Why else have a male soccer and female soccer (other than historical reasons that could, nowadays, be abolished)?
Female-only sports exist to favor women. Parasports exist for a similar reason. If you can’t prove to be part of either group, one would just have to take your word for it.
If a random guy said “I’m a woman,” would that have to be enough?
The whole point of the "testosterone level below 10 nmol/L" was to provide a solid line on this so that the answer would be "yes, with caveats".
10 nmol/L of testosterone is right at the lowest level for a male and is WAY higher than normal for a female.
Quoting an article about the IAAF study (https://sportsscientists.com/2017/07/testosterone-performanc...):
> Among the 1332 females, 24 had T levels above 3.08 nmol/L (remember this is the 99th percentile in a previous study). Of the 24, nine were diagnosed as having a DSD. Nine were found to have been doping, and six were “impossible to classify”
Translate "impossible to classify" as "doping, but we can't prove it so we'll get sued if we say it."
yes:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/transgender-teens-outrun-track-fie...
Another option is to have a separate category for them or many seperate categories.
So outside of examining and testing every single person, seems easier to just have them all compete together. Have weight classes where it makes sense to.
Being a smartass aside, I don't think it will be the end of competitive sports for women. I think we'll see new sports emerge, which would be pretty interesting.
For a man and woman the same weight: Men have stronger bones, much higher oxygen capacity, faster reaction time, better motion tracking, higher fatigue tolerance, better aerobic endurance, higher pain threshold.
An interesting development would be co-ed professional sports with teams that have a fixed number of men and women. I think this is the best we could hope for as far as equality in sports
This would be the equivalent of ditching your current paying customers for maybe potential future even-smaller-segment customers.
Edit: referring to actual transwomen who’ve had surgery, etc. Just being able to declare that you “identify” as a woman and that’s that is the height of insanity.
When I speak of transwomen I’m referring to people who have had surgery/hormones. To me if you’re willing to get rid of your penis that’s dedication and unlikely to be a ploy to win medals in track and field.
These are things that persist even after chopping your penis off or taking hormones - you can't undo the changes that your body went through during the developmental phase.
Someone male who was on female hormones literally their entire life since maybe age 0-2? Ok, you have a case. Otherwise it's just incredibly unfair for women to compete against.
If you really care about women’s leagues then it’s probably best not to frame the issue as “transwomen are male losers.” You will not win support with that approach.