AN ARGUMENT AGAINST GENDER IDENTITY
P1. If anyone can self-classify as a woman, then women’s sports will no longer be fair to biological women
P2. Anyone can self-classify as a woman
C. Therefore women’s sports are no longer fair to biological women
CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY
This argument is not necessarily concerned with transgender individuals, but is instead concerned with any men in women’s sports, including men who are not transgender.
The Guardian reports:
A groundbreaking new study on transgender athletes has found trans women retain a 12% advantage in running tests even after taking hormones for two years to suppress their testosterone. The results, researchers suggest, indicate the current International Olympic Committee guidelines may give trans women an “unfair competitive advantage” over biological women.
The research, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that before starting their hormone treatment trans women performed 31% more push-ups and 15% more sit-ups in one minute on average than a biological women younger than 30 in the air force – and ran 1.5 miles 21% faster.
Yet after suppressing their testosterone for two years – a year longer than IOC guidelines – they were still 12% faster on average than biological females.
The trans women also retained a 10% advantage in push-ups and a 6% advantage in sit-ups for the first two years after taking hormones, before their advantage disappeared. But the researchers say they “may underestimate the advantage in strength that trans women have over cis women … because trans women will have a higher power output than cis women when performing an equivalent number of push-ups”.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/dec/07/study-suggests-ioc-adjustment-period-for-trans-women-may-be-too-short
OBJECTION: “Testosterone has been proven to not give any physical advantage.”
Apart from the claim being contestable, testosterone is only one difference between men and women which affects their ability to perform in sport.
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