Should there be a testosterone limit for participation in female sports events

The answer to the thread's question is: yes. Its a safe bet that a female who produces male levels of testosterone is on steroids (which is illegal in sports, I would imagine). Anyone who naturally produces male levels of testosterone isn't a female.
 
East German team at one point. "Females", supposedly.

top-secret-1984-avi-025.jpg

I agree with what you're saying, and it is not restricted to the east bloc in the 70's and 80's.
But I don't think this last picture is from a sports manifestation.
It seems to me it is a screenshot in a movie doing it's best to confirm some stereotypes.
 
I agree with what you're saying, and it is not restricted to the east bloc in the 70's and 80's.
But I don't think this last picture is from a sports manifestation.
It seems to me it is a screenshot in a movie doing it's best to confirm some stereotypes.

I don't know. I googled the topic and found it. I'll try to find the picture again and see if I can trace it.
 
she took forbidden susbstances, but I think she was more a victim of the system and I don't think she would have cheated knowingly and willingly
and she does not look masculine to me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heike_Drechsler

I think you selected the pics to confirm a certain stereotype that the media have planted in your mind.
A well-chosen picture of Serena Williams would have had the same effect.

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I'm not blaming you for that Angela, just to make you aware.
And it is certainly true that East-German athletes were cheating in a systematic way, as Russia was still trying to do in the olympic winter games.
But it didn't turn females into males.
 
Guys, thanks for answering my... what?... "finesse"? :)

Summarizing all below in one question: what is the solution in your opinion?

@markod
Good analysis. Yep, that's the point, and connected to what I was saying. I guess the "inversion" I proposed could make it more "evident" and easier to understand.
So, I wonder if there would be XXs highlighting among men in certain sports, like volleyball itself? :)
And one more approach: what was Tifanny before the change, as sportsman, and what did she/he become in comparison to her/his pairs, as sportswoman? If the original condition doesn't matter that much, a similar relative performance would be expected, no?

I recognize the complexity of the matter though. Ygorcs is right. I just think this complexity is not that much in the general imbalance provoked by "XY" and "XX", evident imo, but in the integration of these people, never mind mere motivations of political nature, and we know they exist. I certainly appreciate more technical approaches. :)
That said, the "condition", or whatever we call it, could be discussed separately from a psychological (?) perspective, but anyway I assume many of them are probably better with their choice, and they are, yes, different in important aspects, which doesn't mean they're "sub-citizens"(!), right? So, objectivelly, the question, here, would be: how to fit them? It matters imo, and should matter at least for the free world, after all, freedom imposes certain costs, and that includes the right of minorities. Indeed, they are generally citizens of free societies, and, as such, formally as good as anybody else. More importantly, they are people. On the other hand, there could be a conflict of, let's call, rights (?), after all, we have XX women on the other side.
So, alternatively, would a "transgender league" be viable, for example, in the fashion of, say, Paralympic games? I wonder if the audience could justify it in the future, with the help of sponsorships or whomever want to support it.
The counter-argument to keep them where they are could be their currently very low number and the fact they're not necessarily the best where they act, since they are... relatively few. So, that would not be a high price to pay, supposedly. Well, at least not so far. Still, truth be said, many of them, perhaps the most, would be ordinary as "professional" sportsmen, and, as women, would own their "success", in large degree, to the condition in question, beyond the natural ones. Admittedly, certain substances, too, affect what we recognize as "natural", and at the end this is the criteria (being natural), aside relativisms of all sorts. Let's try to be realisthic and go straight to the point. They are not less people than we are, which doesn't mean the change, the condition, is "natural". It is not. Again: what was Tifanny before the change, as man, and what did she/he become in comparison to her/his pairs, as woman? Plus, those are precedents that may evolve to something else. At an unlikely extreme, a league could become, yes, transgender, but with a different label. That's potentially.

So, what's the solution, and how to conciliate it with their right of what we could call "personal plenitude"? Keeping them? Keeping them just in specific ones? Not keeping, under the risk of not being able to fit them somewhere else? I mean, some transgenders may be talentend, and may want to be professional sportspersons. What to do then? Putting them among males? At least few time ago they couldn't even join the army. Complicated. At the end, both have a social price imo. Which is higher? Perhaps the answer is in the acceptance of them by sportswomen and in public opinion in general, even if it's subject to a pure "marketing" (for or against), and even if the best answer is not always, necessarily, in... public opinion.

