Girls sue to block participation of transgender athletes

[jberryhill]

161. I'm sorry for laughing

Let me be clear.

I completely agree with where you are coming from.

However, yes, there is doping in High School athletics. There has long been doping in High School athletics.

CIS female athletes, absent testing and limits, will in fact - and do in fact - use testosterone and precursors thereof to enhance performance.

This happens at all levels of athletics.

Accordingly, there are testosterone limits applied to female athletes. To allow female athletes with excessive testosterone - regardless of whether they are cis or trans and regardless of whether it is natural or artificial - to compete against other female athletes with relative normal (in the statistical sense - i.e. within some range of the statistical mean selected to capture a given high percentage of all athletes), is to allow an unfair competitive advantage.

That is not a value judgment of any kind. The ENTIRE reason for having separate men's and women's athletic categories for the same sport (as opposed to sports such as pairs figure skating) is due to the statistically different hormonal levels and the persistent training advantage of those hormonal levels. Otherwise, men and women would simply all compete in an undifferentiated category which, in some sports, is reasonable.

But if you are going to say, "performance-enhancing biochemical levels should be irrelevant to competitive gender category" then you have to make it an even playing field in some way.

I totally get where you are coming from. It simply does not work out "fairly" to all of the athletes to ignore limits on naturally-occurring performance-enhancing biochemicals, which is the entire basis for gender division in sport in the first place.