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| Click above to go to the podcast, Barri Weiss talking to Carole Hoover |
@45:00 discussion of trans women in sport. Carole Hoover says men are on average 40% stronger than women, especially in the upper body. Men have twice the muscle of women and women have twice the fat of men. The whole discussion is interesting but I’m mainly interested in the transgender in sports issue, because it’s a hot topic right now, especially with the first transgender woman in the Olympics. I wrote here about it.
When a man transitions to a trans woman, that extra body strength only drops about 5% (to 38% stronger) twelve months after transitioning. Hoover say a trans woman will “retain significantly more muscle mass and body size" than a woman (which she calls "natal woman").
I’m short, she says, science shows us unequivocally, that the post-puberty strength, speed and size advantage of men is largely retained when they transition to trans women. Whether that is an unfair advantage is a separate question which she does not want to address. She says the people pushing for trans women to be allowed to compete in elite sports are trying to make the argument on the basis of science, but the science does not support their argument. They ought to be making their case on human rights grounds. I'd be happy to see a human rights argument. The thing is, we could all agree that we ought confer all human rights to trans people both men and women. But, there is no human right to take part in a sports contest. Particularly when that right collides with the right of a natal women, whose spot is taken by a (on average) stronger, faster, trans woman. (Note the issue here is always about trans women. There's no fear that a trans man -- a woman who has transitioned to a man - will challenge natal men).
I wrote more about this here. That was about Laurel Hubbard, the first trans woman to be allowed to compete in the Olympics. That was NZ's Laurel Hubbard in the +87kg weightlifting. She did poorly. Probably to the relief of promoters of trans women in sports, who can say "see.... she got beat by cis-women, so what's the problem?".
ADDED: re the last para, that very point was made here, at the Althouse blog. An Occasional Reader believes Althouse is just stating the facts of where we're at, not endorsing them. I'm not so sure....
Quoting her, I responded:
The outcome Kroc feared did not happen. So Hubbard seems to have helped the transgender movement in 3 ways: 1. She got accepted into the Olympics as a woman, 2. She weathered the exposure and criticism, and 3. She did badly, which cuts against the argument that transgender women have too much of an advantage.
