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| Women weighlifters. Lauren Hubbard is the tall one... |
That "first" is New Zealand's Lauren (née Gavin) Hubbard, who will compete in the Women's 87kg weightlifting in the Tokyo Olympics.
Who thinks we should celebrate this, as a blow for social justice, as a step forward in diversity and inclusion?
Personally I won’t say what I think. After all, I'm part of the white cis-normative patriarchy, so that’s toxic White Privilege right there -- I have no right to an opinion. So, I won’t say. Others however, have made their views clear on both sides of the issue:
Who does NOT support transgender in women's sports?
Answer:
- Most people (of either sex, or both): polls show 70% to 80% of people globally don’t support transgender [WebArchive] folks participating in women’s sports (let’s be clear that the concern is with women’s sports where the transgender woman was born in a male body and is perceived to have an advantage over women born female. There is not the same angst about transgender men competing in men's sports)
- Athletes generally: Major sports stars speak out against transwomen in women's sports, here.
- Female athletes: like Olympic gold medallist Sharron Davies who says "all my friends feel the same", but have been silenced. ADDED: "Fair Play for Women" has Davies' letter to the IOC, signed by over 60 Olympic medallists. Here. The Samoan weightlifter Iuniarra Sipaia, says Hubbard's "strength and everything is still male". The Belgian lifter Anna Vanbellinghen calls it "unfair" and "a bad joke".
- Transgender women: the likes of Caitlin Jenner (winner of an Olympic gold medal as a male), and Debbie Hayton, here talking about the ban on transgender women in NZ women's rugby.
And who DOES support the entry of transgender women in women’s competition?
Answer:
- The Mainstream Media: just Google "Transgender weightlifter olympics". They're all there, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters. ..[ADDED: and the SCMP]
- Transgender Athletes chosen for the team: Like Hubbard herself
- Radical transgender activists: Like Chase Strangio of the ACLU
- The New Zealand Olympic Committee: Kereyn Smith said it was an "historic moment in sport for the New Zealand team"
In sum: radical trans activists have pressured sports bodies to accept trans women in women’s sports, cheered in by mainstream media, all against pretty much everyone else in the world.
Hubbard lived as "Gavin" for the first 35 years of his life. Gavin became "Lauren: in 2013. She has lived and trained as a man for 82% of her life. She is now allowed to compete as a woman provided her testosterone is below a specified level for at least 12 months. (10 nano-moles per litre of blood)
However, her body mass, as a man, was created in the twenty post-puberty years and has not vanished by transitioning to a woman, and keeping testosterone low. (By the way, I've heard, but not confirmed, that that required testosterone level is well above that naturally occurring in women).ADDED (28 June): I did the research. The Olympic requirement for trans woman athlete is testosterone below 10 nano-moles per litre of blood for longer than the immediately preceding twelve months. The average testosterone in a female is between 35 and 70 milligrams per decilitre. Note that that is a different measure, but luckily there’s a conversion chart online — 10 nano-moles per litre equals 135 milligrams per decilitre.Thus, the allowed testosterone that weightlifter Lauren Hubbard can have in her blood is between 3.8 and 1.9 times as much as that of her female competitors.
Somewhat surprisingly, given its robust pro-trans stance, it’s in The Guardian we find a note that male advantage does not decline much even after hormone suppression therapy:
Last year, the scientists Emma Hilton and Tommy Lundberg found that the male performance advantage in weightlifting was 30% when compared to women. Their research indicated that even when transgender women suppressed testosterone for 12 months, the loss of lean body mass, muscle area and strength was only around 5%. [Ref]
Hubbard is 43 years old. The average age of women weightlifters is 24. That alone strongly suggests the benefit of her male body. How else could she credibly be competitive at that age, nearly twice the average?
Looking at Olympic weightlifting records: Overall Men lift between 25% and 48% more in the same weight class, as women.
By the way: important to note that Hubbard has met the IOC entry requirements. In no way is she “cheating”. What seems to have happened here is that the IOC in trying to be "diverse and inclusive" has included one small group — a fraction (the sports elite) of a fraction (about 0.5% of a population identifies as trams) — at the expense of the bigger group of women, of female athletes and the general public. Is that fair? Surely not. It is “diversity and inclusion” only if you exclude women from your calculus. Something needs be done to meet the legitimate concerns of the many -- like the Labour tag "for the many not the few". Something like an "Open" category, in which men, women and transgender could compete. Would that do it?
If Hubbard wins in Tokyo, this issue is going to blow hard on the world stage.
ADDED (4 July): There is no science on the side of including Hubbard in the women's team for the Olympics, which is why her proponents call critics "transphobes", ie ad hominem instead of science. This article I just saw today has more of the science. It's clearer than ever that it is simply not right that biological males should compete with biological females. It's a case of "For the Few, not the Many", in contrast to Britain's Labour Party slogan last time around of "For the Many, not the Few"....
