StarTalk Radio - Gender in Sports with Joanna Harper and Heather Berlin, PhD (Re-release)

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

How does gender impact performance? Neil deGrasse Tyson dives into the archives w/ Gary O’Reilly & Chuck Nice to look at gender in sports with neuroscientist Heather Berlin PhD, and Joanna Harper, medical physicist and transgender athlete researcher. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/gender-in-sports-with-joanna-harper-and-heather-berlin-phd-re-release/ Thanks to our Patrons Hassan Shiman, Lizette Hart, Robert Barnes, Christopher Bill, Bruno Canalda, Joe Stamps, and tony henche for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: Ted Eytan via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And this week, we decided to throw it back to a discussion that's become prevalent in the sports sphere over the past few years, and that's gender in sports. Everybody's been talking about it, specifically because of the role and the need to include transgender athletes in the sports that we all know and love. My co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O'Reilly, they originally recorded this episode back in 2018 when Castor Semenya, who is an intersex woman with naturally high testosterone levels,

was scrutinized for her winning performance as a runner. So since then, this conversation has continued to garner public attention. Various laws are being proposed to limit transgender and intersex athletes in how they can participate in sports. And the fact that laws are being discussed means this is a topic of consideration. As for the Tokyo Olympics, there are athletes such as the New Zealand weightlifter and transgender woman, Laurel Hubbard, and that's sparking some important new conversations. And we just thought it would be valuable to bring back this episode out of our archives. So we hope you enjoy this examination of the science of gender and how our

expanded knowledge of human biology and physiology can help us think more objectively about our society and what we deem as fair in sports. Check it out. Today, we attempt to tackle an enormous topic, the science and role of gender in sports. And joining us now is neuroscientist Heather Berlin. Heather, of course, welcome back. Chuck, just in case there are listeners out there who aren't familiar. Oh, couldn't be familiar with Heather.

Heather is the assistant professor of psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and one of StarTalk All-Stars and our go-to expert for all things on brain science, better known as neuroscience. I aim to please. Okay, so first of all, let's try and put this into some understanding for me. When we say gender and what we mean by sex and the difference. Usually what we mean by female is you have two X chromosomes,

and men have an X and a Y chromosome. And then they go on to express male genitalia on average. On average. There are some variations. I was going to say, because all fetuses start off the same, right? Yeah. Then it's the, what's it called, the SRY, right? Right, yeah.

It's the Sry that actually creates what you just said but then there are variations within that that can express things differently inside of men and women so it really isn't as cut and dry as one might think absolutely and then and so then you have the development of the the sex organs and that that's one aspect of it the biological but then there's also the psychological aspect of what people identify themselves as. So some people might have male genitalia, but psychologically feel like they are female. And that's a different aspect. So there's the identity, the gender identity, and then there's actually just the biological,

physical differences between. Right. So it depends on what you, you know, the definition can change depending on, you know, your perspective. Gotcha. So it's real, I was about to say, so it really is gender fluid, but that's not the best way. But it really is kind of fluid in that, you know, through science, we have found that it isn't just as simple as, hey, you're a man, I'm a woman. Or hey, you're a woman, I'm a man. It's really not as simple as we think it is.

Yeah, but now, you can look at, but on average. On average. On average, there are these biological differences. Women have a uterus, have the capacity to have a baby, right? And so there are sexual differences on average. And then, of course, you have these things at the extremes

where there becomes more fluidity in terms of gender. Exactly. So if we were to take two brains and put them into an MRI, one male, one female, would you be able to go, that's the guy, that's the girl? Is it as simple as that? Or have I just

really oversimplified things? The answer is no. Okay. Absolutely not. I look at brain scans all the time. And when I, and often when I'm sort of trying to figure out what the problem is, because normally there are people who've either had a traumatic brain injury or there's some kind of problem there. I like to be, look at the brain completely as a clean slate without any information so I can be blind to what the problem is before I then go and read the report so I can get, yeah. That's fantastic. When you said that, I don't know why,

but it just struck in me that all charts should be read blindly no matter what the condition is because everyone has bias, including doctors. And so if I look at your chart and I know that you're a black female from Chicago, I'm going to actually have something in my head attached to that as opposed to if you just hand me a chart and say, this is patient 26547, then I'm reading all of these things blank slate. Brilliant idea Blank slate. Yeah. Brilliant idea.

