no easy answer to any of this.
but in MY gut, i feel it’s not fair, and regression for women athletes who have worked so hard for a fair playing field, and their fair share in college sports. Lia of course knew what her new teammates’ times were and how they compared to her swim times on the men’s team. I see it as cheating, selfish towards her teammates and others, and can’t support the competitive aspect of it.
I think classification based on testosterone is totally appropriate. There needs to be some more data on how long the individual would need to have testosterone in a particular range which probably will vary by sport. Joanna Harper, a trans athlete herself, was one of the first to try and quantify how long suppressing testosterone is necessary to level the playing field. Her early research suggested 1 year based on running and cycling, which is I’m sure part of the justification for the IOC and NCAA guidelines - unfortunately the data was limited (not surprising) and the specific sports were also limited. A subsequent study on Air Force fitness studies of trans athletes suggested 2 years - but that was based on specific fitness metrics, not really elite athlete performance.
I imagine we’re just at the beginning of having sufficient data to understand what’s appropriate. I don’t believe these athletes need to be banned. You can see even in this specific case, Lia has not been able to come close to her times she achieved prior to suppressing her testosterone. For swimming it might be 2 years vs 1 year, but I do hope an appropriate policy can be crafted that is both inclusive and fair to cis women.
I meant to include info on Joanna Harper’s research:
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-racing-discover-how-gender-transitions-alter-athletic-performance-including
As I understand it, only focusing on on “current” levels isn’t really an approach that has been used or suggested. And over time, what you call “hormone tinkering” has a significant impact on strength, body mass, and endurance.
It isn’t easy to come up with a standard, but even setting aside the trans issue and focusing on what we know about the fluidity of biological sex, it seems like a different classification standard may be the direction to pursue.
NCAA Transgender policy for trans women:
A trans female treated with testosterone suppression medication may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment.
The Olympics did use testosterone levels to qualify competitors in the past but recently changed their guidelines and are now passing the buck and pushing the decisions to determine who is qualified to compete to the individual sports governing bodies.
The International Olympic Committee allows transgender female athletes to compete in the Games if they reduce their serum testosterone levels below 10 nanomoles per liter for a year and maintain the lower levels during their careers. Transgender men can compete without restriction.
According to World Athletics, track and field’s governing body, the general testosterone range for cisgender women is .12 to 1.79 nanomoles per liter, compared with 7.7 to 29.4 nanomoles per liter for men after puberty. In other words, World Athletics says, the lowest level in the men’s range is four times greater than the highest level in the women’s range.
Separately, track and field has guidelines specifically for intersex athletes, competitors born with biological factors that don’t fit typical descriptions for males or females. Those who possess a rare chromosomal condition are required to reduce their testosterone levels even lower, to five nanomoles per liter, in races from the quarter mile to the mile.
One of the athletes affected is Caster Semenya of South Africa, the two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters, who was classified as female at birth, identifies as a woman and is challenging the track and field policy in an ongoing case.
The I.O.C. has been widely expected to require transgender Olympic athletes to adhere to the five nanomole limit after the Tokyo Games.
According to new research, which examines available studies of testosterone suppression, evidence shows that even a reduction to one nanomole per liter — squarely within the average female range — only minimally reduces the advantages of muscle mass and strength retained as men transition to women.
That undermines the attempt of sports organizations to set universal guidelines, said Lundberg, a co-author of the study, which is undergoing peer review. He recommends that individual sports set their own policies.
“It is easy to sympathize with arguments made on both sides,” Lundberg said of gender identity versus biology. But, he added, “It is going to be impossible to make everyone happy.”
In all your examples the hormone level has to be maintained for a period of time. That was my point.
Fair point. Technically. I think then it becomes a matter of practicality. Look how hard we had to work to ramp up to test people against a deadly virus?
Are we really going to start doing blood tests on kids in youth sports all the way up to D1 college and pro sports? Have we thought about how many people play middle school and high school sports alone? Never mind club. It’s just not practical. We do this by the rough cut of nature: you’re born the sex you are and that’s where you will compete. If you were born male but feel like the other, of course live your life as you wish, and I’m not just a live and let live person … I’m an accepting person. This is not about rejection or fear … at least not for me.
And there is some slippery slope. I have a kid with a type of chronic health condition that would make you surprised about the sport in which chose to compete. People raised their brows. What if this or that happens in the middle of a race? Well, it was a small inconvenience at practice a few times, sure, but she never let them down in a race and wound up being one of their best athletes. It would have bothered her and us if she’d had to have been relegated to a special division of competition for people with her illness. Said another way, there’s a natural limit to how much you can slice and dice in society and still have it work.
Mine is not an elegantly worked out philosophy on this to be sure. It’s more of a practical view on the matter. We have men’s and women’s sports. It works for the overwhelmingly vast majority of people, and at most levels of sport it’s not worth the money and hassle to have to have the hormone Olympics. Yes, some men have more testosterone than others, and some women have more than others. We live with that.
