it was, which is why a male bodybuilder can't run a fast marathon -- but keep in mind that the only things differentiating male bodybuilders from marathon runners are all factors that are completely diminished while on T suppression to female levels.

way to totally dismiss my argument about fairness in sport and only focus on these superficial arguments about how you want a communist system in sport where everyone gets a medal and slow runners are allowed on the team. nobody thinks that's a good idea, and in fact it's the entire reason that we have competitive sport in the first place. if you lose to someone who has a significant disadvantage to you on account of having less testosterone than you and having a larger frame, then in all worlds but your fairy tale kumbaya one, you deserved to lose.

i never did this, but continue to falsely characterize all opposition under one umbrella.

evidently, RossiCheated is a communist that wants all athletes to get a medal even if they are hobby joggers. what you're arguing against is the essence of sport, and yes, sport inherently has repercussions based upon performance. sometimes these repercussions are life-changing, and that's what's so great about sport and most likely the reason we all follow it. your ideas are incredibly destructive to that ideal and would remove motivation to succeed if the rewards were meaningless.

how would it feel to win a race knowing that your best competition, someone who has a significant biological disadvantage but nonetheless worked the hardest to be in contention, was not allowed to compete? a win is a win, but we'd all be better off if the best athletes were allowed to race each other instead of being bound by your arbitrary barriers based upon chromosomes instead of testosterone, the actual most important variable.

At 16:02 of Rationality Rules' video:

https://youtu.be/02FCYz8bOo8?t=962

"to put these findings into context, in long distance running, in which an abundance of slow twitch muscle fibers and hemoglobin are evidently paramount, it might well be the case to say that trans women don't have an advantage, as HRT reduces their hemoglobin to that of 46 XX women and 46 XX women tend to have more slow twitch muscle fibers altogether."

by the way, though i have emphasized testosterone and it is certainly the most important factor here, my primary emphasis is slightly broader on the hormonal changes one goes through via HRT which june has gone through and the NCAA requires (though they should obviously be more specific), including hemoglobin levels. the other factors that matter happen to also be ones associated with this process, while the ones not associated with the process add up to be a net disadvantage -- one can think of it as having a "small engine in a large car", clearly less efficient than having a small engine in a small car.

One thing I found interesting that could be an advantage for transgender females is “retaining athleticism” even though strength, aerobic capacity and anaerobic capacity all fall in line with regular women once T&E has been at female levels for 1-3 years.

Was it Joanne Harper who said they expect a transgender female to retain athleticism they had previously? I forget now. I took that to mean coordination levels. For instance think of how a lot of guys throw a ball versus how most girls throw a ball. It looks different. Girls tend to throw with their dominant side like most guys throw with their non-dominant side. If this is what was meant by retaining athleticism, essentially greater coordination, then that would tend to be an advantage.

Crowd Sorcerer wrote:

One thing I found interesting that could be an advantage for transgender females is “retaining athleticism” even though strength, aerobic capacity and anaerobic capacity all fall in line with regular women once T&E has been at female levels for 1-3 years.

Was it Joanne Harper who said they expect a transgender female to retain athleticism they had previously? I forget now. I took that to mean coordination levels. For instance think of how a lot of guys throw a ball versus how most girls throw a ball. It looks different. Girls tend to throw with their dominant side like most guys throw with their non-dominant side. If this is what was meant by retaining athleticism, essentially greater coordination, then that would tend to be an advantage.

joanna has done a lot of good interviews online about this and i find her to be the most sensible source on the issue (as a 2:23 marathoner pre-transition she is the only person who can approach it from a distance-running perspective as well). she does acknowledge that post-HRT trans women have some retained advantages, like physical size (in sports where this matters), but from what i've seen she says that the fact that the reduced muscle mass and reduced lung size from HRT at least negates this advantage, she personally saw 12% slower performances post-testosterone-suppression. here she says that trans women lost most components of "athleticism".

your idea about what i'd call "muscle memory" is interesting, and certainly there may be certain advantages to having the experience of running a 15 minute 5K before if that's your goal time as a woman. i know that for certain workouts it feels easier for me to hit a certain pace on reps if i've ran that pace before, even if that experience was months or years ago. i don't think it's very easy to measure something like that objectively though, and i don't think it's significant enough to counteract the disadvantages of being taller and "powering a large car with a small engine" as it's told. having good workout partners and pacers might make it possible for any woman to have that same advantage for example.

also, from what i've read among trans people, one usually doesn't even begin taking estrogen pills until your testosterone is already at female levels. so to me this is further evidence that June's T is probably already at least below 3 nmol/L and possibly below 1 nmol/L, which seems to be common among trans athletes because T levels tend to go to extremes on treatment.