Yeah. And it's, and this isn't standard. It's not like everybody does that, right? They usually are reading all the other people's reports. Of course. But I like to first just have this clean look at it and not even know age, gender, anything. And then you kind of make your sort of diagnosis. And then you start looking back and comparing to what other people said and integrate that.

But you make your initial assessment sort of blind. Anyway, so when I look at these scans, I can maybe tell age, you know, based on the differences in the brain structure. But gender, no. Never happens, huh? No, never. So there's no male brain and no female brain,

just as a brain itself. If you're just looking at the raw anatomy, no. Now, there are some studies where you look across a whole group of male brains of scans and images, and you look at female brains, and then you try to see, are there any differences on average? And some studies do pick up differences, but this is a different technique than just looking at any one individual brain and being able to understand. And I would suppose that when you talk about those studies, the same thing would apply to if you were looking at a brain lighting up in an MRI, as it is exposed to certain stimuli, that you would be, men and women would be different in that respect.

Yeah, I mean, okay, first, just looking not at function, but just that structure, there are some things like some studies have found that women have a slightly larger hippocampus, which is a part of the brain that has to do with memory. And that might coincide with them

maybe having a bit better memory, especially of emotional memories. So there's that structural difference. And some, again, these are on average. It's not everybody. Linguistic differences. So there's that structural difference. And some, again, these are on average, it's not everybody, linguistic differences. So for example, the language area of the brain tends to be more what we call lateralized to the left, tends to be more to the left in men. Women, however, tend to also have some language areas on the right side as well. So it's less lateralized. It's still more to the left, but they also have, so there's more of the brain dedicated to language.

And then when you look at it behaviorally, women actually tend on average to use more words throughout the day than men. And they never forget. And become verbal sooner than boys. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's just a fact that anybody who has children knows that little girls become far more verbal

than little boys much earlier. On a cellular level, is there any difference in the chemicals that present in a male or female brain when the processes are taking place? Yeah, I mean, so you have exposure to testosterone, to certain hormones, let's say in utero, that affect development and can affect brain development. There's some differences in connectivity, and that might be a result of higher exposure to testosterone in utero and then outside of utero, of course, but especially during these critical periods of development versus exposure to estrogen.

And also oxytocin is another big one. That female tends to release more oxytocin that's related to childbirth or bonding with their child when they're breastfeeding. All of those things do affect the brain in different ways. They're subtle, but they do eventually have behavioral consequences. So speaking of testosterone, let's relate this to sports. So testosterone in men as we go through puberty and we start to express this hormone and we get muscles and we have bigger bones and— Thicker skulls.

Thicker skulls, absolutely. Your thick skull, your big crow magnets, thick skull, basking your head. You guys are so used to bashing your head around. You had to develop thicker skulls. Absolutely. Your thick skull. Your big crow magnets. Thick skull. You guys are so used to bashing your head around. They had to develop thicker skulls. So now what a lot of people don't realize is that testosterone is a vital part of females too. Like it gives them better bone density. It gives some women are far more muscular, just naturally muscular. Sex drive.

All these things, right? Yeah. So when you have a woman who is high testosterone, does that give her an advantage physically when it comes to physical sports? I'm talking about just the physical sports, physicality of sports. Does that give a woman an advantage to be a higher testosterone? It might. It might. There are certain studies that look at

something as simple as actually, I think it's the ratio between this finger to this finger. I can't remember which finger it is, but there's one finger that if it's exposed to higher testosterone in utero, it will grow longer in proportion to the other finger. And you can actually see somebody's, like, I think it's this finger to this finger. So I was actually exposed to some amount of testosterone in utero that's higher than average, let's say. Now, does that mean that I have thicker bones or I grow taller? Yes, perhaps. Whether it makes a hugely significant difference in the realm of sports is questionable because you have some of these genetic differences, then you have the exposure to testosterone,

and then you have the practice element or the environmental, right? And all of those things have to come into play. Right. So it's not just one thing. You know, one might give you a slight advantage, but if you have somebody who's lower testosterone, but who works out every day. Works all the time. Yeah, yeah.

They might do better at a certain sport than someone who's just higher in testosterone. So we go back to nature and nurture. Yeah. The other thing is, apart from the physicality of a lot of sport, it can be problem solving. And I'd say it can be.

