Hacker News Reader

Comment by tastysandwich | Hacker News Reader

It's not just muscle mass. Men have thicker bones and in general are obviously larger. Lia Thomas is 6'1".

Laurel Hubbard (MtF) was on New Zealand's Olympic weightlifting team. An Indigenous Maori girl missed out because of that.

There's countless examples of athletes who were totally uncompetitive as males, suddenly becoming elite-level after transitioning. If that doesn't say male advantage I don't know what does.

But it's not just the competitive aspect. It may be offensive to say, I know, but some women actually feel uncomfortable in a change room with large 6'1" men and their penises.

View on HN

>But it's not just the competitive aspect. It may be offensive to say, I know, but some women actually feel uncomfortable in a change room with large 6'1" men and their penises.

Ah yes, the penises and their unashamed wielders, large 6'1" men, exposing their meat to the elements. It reminds me of homophobes being uncomfortable sharing the looker room with an openly gay person. Should we also concern ourselves with the women still uncomfortable sharing a changing room with "colored" people?

If there are so many countless examples, why don't you name a single one of them. Or even better, anything that's not an anecdote.

(You named two, but you forgot to mention Lia is still very regularly beaten and Laurel placed last in her group at those Olympics, in a weight class that had most countries not even send a competitor.)

All three medalists in the 800m race at the 2016 Olympics (who also hold the "world's best" for the 600m and the world record for the 2000m) have Y chromosomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_2016_Summer_O...

The silver medalist in the 200m race at the 2020 Olympics (who also holds the U20 WR for the 200m) has a Y chomosome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Mboma

(These participants are "intersex", rather than "trans".)

These people have higher than baseline testosterone in their system. Trans women usually have close to none. This is not comparing the same, or even similar situations.

The series of claims is very simple:

The single biggest genetic difference among humans is the presence of a Y chromosome.

This single casual factor, not "testosterone levels" nor "height" nor "bone density" nor "muscle mass", is the best factor to split on.

Accordingly, the women's division at the Olympics should be based on this factor.

(There are potentially still edge cases, but neither trans people nor even the "46X,Y DSD" individuals mentioned above are the edge cases.)

>The single biggest genetic difference among humans is the presence of a Y chromosome.

That is actually incorrect. You can be born with a Y chromosome and zero functional testosterone[1]. There are a lot of moving parts in between having a Y chromosome and getting testosterone expression. The later of which is a much better discriminator.

And also, these deviations aren't rare. Though they are usually unknown, when they don't cause obvious developmental deviation (and thus labeled DSDs). They also are more common in some populations.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivit...

Indeed this seems like a refutation of the whole thesis that trans athletes are somehow cheating. Intersex conditions are natural (as in no surgery of hormone treatments are involved), yet they confer a competitive advantage - just like genes for bigger lungs or longer limbs confer an advantage to some athletes - so why should a trans person be treated as uniquely advantaged?

The claim isn't that trans athletes are cheating. The claim is they should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.

The intersex athletes support this claim because, although their condition is "natural" in your sense, they are in fact being banned from participation in women's sports. For example, the various individuals mentioned above are restricted from participating in distances from 400m to a mile, including in particular 800m! (Thus they have switched to other distances, but the bans are likely to extend there too.)

>The claim isn't that trans athletes are cheating.

Let's be honest, that's what most of these bills are marketing themselves on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com