I don't think there's any disagreement on this board about Shermer's conclusion but I post this for the clarity of his argument.
MTF transgender swimmer Lia Thomas from Penn is crushing the female competition. Is that her right? Is it right? No. Here's why.
[url=https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxNkMuOhCAQRb-m2bXhqbhg0Zv5DYNQKhkEA-VM_PuhH4tJCBSByq1znEVYc7nMkSuS5zbhdYBJ8FsjIEIhZ4UyBW-GQQ-cSeKN9EwrTUKdlgKw2xANlhPIcc4xOIshp2eD4r1QnGyG9n6koLXnfBbK-56Nli3SMgGg5DK-c-3pAyQHBn6gXDkBiWZDPOpNPG78q616zhWt--5c3tv1KHkJEVolRya0UPc9uM1CvNcNyt5GD4ZTzhinI2dKC9Hxzg2LpOPsYHbKgnPdumI8weqbpPvKu_8ZpJhik7-6im2mVNuX9Un7emuwUzv3MwW8Jkh2juDfHvBt82VmWiFBaZb9ZNGwXoxUD4z1Sn-wmyipuOhZT0kL97l1JfMh-YD8ARzrjzc][/url]
[url=https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxNkMuOhCAQRb-m2bXhqbhg0Zv5DYNQKhkEA-VM_PuhH4tJCBSByq1znEVYc7nMkSuS5zbhdYBJ8FsjIEIhZ4UyBW-GQQ-cSeKN9EwrTUKdlgKw2xANlhPIcc4xOIshp2eD4r1QnGyG9n6koLXnfBbK-56Nli3SMgGg5DK-c-3pAyQHBn6gXDkBiWZDPOpNPG78q616zhWt--5c3tv1KHkJEVolRya0UPc9uM1CvNcNyt5GD4ZTzhinI2dKC9Hxzg2LpOPsYHbKgnPdumI8weqbpPvKu_8ZpJhik7-6im2mVNuX9Un7emuwUzv3MwW8Jkh2juDfHvBt82VmWiFBaZb9ZNGwXoxUD4z1Sn-wmyipuOhZT0kL97l1JfMh-YD8ARzrjzc][/url]
Michael Shermer
Dec 9
Do me a favor and picture yourself sitting in the stands at a swim meet. The winner touches the wall after swimming 1650 yards. Now, count to 38 seconds to note the time before the second place competitor hits the plate that stops the clock: "one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one-thousand…."
When (or if) you get to "thirty eight one-thousand", consider the fact that this was the margin between the Penn State collegiate transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and her nearest competitorteammate Anna Kalandadzein the 1650-yard freestyle on Sunday, December 5 at the 2021 Zippy Invitational (15:59.71 vs. 16:37.44). If you got bored counting and stopped at "five one-thousand", this was the gap between Thomas and the nearest competition in the 200 freestyle race against Columbia in early November.
However, it isn't just Thomas's performances against her male self that we need to compare; she's now competing against biological women (those "assigned as female at birth" in the current lingo), and it is that comparison that makes this a controversial subject. According to Swimming World Magazine, since she transitioned from male to female, and subsequently transitioned from the men's division to the women's division in swim meets, Thomas has been "crushing the school records" and "is even rising in the all-time rankings: her 200 free performance makes her the 17th-fastest performer in history, and she is less than three seconds off Missy Franklin's American record. In the 500 free, she ranks 21st all time." According to Penn Athletics, at the 2021 Zippy Invitational "Lia Thomas delivered another record-breaking performance for the Red and Blue at the event. She won the 200 free with a pool, meet and program record time of 1:41.93. She won the race by nearly seven seconds and her time was the fastest in the country." One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand….
That alone would seem to gainsay this conclusion drawn by Eric Vilain, M.D. Ph.D. and Director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology and Chief Medical Genetics Department of Pediatrics, UCLA, quoted in the Transgender Handbook:
In my opinion, from the scientific studies and the athletic time comparisons available, the data are simply not there to support this conclusion in the NCAA Transgender Handbook:
As well, the NCAA Transgender Handbook is confused about variational differences between men and women, stating:
None of this is to deny that Gender Identity Disorder, or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, are real phenomena, and I mostly agree with the NCAA that "fears that men will pretend to be female to compete on a women's team are unwarranted." Of course, it's possible a few are faking, but from my read of the literature most people who say that they identify as a different gender actually do and are not pretending, especially when gender identity issues arise in early childhood. (I'll leave aside recent examples of male adult prisoners claiming to identify as female in order to be transferred to female prisons, since they likely have other motives). Teenagers with no prior history of gender identity issues who suddenly feel trans may be influenced by social media and peer pressure, but much more research is needed to untangle the confounding variables at work to get at the true cause of both gender identity and transgenderism.
