Transgender Professional Athletes

[Allison W]

Originally Posted by candy_coated_bitch

There's also a LOT of variation within both groups--cismen and ciswomen. And a lot of overlap. Plenty of cismen have low levels of testosterone and plenty of ciswomen have higher levels of testosterone than some cismen. There's a lot more overlap than you might think. Also in size and body type, etc. Most professional women athletes could leave 99% of cismen in the dust.

Not a lot of overlap in actual testosterone levels per se, outside of cases where someone's gonads have been removed or the like, but the rest, yes.

(Off-topic: I like the bit about most professional women athletes outperforming the vast majority of cisgendered men. Male-supremacist types really rage over that. As an added bonus, the performance gap between men and women even at the athlete level has been shrinking over the years. The future is bright.)

Originally Posted by candy_coated_bitch

I think it's complicated when you start talking about hormone levels and such things. There's not a great way to measure that. But, with that being said if a person has transitioned I think the fairest thing is for them to compete under their chosen gender. All the policing gets insane after a while.

Well, hormones can be measured with a blood test; I've had doctors do it. The ranges vary greatly within a given sex, but between them the difference is still pretty big. I wouldn't draw the line at "chosen gender," even as a transperson, but rather by the presence of what is probably the biggest sex-linked advantage, testosterone, and whether they're on it (for transmen) or no longer producing it in quantities abnormally high for a female athlete (for transwomen--and I think the "for a female athlete" is probably a meaningful qualifier, as it's not unusual for female athletes to have relatively high testosterone levels). Possibly even with an additional time qualifier, like two or three years of hormonal intervention, since it takes a while.

On transwomen's T levels, though, the recommended therapeutic level of testosterone for transwomen is actually very low in the female range. I haven't even had surgical interventions, just hormonal ones, myself, and I bring this up because even so I actually had blood tests showing T levels so far below the female range--even the recommended therapeutic range for transwomen--that my antiandrogens had to be reduced to raise them.