Veronica Ivy on The Daily Show on natural testosterone level having no competitive advantage

Not surprising that you can’t recognize a joke. It’s my faith that I am a great joke teller.

You very much did, to quote “The way to establish and maintain a fundamental baseline of fairness in women's and girls' sports is simply to exclude males. ALL males across the board.”

Your definition of males is those born with testes = “natally testicular”. If not, it’s time for you to define what you mean by males and females.

If the best woman is better than the worst man, then trans woman can compete against women. I win argument now.

Being a woman never entitled one to be vulgar like you were in your removed post 61.

Being a women doesn’t excuse you from ground rules of civilized debate or intellectual honesty.

Being a “woman” on this forum is even more immaterial than being born a woman in sport is. What matters in sport is your performance-impacting physiological metrics NOW. What matters here is the strength of your arguments and how responsive they are to others’, not your womanhood, so get over that.

You show that woman who's boss. Mommy can't refuse you ice cream now. Throw in some terribly framed fallacious arguments and you've almost got a hobby. Stick at it, don't let these women get you down with all this hard quantitative data that you're studiously disregarding. Any minute now you're going to convince EVERYONE!

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say a woman is a woman because she is born thusly (that you now seem to be disavowing, but it’s not clear) AND also say what really matters is where their bodies got to today based on being born with ovaries.

If it’s the latter, we are on the same or similar page. Let’s look at their physiological attributes, especially performance-predictive ones, *today* to determine what ranges are fair or unfair to classify them into the competitively weaker category.

Let’s not.

Do you not understand how rude this comes off?

More pointless lecture blathering on things most people know from high school biology. Natal means at time of birth. You inspect a child’s gonads or sex organs at the time of birth to assign sex. There is no implication that testes or ovaries magically got created at the instant of birth. That’s silly. Pages of text on that is unnecessary.

Some people go through surgeries or hormonal therapy to change what they were born with, so “natal” refers to your (not mine) seeming obsession with what one was born as.

Thank you for this. I haven't laughed so hard in weeks.

What did I say that according to your delicate sensibilities was so "vulgar" that you had to have the post deleted?

Was it when I said I thought your claims were "nuts" - wink-wink, nudge-nudge? Was it my suggestion that you are Veronica Ivy - and the irreverent crack I made that followed?

Or did you take umbrage at the fact that I quoted some of the things Veronica Ivy has said to and about "cis women" on Twitter and in interviews?

I agree that Ivy has said some very vulgar and hateful things to and about "cis women." But quoting what someone else said is not the same as saying those things one's self. I wasn't endorsing what Ivy said. I was bringing attention to Ivy's overall views for the sake of shedding some light on the kind of ire and rage Ivy seems to have towards women.

For all of Ivy's claims that male participation in women's and girls sport is "a human right" and that Ivy is "on the right side of history," I believe Ivy's animus, envy and covetousness towards women go a long way to explaining why Ivy and many other males who say they "identify as" women are so dead-set on muscling in on women's sports and showing up the group of humans they contemptuously call "cis women."

Those cis women with higher natural testosterone levels have well known medical conditions that are easily identifiable. It is also established that their higher t-level does not give advantage in athletic compettitions.

So that cannot be used as an argument against the t-level restrictions on trans women.

Any position based on the premise of (a) human sex is binary and (b) it can be easily determined by chromosome and gonads is indefenisble at CAS. We have already seen that in Chand v. IAAF in 2015. Any future decision by CAS will be bound by that decision.

If you want to protect the compertitive fairness in women's sports, a few things will help that cause, IMHO.

1. Stop trying to define who is and is not a "woman."

2. Stop linking this issue with broader issues related to transgender people. (Restroom use, gender affriming health care, etc.)

3. Stop categorically denigrating trans women based on some highly visible indoviduals.

I think the argument Ivy made in that interview is ridiculous. That should not be held agaisnt all trans women / girls who are trying to participate in women's / girls' sports.

You wrote the following in a previous post.

The males with DSDs and opposite-sex gender identities who are creating such contention and controversy by demanding to be included in women's and girls' sports today all still have their testes intact and in full working order.

What about trans or DSD people who have already got their testes removed? Or minors who are too young to make that decision, but are planning to do so as soon as they are old enough (and currently supressing their t-level with medication)? Aside from the question of whether they should be allowed to compete or not, should they be judged by the same way Ivy and Thomas are judged here?

But I thought the 2019 CAS decision issued in the Semenya case supersedes the Chand decision. Am I mistaken?