As a lifelong athlete myself (I was a professional cyclist in the 1980s competing primarily in ultra-marathon events like the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental Race Across America), I am sympathetic to the role of sports in dealing with personal problems. I can't count the number of days I've been stressed, anxious, or depressed for which a long hard bike ride didn't prove to be salubrious. No doubt this is what Lia Thomas means when she says swimming is "a huge part of my life and who I am. The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that's usually really solid. Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?" Being able to maintain a daily routine of working out no doubt attenuated much of the stress she went through.
But all that aside, we must not confuse the issues of biological differences with those of rights. Of course we should support trans rights for the same reason we support the rights of people of color, women, and gays: it is immoral (and in many cases illegal) to discriminate against someone based on such immutable characteristics as skin color, gender, and sexual preference, so gender identity should be included in our ever-expanding moral circle and our ever-bending moral arc. The problem arises when there are conflicting rights claims.
I explored this problem in Part 1 of my column on abortion, in the discussion on the right of the mother to choose (pro-choice) vs. the right of the fetus to live (pro-life). We have to make a choice about whose rights should prevail, and I made the case that the rights of the adult woman to choose what to do with her body should take precedence over the rights of the fetus, who is only a potential person (biologically and legally) in the first trimester and well into the second trimester (after which abortions are almost nonexistent). But even if you're pro-life, you still have to make an argument for why the rights of the fetus should prevail over those of the mother.
In the case of Lia Thomas and other MTF trans athletes, we have a conflicting rights issue between the right of biological women to compete against other biological women who fall within the acceptable bell curve range of female performance vs. the right of MTF transgender athletes to compete against biological women. Given that it seems clear from the current evidence that MTF transgender bell curves of performance do not perfectly overlap with those of biological females, we have to make a hard choice between whose rights should prevail. Given the centuries-long history of women fighting to be treated equally and to enjoy the same rights and privileges as men, including and especially the hard-won Title IX laws that protect women's sports, it seems clear to me that we should and must continue to support the rights of biological women unless and until scientific research and athletic performance evaluations make it crystal clear that the two bell curves perfectly overlap, and/or until there are enough transgender athletes to comprise their own athletic divisions.
As Thomas Sowell likes to note in his many examinations of myriad social problems, "there are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs."
MTF transgender swimmer Lia Thomas from Penn is crushing the female competition. Is that her right? Is it right? No. Here's why.
[url=https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxNkMuOhCAQRb-m2bXhqbhg0Zv5DYNQKhkEA-VM_PuhH4tJCBSByq1znEVYc7nMkSuS5zbhdYBJ8FsjIEIhZ4UyBW-GQQ-cSeKN9EwrTUKdlgKw2xANlhPIcc4xOIshp2eD4r1QnGyG9n6koLXnfBbK-56Nli3SMgGg5DK-c-3pAyQHBn6gXDkBiWZDPOpNPG78q616zhWt--5c3tv1KHkJEVolRya0UPc9uM1CvNcNyt5GD4ZTzhinI2dKC9Hxzg2LpOPsYHbKgnPdumI8weqbpPvKu_8ZpJhik7-6im2mVNuX9Un7emuwUzv3MwW8Jkh2juDfHvBt82VmWiFBaZb9ZNGwXoxUD4z1Sn-wmyipuOhZT0kL97l1JfMh-YD8ARzrjzc][/url]
[url=https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxNkMuOhCAQRb-m2bXhqbhg0Zv5DYNQKhkEA-VM_PuhH4tJCBSByq1znEVYc7nMkSuS5zbhdYBJ8FsjIEIhZ4UyBW-GQQ-cSeKN9EwrTUKdlgKw2xANlhPIcc4xOIshp2eD4r1QnGyG9n6koLXnfBbK-56Nli3SMgGg5DK-c-3pAyQHBn6gXDkBiWZDPOpNPG78q616zhWt--5c3tv1KHkJEVolRya0UPc9uM1CvNcNyt5GD4ZTzhinI2dKC9Hxzg2LpOPsYHbKgnPdumI8weqbpPvKu_8ZpJhik7-6im2mVNuX9Un7emuwUzv3MwW8Jkh2juDfHvBt82VmWiFBaZb9ZNGwXoxUD4z1Sn-wmyipuOhZT0kL97l1JfMh-YD8ARzrjzc][/url]
Michael Shermer
Dec 9
Do me a favor and picture yourself sitting in the stands at a swim meet. The winner touches the wall after swimming 1650 yards. Now, count to 38 seconds to note the time before the second place competitor hits the plate that stops the clock: "one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one-thousand…."
