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This debate would be much more realistic if there was any chance a xx person could compete at the same level as an xy person in the mens events. Quite simply, they cannot. The fastest xx person in the world would not win a high school mens track and field state championships. No xx person will even qualify for the Olympics in a mens event. This is entirely about xy people competing in womens events, and that alone should be enough to make it clear it should not be allowed.

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Dec 18, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.

This issue is super confusing to me. At lower levels of competition (e.g., high school, college), it appears that the trend is that a biological male can compete in female events by simply stating they identify as female. That's even without any transitioning actions (e.g., ADT/ hormone therapy). At international levels it appears transitioning activities must be completed per policies by WADA and USADA. Do I have this correct?

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In almost all settings the issue involves individuals who have changed their legal status (so not self-id). At the international level legal status is the starting point. Different sports have different rules for eligibility. Anti-doping is not involved in the rules (eg, WADA). When you actually get into the eligibility regulations the issue shrinks in size quite a bit. Sport governance is a unique area of policy and not always intuitive. Please follow up with more Qs!

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Roger you are incorrect. At the level he is referring to, high school and college, a simple declaration is sufficient in most places that allow it. No legal status change required.

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Dec 18, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.

"Transgender Athletes are Winning" makes me laugh. Of course they are winning, they're men!

Meanwhile, yes, law and politics are done by consensus but science is not.

New data in Europe has put the brakes on transgender affirmative therapy.

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This issue starts with the challenge faced by sports organizations -- whatever they (or you or I) may think about an individual's sex/gender, they arrive at the point of classification as a legal male or female, and with all of the legal right that entails. There is no provision in sport (or really, anywhere else in such legal settings) for ignoring law/rights and inventing a new set of law/policies/regulations. So the second guessing or misgendering of individuals really doesn't help sport organizations make progress on these issues.

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Dec 20, 2022·edited Dec 20, 2022

Human identity is not subjective. Legal documents proving identity are historic public records that should not be changed. Revokable amendments, try that first? Various countries are working through the unforeseen consequences of allowing this legal fiction.

One person who made a youthful decision in Europe to legally change sex now is finding it impossible to change it back. So the laws continue to evolve. Sweden just dropped WPATH entirely and no person under 18 will have irreversible drugs or surgery. Meanwhile the US spends taxpayer money to "study" hormones and surgery on 8 year olds. Medical experiments on healthy bodies of children? Since when is that ok? The lawsuits are just beginning.

A lot of trans people are working through the life consequences too, it is not what they expected.

Young people should not be encouraged in any way to make permanent changes to their healthy bodies, that is where the issue is for me. The propaganda is intense. Allowing school age children to play on opposite sex sports teams is "affirmation", where adults are expected to pretend they are something they are not., a type of forced speech.

"There is no provision in sport (or really, anywhere else in such legal settings) for ignoring law/rights and inventing a new set of law/policies/regulations."

I don't think that is true. They certainly have invented new sets of laws, policies and regulations on many modern conundrums, especially hasty decisions on sport eligibility. "Rights" are only allowed by the most powerful in societies, and rescinded at will. Females are allowed certain new rights these days, by men, they are not universal natural laws and can be revoked.

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Dec 18, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.

Roger - what science-policy role do you see yourself playing in relation to this issue? When I read your work on climate, I see you striving to embody the role of Honest Broker. Having just read through your posts on transgender athletes, I would suggest that (on this subject) you are drifting towards Issues Advocate (rationale below). There is nothing wrong with that but your own work suggests that it isn't the appropriate science-policy role for issues with high values disagreement and high uncertainty. Thoughts? Am I missing important context?

Thanks so much - I really value your work.

Rationale:

1. Discussion heavy on policy and weight of consensus vs. science. I love your climate posts because they focus on using science to inform policy. In this series you jump over science to framing the issue in terms of a constructivist worldview and making policy recommendations.

2. Focus on narrowing choice of policy instead of using science to clarify or expand policy choice. Again - where is the science and how does it clarify or expand policy choices? If it doesn't exist, what science is needed?

3. Ad-hominem characterizations. You frame up scientists and politicians concerned about current rulings/policies as being party of an "anti-trans lobby" and anti-LGTBQ. Twitter trolls are infuriating but they have nothing to do with good science or policy. You were labeled and smeared in the climate world - why label and smear people concerned about this issue?

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Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022Author

Great Q!

