Journalism is dead. San Fran Chronicle: "(It's) difficult to determine if trans women actually are faster or stronger."

There was a female tennis player, Renee Richards, I believe, who performed very well at the professional level until someone reported he was formerly a mediocre male pro. He played in the Billie Jean King era.

Are the DSD women mostly African? Or are DSD women about the same percentage in most ethnic groups?

'Journalism is dead' or similar is a serious issue. The decline is shocking, to me at least. Especially the way that it is attempted to be shielded. The general perception in a lot of areas is that the quality or freedom with which they can report or write is increasing. It isn't the journalists themselves. It's the restrictions under which they operate.

Billie Jean King herself supported Richards in her lawsuit to compete against women professionally. She won that suit and competed for several more years.

Richards performed about as well against women in her 40s as she had against men in her 20s, suggesting that she did retain some advantage.

The rules put in place in 2003 only allowed males who identify as trans to seek eligibility for female competition of they'd had their testicles removed. The vast majority - well more than 90% - of "transwomen" in the current century still have their testicles and penises. So in reality only a tiny proportion of the world's "transwomen" were eligible for women's elite compeition under the 2003 rules.

The IOC changed its rules in late 2015 to allow males who say they "dentify as" women to gain eligibility for women's Olympic competition with their testicles and penises still intact, and the IAAF soon followed suit.

Under the 2015 IOC rules all males had to do to gain eligibility in women's competition was declare they had a "female gender identity" (at least for "sporting purposes") and provide documentation showing that their T had been under 10 nmol/L for 12 months. (Normal adult male T range is 7.7-29.4 nmol/L; normal adult female range is 0.2-1.68 nmol/L.)

The 2015 IOC rule change was made so late in the year that it effectively didn't apply to the 2016 Olympics because there was less than 12 months between when the rule change was made and the start of either the winter or summer 2016 Games.

The upshot is that the 2021 Tokyo Games were really the first summer Olympics where most of today's "transwomen" could have competed in women's events.

At the Tokyo Olympics, two middle-aged trans-identified males competed in women's events - weightlifter Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand and archer Stephanie Barrett of Canada, both 43. A third trans-identified male, Chelsea Wolfe of the USA, 28, went to the Tokyo Olympics as an alternate in women's BMX cycling.

None of the three males who went to the the 2021 Tokyo Olympics to compete or possibly compete in women's events won or even performed spectacularly well. (Hubbard apppears to have intentionally tanked.)

But all three males who went to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in the women's category took spots from female athletes to get to the Games. Moreoever, all three of these male athletes beat many women and took many podium places and awards from female athletes as they climbed the ranks in women's comptetiion in their respective sports to get to the point of being chosen to go to the Olympics in the women's category in 2021.

Barrett's meteoric ascent to elite world-class competitor women's archery was particularly remarkable because Barrett only took up archery at age 38. Barrett went from never having touched a bow before in all of Barrett's nearl 40 years of life to Olympian in women's competition in the space of 5 years. Very few women of Barrett's age could pull off such a feat, especially in archery where many of Barrett's closest competitors in age and skill were juggling pregnancies, motherhood and breastfeeding along with their athletic careers.

Barrett's selection to represent Canada in women's archery at the 2021 Olympics was especially unfair because Canada was given only one slot in women's archery at the 2021 Tokyo Games - and it went to a male.

You schooled no one. But you are in urgent need of an education.

Richards transitioned in her thirties. She has said if she had done so in her early twenties no female competitor would have stood a chance against her.

Since transwomen and biological women have no difference in athletic ability, can someone explain how Lia Thomas went from the 462nd ranked male to the 1st ranked female in one season? That's a pretty amazing improvement, I wonder what she did to improve by that much?!

"Exceptions" are the only people who win races and championships and set new records.

Good male high schoolers would win Olympic gold in the female category.

It's a truly stunning, brave, and empowering achievement by her. I wonder what "she" did to improve so much?

If that’s the argument, it’s easy to point to even similar intra-group examples like a sprinting nobody like Jacobs winning an Olympic gold or a Kiptum threatening the goat (sure, bring on the doping fallacy now).

But nobody is saying there is “no difference in athletic ability”, rather that the evidence is weak or mixed for rejecting the null hypothesis that there is no advantage post transition, and if there is in some sports, on what therapeutically mutable physiological characteristics the advantage depends is not well understood.

trackfangirl wrote:

This has always been about DSD women (); they have been the ones who have been competing at the world class level and winning gold medals and breaking world distance records.
Trans women have been the scapegoat because there is a lot of hate about them now so that Coe can stop DSD women like Christine Mboma, Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and others from winning gold medals. It is interesting that all of these DSD women are black and all from Africa............... Just saying!

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This is a thread about a SF Chronicle article written in the wake of - and specifically focused on - the recent California state HS track championships where two male teenagers won slots to compete in girls' running events under the rules of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF). CIF is the sole governing body for school sports in CA

So it really doesn't have anything do with World Athletics. Nor does it have anything at all to do with XY DSD athletes with black skin from certain countries in sub-Saharan Africa being entered in, and performing well in, elite international women's athletics competition.

