Plenty else will stop it. This insanity is being enabled by coaches and athletic administrators sport-wide, and being tolerated by a public failing to speak up in protest.
I call this a level-5 trans lie, it’s involving a system of groups (IOC, sports medicine) each of which individually and collectively delivers bald lies in support of an erotic female fantasy fetish.
1 - self-lie (I am a man with a cervix)
2 - self-disguise (wig and lipstick)
3 - self-modify (external support - surgeon)
4 - institutional lie (recognition by IOC)
5 - multi-institutional lie (this report)
6 - institutional self-modification (e.g. change of law)
The unimpressive MVO2's logged by the men masquerading as women could have another reason other than just mediocre aerobic fitness. MVO2 is strongly effort-dependent. It is a maximal effort where you push yourself to where your oxygen uptake stops rising despite the stepwise increases in exercise load -- from there on the increase in power is all anaerobic, which hurts! An MVO2 test is actually agonizing, whether you are fit or not. There are clues to tell whether the subject really did make a maximum effort. A legitimate study would have excluded those subjects who appeared to be sandbagging and reported only the ones who did a fair test. The wide scatter in the men's MVO2 results suggests to me that they included some sandbaggers who quit sooner than they really needed to.
All the trans subjects who participated in this study would be able to guess, even if the researchers didn't tell them, that the purpose of the study was to "prove" that they didn't have an unfair advantage over women. Since "failing" in these tests would help these very same men compete against women in upcoming events, they had every incentive to sandbag. This is rather obviously true for tests like grip and jump height, but the MVO2 can be gamed, too, especially if the researchers want certain results to happen.
I was outraged when I read this study last week and I thank you for publishing an analysis. Note also that asking a trans woman to jump as high as she can in an ICC sponsored study about fairness in sport surely provides suspect results. Even if she thinks she jumped as high as possible - every coach knows motivation dramatically changes performance. Similar results could occur with lung capacity measurements and grip strength. What I saw in the results is that hormones put trans women between men and women in a category of their own. This study also looked at trans men. I don’t hear anyone suggesting elite trans men should compete with men; this alone answers the question of fairness as far as I’m concerned. It’s not about fairness and it never was and nobody thinks it’s fair. They think it’s about inclusion and that women’s safety and fairness for women’s sports don’t matter as much as trans women’s feelings.
Honestly, I don't need to read this takedown of the study. Stop taking these frauds so seriously and just use common sense. I can't believe this is even a subject of scientific analysis.
Has a letter or response of this sort been sent to the BJSM? While it’s useful to have posts like this here, the place where it should really have an impact is in the journal where the bad work appeared.
As a Physical Therapist for 30 years, I appreciate your knowledge, expertise and thoroughness. It is obvious you know of what you speak.
But, I agree with many of the other comments in that it is a shame that busy people such as yourselves have to spend any of your valuable time refuting this nonsense- what anyone with any common sense knows is nonsense.
Another shame is that there are so many charlatans making a living refuting common sense.
As a side note: When will we finally see "Trans Men" competing in men's sports? Yeah, it's not going to happen (although I concede that there could be isolated cases in small schools, lower divisions, etc- where there is a lack of competition).
I think about my son who is a 6'3" DIII freshman volleyball player. He is good, but not yet DI material. If he played DI women's volleyball, he not only would be a starter on one of the best teams, he would dominate- he has a 40"+ vertical for goodness sake.
Wish that someone would put together a whole team of "trans women" who would just totally dominate the WNBA, NWSL, etc- that would quickly put an end to all of this.
Actually Schulyer Bailar is or was competing in men's sports (swimming). He also goes to high schools to be an inspirational speaker for kids and I think worked for Plume (the online drug company selling hormones) for a while, although now the link from his pages to Plume goes to a "not found" on that site, so maybe I am wrong about that. His website is pinkmantaray something.
You don't need a study you just need to look at the overweight middle age men standing on the medal podium next to fit, often younger women (sometimes even teens.) The women bust their asses for 2nd or 3rd and the men just show up.
I can not believe we even need to have this discussion. I miss common sense.
Don’t need a scientific study to tell me men are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. This is such a silly thing we keep talking about.
It's actually just fraud
A more charitable view would be “motivated reasoning” but yours works
It is. It’s high time all women refused to participate in events that include biological males. Nothing else will stop it.
Plenty else will stop it. This insanity is being enabled by coaches and athletic administrators sport-wide, and being tolerated by a public failing to speak up in protest.