Gebremustard, your argument amounts to little more than that mediocre males should be able to compete in women's competition, with testosterone being used as a form of handicapping to ensure the males don't dominate. If reducing an athlete's testosterone levels doesn't take away their advantage over females - as could easily be the case with a highly-talented male - then your argument falls apart, because it's based on achieving parity of performance not biological identity. If an XX female thrashes other women that isn't unfair - but it is unfair if an XY male does. That's what it means to have a female category in sports.

i don't think so. how is Eastwood, with 1:55/3:50/14:38 PBs pre-transition, a "mediocre male"? perhaps mediocre in the context of pros, but not mediocre in the context of the general population. as we don't know june's female PBs yet we can't say whether or not she will be mediocre yet, but you seem to think that she will dominate, or at least that people like her will dominate.

yes, but i wouldn't use that phrasing as it sounds like the end goal is to hinder trans people, which it isn't -- the purpose is to have fair and equitable competition in the women's category, and naturally part of that is making sure that any one group doesn't dominate over the others. the same applies to DSD women who produce high amounts of testosterone, for example, and arguably the same philosophy applies to current anti-doping rules in sport even for men.

i don't follow this argument. firstly i totally disagree with your first clause. the whole point of having T regulations is that it would be impossible for a male athlete to maintain his advantage over female athletes after he transitions to female and undergoes HRT. so your argument that this could "easily be the case with a highly-talented male" doesn't follow and it isn't backed up by the science so far, at least for distance running.

parity of performance would be a good goal to reach for, but in my opinion the disadvantages too far outweigh the advantages right now (assuming the athlete has undergone HRT to T levels below 3 nmol/L, as June likely has) to achieve that on an average basis. i also challenge your assumption that "if an XX female thrashes other women that isn't unfair" -- actually, that could be unfair, for example if that woman was on drugs, or less obviously if that woman had an XX DSD that caused them to produce extra testosterone (which is definitely possible). i should stress that my line, a hormonal one, would still give those athletes a chance to compete if they lower their testosterone, while your line (chromosomal) wouldn't have any place for those athletes.

again, to your point about parity, according to the WMA age & gender-grading calculator, June's 5K pr of 14:38 pre-transition (i put achieved at age 20) equates to about a 16:33 women's performance.

*link to calculator:

based on my research on biological and specific factors, my prediction is that june won't beat that this year. let's look at the facts: first, we have some logs from June to December 2018 as she was going through her transition, that indicate about 17:15 5K shape (she was doing 3x800,400,400 reps at 2:45ish,75ish pace) at best. joanna harper said it took her 9 months to see a 12% performance dip in her long distance races after starting HRT, so remember that we should expect her to be slower than when she ran this workout.

the next data point we have is that, according to Joanna Harper who said this to LRC, "June finished second (to one of her teammates) in a time trial at UM last weekend, and so she might not even be the fastest runner on her own XC team"

after some research i think Joanna is referring to the four-mile River City Roots Run in Missoula, which was the team's "soft opening" that i haven't seen mentioned here at all until now. the team published a meet preview for tomorrow's race today that mentions this race:

"Both teams had a soft opening to the season last weekend when they raced the four-mile River City Roots Run in Missoula. The women's team was led by freshman Beatrix Frissell and senior June Eastwood, both of whom were given times of 24:26."

keep in mind, Beatrix Frissell has a 5K PR of only 18:24 from 2017 and 18:40 from last year. so unless this was a jog, which it might well have been if they finished holding hands, it's not the best sign for June's fitness. 24:26 4mi converts to a 77.22% age grade, which is a ~18:40 women's 5K equivalent. it's actually kind of astounding that someone who had 14:38 5K PR not long ago can go to 18:40 5K fitness so quickly, but that's such powerful validation of what HRT can do to performance. anyone who thinks that June will dominate this season knowing this performance is an absolute fool.

the best returning montana women's runner is probably Emily Pittis, who has a 17:10 5K XC pr, but she's coming off an injury and not at full fitness yet. there are a few other runners with 17-mid-ish 5K PRs (Erica Smison SO 17:33 XC, Colleen Openshaw SR 17:21 track, Samantha Engebretsen SR 17:28 track, Isabella Nellos SO 17:57 track transfer from UNM).

