3 responses to “Feminists Complain About “Gender Dogma” — While Pushing Gender Dogma”

1. 

   tj

   March 23, 2022

   I agree, Selwyn. I’ve known a few women who couldn’t be satisfied until they could compete against the males at whatever endeavor, especially the athletic. I’ve sometimes wondered if some “masculinists” hadn’t cooked up a plot to teach such females a lesson in reality. I mean the feminization is reversible if it’s only hormonal, right?

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2. 

   Jack sumter

   March 29, 2022

   Follow up: Very Long Post about sex, gender, and fairness in women’s sport.
   After what I posted the other day about having actually been an NCAA swimmer who supports Lia Thomas, I had several long conversations that made me realize it might be helpful to share something more extensive about why I vehemently believe trans women belong in women’s sports.
   I am writing this as a trans and intersex person, a lifelong athlete, a former NCAA swimmer (you can see my top times here lol https://athletics.carleton.edu/sports/2020/4/16/womens-swimming-and-diving-all-time-top-twenty.aspx?id=6100) and a biologist.
   Outrage and suspicion based on the idea that men are pretending to be women in order to dominate women’s sports is over 100 years old. When women’s participation in athletics increased in the early 1900s, this created significant anxiety that the position of (white) men in society was being threatened and the (white) ideal of women as delicate, feminine, and passive was in jeopardy. These anxieties ranged from the myth that exercise and sport could damage reproductive capacity to the belief that the strained facial expressions of women athletes during exertion were unfeminine and ugly. As women’s involvement in sports grew and it became apparent that women actually can excel at sports without their internal organs falling out, suspicions arose that these fast, strong, muscular athletes might not actually be women. As a result of these suspicions, beginning in the 1940s and 50s, women athletes began to be required to bring “medical femininity certificates” to international competitions to verify their sex.
   https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html
   In the 1960s, anxieties about men competing in women’s sports increased further due to international politics and concerns about the success of the Soviet Union in women’s athletics. The “medical femininity certificate” was replaced by a requirement that a panel of doctors examine the genitals of every women competing in international athletic competitions. This was humiliating and was soon replaced by chromosomal testing.
   However, chromosomal testing proved to be an ineffective method of “sex verification” because human sex is comprised of multiple traits which come in different combinations. From the late 1960s to 2000, this policy failed to identify any men pretending to be women, but it did identify, humiliate, and traumatize multiple intersex women athletes born with traits such as Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, meaning that they have XY chromosomes but no ability to respond to testosterone.
   Some of the athletes with CAIS identified this way did not previously know that they were intersex, and only found out upon their disqualification from competition for traits of which they had no knowledge and which provided no athletic advantage.
   After mandatory chromosomal testing was ended, the International Amateur Athletic Federation maintained the ability to perform selective testing on women athletes if questions arose about their sex. In 2011, this was reclassified as “hyperandrogenism testing.” After protests from disqualified athletes, in 2018, the I.A.A.F. revised the guidelines around sex verification testing so that they applied only to a handful of track and field events and and would exclude specifically woman athletes with “testosterone levels equalling or exceeding 5 nmol/L who are androgen sensitive.” In 2019, this was further revised to apply only to women athletes with “testosterone levels equalling or exceeding 5 nmol/L who are androgen sensitive and who have XY chromosomes and testes.”
   That adds up to at least 6 different official definitions of what constitutes an acceptable woman in sport, and this is just for cisgender women. There is no single, simple, or obvious way to decide who counts as a woman because human sex refuses to be divided neatly into two categories. And just as the suspicions about women athletes originated from anxieties about white femininity, the athletes who have been subjected to “selective” hyperandrogenism testing have disproportionately been women of color from Africa and Asia who did not conform to hegemonic standards of white femininity.
   From 2003 until the 2022 Olympics, transgender women competing in women’s Olympic events were required to maintain a total serum testosterone level of below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to competition.
   https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Medical_commission/2015-11_ioc_consensus_meeting_on_sex_reassignment_and_hyperandrogenism-en.pdf