It is quite often solving a lot of problems during a game, whether it's tennis or soccer or basketball. Is a female brain more predisposed than a male brain? Are there certain areas that you said, certain language areas and the hippocampus for memory?

Are there other areas that would have an advantage in certain situations? So there are a lot of things, I think, that are happening during the play. So problem solving, now, on average, they say, you know, men tend to be better at like spatial, visual spatial processing

and women in language. But however, if you just take individuals, if you look at, say, me and my husband, I'm very good with math and visual spatial and language isn't my thing. And he's a writer and language is his thing. So we're totally the opposite of what you might expect on average.

So again, these are all, there's a lot of exceptions to these rules. But on average, men tend to be better at visual spatial processing, of being able to really, so women are good at, you know, they say multitasking for a number of reasons. And men tend to be good at focusing on one particular thing and being able to kind of tune out. And anybody who's married knows this. Yeah. Can tune out everything else. You know,

I'm talking about, I tell him five times and he's just not because he's focused on something. Whereas I can hear five things at once and, you know, watch the kids and whatever. So in sense of, I mean, you know, problem solving involves a lot of different things. But I think one is, if you're under a high amount of pressure, can you stay focused? And that also has to do a lot with prefrontal cortex function,

which varies between men and women. So it depends on what you mean by problem solving. I guess that's the answer to the question. Okay, sport will have an element of spatial. Right. I need to, as if we stay with tennis, if I need to place that ball there

to set my opponent up to the third shot on, to do certain things like that. So to think like, or so three steps ahead or that kind of logic. Which then may be possibly cliche and I'm falling into the trap

of multitasking, because you're already thinking about doing all of that while you're doing all of this. Yeah. And I think that, again, there's going to be more importance in terms of individual variation than so much the male-female elements coming into play. I think in those sports, certainly the physicality of men will make a huge difference. If you're going to put a man up against a woman, I think that obviously the obvious

physical differences, although you have some men who, you know, some women who can totally, I mean, if you take Serena Williams, you know, she's going to beat the average male tennis player, I'm pretty sure. But outside of the physicality, I think the problem solving and the thinking, you know, 10 steps ahead, you're not going to see huge differences between men and women, especially those who are prone to want to go into sports.

And that's where they have an affinity. If they're going to get to the highest levels, they're all going to probably have equal ability to think ahead and solve problems. So I know there were some studies done back in the 90s about young children, how they perceive themselves and their abilities. Yeah. Juxtaposed against children who were just a few years older. So we're talking about like

five and six-year-olds. Juxtaposed against nine and 10-year-olds. The five and six-year-olds, juxtaposed against nine and ten-year-olds. The five and six-year-olds were like, I'm great. I'm good at this. I'm awesome. And then by the time they got to nine and ten, the boys were like, I'm great. And the girls were like, not so much. Or they thought they were great at other things.

So it's not like they were they were great at other things. So it's not like they were suffering from self-esteem issues. It's just that they thought they were great at something else. And primarily, the thing that was glaringly different was sports competition. Right. Is this, I don't know what that study is saying, but I think it might be saying, because I don't think there's enough information to say this. But what it says to me is that a lot of this is just kind of like you're looking around, you're absorbing your surroundings, and you're saying to yourself, hey, this is not what I'm supposed to do. Well, I mean, there's studies, like if you even just look at like math ability, for example, you know, girls and boys start out, they equally, you know, thinking they can do math. They actually show, they tell girls before they're about to take

a math test that girls tend to do better on average than boys on math. And they do really well on this math test. And then you tell another group of girls, actually, it shows that men do way better than women on math, and they actually do much worse on the math test. So those influences do affect your confidence and your ability, and then it becomes a snowball effect. That being said, you know, men, testosterone, tend to be more competitive, more aggressive, and they might gravitate more towards sports because they enjoy it. There's actually studies that show that in societies that have the most fluid gender roles where they don't sort of have these oppressive laws and you are allowed to do whatever you want,

that's where they actually see the biggest discrepancies in terms of what self-chosen, what men and women choose to do. So part of it could be a preference thing. It could be that men just gravitate more towards the physical and aggressive kinds of sports. Women tend to want to be more cooperative and have group cohesion, and maybe kinds of sports that involve that, they'll gravitate more. So again, it's hard to separate out all these factors. I mean, the influence of culture, of course, has an effect,

but our natural inclinations and tendencies also have an effect. Well, how about gender segregation? Because we separate boys and girls all the time from the time they're very little. Yeah. Couldn't that actually exacerbate the fact that boys gravitate towards, like, I'm sure there are little girls, and maybe not on average and maybe not as a whole, but just the little girl out of the eight boys. And then there's two girls who want to play baseball.