the women will run their official opener, a 4K in Cheney, Montana tomorrow morning. last year, the top Montana runner Erica Simison ran 14:31 for 7th there, and June finished ahead of her last weekend. i suspect that June will probably finish first on her team tomorrow, but i don't think she'll win the race, especially seeing that Idaho will be competing and they have some 16:xx performers on the roster. my prediction is that Idaho will pack up for the win and June will lead the chase pack around 5th or 6th place in 14:20ish, on pace for an 18 flat 5K. this prediction is pretty optimistic, and truthfully if i wanted to go just by the science i'd add 30 seconds. it may very well be that she "sandbags", not for any malicious reason, but just because that's a sensible strategy to take in a season opener where you'd rather pull along your team than take the win.

we'll see what happens tomorrow but more importantly over the rest of the season. i suspect a lot of people who know nothing at all about XC or distance running will be very invested in the results, and may interpret them regardless of how they end up to match their biases without regard for actual truth.

So much shifting of the goal posts. Of course Eastwood is not mediocre compared to the general population but as a 1.55 runner over 800m he/she is nowhere near elite in the male category. A runner capable of 1.47 or so who transitions may only expect to lose 5-7 seconds with reduced testosterone, which would still enable them to utterly dominate their female competitors, if not become a world record holder. So far, none of the trangender entering women's competition have been elite or potentially elite male competitors. When it happens, XX women will have no chance.

Of course an XX woman could dominate through doping, but that is a complete red herring. Doping is not the issue in this debate. There is no argument of unfairness if a clean competitor dominates, which can and has happened in the past.

You keep maintaining that reducing testosterone will level the playing field between biological males and females - which utterly ignores the other advantages males can have that will not be affected or significantly reduced - but that is simply a contrivance to allow males to compete in a category in which they do not belong. The contrivance is apparent because it depends utterly on results, that these males don't dominate the female competition, when the issue is that they are simply not in the same biological category, in the same way a 30 year old cannot compete in the masters. The core issue is not whether any competitor has advantages over other competitors (the Phelps argument) but that they conform to the appropriately defining category for that sport, like weight divisions in boxing and wrestling, and the biological criteria for female in the category of women's sport.

A last point - you are incorrect to suggest DSD females can have male levels of testosterone; it is DSD males who have those levels, as XX females cannot produce male levels of testosterone - they do not have testes. That is why the IAAF has specified its rule applies to DSD males.

you seem to be the one shifiting the goalposts here, i never claimed she was elite in that context pre-transition and more importantly whether or not she was elite has no bearing on my argument that she can compete in women's sport equitably. in long distance running, the hypothesis which i fully believe is that that an athlete typically becomes about 12% slower after 9 months of testosterone suppression -- note that this is more than the 10% difference between men and women. applied to your 1:47 hypothetical, her time would become about a 2:00 as a woman, not a 1:52. that's an equitable comparison.

june is the best runner ever in modern history to transition from male to female. i agree our data would of course always be better if we had faster runners to look at, but just look at most of the responses in this thread and you will see that people are acting as if june will dominate the NCAA or even set women's world records. this is obviously false, and acts as a mechanism to exclude her from competition.

this is more tested on distance athletes, i think joanna harper's langmark study was linked earlier but i'll link it here again as it's useful to see that the age graded percentages of trans runners stayed about the same after they transitioned:

i used doping as an example that we already divide based on testosterone levels as a measure of athletic ability, so the T limit rules by the IAAF and the type of rules i'd like to see in the NCAA only serve as an extension of that.

again, Armstronglivs, please name the specific advantages you claim so that i can debunk them all again for the audience. you pointed out a few earlier, and i individually debunked each of them. in fact, many of the "advantages" you brought up serve as disadvantages in distance running, where having a large frame and heavier bones is a hindrance if you don't have the internal engine to run it well. that argument is a losing battle for you not backed up in science.