   In late 2021, the IOC released an updated framework to go into effect after the 2022 Olympics removing restrictions on intersex and transgender women athlete’s testosterone levels unless it can be specifically proven that their transgender or intersex status provides a consistent, specific, and unfair advantage in their sport.
   https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/News/2021/11/IOC-Framework-Fairness-Inclusion-Non-discrimination-2021.pdf?_ga=2.195521836.1048075235.1637092563-834742310.1637092563
   This framework is non-binding and some federations have already said they will not accept it, but it reflects the increasing understanding that athletic performance is not directly proportionate to endogenous (naturally occurring) testosterone levels.
   https://www.outsports.com/olympics/2021/11/16/22785619/olympics-trans-transgender-nonbinary-athletes-ioc-policy-paris-2024
   https://www.si.com/olympics/2022/03/23/transgender-athletes-testosterone-policies-ioc-framework
   Many of the arguments made against the participation of transgender and intersex women in women’s athletics is based on the belief that athletes with higher endogenous testosterone levels have a consistent and meaningful advantage across sports. This was directly contradicted by a 2014 paper which showed that elite cis men and women athletes actually had overlapping ranges of naturally occurring testosterone. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VDEJ1cQ6WBv-AeCL2Um0pgluSpt_JpX5/view?usp=sharing
   This demonstrates both that some elite cis men athletes have testosterone levels below the typical range for cis men, yet still manage to be elite athletes, and that endogenous testosterone levels are clearly not the sole or defining factor separating the athletic performance levels of elite cis men and elite cis women athletes.
   For people who are still stuck on the issue of testosterone and trans women in athletics, all trans women competing in women’s events in NCAA and international athletics as of now have been subject to regulations requiring that they be on testosterone suppressing medication, which has been shown to reduce testosterone in trans women to at or below average testosterone levels for cis women within a year.
   https://ec.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/ec/8/7/EC-19-0196.xml?fbclid=IwAR0tGCr-SrSGM_Fx2m9NNaaHt92xF6R46zpRZkvCuMArUhQP51fO9GKzV5o
   Biological sex is much more complicated than just hormones, and much much more complicated than just testosterone, but it is vastly inaccurate to say that trans women on hormone replacement therapy are biologically identical to cisgender endosex (non-intersex) men. https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/4/11/bvaa119/5897036
   Because more trans people are coming out as children and accessing hormone blockers and gender affirming 1st puberty through hormone replacement therapy, there are some trans girls and trans women athletes who never have and never will experience the levels of testosterone that the average cis endosex man will have during puberty.
   Still, some people insist that there is still an innate and universal athletic advantage that all trans women have as a result of being assigned male at birth regardless of their transition status or current testosterone levels. This claim overlooks several key factors.
   1. Being assigned male at birth does not mean you will automatically be good at sports. Most cis men are not elite athletes. On my college swim team, there were some cis women swimmers who were faster than some of the cis men swimmers. This is common at lower levels of sport. Many men who are not athletes seem to think they could show up to a competition of any sport and defeat elite woman athletes simply by virtue of being men. That is both false and misogynistic.
   2. All of the examples we have of trans women competing in high level women’s sports have been under policies that require testosterone suppression. And there are no examples of trans women being disproportionately dominant in women’s sports. Even people who are against including trans women in women’s sports have not been able to provide examples of this. Arguing that no cis woman athlete can beat a trans women athlete ever just because the latter was assigned male at birth is not only proven false by the results of actual sporting events, it’s also magical thinking, transphobic, and misogynistic. https://sports.yahoo.com/trans-athletes-sports-2021-120011195.html
   3. Some people are fixated on specific physical traits that some trans women have which they assume no cis women have. There are actually no traits that trans women have that no cis women has. None. There are cis women who are tall. There are cis women who are muscular. There are cis women who have broad shoulders and narrow hips. There are cis women with beards. There are cis women with high testosterone. There are cis women who have Y chromosomes. There is immense biological diversity within the category of cis women. (If you don’t consider intersex women to be women, that’s also bigotry). There are multiple examples of transphobes claiming to point out women athletes who they believe are trans based on their appearance when the women in question are actually cisgender. This is just recapitulating the anxieties and surveillance of women athlete’s biology and adherence to standards of white femininity that lead to a century of failed attempts at “verifying” woman athlete’s sex status.