But the girls are like, they're told no. So, I mean, wouldn't that also account for some of the discrepancy in, you know, the numbers, the interest and the performance? Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I mean, you know, it's a double-edged sword because at some level, you know, just as I talked about the physicality and men tend to be taller and bigger and larger and there can be some discrepancies there when, especially if you're talking about contact sports, right? But I remember when I was in graduate school, I wanted to play soccer. I mean, I was a professional, but just, you know, I wanted to play intramural soccer. And we are,

particular college only had a male team. So, and it was for fun. It wasn't, you know, like the university team. And I said, you know, can I play? And so there was this huge debate in the team about, there was a whole group of them

that said, yeah, I want to play. And we were fighting for it. But then the other teams didn't want me there because they said they wouldn't play as aggressively if I was on the, so, you know, there's a lot of psychological preconceptions involved. So there could be problems. I think when they're young, of course, why not, you know, start out,

have co-ed teams, whatever, as it gets more intense and aggressive and you're getting at the higher levels of like where little physical differences can make a big difference, then maybe it does make sense to separate it out at that level. Well, you know, and honestly, that's what happens with young boys too. I mean, I remember playing football and going away for one summer from school and then coming back and it seemed like over that summer, the team got five times the size. Right. That was the end of my football. got five times the size.

Right. That was the end of my football. Because little skinny ass, I'm sorry, little skinny spindly tuck could not play with these guys that somehow sprouted up and they were now like 190, 220, you know,

and I'm still like buck 10 soaking wet carrying a brick. It has less to do with actually gender differences than just the actual physicality. So if you, instead of making it the line to get into a team based on gender, make it based on, I don't know, like size, weight, whatever. Whether you're a male or female, if you are X number of pounds and X tall,

you can be on this team. Like wrestling. Right, right. And so it won't matter what the gender is. You've got weight categories in events like that. For me, I quite simply, are you, one simple question, are you good enough? Right. And then, yes, no, you're in.

And to the point where are women as competitive as men? I think that question seems the most redundant thing I could possibly say in this discussion. Because there's no doubt that every bit, you've only got to watch the Olympics, you've only got to watch any sporting event to just see how competitive every female athlete is. So there's a whole load of things. We've talked about things already, and there's basically no difference. You've said to me, you could look at a brain, two brains, one male, one female, you wouldn't know. If you came to that blind and you looked at it and said, I couldn't tell you on a screen, which it is, there seems to be very little. The only thing that will change is the

physicality. Physicality. And if you're mismatching on a physical, I mean, if you go into a boxing ring and there's one guy, 250 pounds and six'5", and you're 5'10 and 130. That's no longer a boxing match. That's it. They don't do that. So probably you should match people up based on skill and maybe weight categories and size categories, but not based on gender.

Right. And I think that when you think about it, some of it has to be just cultural and societal bias because there's no reason a kicker, even in the NFL, couldn't be a female. Absolutely. There's no reason. I fully agree. I fully agree. And I think that that's why, you know, I think, but for instance, I don't want to play football.

You know, that's not something I would choose to do, right? But if I wanted to, and if I wanted to have a crack at it, there should be no reason why there should be rules against that. Unless I'm going to get really seriously physically injured or whatever, but at least give me a chance to try out or see if I can reach the level of... The question that keeps popping up into my head in the last minute is, is society ready for that?

That's another question. That's a whole other show. I mean, I think everyone sat here is thinking pretty much the same thing. Well, I think you've got to start with baby steps, right? Little by little, there's an integration and a change, just like everything else where, you know, women had to kind of fight their way

to break through and then it became the norm and like voting even, right? So, you know, again, sports is different. There's this physicality, but if you match up teams based on the size aspect

and, you know, I think that over time people will adapt, but it takes, you got to go in baby steps. If there was one thing from your point of view that could be done now that would maybe speed up those baby steps, what would it be?

That's really, that's really, I would take a popular sport, just one of them, anyone, and just start by opening that up and say, whether it's tennis. I mean, do they do that? And they have one match where it's going to be, you know, the best woman versus the best. I mean, they did the battle of the sexes, right? They had this matchup. But let's just start by taking one sport and doing one, like, match or one type of competition where it's integrated. And just see how it goes. And then we can start moving in that direction. Okay.