as for your broader philosophical point -- yes, my approach is data-driven when possible. athletics rules are inherently data-driven -- for example, the IAAF rule that you have 0.1 seconds after the gun to false start in a 100m, which was based on studies that showed 0.1 seconds is the fastest possible human reaction time. weight classes are also data-driven: they make the classes cut off every 10 kilograms (example number as i don't follow such sports) for example, rather than every 1 kilo or every 5 kilos, because the data shows that athletes only one or five kilos apart aren't distinct enough athletically to provide a significant enough advantage to the heavier competitor, while 10kg (for example) provides a meaningful enough difference. masters athletics is a whole other beast, but follows similar analogy to the weight class example: it's the reason we don't keep single-age records (except perhaps as trivia) but instead group athletes every 5 years, and not every 10 years or every 4 years, etc -- though, to be honest, i don't believe age-group competitions in athletics have proven themselves to have as much integrity as open events. this isn't due to 30 year olds identifying as 60 year olds as you suggest, but just because masters meets tend to be more "for fun" types of events and aren't something that people usually make a living off of.

but to make a more direct challenge to your idea of exclusion, note that we call it the "women's category" and not the "female category". the simple fact is that in our society, trans women exist, they can and do join women's events many times wholly unnoticed as it is just a fact of life. surely you believe that inclusion is a good thing if no other values are compromised in the process -- so if we can include trans women while not compromising equity of competition, then it's the duty of governing bodies to do that.

[/quote]

no, actually i am correct here and yes, the IAAF rule is flawed because it does not apply to high-T XX women. they only made the rule apply to XY DSDs because they wanted to make it as specific as possible to avoid unintended side effects, and Semenya Wambui and Niyonsaba all happened to be XY (presumably known to the IAAF at the time) so it worked. maybe one day the IAAF will have a perfect rulebook that also applies to such women, but they'll likely need a recent example case to happen first. i think it'll happen within the next few years as we become more aware of these conditions.

This is easy,

How does June Rank on the female side vs. her well established male record.

Age and gender graded results.

I still think it's not equality because a FTM can''t compete with males, so yes , on the balance, males will be taking females places in sport , even if they don't dominate, which apparently the often do.

Everydog wrote:

This is easy,

How does June Rank on the female side vs. her well established male record.

Age and gender graded results.

I still think it's not equality because a FTM can''t compete with males, so yes , on the balance, males will be taking females places in sport , even if they don't dominate, which apparently the often do.

quick answer: June's pre-transition 5K PR of 14:38 is a 88.72% age grade. June's 24:26 4-mile she ran last weekend is a 60.44% age grade. it's not even close, and the reason for that is that hormone therapy actually works in distance running, even to the point of a net disadvantage compared to women. and yes, i know that it was a soft season opener, but come on. all the evidence, which i explained in great detail two posts above, points to the fact that June won't be dominating this season.

if you want the actual peer-reviewed data see page 5 of this PDF, which shows that the average age grades of 8 transgender runners mostly decreased, and when they increased it was only in spite of the HRT disadvantage due to increased training:

also, i would challenge your assumption that a trans man can't compete with males. in fact the first ever transgender athlete to compete in NCAA D1 this decade wasn't June, but was a trans man Schuyler Bailar on the Harvard men's swim team:

and the first trans athlete to ever make a US national team was also a trans man:

Gebremustard, still getting your facts wrong. XX women who are hyperandrogenous cannot produce male levels of testosterone (and male levels are on average 15 times higher than for females). Most women have a testosterone level between 0.7-2nmls; hyperandrogenous females may teach 3-4nml, which is nowhere near typical male levels. The reason is starkly simple - DSDXX do not have testes. Hyperandrogenism is also the reason why the IAAF set its permissible level for testosterone of 5nml - above normal female levels - to allow for possible XX outliers while being less than what males will have.

You also keep trying to depict male physiological characteristics (height, size, etc) as disadvantageous, when the stark fact is that most male distance runners (quite apart from other sports) are bigger than their female counterparts. And yet also faster. Reducing testosterone doesn't remove the physical advantages most males have because female athletes and sportswomen who are androgynous or "masculine" (but have female levels of testosterone) are often more successful than those women who have a typically feminine physiology (less muscle mass, more body fat, shorter legs, wider hips etc). There could be no more glaring example of "masculinised" advantage than an athlete like Kratochvilova (who many suspect achieved this through steroids). Being "male" - even for a female - is an in-built advantage in sports.

You are also wrong about the degree that reducing an athlete's testosterone affects performance. Semenya is XY and it has been estimated she would lose 5-7 seconds off her current 1.55 for 800m. A 1.47 elite male would therefore be still likely to be able to run in the low 1.50's if they also reduced their levels of testosterone.