On this issue, like on climate, I am an advocate. That is the normal mode for experts as no individual has the expertise or breadth to serve as an honest broker (except on simple issues, like where to have dinner).

There is an important role for evidence and science in informing what an “unfair advantage” is, the possibilities for mitigation and the role for reasonable accommodations. How these issues might play out is going to be a function of both individual sports and individual athletes.

As far as the anti trans lobby, my view is that anyone who professes concern about sport but then joins in with ADF, Sex Matters, and other groups with a broad political agenda that seeks to exploit sport, the characterization fits. More generally if these folks wish to play hardball, I can play that right back. See my Twitter thread on this earlier this week.

Please feel free to follow up! 👍🙏

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Dec 18, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.

Your first couple of sentences are intriguing and make me think I have misunderstood your conceptualization of the Honest Broker. If I understand you correctly - you believe that individual scientists can't function as Honest Brokers. Instead, the Honest Broker is a committee or authoritative body comprised of diverse advocates tasked with clarifying/expanding policy options based on science. In contrast, the same committee/body without the clarify/expand edict would be comprised of scientists acting as advocates (or Issues Advocates?). Is the edict the "special sauce" that transforms the process and combats against the dysfunction of Stealth Advocacy?

I confess - the scale mismatch is confusing me as your book talks about embodiment of the roles at an individual level. For example: "In such situations the scientist may be more effective as an Issue Advocate or an Honest Broker."

What am I missing? I think this is important as it cuts directly at the heart of what we should expect from scientists seeking to be involved in public discourse and policy-making. If there is no definition of Honest Brokering at an individual scale, its advocacy all the way down.

Ps. Your thoughts on the remainder of the comment make a lot of sense. Thanks.

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Jason, Good stuff. Think of it this way. At one end of an "honest brokering" spectrum we find the individual honest broker ready to offer alternatives on what restaurants one might eat at in their town tonite. At the other end we have an issue like the U.S, response to COVID-19, for which any one expert is ill-prepared to serve as an honest broker. In the vast space in between there are plenty of issues and contexts that are possibly served by an individual as honest broker versus a broader committee. There is in my view no hard and fast rule for making that distinction, but the more complex (in a post-normal science way) an issue is, the more likely that a broad committee serves THB function better.

All that said, the individual's decision to "honest broker" is more complex than deciding whether or not to try to serve as an individual in that role -- it might also include a commitment to participating in an honest brokering process (which might be comprised of a diverse set of advocates).

None of this was spelled out in detail in THB, but will be discussed a lot in the sequel.

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Dec 19, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.

Thanks for the reply! We are definitely down in the weeds but I appreciate the conversation.

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Dec 18, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.

To me, I have no issue as long as the playing field is truly fair. Has there been enough “science” done to say that a person has transitioned to the point they do not have a physical advantage (based on gender at birth) over all competitors. Strictly from an appearance standpoint, it is difficult for me to look at Lia and not at some point feel she has a competitive advantage (based on gender at birth). How can this be done to eliminate subjectivity...fact based science. I am curious, have we seen a person born female transition and be competitive with individuals born male?

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A big issue for trans men is the taking of testosterone, which can elevate performance (and is typically banned in sport), but some athletes can get a TUE. But yes, trans men have shown an ability to be competitive with cisgender men in various cases.

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Dec 17, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022

Let’s cut the BS. The notion that self-identified females who are genetic males should be treated as males in athletic competition is utter nonsense. They are not. Not even close no matter when the idea took hold in them or was planted in their brains by others. This is just madness. To deny this truth is misogyny. Yes misogyny. Stop.

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First, I note that this issue is not about Trans athletes competing in organized sports. It is only about transgender women competing in sports that were the province of cisgender women. Transgender men are not competitive with cisgender men in any sport of which I am aware. (The only sport I can think of where transgender men might be competitive with cisgender men is auto racing.)

That Title IX forced colleges and universities to reallocate resources from men’s sports to women’s sports is unquestioned. That Title IX can be used to force women’s sports to allow transgender women to compete is all but certain.

What is not generally acknowledged is that women’s sports, as they are configured today, for the most part require subsidies, either explicit or implicit. The fact is that only a small percentage of sports fans care about women’s sports, limiting the revenue those sports can generate. It in light of this that I ask – Will the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports increase or decrease the interest in women’s sports?

I suspect the subsidies will need to increase.