But since you brought up Mboma, Semenya and Niyonsaba: yes, it's true that all the XY DSD athletes who have won gold medals or close to gold in women's running in the current century are black and from Africa. But that's because a small handful of nations in sub-Saharan Africa with majority black populations are the only countries in the world which in the 21st century have made a point of selecting athletes with differences or disorders of male sex development to compete for them in international elite women's running.

The kinds of disorders of male sex development that Semenya, Mboma and Niyonsaba have can be found amongst every population on earth. Persons of all races and ethnicities have these conditions. But in the 21st century, athletics officials in only a small number of the world's 195 nations have supported and made a habit of entering XY DSD athletes with male athletic advantage into elite international women's competition.

Other countries in the world stopped knowingly entering XY DSD athletes - particularly XY DSD athletes with the specific kinds of DSD that Semenya, Niyonsaba and Mboma have - in women's events decades ago. If you look into the history of XY DSD athletes in women's events, you'll find that al the known ones in the 20th century were white and from Europe.

The XY DSD athlete who in the 1980s won the landmark legal case that caused the IOC and IAAF/WA to changed to rules to open up female competition to XY athletes with DSDs happens to be white and from Europe (Maria José Martínez-Patiño, a hurdler from Spain).

Moreover, in the present century sports governing bodies and the government in some places have actively opposed and tried to stop XY DSD athletes in and from their countries from competing in women's athletics. For example, athletics officials in India have long tried to prevent Indian XY DSD athletes like Dutee Chand from competing in women's elite international track & field - and they have made it clear that they do not want XY DSD athletes representing India on the world stage in women's sports competition.

Now to the insinuation that World Athletics' recent decision to tighten the rules for XY DSD athletes in women's elite international track & field might reflect racist prejudice against XY DSD athletes who are black and from Africa because of their skin color and where they come from:

It just so happens that the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the governing body for soccer in Africa, is currently helmed and run by black men from sub-Saharan Africa. Yet they have shown they have the same kinds of concerns about the fairness of allowing black African XY DSD athletes to compete in women's international events as their counterparts at World Athletics like white European Seb Coe.

Last year, the African men with black skin who run the CAF declared 11 athletes with black skin from sub-Saharan African countries ineligible for the 2022 Women's African Cup of Nations football/soccer championship for failing to comply with the CAF/FIFA rules on testosterone levels set for XY DSD athletes in women's international soccer.

One of the athletes the black men from Africa who run the CAF declared ineligible to compete in the 2022 women's pan-African football championship is star striker Barba Banda, a black player from Zambia who is soccer's equivalent to Semenya. At the 2021 Tokyo Games, Banda, then 19 or 20, was the breakout star in women's soccer, becoming the first player in history to score back-to-back hat tricks in women's Olympic compeition.

We admittedly don’t have great data on it, but I think a reasonable baseline assumption would be that it doesn’t differ dramatically between races or ethnic groups, but participation in sports does, and all we see in televised international sporting events is the end result of the many many levels of selection that all go into who you see participating in sports at the highest levels.

It is just biology. Men have 10 times the amount of testosterone that normal women have. Now you want to get rid of that testosterone? O.K., but then it is going to take a couple of years for that to equilibrate. And men still have a larger frame with a larger
cardiac output, a larger lung capacity

I forgot to correctly attribute that quote. It's Renee Richards.

Let’s here from our sideline correspondent to get her opinion:

So here's a potential solution to all of this.

Establish the following divisions:

1) Open division - completely inclusive. Anyone of from any group can compete here. Their choice.

2) XX division - only those with XX chromosome make up may compete in this division

3) Para division - para athletes only

4) Binary division - trans athletes only

This allows for both inclusion and preserves the reason title 9 was created in the first place.

Actually, Richards "transitioned" at 41.

But back in the early-mid 1970s when Richards made first made headlines - and prompted widespread protests and boycotts - for competing in women's tennis, the process of "transitioning" for males meant having their testicles surgicaly removed. Usually the internal parts of their penises were removed too, with the remaining skin reconfigured into what surgeons falsely promised would be a close approximation of a human vagina.

By contrast, nearly all males who "identify as" women and girls nowadays keep their testicles and penises intact. This has been the case for most of the present century. That's why in recent years, trans activists shifted the focus to testosterone suppression and the current testosterone levels of males who want to use gender identity claims as their inroad into women's sports.

Moreover, today there's no uniform standard for what "transitioning" means for males who wish they were and claim to be women or girls - not even in sports for those who want to compete in women's and girls' events.

In many US states such as California and Connecticut, boys can compete in girls' school sports simply if they say they "identify as" girls - no medical interventions of any kind are required to suppress the amount of T their their testicles pump out.

The two male athletes who dominated in girls' HS sprints in CT several years ago were given free rein to compete in girls' track without undergoing any T suppression or taking any exogneous hormones. The only apparent "transition" the two male athletes went through was that one adopted a new first name; both started wearing colored nail laquer and/or brighlty colored acryclic glue-on fake fingernails; and both sported new hair dos.

But even in the hair department, the two CT male athletes who dominated in girls's HS sprints for several years didn't do all that much: one went to a salon and got hair extensions; the other one wore wigs and hairpieces of long locks known as falls when competing in girls' track meets. But the one who wore the wigs and falls also showed up for and ran in several girls' track meets wearing a skin-tight unitard-type running suit that made "her" male genitals clearly evident for all onlookers to see.