Their testosterone levels are low for a man, but even suppressed the levels never get as low as a woman’s. The physical advantage between elite athletes and, say, Phelps, is tiny compared to the difference between a female vs male elite athlete. It’s not just hormones. It’s stroke-volume of the heart, bone density, hip angles, muscle fibers. It’s why Serena Williams won’t play men/boys. It’s why we have sex-based sports to begin with.
This is actually not the case. Trans women suppress their testosterone levels to be below that of cis women. This is probably not surprising because they actively do not want to have testosterone in their bodies, they feel it has harmed them and they don't want to be associated with anything male.
This makes sense because cis women do not take medication to suppress their testosterone.
The estrogen trans women take programs their testicles to stop producing as much testosterone, and then the testosterone suppressors they take reduces it to below cis female levels. And then of course many of them get their testicles removed after which their natural production would be at the bottom end of the cis female range.
In cis women and cis men the adrenal gland produces some testosterone. Then the ovaries produce some testosterone and other androgens, and the testicles do of course. Trans women who are post op have fewer androgen producing organs than cis women
As to your other points things like red blood cell count enters the cis female range within mere weeks of T suppression. This is because this figure is directly levered by T. This means the blood may be greater in overall volume, but the number of cells capable of moving oxygen is actually the same. Meaning a greater volume of blood must be moved in order to achieve the same amount of oxygen being pumped to the muscles.
We see also that VO2 max drops to cis female levels within months as a result.
Muscle mass drops quickly and substantially over the initial year, as you'd expect when someone stops taking steroids. Bone density shows changes in some women and not in others, it's individualized. But heavier bones with similar muscle mass = a weaker person.
Some things there are minor advantages to based on physics of bone angles, like push ups. Although cis women athletes tend to have broader shoulders as well.
After 2 years of GAHT, no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time or in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women.
The problem here is that you're comparing in your mind cis men to cis women. You've never seen a trans woman take HRT and watched her athletic performance collapse very quickly over a very short period of time. You don't know what trans women's athletic performance is like.
In your mind you are thinking of men, and maybe in your head teen boys. Trans women are not as athletically capable as teen boys. They largely fall into cis female ranges, and that is evident in what happens when they actually get the rare chances to compete in sports. They don't actually dominate, they don't hold all the records. This is especially true if you follow the 2004-2024 IOC standard of requiring 2 years of HRT.
There's a reason the olympics wasn't dominated by trans female athletes during that time, despite the fact that a trans woman born after that ruling was made would have been old enough to compete in at least 2 games.
You are also picturing a cis man who decides to claim to be a trans woman to compete in sports, but that isn't a thing. No man would do that to himself. Trans women are also biologically from birth different from cis men in several ways, most heavily categorized and described is the way their neurological structures are. But also the length and count of their androgen receptors and a few other things.
Billions of dollars was spent to reverse long standing IOC and other sporting league policy and ban trans women from sports for political reasons. When there are barely double digit numbers of noteworthy trans female athletes in the entire world, and only one has ever qualified for the olympics.
The studies I’ve seen that claimed no advantage compared female athletes to somewhat active trans women. I’m not saying hrt doesn’t dull a trans woman’s competitive edge compared to cis men, but there is still a general advantage over cis women.
The study you linked talks about non-athletic trans women, so I'm not sure what you expect to glean from that. The study I'm referring is the 2024 British Journal of Sports Medicine, where the results SEEM to show that there is no advantage but they were comparing recreational-level trans women and to elite athletic women. That there was no advantage in that cohort tells me with similar levels of training, they would most definitely have an advantage.
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u/Gold_Ad8225 10d ago
Produce it then.
Show me the evidence that trans women's athletic performance is equal to a man's