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Perhaps since Title IX is a type of affirmative action to encourage female opportunity, and females are now undefinable, it is time to just do away with it and let the chips fall.

The post pubertal males who become trans are largely autogynephiles, an embarrassing secret trans activists try hard to keep hidden. It's just a powerful sexual fetish, not a deep identity crisis. Hypno sissy porn is a real thing! Females are aware that they are these guys' fetish objects.

The way things are going demographically, soccer and pickleball will be the only sports of the future.

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I don't understand how gender - not one's sex - determines eligibity to compete in some sports. Allowing male athletes who are trans-women to compete against females will lead to less interest in those sports as they become less competitive.

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The key issues with transwomen competing with biological females (henceforth called females) are fairness and safety.

In sports where biological males (henceforth called males) have no advantage over females the fairness issue falls away and should be no barrier to transincludion. Indeed one could question the existence of male/female categories.

I reasonable starting point is to assume that, in all sports where males outperform females, there should be a moratorium on transinclusion until it is shown that transwomen do not outperform females.

In non-contact sports, the safety issue falls away.

In contact sports a reasonable approach to safety would be to have a moratorium on transinclusion until it is shown that there is no increase in risk to females from including transwomen.

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Equestrian sports are heavily female with no apparent male advantage, yet the men seem to take the honors more often than expected. One article I read discussed the imbalance of power and influence, the social circles, politics within the sport, the better access to top horses etc. that men seem to have as an advantage in elite competition.

Shooting and archery are fairly free of advantage, though a tall archer with wider shoulders, like Stephanie Barrett, a transwoman novice who made the Olympic team, could have an advantage.

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Interesting. I have see objection to increasing categories in sport for fairness or safety. Adding a category for transwomen seems an obvious compromise.

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I have no objection to adding categories but transwomen only wish to blend into the female category, undetected. It's part of the whole schtick. There aren't enough other competitors in most sports, like it was for women before Title IX.

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“…reasonable accommodations, consistent with evidence and data…”

I predict that in a decade or two, the current social trend of allowing people with XY genotype to compete in sports against people with XX genotype will become a textbook example of the abuse of empirical methods to support a political/social agenda of a particular historical epoch.

You have to start with the reason sports are separated into men’s and women’s in the first place. Humans have known for hundreds of “generations” that men are stronger and faster than women. That is the reasonable starting presumption. Philosophically speaking it’s a Chesterton’s Fence. Medically speaking it’s a First Do No Harm. Statistically speaking it’s a Burden of Proof.

Statistically, we know that athletic attributes of men vs women exist on normal distributions that overlap to varying degrees; the fastest women sprinters can beat many men. Add to that, we now have a speck of history on the human time-line where we can manipulate the effects of the hormones most associated with post-pubertal phenotype differences, androgens and estrogens. Manipulating these hormones at varying times in development will change the characteristics of the normal distributions. The main point is that we have vastly insufficient data on the effects of androgen suppression.

Furthermore, on the very day they are born, little XY will be on a different distribution of relevant behavioral characteristics than their little XX fraternal twin sibling--- aggressiveness, risk-taking, competitiveness, socialization strategies.

Consider the task of doing a power analysis on how many years of sports outcomes would be needed to prove that androgen-altered XY has no statistically significant advantage over control XX. And what level of statistical significance do you choose to say androgen-altered XY can compete?

Your use of the pejorative “blunt discrimination” implies that the burden of proof has shifted onto women’s sports to compete against XY people. Are you claiming there is statistically robust data to support that? I'm happy to be educated.

Roger, you’re a world’s expert on capture of academia by motivated reasoning in the climate domain, which you describe as “a sort of bizzaro world” of embracing incorrect science. There is every sign that this is what is happening in the trend to allow transgender women compete with XX people at all levels of sports.

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"aggressiveness, risk-taking, competitiveness, socialization strategies"

Nailed it. Why men insist on sneaking into female spaces, lol, and the men that support this absurd intrusion. Females have a hard time defending their spaces, especially when they have children. The male task is supposed to be protection of females from other men.

As a female, I lack the "sports area" of my brain entirely. I like movement, skills and activity but I can't even keep score in Pickleball because winning is irrelevant.

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It amazes me how such a simple and basic issue is made some complex. Your competition gender category is defined by your chromosomes and your plumbing, not your imagination, nor your “feelings”.