Now, this seems complex, yes, and I must agree with Ygorcs here.

That said, particularly, I guess the lowest price, and perhaps the most "fair", would be in "private" competitions, in the fashion of Paralympic games, but perhaps we could also wait a bit more to see how it unrolls? I mean, it's something still new. If not, the solution would be to put them among males, which would probably mean not putting them anywhere. Again, complicated.

Insights are welcome.
 
transgenders can do with their own body whatever they want, but no one and no society or organistation should have to bend their rules to accomodate them
there are competitions for males and for females and to protect the athletes, sportsmen and sportswomen, and to create a level playing field there are rules and limitations
an important limitation is the list with forbidden substances
and it is not because someone 'feels' he/she belongs to the other sexe that he/she should be allowed to enter the league of the opposite sexe
 
transgenders can do with their own body whatever they want, but no one and no society or organistation should have to bend their rules to accomodate them
there are competitions for males and for females and to protect the athletes, sportsmen and sportswomen, and to create a level playing field there are rules and limitations
an important limitation is the list with forbidden substances
and it is not because someone 'feels' he/she belongs to the other sexe that he/she should be allowed to enter the league of the opposite sexe

I agree completely, and I don't see anything that complicated about it. If there are enough of them to have their own league, and they wish to organize it, great, and more power to them.

We don't allow athletes to use performance enhancing drugs for a reason, and if they're caught they pay the consequences. This isn't that different.

When my daughter was in elementary school she desperately wanted to play baseball on the boys' team, and not softball with the girls. That's what her father, a great baseball player in his day, had taught her, and that's what she thought was more fun. They didn't let her. At first I was angry and wanted to fight it, but upon reflection I didn't do it. She could compete and even best them at 10, 11, 12, but what about when she was 16 or in college, even older? What then? She would never make the boys' or mens' teams, and she wouldn't have practiced and mastered softball. You have to be fair as well as realistic about some things. There are differences between the sexes that not all the training in the world can equalize. It doesn't mean we're inferior. We're just different.
 
transgenders can do with their own body whatever they want, but no one and no society or organistation should have to bend their rules to accomodate them
there are competitions for males and for females and to protect the athletes, sportsmen and sportswomen, and to create a level playing field there are rules and limitations
an important limitation is the list with forbidden substances
and it is not because someone 'feels' he/she belongs to the other sexe that he/she should be allowed to enter the league of the opposite sexe

To be fair, every pro-athlete takes PEDs anyway, including anabolic steroids most of the time. Even when I was into very amateur level boxing in my teens and early twenties trainers would more or less tell you to leave if you weren't willing to inject. At the professional level athletes are basically walking pharmacies. It makes no sense to talk about rules and fairness with these competitions.
 
To be fair, every pro-athlete takes PEDs anyway, including anabolic steroids most of the time. Even when I was into very amateur level boxing in my teens and early twenties trainers would more or less tell you to leave if you weren't willing to inject. At the professional level athletes are basically walking pharmacies. It makes no sense to talk about rules and fairness with these competitions.

some sport federations have only rules on paper, in other sports controlls are more serious
that being said, even in sports where there are controlls, always new products and techinques are invented, either for things that are not forbidden yet, or for stuff that is not traceable yet
 
Razib Khan chimes in about the differences between men and women in terms of athletics. I think I summarized part of it in an anecdote. Until about the age of 14, my daughter could beat the pants off virtually any boy in swimming, tennis, golf, baseball. As soon as the boys started puberty things began to change. She could and still can beat a lot if not most men, but although she can best almost all women she knows, she can't beat the best men she knows.

Nature is just against her. It hurts, but there it is. Doesn't stop her from preferring to play against men, though. She's highly competitive: her father's daughter in almost every way.

One of my favorite pictures of her is one I took when she had no time to change after a softball game and had to go in uniform to get a mani/pedi. The only thing she took off were her helmet (she was a catcher) and cleats. :)


https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019...binary/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitteror
 
Razib Khan chimes in about the differences between men and women in terms of athletics. I think I summarized part of it in an anecdote. Until about the age of 14, my daughter could beat the pants off virtually any boy in swimming, tennis, golf, baseball. As soon as the boys started puberty things began to change. She could and still can beat a lot if not most men, but although she can best almost all women she knows, she can't beat the best men she knows.