That is one thought. There will be others, and hopefully our audience will engage with it. We're going to take a break, but to Dr. Heather Billing, thank you so much for your contribution to this particular show. Yeah, you weren't bad for a woman.

I took on two men, took on two men, and it's lead it. When we come back, the science of gender and sex and its role in athletics. Stick around. We'll be right back.

And welcome back. I think we have a particularly interesting guest joining us now. Dr. Joanna Harper is a transgender and gender-varying athlete, an endurance runner, a medical physicist at Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon, and the only person in history, Chuck, to publish a peer-reviewed article on the performance of transgender athletes. Welcome to the show.

So, okay, Joanna, let's start with a few of the vocabulary and terminology, so as I understand. So if we go through exactly what transgender, intersex, biological and anatomical sex and how this all unfolds, if you could base that for my platform to work from, please. Both sex, the biology of the male-female divide and gender, the biology of the male-female divide, and gender, the sociology of the male-female divide, are complex. And we can divide biological sex into different categories like external genitalia, internal genitalia, chromosome pattern, hormones, secondary sex characteristics. And these are not all necessarily concordant. So, you know, some people might possibly have external genitalia of one sex and internal genitalia assorted with the opposite sex.

Gender is also complex. the opposite sex. Gender is also complex. Many people nowadays talk about gender fluidity that implies a one-dimensional continuum between male and female, but I actually like to think of gender as a two-dimensional graph in which we have male-female along a vertical axis and then the number of gender aspects along the horizontal aspect. And in particular with sports, I like to think of gender assigned at birth, social gender, legal gender, and a concept that I like to call athletic gender. Others have used terms like sports sex, but we're talking about the same thing, gender for the purpose of sport. And so these things are complex, but I think we can narrow this down in terms of sports.

You did warn us it was complex. You have advised the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, on guidelines regarding sex reassignment and hyperandrogenism. The athlete that springs to mind is Semenya, but I think we're going to get a little bit more in depth with that later on when we talk. But, all right, are athletes, here we go, simple question, are athletes being gender tested at the Olympics right now? In the 2016 and 2018 Olympics, there was no testing. Anyone who had been assigned

female at birth was allowed to compete in 2016 and 2018. Whether there will be some sort of test for 2020 remains to be decided. Okay. Is there a blanket ruling as the IOC, the IAAF, the International Athletics Association, if I remember it, Federation, and the NCAA, all of these large governing bodies, do they have the same rules or are they all varied? They all vary. Certainly the IAAF and the IOC coordinate, but they haven't always had the same rules.

And the NCAA is a completely different organization with its different set of rules. have come to center around the idea that hormones are the most important aspect for determining who gets to compete in the male or female categories. So they're looking at hormones and what are they proposing? Or is there any kind of universal proposition being put forward to create a standard? And should there be? Well, I guess first question first. The NCAA, since 2011, has used a testosterone-based standard for transgender athletes. Intersex athletes are not a big concern in the NCAA because the prevalence in North America is less and there are other complicating factors, but mostly the NCAA

just has to concern themselves with transgender. The IAAF and the IOC both have to consider intersex and transgender and they have separate policies for each of these as i say the ioc has not had a policy on intersex athletes since the 2014 olympic games the ioc has a transgender policy that has been in place since 2011 they have have a new DSD regulations that govern intersex athletes that will start to take place in November 1st of 2018, so just a few weeks from now. So the second thing, should they all be the same? Well, not necessarily. I think we should look at elite athletes differently than we look at low-level athletes.

But I think the NCAA is high enough, a level of sport, that they should probably be fairly close. Okay. And can you do me a favor? Because as you were talking about intersex athletes, I'm sure that there's a goodly portion of the listening audience that's not familiar with that. And in doing so, maybe visit the fact that everybody thinks that this is a very new, and even though it's very nuanced, it really isn't a new thing. I mean, this has a very long history going back to the Olympics in like, what, the 30s, right? Yes, and certainly intersex people before then, you know, in the 19th century, you had bearded ladies, you had these sorts of things. So intersex people who have either physical and or chromosomal characteristics that in some manner blur the line between male and female. Until the 21st century, these people were generally called hermaphrodites.

