I agree with Claire.
See the Twilight of Women’s Sport?
Biological male, Emily Bridges, a cyclist for Team Great Britain has continued to race against men even though Emily identifies as a woman. But because of hormone therapy, Emily’s testosterone levels are now low enough to meet the criteria set out by British Cycling, the sport’s governing body, for Emily to compete against women.
That was always Emily’s plan. How successful could Emily be?
Before coming out as trans, Ms Bridges set the Junior Men’s national record for 25 miles in 2018 with a time of just over 47 minutes – two minutes faster than the current national record for adult women.
Source: The Mail Online
What do female Team GB cyclists think about this development? Not sure. I strongly suspect they are being encouraged to either lie or take unfair defeat in silent submission. The following seems inevitable.
Top women cyclists who have helped Great Britain to historic triumphs face losing their team places after a trans woman announced she would now compete in female events.
Source: The Mail Online
For those keeping watch over women’s sport, the hour is getting late.
Competitive Inequality
Here’s a good story at the ”DailyMail” about trans-athletes and women’s sport.
Most Sport Scientist’s disagree with the International Olympic Committee’s recent decision to remove upper limit restrictions on testosterone levels, restrictions which only applied to biological male athletes who wanted to compete as women in Olympic competitions. Or in the rare instance of an athlete born with a DSD (Disorder of Sexual Development) which caused her body to produce abnormally high levels of testosterone. Speaking scientifically, testosterone enhances physical performance greatly.
But apparently now, Self-ID is enough for the IOC. Biological males no longer need to keep their testosterone levels low by taking estrogen. The IOC once thought that higher levels of testosterone would give biological males an unfair competitive advantage over biological females.
But according to the IOC, it is only an inner sense of gender that matters now. Inclusivity trumps science.
I wonder if many world-class female athletes agree.
Most important graphs in the Mail story.
‘The IOC (International Olympic Committee) framework doesn’t seem to acknowledge that there’s a massive tension, which you could read as probably being impossible to resolve, between inclusion – as people use it in this context – and fairness and safety for female competition,’ said Williams, senior author of an ‘expert statement’ on the eligibility of trans athletes for sex categories, which was compiled on behalf of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences.
‘Most people in my profession can’t see how all three things can be achieved satisfactorily – and most sports are going to have admit as much.’
The International Olympic Committee published new guidance on trans participation in November. It removed a recommended limit on testosterone production for the female category and instead prioritised the inclusion of trans athletes.
Activist groups welcomed the development. Human Rights Watch said it was a ‘significant step toward protecting the dignity of all women athletes’.
Here’s the problem, HRW, Trans-women are not real women. Lia Thomas spent 19 years of his life as a male. You can’t take the differences of puberty back. The physical advantages produced by post-pubescent testosterone guarantees competitive inequality.
Count the ways:
‘One is the growth of the skeleton, not just the length of bones but also their diameter and their mass. The second is the effect on muscle growth. Testosterone is a powerful stimulator of muscle growth, both in terms of the thickness of the muscle and the size of the individual fibres.
‘The third is raised blood levels of haemoglobin, the key protein for transporting oxygen around the body and exercising muscles during sport.
‘When someone lowers testosterone, the question is, what happens to those three things? Largely, the skeleton doesn’t change, it might just get a little bit less dense, but it is probably negligible. Muscle strength and mass probably reduces by a few per cent, based on the data so far, and less than half of the typical difference between men and women.’ – Source: Mail Online
We need to hear from courageous world class female athletes on this obvious threat to Women’s Sport. Rights, once conferred, are very difficult to rescind.
The hour is getting late.
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"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]