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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that the man didn't get a trophy for winning his class. Most times, that's the overall trophy, and then there's an additional one for the fastest woman.

So the article is clear enough, I think, given that most runners know this already.

Edit: I haven't commented on if I think this is a good thing or not, just explaining the article.

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There isn't, and shouldn't be a "male" class. There's a "human being" class, and a "human beings without the testosterone gene" class. The only reason to have the second class is because only half of the human population has the "testosterone" gene (aka the Y chromosome), and the other half still like to run. If you can win the "human being" class without needing the testosterone gene, more power to you.

> There's a "human being" class, and a "human beings without the testosterone gene" class. The only reason to have the second class is because only half of the human population has the "testosterone" gene (aka the Y chromosome), and the other half still like to run.

While it's always cute when people pretend that human sex is simple and things only get complicated when gender identity is considered, chromosomes aren't genes, the Y chromosome isn't the “testosterone gene”, XY females exist, XY females with a normal copy of sex-determining region Y (SRY) exist, and, as was discovered recently, XY females with a normal copy of SRY who have borne children exist. Also XX females have testosterone at various levels.

It's true that recently was part of how to deal with the evolving understanding of gender in the context of sport, a number of governing bodies have redefined the criteria for competing as a woman to be based on a combination of identity and serum testosterone levels, but that's also not about a “testosterone gene” and at best imperfectly correlates with any particular gene.

Of course I was using shorthand. The point wasn't to paint an accurate picture of the biology of sex selection, but to point out the reason for having a "women's" class: that, on the whole, men have biological advantages in physical activities, and that for most sports, not having a women's class would effectively mean excluding women from competitive versions of that sport entirely. Obviously somewhat less so in ultramarathons than say, sprints or weightlifting; and it's obviously more complicated when you're talking about the top 50 people out of 7 billion, rather than the top 50 people out of a few thousand, or even a few hundred thousand.

Thank you for sharing this added information, but calling what parent said "cute" is unnecessarily condescending.

Interestingly it basically is down to a single gene [1] that's called "Testis-determining factor". And while it's usually on the Y-chromosome, there are actually a pair of conditions where either that gene ends up on an X-chromosome, making an XX individual outwardly male [2], and another where that gene is missing from a y-chromosome, making an XY individual outwardly female [3].

I didn't mean for this to come across as correcting you, I just thought it was neat, and it seemed worth sharing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testis-determining_factor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis

So, radical proposal: Why not do testosterone-based rewarding? Low-testosterone cis men, high-testosterone cis women, MTF and FTM undergoing hormonal replacement, and nonbinary folks can therefore all compete on equal footing based on testosterone level. Similar to weight classes in fighting.

Because MTF's have a permanent advantage in bone structure and muscle mass. Edit: and also brain volume, neuron count, so maybe reaction times and such are retained too, if you care to look that up.

testosterone doesn't matter at all in ultra endurance competitions.

I don't know enough about the subject to say you're wrong but I'm inclined to given what I know about testosterone's effects on physical development, and I can imagine having stronger muscles means better or longer running. Do you have evidence that testosterone and its effects on muscle development have no effect in such competitions?

Not the person you are responding to but you might find this article interesting: https://www.outsideonline.com/2336111/defining-upper-limits-...

I’m not sure what role testosterone plays in ultra endurance sports but there are other considerations besides only testosterone.

in ultra endurance the slow twitch muscle fibres matter more, not the size of big muscles. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-49284389

there have been quite a few articles lately explaining the situation

Testosterone, among many other things, increases expression of Hemoglobin and red blood cells. So it definitely helps with endurance.

Yeah I had to read other comments to get that. It wasn't clear to me because I just figured there was only 1 trophy period, the way it's written it says there's only one overall trophy negating the previous sentence. English isn't my first language so maybe I'm just getting lost somewhere.

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