Hermaphrodites, right. So many people might be more familiar with that. And intersex people, their conditions are called DSDs or differences of sexual development. So I use the term intersex and DSD interchangeably, but many people might be more familiar with hermaphrodite. And so when we're talking about, let's kind of transition because to transgender, and you wrote an article, let me get the title right, because I read it, and it was in the Washington Post. And it said, do transgender athletes have an edge? And then

you said in the title, I sure don't. Now, I read that article, and I have to say that the title is somewhat misleading, because people, I'm sure, will kind of maybe cruise through it or read in a cursory fashion or just read the headline and think that you feel there is no advantage whatsoever for being transgender and competing but I read the article that's not what you're saying at all you're not saying that so please for those people who might not understand what you're really saying, can you clear it up for them? Absolutely. First of all, organizations like the Washington Post have people who write titles for them. Yes. Yes. And I'm sure you know that. So I wrote the article, somebody else wrote the headline. And anybody who reads the article, this is why I'm bringing this

up. If you read the article, you realize that somebody slapped a headline on there to make you read the article. But the headline and the article are really not in sync. So can you just tell us when it comes to advantages, what you really feel? I don't want to put words in your mouth. I read the article, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. And just let people know what you're really saying. Okay. So most people are concerned about transgender women, people who start life as biologically male and then transition to female competing in women's sports. And many people say that trans women have advantages over normal women or cisgender women. And that's actually true.

Even after hormone therapy, which makes enormous differences, but even after hormone therapy, transgender women are on average taller, bigger, and stronger than cisgender women. And in many sports, those are advantageous. However, transgender women also have a large frame that they're now trying to power with reduced muscle mass and reduced aerobic capacity. So that's a disadvantage. So trans women have advantages, but disadvantages too. And then the most important question is, can transgender women and cisgender women compete against one another in an equitable and meaningful fashion. If they can, they belong in the same category. If they can't, they don't belong in the same category.

It's interesting when we look at your personal journey, because you're an endurance runner, and it's all about, I don't need the weight. I don't need this extra thing to drag this long distance. Are you saying that when you went through your process that it became particularly disadvantaged to you? And if so, can you explain the processes that you went through and the disadvantages that came with it? Muscle mass still helps transgender athletes. And as a trans woman, I carry more muscle mass than cisgender women. And so that helps. But certainly the fact that, you know, I mean, I'm not a huge person, but by female distance runner standards, I'm bigger than average.

And so, you know, that is a disadvantage. And so what I found in my particular case is that after nine months of hormone therapy, I was running 12% slower. And that's the difference between male distance runners and female distance runners. So I had lost that advantage over 12 months or over nine months, rather. And then I started finding other transgender distance runners and the same thing had happened to them. And that made the basis of my study. But in particular, if you want to look really closely at it, when I was running in men's competition, my best event was the marathon. So the longer the race, the better I did. But that's actually no longer true.

My best race distances as a woman are 5k to 10k. And that speaks of my advantage of a little more muscle mass, but my disadvantage of having a little more frame. And so I'm still pretty good at longer distances, but I'm now best at 5k to 10k. So there's been a little shift. at 5k, 10k. So there's been a little shift. It's interesting. So now you talk and discuss this. Is there a sort of specific events that would benefit some that don't, some that do the advantage, disadvantage scenario within sports and different sports? Absolutely. One would expect basketball, volleyball, weightlifting, those sorts of sports you might think would be sports where transgender women would have advantages. In gymnastics, transgender women are going to be hugely disadvantaged, so disadvantaged, in fact, that I predict that I will never live to see an elite trans woman gymnast. Never. Wow. So now when you talk about, and I would say,

maybe you can speak to this or not, and maybe you've come across this in your studies or not, but I will say that when it comes to games, then, that require both hand-eye coordination, skill sets, and strength, that you really can't say that there's an advantage to being a transgender or not because you still have to have the skill set. You still have to have the hand. These are things that are developed through causing neurons to fire together and wire together in such a way that you become super proficient at a particular action.