When (or if) you get to "thirty eight one-thousand", consider the fact that this was the margin between the Penn State collegiate transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and her nearest competitorteammate Anna Kalandadzein the 1650-yard freestyle on Sunday, December 5 at the 2021 Zippy Invitational (15:59.71 vs. 16:37.44). If you got bored counting and stopped at "five one-thousand", this was the gap between Thomas and the nearest competition in the 200 freestyle race against Columbia in early November.
Quote:
A senior at Penn, the 22-year old Thomas from Austin, Texas transitioned and went through the required one-year testosterone suppression treatment required by the NCAA (apparently during the 2020-2021 school year when Covid shut down all swimming meets), as explained in its Transgender Handbook:
Has that treatment slowed Thomas's performance? According to Swimming World Magazine:Quote:
A trans female (MTF) student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for the purposes of NCAA competition may continue to compete on a men's team but may not compete on a women's team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.
Comparing her 1650-yard freestyle time as a man of 14:54:76 to her latest time for the 1650-free of 15:59.71 as a transgender woman, the medical treatment would seem to have had an effect. To be exact, that 65 second difference constitutes a 7.2% decline in performance. Even considering confounding variablessuch as the lost-year of competition due to Covid, differential training regimes, dietary and other factorsit seems reasonable to conclude that the testosterone suppression treatment has had a nontrivial effect.Quote:
It's worth noting that Thomas, from her time on the men's team, was a six-time finalist at the Ivy League Championships, including three runnerup performances at the 2019 meet. Her times were 4:18.72 in the 500 free, 8:55.75 in the 1000 free and 14:54.76 in the 1650 free. Following hormone therapy, her 2021 times are far slower but still fast enough to be championship quality.
However, it isn't just Thomas's performances against her male self that we need to compare; she's now competing against biological women (those "assigned as female at birth" in the current lingo), and it is that comparison that makes this a controversial subject. According to Swimming World Magazine, since she transitioned from male to female, and subsequently transitioned from the men's division to the women's division in swim meets, Thomas has been "crushing the school records" and "is even rising in the all-time rankings: her 200 free performance makes her the 17th-fastest performer in history, and she is less than three seconds off Missy Franklin's American record. In the 500 free, she ranks 21st all time." According to Penn Athletics, at the 2021 Zippy Invitational "Lia Thomas delivered another record-breaking performance for the Red and Blue at the event. She won the 200 free with a pool, meet and program record time of 1:41.93. She won the race by nearly seven seconds and her time was the fastest in the country." One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand….
That alone would seem to gainsay this conclusion drawn by Eric Vilain, M.D. Ph.D. and Director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology and Chief Medical Genetics Department of Pediatrics, UCLA, quoted in the Transgender Handbook:
Comparing the swim-times between male and MTF trans Thomas may support the first part of Vilain's observation, but the comparisons between trans Thomas and his biological female competitors do not support the second part of the statement. Since data is thin in these matters, and anecdotes thick, consider Ellie Marquardt, a Princeton University all-American swimmer who in her freshman year set an Ivy League record in the 500-meter freestyle. This past November Lia Thomas crushed Marquardt in the event by over 13 seconds (4:35.06 vs. 4:48.64). One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand….Quote:
Research suggests that androgen deprivation and cross sex hormone treatment in male-to-female transsexuals reduces muscle mass; accordingly, one year of hormone therapy is an appropriate transitional time before a male-to-female student-athlete competes on a women's team.
In my opinion, from the scientific studies and the athletic time comparisons available, the data are simply not there to support this conclusion in the NCAA Transgender Handbook:
It is not at all clear that one-year of cross sex hormone treatment after puberty turns a biological male into a biological female. Why? Because of all the other differences that result from puberty, most notably a more productive cardiovascular system with larger hearts and lungs that delivers more oxygenated blood to muscles, significantly more upper and lower body muscle mass and corresponding strength in propelling arms and legs, the different leverage strengths from having longer and stronger limb bones and spine, and much else. It is possible, as the NCAA report states, that "transgender girls who medically transition at an early age do not go through a male puberty, and therefore their participation in athletics as girls does not raise the same equity concerns that arise when transgender women transition after puberty," but that they even notes this seems to contradict their statement quoted above. Before and after puberty makes all the difference in the world.Quote:
It is also important to know that any strength and endurance advantages a transgender woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy. According to medical experts on this issue, the assumption that a transgender woman competing on a women's team would have a competitive advantage outside the range of performance and competitive advantage or disadvantage that already exists among female athletes is not supported by evidence.