Nature is just against her. It hurts, but there it is. Doesn't stop her from preferring to play against men, though. She's highly competitive: her father's daughter in almost every way.

One of my favorite pictures of her is one I took when she had no time to change after a softball game and had to go in uniform to get a mani/pedi. The only thing she took off were her helmet (she was a catcher) and cleats. :)


https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019...binary/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitteror

My sister was very fast in the 50m dash. She won a lot of meets competing against other girls. But she stood no chance when competing against the top black girls or the top boys. It's OK to have these competitions among similarly skilled people. My sister did very well among her peers but not so well among the higher skilled/higher performing girls and boys. The Williams sisters at their peak could probably compete with some of the lower ranked men in tennis but how will they do against Djokovic and Federer?
 
Softball plays: not baseball, but still lots of fun to watch imo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmxYW1mN64c

The science behind the differences:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmxYW1mN64c

"Is baseball a harder sport than softball? How different are they really? Very different, not only in softball is the field smaller, the ball larger and pitching harder, it is also a lot harder to hit. You can make the argument that in baseball the ball is smaller which makes it harder to see and hit. But the bats have bigger barrels and a pitching mound is about 20 feet farther away from home plate, than in softball. As well as being farther away, the baseball mound is raised. This makes the ball travel in a downward trajectory, meaning that baseball players can not throw rise balls. In softball, the mound is flat; therefore pitchers can throw rise balls. This means that a softball batter has to work against gravity to hit a ball. Still not convinced that softball is a harder sport? In baseball, a fastball pitched at 90 miles per hour from an average pitching mound 55 feet from home plate gives a batter about .44 seconds to see and react to the pitch. In softball, a fastball pitched at 70 miles per hour from an average pitching mound of 37 feet, gives the batter about .35 seconds to see and react to the pitch. This means that a softball batter receiving a pitch 20 miles per hour slower still has 20% less time to react than a baseball player. Can you imagine if softball pitchers could pitch 90 miles per hour? The batter would have about .2 seconds to react, which is about the speed of blinking twice. So not only does a softball player have less time to react to the ball, if it is a rise ball or even just a high fast ball, they have to work against gravity, making softball a harder hitting sport than baseball."

Pitchers and catchers working in unison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xSEYt9vlWU

Boys trying to hit against a twelve year old girl throwing a softball...just for fun guys...don't get triggered. The boys haven't hit their growth spurt a lot of them, and they haven't trained for hitting softballs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJwGD2rlgOw
 
sure this "women" has a significant advantage. but certainly many women who compete there have a significant genetic advantage over other women and that's why they are there. isn't the point of sports to show others you are the strongest the fastest or whatever? now if someone is genetically better suited for a sport you just implement new limitations and categories? what's the point then? let's assume there was a genetic programm to produce a women that has a strong genetic advantage over others in a certain discipline would she be allowed to compete or not?

and then there is also the discussion about drugs that increase the performance.

imo this whole discussion shows how stupid these too serious competitive sports actually are.
 
If people don't get it after this, there's nothing more I can say.

See:


"I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really questioned the existence of separate sports leagues and competitions for men and women. It’s always seemed obvious that distinguishing between male and female athletes is a no-brainer if women are to have a real chance of winning medals and tournaments in most sports, and if they aren’t going to be gravely injured in some contact sports. That simple distinction doesn’t say anything normative about either sex (although resilient, if narrowing, pay differentials are evidence that sexism hasn’t disappeared). It doesn’t say that Billie Jean King couldn’t beat a man at tennis. She famously did, after all. The whole point of separate contests, to my mind, is to empower women. Title IX, for example, is designed specifically to ensure equal access to sports for women, who had previously been sidelined in college athletics. In this case, separate is the only way to be fully equal.Then along comes the fascinating case of Caster Semenya."

She's what used to be called a hermaphrodite.

"She isn’t doping; she has played and is playing by the rules; she has been the subject of some invasive and ugly attention which she doesn’t deserve; but the upshot is that her body produces more testosterone or responds in ways different than women with XX chromosomes."