Am I right in thinking that there's no real advantage? You say basketball. I believe that a female, just a biological anatomical female, could compete the same way as a male could in certain positions on a basketball court. Or am I crazy for thinking this way? Well, you know, you're not likely to see a biological female in the NBA. You know, so there is certainly something to the male-female divide. But if you're looking at transgender women, on average, they're four or five inches taller, which is certainly an advantage. But I would say that transgender women, and it's really hard to quantify this,

but I am certain that transgender women are quickness disadvantaged with respect to other women. And so does this balance out? Well, you know, there are no transgender women in the WNBA, so it's hard to say for sure. But I don't think even in basketball that trans women are so advantaged as to make competition unreasonable. And that's my point is that, you know, there are so many other variables involved that you can't flatly say, oh, hey, you have this great advantage because you're transgender. I think a lot of this is political and a lot of it has to do with social bias more so than an actual empirical representation

of true advantage. But I'm going on record as saying that is an opinion. So I can't, you know, that's my opinion. Okay. And, you know, you're right. There are a lot of people who still think of transgender people being really the sex they were assigned at birth or the gender they were assigned at birth.

And so a lot of people think trans women are really men who are pretending to be women. And that's where they have a problem. And so they think of men invading women's sports. But trans women, certainly in terms of gender identity, I mean, trans women are not faking who they are. Nobody would go through all the things that transgender people have to go through just to succeed in sports. Yeah, and you know, that's a wonderful thing you just said there. Exactly. Nobody's going through all of this to truly acknowledge their real identity just so that I can win a medal or a trophy. I'm sorry, but I'm with you on that one.

I'm just listening to Joanna there. And you spoke in your article in the Washington Post about fear, the fear of other athletes. And you said, oh, we don't mind you competing as long as you don't beat us. Is that just born out of pure ignorance? Is that just born out of pure ignorance? You know, I don't want to label people, but, you know, I think if people have a chance to compete closely with and against transgender athletes, you know, this sort of fear will go away. And, you know, as a runner, I have good years and bad years and good years and good races and bad races.

And people have raced against me a lot. They understand that, that some days they'll beat me and some days they won't. And so, you know, we're athletes like anyone else. So is there anything that can be done by any of these organizations, sanctioning bodies or governing bodies that can make inclusion easier? And are they looking to make inclusion easier or is this really just a political football that must be handled? You know, the primary job of sports governing bodies is to govern sports. Okay. And, you know, inclusion is not their primary goal. Okay. try to be inclusive as long as they can maintain equitable and meaningful competition within whatever categories they have determined are appropriate for their sport. And so are there

things they can do? Yes. And, you know, the NCAA has certainly made an effort. The international governing bodies, the IAAF and the IOC, they're working on it. They've got a ways to go, but they have both an intersex athlete and a transgender athlete among 12 worldwide experts that help advise them on this. And that's pretty good representation right there. And we're working on things. That's good. That's good to know. And, you know, you have such a very, I will say, measured and level-headed approach to this whole thing. You know, I quite admire the way you approached and broached the subject matter.

Because for some reason, this incites a very passionate and emotional response from so many people. One that I don't get, maybe it's because I've never been a real athlete. You know what I mean? Aside from playing some intramural sports in school, I don't know what it's like to feel like everything's on the line or whatever. So I'm not sure, but it just really incites not only from players, but also from the public, this incredibly passionate, fiery response. And I'm just a little, I'm not as good at understanding that.

It's interesting, Joanna, when we talk about where the answers might come from and what things are beginning to take place to find the right path forward. We have currently, Keista Semenya, who I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, is considered to be hyper-androgynous. Can you explain that to me so as I don't tread all over it and make the mistake of thinking you're one way or the other? It's a handful of a word, first of all. Is it?

For me, it is. Yes, it means someone with naturally high levels of androgynous hormones, and testosterone is the most common androgen that we know of. So the thing, and if you look at the new IOC or the IAAF rules, they actually have gone away from calling them hyperandrogenism rules. They're now called DSD regulations. And I think that's a better term because there are things like polycystic ovary syndrome that can cause hyperandrogenism in females, not as high level as having testes. But so talking about the various DASDs that they do in the new IAAF regulations, I think it's a step forward. But hyperandrogenism is a natural level of high testosterone. And in the restricted athletes, that comes from having internal testes.

There are some of these DSDs or intersex conditions where a person can be born with external female genitalia, but internal testes. And some, but not all of these people, when they go through puberty, go through very much a male-type puberty where they get pretty much full male advantage. Now, not all of these intersex people do, but some do. And this is the problem for sports. This person has been born, was declared female at birth, raised female, and then goes through male puberty.