However, your fundamental misunderstanding is that "inclusivity" is what is necessary in sports (and hence you try to somehow "squeeze" biological males into women's sport by playing with their testosterone levels). But sports are not "inclusive" - they are generally exclusionary. Categories for competition that are based on weight, age and performance standards all demonstrate this: unless an athlete or competitor can satisfy the criteria for a category of competition they don't qualify. It is only in the category of female sports ("girls" and "women", if you prefer) that we see the artifice of allowing the participation of competitors who clearly don't fit the accepted biological criteria for that category. We allow some males to pretend they are the same as the women they are competing against. They are not - and reducing their levels of testosterone doesn't change he that fact.

If the guiding principle to "inclusivity" is that males competing against women don't have a competitive advantage then logic requires that any males of a comparable standard to women - but no clear advantage (i.e. mediocre male competitors) - should be able to compete in women's sport, and not just those males who identify as women. There is then no longer any point to having a distinct and separate category for women sports, because it has effectively become standards-based and not biologically determined, as it long has been. That is where the "identity" argument that advocates the participation of transgender and DSD males in women's sports is leading us.

No shoes on the ground at EWU today? Where are the live updates?

You seem to be implying that guys are going to compete somehow with out any hormone treatment requirements which is a straw man argument. No one, with any power to affect the rules for allowing transgender women to compete, supports that.

There is zero data, other than Semenya who is not transgender, to estimate how fast a 1:47 guy could run after treatment. June is the very first transgender female distance runner, with decent times as a male, to compete against women.

actually i have yet to get a single fact wrong, including this one, while you have gotten many wrong. thank you for pointing out the dimorphism of testosterone, though, because that's been a central point of my argument that goes against everything you've said previously about T not being a fair dividing line between sport categories. the fact that T tends to extremes, as i pointed out earlier, is strong evidence that it's a much better dividing line than chromosomal testing, which can't be altered by humans and isn't the causal factor for increased performance, only a correlatory factor.

Armstronglivs, i'll say again, have you ever seen Bekele run? or any pro distance runner for that matter? these people are not tall and any accredited coach will tell you that being large is a huge disadvantage in distance running. this is basic, elementary-school level physiology and it's astounding you can't accept this scientific reality. men are taller than women on average, and this generality extends to distance running -- but in this case the men are faster in spite of the tallness disadvantage due to, as you say, having increased testosterone -- a disadvantage that becomes evident when trans women transition and decrease their T to female levels, as we've already seen with June in her recent performances. perhaps the fact that you said "yet" in your comment above was a Freudian slip on your part. tell me, how does a 14:38 person go to 18:40 5K shape within a year despite consistent training? do you honestly think June is benefiting from her height when she runs 24 minute 4 miles?

again, name one "physical advantage" that you think men have over women that doesn't decrease to zero or negative on HRT -- remember the last time you did that, when i individually debunked each of the crack science points you parroted to no response from you? i'd gladly do it again. the relevant differences between men and women athletically in distance running are purely hormonal, not musculoskeletal, and this is shown both in science and in practice. indeed, the female body is the ideal form for distance running -- the only reason women are slower is because they don't have the testosterone, they don't have the big engine required for their small bodies.

by the way, again you mention the strongest evidence against your point of view and present it as if it somehow helps you. guess what -- Kratochvilova was good because she had more T than her female competitors, naturally or otherwise. an equitable women's playing field like the line I propose (and I should add, the line already accepted and legislated by today's IAAF) would mandate that Kratochvilova keep her T levels at female dimorhpic amounts. the physical changes you mention in Kratochvilova aren't "masculine" per se -- they are "testosterone-like", which we associate with masculinity but it's important to note that the root cause for these physical changes is the testosterone. the muscles she has are landmark indicators of increased testosterone, and these would grow on any born-female who was on increased testosterone and training for a year or longer (as they already have on Chris Mosier).

Semenya might lose less time because her testosterone levels may be "in between". it's not as much of a drop as someone like June who may have been born with higher levels of T. funny that T levels give us an actual measurable scale for this stuff while chromosomes only tell one part of the story, like looking at the correlation without the causal variable for increased performance, right? your total lie about 1:47 to 1:50s instead of 1:47 to 2:00 is also not based at all on science, and in fact totally contradicts the Harper study linked above. you continue to ignore basic scientific truths in pursuit of a biased vision.

