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

I once referred to a MTF transperson as him. And my post got deleted.

So we are forced to use "him" when referring to a biological male who has transitioned to female.

That makes zero sense. Reassignment surgery is cosmetic as far as athletic performance is concerned. The mental well being and bodily autonomy of the trans individual are the only relevant concerns for surgery.

Women? In what way? Please enlighten us dumb folk.

Yes, a larger frame, but trans women athletes have the same hemoglobin (supplying oxygen to the muscles) levels as their cisgender counterparts. So they end up powering their larger frame with a smaller engine. This was the basis of Harper's finding that--among distance runners--a B male runner with be a B trans women runner.

Yes, I agree. From a purely athletic performance point of view it makes no sense. Just my opinion.

You're being disingenous in alleging that there's unanimity amongst the "CAS, US federal courts and al lthe other courts" in the world on the issue of whether males can be excluded from female sports because of their sex. Actually, the various court opinions contradict one another.

Even within the same judicial system, there is no unanmity from one case to the next (as the marked differences in the reasoning and language used by the CAS in the Chand and Semenya cases shows).

Your contention that "you need to prove there is a difference" between females and the particular kinds of males you think belong in the female category in order to "justify exclusion" of those males rests on your belief that the female category always has been and must always be open to at least some males - namely males with certain DSDs and males who claim to have opposite-sex gender identities, so long as said males meet certain conditions that you and other mostly male people have decided on.

Your contention is also based on your view that the onus is on people who believe in female-only sports to prove why exclusion is justified in the case of each and every individual male, or groups of males, who want to get into the female category. Because you don't think that female people as a sex class should be allowed to say no to and exclude all males across the board from female sports simply because they are male.

Whereas my view is that the onus is on advocates of male inclusion/intrusion in the female category like you to prove why shoehorning some males into female sports is justified and fair. Because I believe that female people as a sex class should be allowed to say no to and exclude all males across the board from femael sports simply because they are male.

In the past, many of the mostly male policymakers and judges who've been the ones to decide who gets to compete in the female category of sports have held the same position as you, or they've made decisions siding with it. But I'm not sure that's going to continue to be the case in the future.

But bring on the court cases. Advocates of a female-only category are armed with good arguments and evidence for our side in ways we've never been before - and we'd like to get a fair hearing in the courts, finally.

CAS employed the exact same reasoning in both Chand case and Semenya case. They reached different conclusions because they had different cases at hand.

Either you didn't read the actual decisions, or you don't know how to read legal documents.

Its core capability is write-only, not so much to read critically, not even its own writings.

The reason Richards didn't dominate in women's tennis is that Richards started playing tennis in the female division in Richards' 40s, when Richards was well past Richards' athletics prime.

Richards has since said that if Richards had played women's tennis 20 years earlier when Richards was of prime age, Richards would have absolutely dominated in women's professional tennis. Richards has said that if Richards "transitioned" at around age 20 and played women's tennis starting from the time Richards was 21, then Richards most certainly would have beaten the pants off all the top female players in the world in every single match and swept every single women's Grand Slam title each year that Richards remained on the women's pro tour.

Allow me to simply agree with your self-evaluation of your mental acumen.

It makes sense in that no women have penises and in reality land having a penis should disqualify anyone from competing in women’s sports

Ouch, so much contortive noun expenditure just to avoid giving someone basic human dignity.

There is a simpler way to say 'trans women': men. And men who dress up like women are still men. That's like calling a train an iron horse, but then actually insisting that the train is a horse.

There's no good way to do a performance test where the desired outcome of the participant is to is to under perform. If you're only allowed to race in the women's field if you run a mile slower than 5:00 then you just sandbag the test and blast the race.

I agree that the burden of proof that there is no retained advantage should be on the biological men seeking to compete in the women's field. An outcome based test like running or cycling is open to intentional misrepresentation, and a non-volitional parameter based test like blood tests or muscle biopsy does not capture the many sexually dimorphic variables that affect performance outcomes.

The fundamental issue is that transitioning to a different gender can be a choice. Some people surely truly feel as though their gender doesn't match their body. Some can be bad actors faking it for notoriety, plaudits, or victories. How do you possibly determine between the two, and the gray area in between?

Since there is no possible objective way to separate out the bad actors and no objective way to disprove retained advantage then the reasonable solution is to compete as your biological sex. Competing in sport as your stated gender is not an unalienable or fundamental right.

Stating something one knows to be false is lying. Lying is not dignified.

Identifying as such doesn't suddenly turn them into women.

There is no need to determine intent, nor does it make sense for a policy to make potential dishonesty the default assumption.

There is quantifiable unfairness in a policy only if transwomen winning medals as a fraction of all transwomen significantly exceeds the corresponding fraction for cis women. That currently is not happening in any sport, certainly not in T&F, rather everyone on both sides of the debate agrees that WA/FINA rules make it practically impossible for any trans (or for that matter DSD) women to be competitive.

So the current WA/FINA policy is indeed effectively a default exclude without a credible threat (yet).

Go look at Lia Thomas.

Don't know why you're being disingenuous about Richards; when she competed as a man in the 1950s (reaching the early rounds of the US Open), the major tennis tournaments were only open to amateurs. That was the highest level then.

She did keep her transition secret because that's what all trans people were expected to do in those days, as a condition of transitioning. The ideal was to cut off everyone you knew, start over somewhere else, and never mention your past to anyone (and lie if confronted). Amazingly, this "deep stealth" protocol didn't exactly do wonders for trans people's social support networks and mental health.

Admittedly having a distinctive style and a high level of ability in a sport one played before transition, and then picking it up again after transition, was probably not the most reliable way to go about this, and Richards may well have known this going in.

As for the last part, that's simple to explain: trans athletes transition because they're transgender, not to have an advantage in sports (whether they obtain one is a separate question). Dysphoria sucks enough that, even if the rule were only a year on hormones, people who aren't genuinely transgender would probably back off before then. How many cis people here would transition and live as the other sex for the rest of their life for $10M?