As well, the NCAA Transgender Handbook is confused about variational differences between men and women, stating:
No one who thinks at all about this issue thinks that all transgender women are unusually tall and big-boned muscular men. Picture two overlapping bell curves, like the one (below) for male and female height differences. Of course there are some men on the far left tail of the men's distribution who are shorter than most women, and there are some women on the far right tail of the women's distribution who are taller than most men; but on average men are taller than women, and in such natural variation most men are taller than most women. I've not found any data graphs like this for transgender athletes, but think of Lia Thomas as a successful male collegiate swimmer falling on the right tail of the men's bell curve and better than most male swimmers who, after a year of post-pubescent cross sex hormone treatment slides a little ways leftward along the horizontal axis toward the mean for men. But that's not the comparison that matters! Compared to even elite female swimmers, a slightly (7.2%) slower Thomas is still going to be to the right of most of them on such an overlapping bell curve diagram.Quote:
Transgender women display a great deal of physical variation, just as there is a great deal of natural variation in physical size and ability among non-transgender women and men. Many people may have a stereotype that all transgender women are unusually tall and have large bones and muscles. But that is not true. A male-to-female transgender woman may be small and slight, even if she is not on hormone blockers or taking estrogen. It is important not to overgeneralize. The assumption that all male-bodied people are taller, stronger, and more highly skilled in a sport than all female-bodied people is not accurate.
None of this is to deny that Gender Identity Disorder, or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, are real phenomena, and I mostly agree with the NCAA that "fears that men will pretend to be female to compete on a women's team are unwarranted." Of course, it's possible a few are faking, but from my read of the literature most people who say that they identify as a different gender actually do and are not pretending, especially when gender identity issues arise in early childhood. (I'll leave aside recent examples of male adult prisoners claiming to identify as female in order to be transferred to female prisons, since they likely have other motives). Teenagers with no prior history of gender identity issues who suddenly feel trans may be influenced by social media and peer pressure, but much more research is needed to untangle the confounding variables at work to get at the true cause of both gender identity and transgenderism.
As a lifelong athlete myself (I was a professional cyclist in the 1980s competing primarily in ultra-marathon events like the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental Race Across America), I am sympathetic to the role of sports in dealing with personal problems. I can't count the number of days I've been stressed, anxious, or depressed for which a long hard bike ride didn't prove to be salubrious. No doubt this is what Lia Thomas means when she says swimming is "a huge part of my life and who I am. The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that's usually really solid. Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?" Being able to maintain a daily routine of working out no doubt attenuated much of the stress she went through.
But all that aside, we must not confuse the issues of biological differences with those of rights. Of course we should support trans rights for the same reason we support the rights of people of color, women, and gays: it is immoral (and in many cases illegal) to discriminate against someone based on such immutable characteristics as skin color, gender, and sexual preference, so gender identity should be included in our ever-expanding moral circle and our ever-bending moral arc. The problem arises when there are conflicting rights claims.
I explored this problem in Part 1 of my column on abortion, in the discussion on the right of the mother to choose (pro-choice) vs. the right of the fetus to live (pro-life). We have to make a choice about whose rights should prevail, and I made the case that the rights of the adult woman to choose what to do with her body should take precedence over the rights of the fetus, who is only a potential person (biologically and legally) in the first trimester and well into the second trimester (after which abortions are almost nonexistent). But even if you're pro-life, you still have to make an argument for why the rights of the fetus should prevail over those of the mother.
In the case of Lia Thomas and other MTF trans athletes, we have a conflicting rights issue between the right of biological women to compete against other biological women who fall within the acceptable bell curve range of female performance vs. the right of MTF transgender athletes to compete against biological women. Given that it seems clear from the current evidence that MTF transgender bell curves of performance do not perfectly overlap with those of biological females, we have to make a hard choice between whose rights should prevail. Given the centuries-long history of women fighting to be treated equally and to enjoy the same rights and privileges as men, including and especially the hard-won Title IX laws that protect women's sports, it seems clear to me that we should and must continue to support the rights of biological women unless and until scientific research and athletic performance evaluations make it crystal clear that the two bell curves perfectly overlap, and/or until there are enough transgender athletes to comprise their own athletic divisions.
As Thomas Sowell likes to note in his many examinations of myriad social problems, "there are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs."
“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” (The Law, p.6) Frederic Bastiat