What do you do with that person? Here's what I want to know about that, though. When you talk about, I'm not going to, the DST, why is it that that's never an issue when it's male and male? some men who are just naturally superior physical specimens and no one says anything about it. I point without any compunction to LeBron James. You look at LeBron James on a court and LeBron James is physically superior to everyone on the court. You can visibly see it. You can see it. No one says, well, the only reason he's good is because he's got a natural advantage. Nobody says that because they know

what kind of work goes into getting there. So why is it that we focus only on females with this? I mean, I'm trying to figure that out, you know? And why is it okay for men to have a natural advantage, but for females not to have a natural advantage? Okay, so we divide athletes into male and female categories. And we do so because men are hugely advantaged in almost every sport. So we want women to win things like Olympic gold medals. But there is no Superman category.

If there was, LeBron James would belong in that Superman category. But we don't have one of those categories. We have a male category. We have a female category. And we have to find some way of dividing human beings into male and female athletes. human beings into male and female athletes. So that's why there's no upper category for LeBron James, Usain Bolt, et cetera, et cetera. But we do have a female category and a male category. And so we need to pick some way to differentiate. And I would suggest that using the appearance of external genitalia at birth is not the ideal way to do it, but for the purpose of sport. But that's how we

divide human beings at birth. We divide them by the appearance of external genitalia. But in terms of sport, it's not optimal. So speaking of that, because we're almost out of time, and this is fascinating, and you're so great at talking about it and educating people. So that being said, what would be a prescription? I'm not asking you to solve this problem right now, but are there any ideas?

Are there any efforts? What would be the prescription that you feel might help this problem along? What I would suggest is that we use an evidence-based method that relies on a biomarker that is an important differentiator of male versus female athleticism and is mostly dimorphic. and is mostly dimorphic. Testosterone fills all those boxes, but we'd like to come up with something better than testosterone. We are starting to do some pretty exciting studies. We are currently studying two transgender athletes, one in the Denver area, one in the Phoenix area, as they transition. And we are learning a lot and we very much hope to have these studies going around the world in the next few years. And I think we can learn a lot and I think we can come up

with better biomarkers in the future. So Joanna, as we sit here in sort of like beginning mid October, 2018, next month, the IAAF will introduce new testosterone ruling, which, correct me if I'm wrong again, will see athletes with higher levels of testosterone being put into a medication program that lowers that. And they focus, strangely enough, on the 400 meters, the 800 meters and the 1500 meters, which happens, surprisingly enough, to be Casta Semenya's particular chosen field of track events. How has the world reacted to that?

Well, many people have reacted very negatively. reacted very negatively. You know, those events were chosen not because they're castor simenius events, but because those are, A, events which a 2017 study undertaken by a couple of scientists showed advantage for higher testosterone levels. showed advantage for higher testosterone levels and b these are the events that over the last 25 years have shown that intersex women have a huge advantage. I have a paper that's just been accepted for publication and there's like 15 co-authors but one of the things we looked at was how do intersex women do in those events over the last 25 years? And we found that they had a 1700-fold over-representation in those restricted

events at global track and field championships over the last 25 years. So it's not just Castor Semenya. Thank you for pointing that out. Very good. Is the IAEA action the best way forward? Or is there a glaringly obvious other path that can be taken? I'm not certain it's the right way forward. I'm not certain it isn't. Castor Semenya, it appears, is going to challenge those rules in the court of arbitration for support. And we will see what we will see.

Absolutely, we will. Oh my God, this is fascinating stuff, but we are out of time, unfortunately. And hopefully, maybe we can just revisit this as a kind of like an epilogue. So we can, after the trial and all the hearings and all that, maybe we'll be able to get you back on and just kind of revisit this, if you don't mind. No, no, I would be happy to do so after the trial.

That's very generous of you, because this is a moving thing. This thing is going to move forward, and I think we need to keep ourselves acutely aware of it. So Dr. Joanna Harper, thank you so much for your insight and your patience with Chuck and I and explaining some very simple things to us. Thank you very much indeed. You're welcome. They're not simple at all.

You're very generous, as I said. Thank you. All right, Chuck. Every day is a school day, my friend. Yes, it is. And I'm glad today I actually paid attention in class. I think we all are. And we'll look forward to your company on the other side.

Thanks for participating in this episode we pulled from the archives back in 2018. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist and your host of StarTalk Sports Edition. As always, keep looking up.