So I don’t really have strong opinions on the whole controversy over women’s sports at the elite level…mostly because I have a really hard time following all the logic. For me the biggest problem seems to be that we have two categories, men’s and women’s, and there are those who are arguing that they’re actually nearly plastic catchalls…which then suggests to me we shouldn’t have two categories in the first place in competition at the highest levels.
With that in mind, D. J. Grothe points me to this prescient interview from a few months back, Hyperandrogenism and women vs women vs men in sport: A Q&A with Joanna Harper. Joanna Harper is a transwoman who is (was?) also a competitive racer and a sports scientist. This portion is where the facts stand:
I would also like to relate a two-part epiphany that I had after my transition. In 2005, nine months after starting HRT, I was running 12% slower than I had run with male T levels; women run 10-12% slower than men over a wide range of distances. In 2006 I met another trans woman runner and the she had the same experience. I later discovered that, if aging is factored in, this 10-12% loss of speed is standard among trans women endurance athletes. The realization that one can take a male distance runner, make that runner hormonally female, and wind up with a female distance runner of the same relative capability was life changing for me.
As they say, “read the whole thing.” It’s long, and detailed, and doesn’t offer easy answers. Ultimately the reality is that no “solution” is going to be fair to world-class athletes. But, it’s probably important to remind ourselves that it is also unfair to those of us without the genetics of world-class athletes, and we seem to be OK with that.
Compare and contrast with this piece from Let Caster Run! We Should Celebrate Semenya’s Extraordinary Talent. The title really captures the reality that it was pretty obvious that the author was going to come down on one side, and would make a lawyerly case. Rather disappointed with Nate Silver’s shop.
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