Unfair advantages

It seems scarcely credible, but this article has appeared in, of all places, Scientific American. Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams: There is no scientific case for excluding them:

The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.

This is, of course, about far more than testosterone. Men after puberty have significant advantages over women in body strength, in terms of muscle mass, lung capacity, and bone size. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. 

And all this talk about "forcing" transgender girls to play with boys: no one's marching these wretches to the playing fields at gun point. They can play with their biological sex, or they can form their own teams and events, whatever: they just shouldn't be playing with women. The whole farce is exposed by the point that the issue of trans men playing in men's sport never arises – for obvious reasons.

It's astonishing that Scientific American would publish such a piece. It's Lysenko revisited – a triumph of ideology over science. And, as a commenter at Jerry Coyne's site reveals, the author of the piece, Jack Turban, has taken at least $15,000 from a pharmaceutical company that makes puberty blockers.

What a disgrace.