The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Yes you can have fair Olympics with transgender athletes competing against cisgender women

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

It's been 125 years since the modern Olympics were founded in Athens, and this year will see a monumental first for the world's biggest sporting competition: the inclusion of Laurel Hubbard, a transgender female athlete, in the women's weightlifting competition. In 2015, the IOC issued guidelines that allow transgender athletes to compete as a woman if their testosterone levels are suppressed to predetermined level prior to competing. Scientific advisers to the IOC argue that hormone therapy is sufficient in creating a level playing field between transgender athletes and biological females. Trans women, they maintain, who have undergone estrogen therapy, do not possess a material athletic advantage over cisgender women. Critics of the current IOC policy argue that the suppression of testosterone does not mitigate many of the physical advantages gained by those who have gone through puberty as males - such as developing a bigger heart, more lung capacity, longer skeletal structures, etc. Separate sports categories for women and men were created to give female athletes the chance to compete against each other and win on approximately equal terms. Including transgender women in sports competitions like the Olympics is profoundly unfair to cisgender females and denigrates their hard work and sacrifice as elite athletes. Arguing for the motion is Joanna Harper, trans athlete, medical physicist, and adviser to the IOC on matters of gender and sport. Arguing against the motion is Gregory Brown, Professor of Exercise Science at University of Nebraska at Kearney. QUOTES: JOANNA HARPER “We need to be very careful when we make arguments that trans women athletes are displacing other women, because in a sociological sense they are indeed female." GREGORY BROWN “If you're going to compete, you should have a chance to win. Including a trans woman who runs 12% faster than a cisgender woman makes it very difficult for it to be a meaningful competition.” Sources: BBC, RNZ, Good Morning Britain, Fox News, France24 The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail]. To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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to arm you, the listener with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Yes, you can have a fair Olympics with transgendered athletes competing against women. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard will become the first transgender athlete at the Olympic Games. The country's Olympic Committee has named her

as part of the women's team for the Tokyo Games, The IOC now allows transgendered women to compete, provided their testosterone is at certain levels. Oh, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. It's been 125 years since the modern Olympics were first held in Athens in 1896, and this year is a monumental first for the games. Transgendered athlete Laurel Hubbard is competing in the women's weightlifting competition. The decision to conclude Hubbard has been a controversial one, reigniting the heated debate about transgendered athletes and their place in elite sporting events.

Supporters of the IOC's decision to include Laurel Hubbard argue that having undergone the required hormone therapy, she should be allowed to compete. It is important for us to note that Laurel has met the New Zealand Olympic Committee selection criteria based on performance. and importantly, Laurel has met the International Weightlifting Federation eligibility criteria for athletes who have transitioned from male to female. Suppressing testosterone, they argue, is sufficient to creating a level playing field when it comes to transgendered athletes competing against biological cisgendered females. Critics of the IOC policy argue that hormone therapy alone does not mitigate against many of the physical advantages gained by those who've gone through puberty as males.

These include everything from developing a bigger heart, more lung capacity, and larger skeletal structures. It's unfortunate that some female, somewhere wherever, is doing her weightlifting, is like, well, I'm going to miss out. I'll go into the Olympics, achieving my dream, representing my country, because a transgender athlete is able to compete. That's New Zealand weightlifter Tracy Lambrick. Many female athletes, like Ms. Lambrick, argue that separate sports categories for men and women were created to give female athletes the chance to compete against each other and win on approximately equal terms.

Including transgendered women in elite competitions like the Olympics is profoundly unfair to cisgender female athletes. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion. Be it resolved, yes, you can have a fair Olympics with transgendered athletes competing against women. Arguing for the motion is Joanna Harper, a former trans athlete, medical physicist, and advisor to the IOC on matters of gender and sport. Arguing against the motion is Gregory Brown. He's a professor of exercise science at the U.S. University of Nebraska Kearney. Greg, Joanna, welcome to the Monk Debates.