As Ross Tucker and others who were involved in these cases have noted, "a wind change" occurred between the Chand and Semenya cases - both in terms of the arguments and evidence given, and in the way the CAS ruled and its reasoning.

Again, do you think the Chand ruling takes precedence over the Semenya decision?

1) I’m not sure which study or sample “those cis women” refers to, but the Sonksen et al study I was referring to is not about high fT in cis women but rather that some of the low fT men dip into women’s average ranges.

2) For androgen resistant women, yes. Otherwise I believe the correlative truth of the claim depends both on sex and the sport, eg see Bermon-Garnier 2017 as well as Sonksen et al 2018. Which is why IAAF weirdly has different rules for 400, 800 from sprints and distance events. Bermon thinks it matters for 400/800 and some other sports for women. For men as well, some of the data is counterintuitive, while some is as expected.

3) I agree. Ivy happens to argue against fT restrictions for trans women. I think that peer reviewed data driven evidence in each sport should determine whether the restriction is warranted to maintain fairness for cis as well as trans women.

Hunter has a point.

Testy, why are you trying to limit the debate solely to physiological, performance predictive attributes? Is the ultimate goal to individually assess an athlete, cis/trans, and then place them in a specific sport/category regardless of their sex?

For instance, if a male that was ranked 462nd in the 1500m freestyle, decided to identify as female and was evaluated for her performance predictive attributes, if she was slow enough then she could compete in the female category? Is that where you are going?

The performance predictive attributes that I know off the top of my head are:

Men have more cardiovascular fitness (the capacity to transport and use oxygen during exercise) than their female counterparts.

Males have longer and larger bones, which provide a clear mechanical advantage over females. In addition, females generally have more lax and fragile musculoskeletal structure than males.

Males have a higher ratio of muscle mass to body weight, which allows for greater speed and acceleration. This explains why female speed records in running and swimming are consistently 10 percent slower than men's, and why, on average, they have two thirds of the strength of men.

Those are performance advantages in some but, not all sports, ergo, the need for sport specific performance attributes instead of "look, a small man was an elite athlete!!!!"

There are performance metrics that help females perform better than males, balance, endurance, childbirth, etc., but I think we're supposed to be looking solely at attributes that would allow the 462nd ranked male swimmer to climb to the top of the podium in women's sport aren't we?

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Nobody "assigns" sex though. When a baby is born, the people present examine her or him and if the birth happens in a medical setting or with medical personnel present, the sex is recorded in medical records. But most of the time if the mother has had standard prenatal care, the sex will have been noted much earlier based on a prenatal sonogram done in the 2nd trimester - and increasingly by genetic testing through means such as the NIPT and CVS.

Also, it's not like the only time kids' genitals are closely examined by parents and HCPs. Between diapering and bathing, and then toilet training, parents and caregivers see and touch the the genitals of babies, toddlers and little kids all the time. We become very aware of changes and anomalies in the genitals and urinary anatomy of our children.

At some point after a child is born - the timing depends on the country and jurisdiction - the mother or parents will also register the child's birth with the appropriate government office and apply for a birth certificate - and at that time the DOB, parentage and sex of the child will become part of official records.

However, birth registration is not yet a universal norm. Lots of places in Africa still have very low rates of birth registration during childhood. When Caster Semenya was born, it was the longstanding custom for blacks in South Africa not to register their kids births with the government, so pretty much all black kids grew up without BCs. When Francine Niyonsaba was born and grew up, nobody in Burundi got BCs for their kids because Niyonsaba was born as Burundi began a bloody 13-year long civil war that left it without any functioning govt administrative offices. Also, in Burundi during Niyonsaba's childhood, lots of people pretended their sons were daughters to keep them from being forced to become boy soldiers.

Some people go through surgeries orhormonal therapy to change what they were born with, so “natal” refers to your (not mine) seeming obsession with what one was born as.

Yeah, so? Getting surgeries and taking hormones doesn't change anyone's sex - nor does it undo or turn the clock back on all the development and life experiences that went before. If Caitlyn Jenner were to get Jenner's testes removed, it wouldn't change the fact that as Bruce, Jenner won the 1976 Olympic decathlon, starred in Wheaties TV commercials and sired a bunch of kids with at least three different women.

If you were aware of health care norms and customs amongst the adult female population, you'd know that a huge proportion of women will end up having our uterus and/or ovaries and Fallopian tubes surgically removed - and many women have HRT for this reason and due to natural menopause. An average of 600,000 women in the US have hysterectomies each year; by the time we reach 65, more than one-third of us will. At least 20 million women over 45 have had hysterectomy - almost all after having children.