We need everyone to pitch in to stop it.
The lung capacity & function has been what I suspected, since those are increased before puberty. The size should be obvious.
I was surprised about the fitness level.
Thanks for this!
Scientific fraud, and obviously so.
I call this a level-5 trans lie, it’s involving a system of groups (IOC, sports medicine) each of which individually and collectively delivers bald lies in support of an erotic female fantasy fetish.
1 - self-lie (I am a man with a cervix)
2 - self-disguise (wig and lipstick)
3 - self-modify (external support - surgeon)
4 - institutional lie (recognition by IOC)
5 - multi-institutional lie (this report)
6 - institutional self-modification (e.g. change of law)
7 - language change ( pronouns, “gender”)
The unimpressive MVO2's logged by the men masquerading as women could have another reason other than just mediocre aerobic fitness. MVO2 is strongly effort-dependent. It is a maximal effort where you push yourself to where your oxygen uptake stops rising despite the stepwise increases in exercise load -- from there on the increase in power is all anaerobic, which hurts! An MVO2 test is actually agonizing, whether you are fit or not. There are clues to tell whether the subject really did make a maximum effort. A legitimate study would have excluded those subjects who appeared to be sandbagging and reported only the ones who did a fair test. The wide scatter in the men's MVO2 results suggests to me that they included some sandbaggers who quit sooner than they really needed to.
All the trans subjects who participated in this study would be able to guess, even if the researchers didn't tell them, that the purpose of the study was to "prove" that they didn't have an unfair advantage over women. Since "failing" in these tests would help these very same men compete against women in upcoming events, they had every incentive to sandbag. This is rather obviously true for tests like grip and jump height, but the MVO2 can be gamed, too, especially if the researchers want certain results to happen.
I was outraged when I read this study last week and I thank you for publishing an analysis. Note also that asking a trans woman to jump as high as she can in an ICC sponsored study about fairness in sport surely provides suspect results. Even if she thinks she jumped as high as possible - every coach knows motivation dramatically changes performance. Similar results could occur with lung capacity measurements and grip strength. What I saw in the results is that hormones put trans women between men and women in a category of their own. This study also looked at trans men. I don’t hear anyone suggesting elite trans men should compete with men; this alone answers the question of fairness as far as I’m concerned. It’s not about fairness and it never was and nobody thinks it’s fair. They think it’s about inclusion and that women’s safety and fairness for women’s sports don’t matter as much as trans women’s feelings.
Clear, concise, and very much needed.
Honestly, I don't need to read this takedown of the study. Stop taking these frauds so seriously and just use common sense. I can't believe this is even a subject of scientific analysis.
It helps to have an analysis to back it up.
Thanks! This is great, but these concerns won't mean much unless they are submitted to the periodical that published this joke of a study.
I hope you do so! The integrity of Science could be harmed if this study is allowed to stand.
Would like to see "transwomen" referenced as "Men (transwomen)" in these articles. We need to stop using their language.
Has a letter or response of this sort been sent to the BJSM? While it’s useful to have posts like this here, the place where it should really have an impact is in the journal where the bad work appeared.
As a Physical Therapist for 30 years, I appreciate your knowledge, expertise and thoroughness. It is obvious you know of what you speak.
But, I agree with many of the other comments in that it is a shame that busy people such as yourselves have to spend any of your valuable time refuting this nonsense- what anyone with any common sense knows is nonsense.
Another shame is that there are so many charlatans making a living refuting common sense.
As a side note: When will we finally see "Trans Men" competing in men's sports? Yeah, it's not going to happen (although I concede that there could be isolated cases in small schools, lower divisions, etc- where there is a lack of competition).
I think about my son who is a 6'3" DIII freshman volleyball player. He is good, but not yet DI material. If he played DI women's volleyball, he not only would be a starter on one of the best teams, he would dominate- he has a 40"+ vertical for goodness sake.
Wish that someone would put together a whole team of "trans women" who would just totally dominate the WNBA, NWSL, etc- that would quickly put an end to all of this.
Actually Schulyer Bailar is or was competing in men's sports (swimming). He also goes to high schools to be an inspirational speaker for kids and I think worked for Plume (the online drug company selling hormones) for a while, although now the link from his pages to Plume goes to a "not found" on that site, so maybe I am wrong about that. His website is pinkmantaray something.
You don't need a study you just need to look at the overweight middle age men standing on the medal podium next to fit, often younger women (sometimes even teens.) The women bust their asses for 2nd or 3rd and the men just show up.