"Does that give her an unfair advantage? This month, in a 2–1 ruling, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that it did, and she (and any other high-T female athletes) could no longer compete in 400-meter or 800-meter track events unless they reduce their testosterone levels. Most women have T levels between 0.3 and 2.4 nanomoles per liter (npl). The new rules require all competitors to lower their testosterone to a maximum of 5 npl. "

"I’m torn, to be perfectly honest. There is no satisfactory conclusion here: Semenya has done nothing wrong, and neither have her competitors. The CAS acknowledged that it was forced either to discriminate against Semenya or against all the other women in her sport. So they worked out a compromise that doesn’t really please anyone, but that’s designed to keep competition as fair as possible. It seems a reasonable balance to me, but it has been widely excoriated, especially in the mainstream media."

The "gender studies" professors who blind themselves to science for the sake of ideology have come out in full force.
"Then this: “In other words, for most sports, testosterone levels do not correlate with superior performance.”

To put it mildly, this is bonkers. Women have a range of 0.3–2.4 npl, and we know that Semenya must have more than 5 npl, or the regulations would not apply to her. Men, in contrast, have a range from 10–38 npl. There’s not even an overlap. The range among women is tiny compared with the difference between men and women. Of course testosterone correlates with superior performance! That’s the entire reason we have separate contests for the two sexes. And the entire reason we forbid doping. How the New York Times could publish this deeply misleading sentence (to be polite) is beyond me.
Current testosterone levels per se also don’t account for the effect of the hormone throughout a man’s life. Doriane Lambert, Duke law professor and former 800-meter running champion, notes how profound the effects are:
Compared to females, males have greater lean body mass (more skeletal muscle and less fat), larger hearts (both in absolute terms and scaled to lean body mass), higher cardiac outputs, larger hemoglobin mass, larger VO2 max (i.e. a person’s ability to take in oxygen), greater glycogen utilization, and higher anaerobic capacity.
A physician who ignored these differences would lose her license. Gender studies professors apparently make careers out of denying it. So take the top female runners in the world right now: Literally thousands of boys and men would beat them. Lambert elaborates: “In the single year 2017, Olympic and World Champion Allyson Felix’s lifetime best in the 400 meters of 49.26 seconds was surpassed over 15,000 times by boys and by men.” Remove the distinction between male and female testosterone levels, and no women will be in any major athletic contest for the foreseeable future.
The other argument is that all humans have natural inequalities and we don’t penalize a swimmer, say, who has an unusually wide wingspan, or whose body produces much less lactic acid than most, or a basketball player because he’s more than seven feet tall. Why penalize one natural advantage over others? The answer to that is that the natural advantage of males’ levels of testosterone over females’ outweighs anything else that might be pertinent within each sex’s range. Among the members of each sex, you can have natural advantages that can confer an edge, but most are quite subtle (the case for much lower lactic acid helping Michael Phelps, for example, is highly debatable) and they are nowhere near as powerful a determinant as testosterone. Yes, of course, plenty of women can outrun plenty of men. But the average difference in performance in most sports between men and women after puberty is 10 to 12 percent. At an elite level, that all but wipes out female victories in coed sports. It would end women’s athletics."
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/andrew-sullivan-who-should-be-allowed-in-womens-sports.html
 
See:



To put it mildly, this is bonkers. Women have a range of 0.3–2.4 npl, and we know that Semenya must have more than 5 npl, or the regulations would not apply to her. Men, in contrast, have a range from 10–38 npl. There’s not even an overlap. The range among women is tiny compared with the difference between men and women. Of course testosterone correlates with superior performance! That’s the entire reason we have separate contests for the two sexes. And the entire reason we forbid doping. How the New York Times could publish this deeply misleading sentence (to be polite) is beyond me.

testosterone levels of 10-38npl is a huge range compared to 0.3-2.4 npl in women. so if testosterone has a correlation with physical performance, it probably has, the question is why shouldn't there be testosterone levels in male sports too? the poor low testo men never even have a chance to compete in certain sports without doping. so make doping legal already.

this discussion isn't really about fairness isn't it. it's as the text says to empower women and to have female competitors at big sports events. and i understand that. but then why not just say caster is no women so she cant compete. that easy cause i'm pretty sure if all those "female" competitors end up beeing transgenders with lowered testosterone levels people wouldn't like that either because they want to see real WOMEN there.
 
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