But no one claims that women who developed gynecological issues and thus no longer have the repro organs we were born with have changed sex - or that removal of women's ovaries, F tubes and uteruses somehow negates and erases all the periods, pregnancies, miscarriages, labors, childbirths, sexual harassment, sex discrimination, maternity discrimination etc or any of the other distinctly female experiences that came over the course of their lives as girls and women before.

Indistinguishable on the performance-predictive metrics (eg endogenous T or others)

Huh? I thought you and pretty much everyone on this thread agreed that current levels of endogenous T in elite adult athletes cannot be regarded as reliably "performance-predictive" for athletes of either sex competing against others of the same sex. (Especially not when the levels reported are based on one-time tests done right after the athletes competed, which is when many of samples in the relevant research were taken.)

But now you're saying endogenous T at or near the time of competition actually is a reliable predictor of performance?

How so? For which sex? And in what sports and events in those sports?

BTW, the meaning of the terms "low natural T" and "high natural T" is totally different for the two sexes.

Learn to write in fewer than many long paragraphs in every post simply by staying on point.

Stop telling me how to write my posts. Barking out orders like you do makes you come across as bellicose, petulant petty tyrant. You seem to have trouble tolerating different views to your own, and to believe others - especially women - should defer to your supposedly superior wisdom and vast knowledge

When high school boys regularly run faster than women’s world records I consider that to be a clear gap in performance between the sexes.

No overlap at all is a bogus definition. The top elites amongst the same sex are separated by fractions of a percentage point. The top female and top male are separated by >10% for a given event. That’s two orders of magnitude difference. That’s way more than enough, mathematically, for me to consider them separated significantly.

I guess that’s two definitions.

Question: how ‘unfair’ will it be for you when you start getting beat by high school boys whilst competing against elite females all of are assigned to your ‘current performance’ category?

Thanks for asking. Your post unlike others’ at least demonstrates an understanding of this premise I’ve banged over and over: “You should either be able to identify performance advantageous traits for inclusion/exclusion OR accept that you also just have a definition that doesn’t necessarily confer any performance advantage or disadvantage.”

Let me explain the position. I believe most of us agree on the following premises (except the NitpickingVerboseLady who might get stuck on some inconsequential detail and type two pages condescendingly educating me on basic biology or general knowledge):

1) We have at least two groups amongst humans who have distinctly different abilities, so we need at least two categories for the sake of something called “fairness” we care about a lot.

2) What is fairness? If one person can never be remotely competitive (about 8-12% or more weaker) with another no matter how much they train, we intuitively think it’s unfair for them to compete with each other.

3) “Performance” alone can not be a determiner of to which category one belongs, otherwise one would just run slow in trials to compete in the weaker category, so we look for an innate relatively unchangeable feature that is performance-predictive, ie people who have that feature are overwhelmingly likely to be in the weaker category and people who don’t in the stronger category. To answer your specific question, being slow enough is not enough for the 462nd ranked male athlete to be included in the weaker category.

4) Many people for the longest time and to this day believe that that feature is being born with ovaries. That is not an unreasonable position, but it should be recognized that it is being used as a performance-predictive feature.

5) Nobody thinks ovaries are like lead weight that make you slower in and of by themselves, rather ovaried people go through puberty without testosterone-charged physiological developments that result in distinctly weaker features than the stronger category (of testied boys).

6) There are other performance-predictive features like the several physiological features you listed. Endogenous fT is widely thought to have an important performance-predictive effect in various sports. It’s far from perfect in any sport. There are others like lean mass, VO2Max, height, leg length, or whatever is most performance-predictive for that sport, “sport-specific” as you said.

If your argument, for example, is ovaries are the single-best predictor of weaker performance because they result in (say) narrower shoulders on average, and wide shoulders are important for performance in sport X, then how is it fair to include a cis woman with shoulders wider than a trans woman but exclude the trans? What does fairness even mean then? If the extent of diversity of physiological attributes within elite cis women extends to be superior to that of some elite cis men (as studies like those by Sonksen et al 2018 show), how can you define “fairness” without drawing a line somewhere?

Hence the claim that you better either use current performance-predictive physiological features to include/exclude any person in the weaker category OR accept that whatever other criteria (like natally ovarian) is not necessarily predictive of *dramatically* weaker performance than a trans woman.

The above is an extreme position but the only one that is consistent with non-binary gender and intersex cases. The world’s governing bodies are never going to go back to a binary model or a position that denies a trans woman her identity (although people on LR may call her delusional all they want), so it’s either a separate third category for trans and intersex OR inclusion/exclusion based on performance-predictive features beyond just natal ovarianness.