   4. Traits associated with current or former high testosterone levels are not advantageous in every sport and are not sufficient by themselves to make an athlete successful in any sport. Training, technique, and sport specific mental preparation matter enormously. As a collegiate swimmer, I outraced athletes who were better physically prepared because I could mentally access more of my maximum physical capacity than they could on race day. I watched a special on Peacock where Michael Phelps discussed each of his Olympic finals and explained how he had both won and lost races on the strength of his mindset and mid-race mental decisions. These factors matter immensely, they can make the difference between winning and losing a race, even for one of the most truly dominant athletes of all time, and there is zero evidence that trans women have an advantage over cis women in any of them.
   There is also the larger question of how fairness is defined in sport. There is an inherent level of unfairness in all sports, and decisions about what is a fair versus an unfair advantage are not always clear cut. It’s up to the governing bodies in each sport to decide what is a fair vs an unfair advantage and these decisions are continuously being revised as technology and training methods evolve.
   As of now, most naturally occurring physical traits, even extreme ones, are considered fair advantages. In 2022, elite athletes are not expected to have average physical characteristics, and it’s in fact expected that they don’t in many sports.
   Scott Hamilton, an Olympic gold medalist in figure skating, had a brain tumor as a child that prevented him from growing for several years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Hamilton_(figure_skater)#Early_life_and_education) and reduced his adult height. Being small can be an advantage in figure skating, but Scott Hamilton isn’t considered a cheater because his childhood illness made him shorter. Being tall is an advantage in volleyball, but 3-time Olympic gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings isn’t considered a cheater because she is 11 inches taller than the average woman in the US. Being a non-average height in a sport that favors very tall or very short athletes is considered a fair advantage.
   There has been extensive discussion about Michael Phelps’s extraordinary body, and he was considered lucky, not a cheater, and celebrated for his accomplishments. His many unique physical traits include long arms, a long torso, above average flexibility, and below average lactic acid production, all of which are considered fair advantages.
   https://www.liveabout.com/michael-phelps-body-proportions-and-swimming-1206744#:~:text=Phelps%20Produces%20Less%20Lactic%20Acid&text=Phelps'%20body%20produces%20less%20lactic,distinct%20advantages%20for%20any%20athlete.
   However, the exceptions to this overall acceptance and celebration of unique bodies in sport are woman athletes with sex traits which are perceived as failing to conform to expectations of cisnormative white femininity. This includes both trans women and the cis women of color who were disqualified from sporting events because their naturally high testosterone levels were deemed an unfair advantage, including Pratima Gaonkar, Santhi Soundarajan, Caster Semenya, Pinki Pramanik, Dutee Chand, Beatrice Masilingi, and Christine Mboma.
   By contrast, men athletes with naturally high testosterone levels are not subjected to sex verification and are not considered to have an unfair advantage. As it has been established that the ranges of naturally occurring testosterone levels in elite cis men and women athletes overlap, there is not consistent evidence across sports that high endogenous testosterone is even a universal advantage.
   It is additionally inconsistent and unscientific to claim that endogenous testosterone is the only naturally occurring physical trait which is considered an unfair advantage in sport (and only in women’s sport) when every other naturally occurring physical trait variation, no matter how extreme, is considered a fair advantage.
   There are also many accepted fair advantages in sport which are not naturally occurring physical traits. In elite athletics, it is considered a fair advantage for athletes that have access to higher quality equipment, the ability to train full time due to economic security, and the ability to employ a full team of professionals to maintain their body (for example Dara Torres https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29torres-t.html) to compete against athletes without these privileges.
   In swimming for example, it is known that tech suits (highly compressive suits that extend to the knee and which have bonded or taped seams) can provide both a physical and mental advantage that increases racing performances.
   https://swimcompetitive.com/tech-suits/how-much-time-does-a-tech-suit-drop/
   These suits are extremely expensive ($100-$500 a suit) and can only be worn a few times before they start stretching out and aren’t as compressive. They are banned for swimmers under 12 years old but allowed in high school and college competitions. https://www.usaswimming.org/news/2020/08/24/tech-suit-restriction-for-12-and-under-swimmers