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The notion of "competition gender" has been advanced (most recently by IAAF) and has not been approved in law (including in sports law).

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I look at this issue from a ‘least harm, most benefit’ perspective. For purposes of this argument there are three categories of men who have, or want to transition to men:

1. Those who have no desire to compete in athletic events

2. Those who want to play sports, but aren’t competitive in either men’s or women’s sports

3. Those who aren’t competitive as men but would be competitive as women.

So it is obvious that the way to accrue the most benefit and the least harm is very simple. Allow transgender men to compete freely in women’s sports, but only on the condition that they cannot ever win a medal at any level as an individual, and a team cannot ever win a medal at any level if any of its members are transgender men.

This policy would immediately and forever separate the ‘wheat’ (those individuals born as men who wish to become women and still compete in sports but aren't competitive at the top levels) from the ‘chaff’ (those men who only or primarily wish to become women so they can win in women’s sports). This policy is beneficial to women’s sports in general and is only harmful to those few transgender men who can’t win as a man, but could as a woman. Do we really want to destroy all of woman’s sports just so a few ex-men can walk away with all the medals?

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Gender identity dysmorphia (or "disorder") is a known and defined mental issue (or "disorder"). I wonder how we even got to this stage of arguing about whether a "transgender" person is really a different sex, given that it's basically a mental problem. Are we also supposed to accept that an anorexic person is indeed as fat as they think they are? Should the taxpayers be liable for gastric-bypass surgery for anorexics? Should we be forced to call anorexics "fatty" or risk legal penalties? It's a mad, mad world.

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A conceptually non-prejudicial way to frame current gender issues is with the term “biopsychosocial.” Many human conditions have etiologic contributions along all three dimensions--- biological, psychological, and social. There has very likely always been a small population of gender dysphoric people from a developmental basis. To quote Jaak Panksepp from his book The Archaeology of Mind, “Sexuality is further complicated (especially at the tertiary-process level for humans) because the sexual body and the sexual brain develop along different trajectories in utero.” Nowadays it’s also clear that there is a strong social and psychological contribution to a likely separate social phenomenon of gender fluidity.

My point is that this is such a complex, poorly studied area that to invoke current science as supporting XY’s competing in sports against XX’s just shows ignorance.

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Well, don't get me started on current but belated recognition that a certain amount of "transgender" kids are kids who need attention so badly that they're doing what is popular: declaring themselves transgender. The leftists who popularized this trend need to go to jail for every life they ruined. Children are impressionable and want to be loved.

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The mothers with "transhausen by proxy"...the moms want to have a reality show and a very special child. The social contagion of teens, they stay up all night watching YouTube videos and reading Tumblr and Reddit trans propaganda. They see endless unattainable Kardashian stereotypes, making plain girls despair and declare they are really boys. It's a social pandemic.

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Dec 17, 2022Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.

As a conservative, I could get behind cap-tie policies like the ones Roger suggests. I’d be inclined to include them at the high school level, not just the collegiate and professional levels, but it’s a pragmatic approach to a thorny problem, and ensuring hormonal regulation could level any competitive imbalance. I suspect that hormonal regulation would also deter those male athletes who perceive competing as a female to be a path to athletic glory that might elude them as males.

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Thanks. Pragmatism FTW.

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Sorry, but high school is not a time when females are comfortable with males using their locker rooms. Does consent matter? The college swimmers were not happy with Lia Thomas dangling around their locker rooms and seeing them naked. Young fertile women are not naturally trusting of males inviting themselves into their single sex spaces.

If new competition rules require that little boys who want to be trans-women stop puberty before it starts, have childhood genital surgery and take early cross sex hormones to appear to be female, there will be few competitors to discriminate against and exclude.

Early medicalization and affirmation practices finally have enough data that Europe is putting an abrupt end to it.

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Sharing of locker rooms between trans and non-trans athletes is an entirely different issue, and one on which I’m less willing to compromise. The issue at hand involves competition, and in that regard Roger’s take makes sense.

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I personally am opposed to what the swimmer at UPenn has done. It is truly unfair to his born-female competitors. However, a combination of the Ohio High School rule and "cap tie" would satisfy me. As long as there is no unfair advantage, "laissez le bon temps rouler!"

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Thanks!

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To the tune of "Doing what comes naturally" from Annie Get Your Gun:

My favorite Uncle Harry

He never read a book

Knows one sex from another

All he had to do was look

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