No Science Supports Transgender Athletics

Science popularizers Sabine Hossenfelder and NDT wade into a culture issue:

Neil DeGrasse Tyson made waves recently by giving his take on transgender athletes and how they should be allowed to participate in sports. The discourse around this tiny issue has become increasingly toxic, meaning it’s time for me to talk about it...

They act as if some scientific research into hormones is going to make athletic competitions more fair.

6:11 The problem with treating trans women as female athletes, on the other hand, 6:16 is that at the moment it’s unclear how to do it well. So I think much of the disagreement you see 6:22 comes from the clash between the question of how do we deal with trans athletes NOW 6:30 and the question of how we should ideally deal with them one day.

There is no way to do it well, and no research is going to provide a way.

They both acknowledge that all athletic competitions are unfair in the sense that some athletes have superior talent, strength, training, perseverence, etc. That is a feature, not a bug. Competitions is supposed to bring out the best.

Friendly golf games have handicaps that supposedly let players with different skills compete. Okay, but handicaps are not used in the big tournements.

The science tells us that mammals are unambiguously divided into males and females. The sexes are immutable. Males have a distinct advantage in most sports.

The human sexes are not just divided by athletic ability, but also by psychological traits and cultural roles. We have girls' sport to give opportunities to girls, and not to approximate scientific fairness.

Usually Tyson and Hossenfelder stick to their areas of expertise, but they have waded into the culture wars.

Apparently the respectable liberal prevailing opinion is that if a boy identifies as a girl, and if he is medically treated to diminish his masculine abilities, then the compassionate thing is to let him compete with the girls. But it ruins the whole idea of girls' sports. It is harmful to the girls, and harmful to the boy. Some European countries have quit doing these treatments on minors, because of the obvious harm and the lack of any good evidence of benefit.

Kamala Harris ran for President under a transgender platform. It was probably the issue she most identified with, besides abortion and open borders. I am expected some changes, now that she lost.