   When I was a collegiate swimmer, my team was able to get a lower rate on certain brands of tech suits for our championship meets, but this isn’t necessarily available to high school level swimmers. High school swimmers who can afford tech suits have a known advantage over high school students who can’t, but this is considered to be a fair advantage by USA swimming and by high school conferences. We aren’t seeing legislation proposed to ban tech suits in high school swimming though, we are seeing legislation to ban trans girls from competing in high school sports because this is ultimately about bigotry and not about fairness.
   As the IOC outlines in its new framework, to argue that trans or intersex women have a specific unfair advantage over endosex cis women, their physical traits would have to be proven to provide both a magnitude and consistency of advantage greater than any of the other many and significant physical and non-physical inequities currently considered to be fair advantages in sport.
   As many other people have pointed out, the actual issues of fairness in women’s sports include the lack of opportunities, support, regulation of coaching and medical staff (extremely apparent in the ongoing USA gymnastics dumpster fire), and financial payoff for women athletes, but people who enjoy being angry about the supposed unfairness of trans women in women’s sport tend not to actually care about those things.
   I was a competitive swimmer for 15 years and a NCAA swimmer for 4 years and I have never seen anything close to this level of discussion about anything to do with women’s NCAA swimming before, and it’s disgusting and disingenuous and an insult to women athletes that so many people only pretend to care about their sports when it provides the opportunity to be publicly transphobic.
   Lastly, even though this is much bigger and older than Lia Thomas, what she’s been subject to is so deeply unfair and dehumanizing. Coming out as trans and transitioning is very, very hard, especially when people close to you are unsupportive (as some of her teammates have revealed themselves to be). Being a student athlete is very hard and NCAA athletes don’t get paid unless they have NIL deals. Physically transitioning and undergoing a second puberty while trying to maintain your body awareness and technique as an athlete is even harder.
   Dealing with all three at once and then winning an event at NCAA championships (especially one as grueling as the 500 freestyle) is an incredible achievement and one for which she has been thoroughly punished. Strangers who are against her participation have shared fabricated lies about her times pre-transition, her level of dominance post-transition, and the details of her body. Strangers who support her have argued that her failure to break the 500 record or to win either the 200 or the 100 freestyle at NCAA championships means she has the right to compete. To quote trans cyclist Rachel McKinnon, why should a trans woman’s right to compete in sports be contingent on her not succeeding, or not succeeding too much?
   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/i-won-a-world-championship-some-people-arent-happy.html?fbclid=IwAR3UWZhVe3fjQzcsEC9IeoJWIql58nCt3EbJqDMhnVH3F9yPTVvsy7fsVe4
   Transmisogynists are terrified not just of trans women competing in women’s sports, but of trans women doing well in women’s sports. Trans men athletes do face transphobia, but they are not subjected to the same level of scrutiny, criticism, dehumanization, and punishment for daring to compete or even occasionally win. https://pinkmantaray.com/transathlete?fbclid=IwAR3XmeOs_PHho_5tIcPbc6l2ok0W3d5T0fS_3FH8YzAzfu2kyfc3m47LPus
   And at the end of the day, that’s what this is really about and has always been about. It’s always been about hating trans women and not wanting anything good to happen for them. It’s always been about fear, disgust, and dehumanization of women who aren’t seen as compliant to a narrow, racist, transphobic, and exorsexist ideas about femininity. It’s always been about the anxiety that if a woman is too good at sports, she can’t possibly, really, actually be a woman.
   Image shows a picture of swimmers in a lap pool superimposed over a trans flag.

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3. 

   Selwyn Duke

   April 1, 2022

   Dear JS,
   You do have some intelligence, which, unfortunately, you’re using for the purposes of rationalizing more effectively than a dummy would. I’ve refuted all the arguments you put forth above in my articles, so here I’ll just make one point.
   If we really can’t define “woman,” then the term becomes irrelevant. There is then no rational reason to have “women’s” sports, and we thus should eliminate the classification completely. We should just have all the humans (since I’m sure you agree that we can define “human”) compete together. We can, of course, also delineate based on age and weight where appropriate, as I’m also sure you agree that those are definable and quantifiable qualities.
   I’m actually all for eliminate women’s sporting categories, mind you. I think it would be a good object lesson in reality.
   By the way, happiness will be found through God, not the MUSS agenda. Shed the moral relativism and accept that Truth exists, and doors will open for you.
   God bless,
   Selwyn Duke

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