If you can find a way to make a transgender woman not carry any of the advantages she had from having had testosterone in her body for whatever amount of time she had it, then sure let her play. But my sense of it is that much more often than not it’s simply not a fair playing field and someone who was a man is going to just have it over almost every woman with whom she competes. I may be wrong.
And while I appreciate the analogy and some of the common factors in both situations, AAs who were denied the opportunity to compete were victims of people who thought they were lesser people. This is about something else.
So sad for these women.
Disappointed that Penn is trying to silence members of its women’s swimming team. Not surprised,but really disappointed
I focused on testosterone because you and others indicated it is a “game changer.” But I don’t have all the answers either. My general point is that there may be other ways to classify people for athletics other than the way we do it now, body mass, for example, or combinations of multiple factors. I don’t know.
This is an interesting point but one that could be resolved by allowing people to compete “up” but not “down.” For example, trans women can generally choose to compete in men’s divisions, even if these women are limited in the circumstances in which they can compete as women.
If all the advantages of every competitor were always neutralized then wouldn’t everyone just always tie? It seems the best we an hope for is that people within the same range of physical attributes are classified with each other.
I’m not sure this is true. For example in the 500 meter freestyle Lia Thomas’s best time (4:34.06) is 10 seconds slower than Katie Ledecky’s NCAA record (4:24.06). And while she does have the fastest times in a few events this year it is by only a tenth of a second, and she has the sixth fastest time in another event. So she is very good, but so far is far from completely transcending the competition.
I am curious as to what happens to her results as time passes and she continues to lose body mass from hormone therapy.
It may not be the case for you, but for many this analogy fits all too well. To some, trans women are nothing but opportunistic, unnatural freaks. Others. Lesser. Inhuman. Look at the horrible, nasty comments in other forums, or even the veiled disrespect shown here. Marginalized groups have long been denied access and participation as a way of keeping them marginalized, and that is what is happening here.
So sad to quote an apparently extremely right-wing publication. If there is an issue, raise it with Penn, the Ivy League, and/or the NCAA. Aren’t those the only fora that matter? Posters have clearly set forth the NCAA guidelines in this thread. Unless I am missing something, isn’t that the contours of the debate, as opposed to views espoused by “outkick.com”?
But, as some folks say on CC, “you be you”.
It’s an interview with a swimmer on the team. Her point of view is legitimate and relevant to the discussion. There are plenty of left wing publications posted on CC as well, with the accompanying bias. Somehow that’s never an issue.
Raise it with the NCAA…that’s the issue.
I did. I already wrote to them as well as Penn. As an alum I’m not at all happy with the situation.
Fair enough.
This article uses the word “disgust” in reference to Ms. Thomas repeatedly, and also refers to her as “he.” The article states that when Ms. Thomas touched the wall at the finish, there were no cheers, just silence.
This situation is sad for everyone. I hope there isn’t outright hostility to Ms, Thomas as the article seems to suggest.
The guidelines allow her to swim with women. There is no other way for her to swim.
The feelings of the other swimmers, if bitter as portrayed, are understandable but perhaps they will evolve along with the policies. The situation is new.
You can see her times pre-testosterone suppression- she’d easily beat
Ledecky’s records as a middling ivy sophomore. That’s the point - her times are way down since starting testosterone suppression. At what point is her breaking Ledecky, a true once a generation phenom, because she’s amazing vs she’s benefiting from testosterone as amazing as Ledecky is hundreds of college swimmes can beat her easily.
Gender identification has become increasingly complicated (just look at the questions on the latest college applications). Will gender become a continuum, rather than a few discrete points, to be based on the level of testosterone? If so, will that question of gender on college application evolve from a multiple-choice question to a question of numbers (and decimal places), or a times-series, or even an essay? 
The level of testosterone has impact outside of the world of sports too.
This is an irrelevant point to this conversation but yes, we as a western society have identified gender as a binary but that is not the case. There have always been people who do not fit into our definition of male and female and many other societies have welcomed and recognized that. Luckily for many this is becomingly increasingly accepted and people who fall outside of current rigid standards are allowed to be themselves and live complete lives. Isnt that a wonderful thing, and an essay here or there to explain someones true self sounds wonderful to me.
But not down enough to be at the same level of competitiveness as before.
I think the sense of unfairness many have is because the gender change has shifted Lia from middling Div 1 to world class. I am not suggesting that Lia transitioned to win, but instead that transitioning itself from male to female provides a relative advantage which creates unfairness. To me, fairness means being at the same relative performance level as before.
Suppose that it was possible and socially acceptable for Bruce Jenner to transition after winning the 1976 Olympics. If the 1980 Olympics weren’t boycotted, Caitlyn could have participated in the women’s pentathlon, likely winning there as well. Would people think it unfair if she won that? To me, no, because Caitlyn’s athletic dominance was already established.
There aren’t going to be cheers for an event that is already a foregone conclusion. Competitive swimmers with substantially higher testosterone levels than biological women will consistently win, and the result is known before anyone gets in the pool, so it isn’t much of a contest. Had Thomas been interested in swimming, rather than winning, the men’s team was an option always. Apparently swimming was not the goal.