now this is where your argument really starts to unravel. i understand using the word "biological male" to refer to people born male, but it's important for this conversation to note that by most biological markers, she is female on account of having female levels of T+E, and the resultant muscular changes (decreased pelvic size, decreased lung size) from maintaining such levels -- the only male biological markers left for her would be things like her height and her chromosomes, which have been proven to either be a hindrance or make no difference in distance running. and by the way, your idea about sports being exclusionary is a total falsehood -- black people, white people, gay people, have always been allowed to participate in sport (well not *always*, but please, i dare you use racial segregation to your advantage, i would love to see this coming from you). people born in East Africa are allowed to participate in sport despite having an abundance of slow-twitch muscle fibers compared to people born in the USA. but again, they can compete equitably because these differences are not substantial enough to necessitate separate categories.

again, totally wrong. June isn't "pretending" to be a female, her biological characteristics especially as they relate to long distance running are effectively female as i've outlined above. the reason for that, and as all evidence shows without a single point of evidence from you, is that reducing testosterone causes a domino effect in the body that actually shrinks pelvic size and decreases lung size and VO2max to levels at least equal to, if not far below female levels (more "feminine" if you will).

no, what you fail to understand is that this difference is based on skill ceiling, not baseline. so a mediocre male runner could not compete equitably with women because, theoretically, if he trained more and ran high mileage, due to his increased testosterone, he would then develop an unfair advantage on account of his increased ceiling. all the available literature points to T being the appropriate marker for this. the point of having a female category is, as Joanna Harper put it, "so women can win things", and this certainly holds true once June enters the mix as a woman -- one who deserves to win things just as much as, but not more or less than, other women. put differently, we separate into two based on an inherent biological dimorphism in testosterone level distribution, and June still conforms to that dimorphism as much as any other, just on the opposite end of it as she was born.

This article, especially the flowchart on p. 7 of the PDF, is helpful for summarizing several factors that affect distance running. For example, looking at “limb morphology,” “tendon length,” and “muscle stiffness,” I’m not sure we have proper data to conclude that reducing testosterone will proportionately, or appropriately, level the field for transgender participation in female athletics. I’ve not seen anyone cite data addressing several of these factors.

The interconnectedness of our movement-related systems and the complexity of human physiology makes me skeptical when people rely on limited data to conclude, “Aha, we’ve done it and there’re no doubts remaining!” I think that jumping to sweeping, unequivocal conclusions about systems affected by so many variables, as human beings are, is premature. I’m not sure how we could ever know how June would’ve developed if she’d started as an XX female, which is the real mystery.

Firstly, Semenya is XY - as is June. They are both biological males. That Semenya is DSD does not change that fact. So they are comparable from that perspective.

Secondly, I am not implying that males could compete without reduced levels of testosterone - that is part of the argument for their participation - although some males might. Reducing testosterone is about eliminating a sex-based biological advantage. But what is not being understood is that this shifts the grounds for participation in women's sport from sex-based criteria, as it normally is, to standards-based criteria i.e. it is ok for certain males to compete against women if they have no advantage that XX women cannot have. Effective proof of that is they will be of a similar standard. That is the whole point of requiring reduced testosterone. On that basis, "identifying" as female is therefore not of itself sufficient to allow participation. This is what is being argued of Eastwood to justify his/her participation in women's sports. He/she will not be dominant, it is argued - whether that is true or not.

But once you go down that path then there is no principled argument against allowing the participation of other males, even those whose testosterone levels have not been reduced, provided their performance levels don't clearly exceed those of the women they compete against. So a 1.55-2.05 male 800m runner should be able to compete against women of a similar standard. The whole basis of the "reducing testosterone" argument is to enable biological male and female athletes to compete without the males dominating. Reducing testosterone becomes redundant to that purpose if the males are of an equivalent female standard.

Indeed, if it is being argued that only males who "identify" as women should be able to compete in the women's category then other males could argue that it is discriminatory to exclude them, if they are either prepared to similarly reduce their testosterone levels or they are of an equivalent standard to the women they wish to compete against. Once we insist testosterone is key then the issue is no longer about "identity" but performance - and, there, gender is irrelevant. So, one way or another, we are headed to open sports - which is not quite what the "inclusivity" advocates had in mind.

Of course, nothing you say is correctly either factually or logically but it does reflect perfectly your religious point of view on this subject. I am not interested in conversion, thank you.

7th in 14:33 for 4K.

The Original Poster wrote:

https://goeags.com/documents/2019/8/22/19wxClashINWResults.pdf

7th in 14:33 for 4K.

Right around 18:30 shape for 5k. Women's sport is doomed.