Thank you. It's good to be here. Hi, Richard. Yes, I agree. It is good to be here. Joanna, thank you for coming back on the program. We really appreciate your time today. Greg, thank you for joining us. This is a very important, timely, fascinating debate that touches on science, our fundamental conceptions of the purpose of sport, big ideas like what is fairness in society. How do we balance different societal goals like inclusion with competitive sport, something that is so important to billions of people the world over. So the opportunity to have this time to spend with you to kind of reflect on these big ideas and questions is really just

a privilege indeed. Our resolution today, be it resolved. Yes, you can have a fair Olympics with transgendered athletes competing against women. Joanna, you're arguing in favor of the So I'll put two minutes on the clock and turn the program over to you. Thank you, Roger. Yes, I do believe that the current IOC guidelines are appropriate to allow fair competition at the Olympics between trans women and ciswomen. The IOC first put in rules in 2004 and Tokyo 2020 will be the first time that we see trans women competing. there are likely to be only one or two trans women competing in the games, and that is a substantial under-representation by population.

Trans-women are not going to dominate the games, probably won't win any medals, and I do think that indeed these IOC guidelines are appropriate. What I don't think, however, is I don't think that trans women should be allowed to compete in high-level sports simply based on gender identity. The IOC guidelines require trans women to lower their testosterone, and I think that that is an appropriate requirement for trans women to compete in high-level sports. I would make a few changes to the existing IOC guidelines,

but I think that overall they do allow fair competition between trans women and Thank you, Joanna, for that opening statement. Before I move to Greg, I just want to clarify what is meant by the term cisgendered. Cisgendered is defined as someone whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth. So if you are born as a biological female and you identify as a female, you might describe yourself as a cisgendered female. Okay, now we're going to get the other side of this debate. Greg is arguing against our motion today, be it resolved. Yes, you can have a fair Olympics with transgender athletes competing against women. Greg, give us your opening statement.

Well, thank you, Richard. And I appreciate Joanna's take on this. My opinion on this is that we cannot have fair competition between trans women and cisgendered women because of a number of factors. One, we have just eons of human experience and countless thousands of research papers showing that there are important biological differences between men and women, between male and female humans. If we look at those differences, they confer upon males inherent athletic advantages that are advantages that no woman, no cisgendered woman, can hope to attain. Those advantages include all sorts of physiological factors that give men an inherent athletic advantage. And at present, we do not have any research that substantially demonstrates that transgender identification or the use of gender-affirming hormone therapy erases the differences between males and females. Therefore, as we have recognized as a society, that men and women cannot compete fair.

on the same playing field due to the advantages of men, I think that it is very incorrect and premature to state that we can have a male undergo male-to-female hormone treatment and then erase the advantages to make it fair for that trans woman to compete against cisgender women. Thank you, Greg. Chance now for rebuttals, the opportunity for both of you to react to what you've just heard from the other person. So, Joanna, you're up first. Let's hear your comments on Greg's opening statement. So I agree with Greg that there are many good reasons why we separate men and women into different categories for high-level sport.

And as Greg said, women cannot compete against men in most sports at a high level. However, trans women aren't men. Even before starting hormone therapy, trans women have substantial disadvantages with regard to men. Trans women have lower grip strengths than cisgender men even before starting hormone therapy. And then there are further changes that occur with hormone therapy. Now, Greg is correct that hormone therapy won't erase the differences. It does, however, mitigate the advantages to the point where I think we can have meaningful competition. There are some advantages that are erased.

Hemoglobin levels, which are very important for endurance sports, will go from typical male to typical female values within four months, but pure strength won't. However, there is also a study that shows the advantages in the number of push-ups per minute that can be done, which is a strength-related activity, can be erased. So overall, I would suggest that gender-affirming hormone therapy does mitigate the advantage. that trans women have over cisgender women to the point where we can have meaningful competition. Thanks, Joanna. Greg, similar opportunity for you, a chance now to react to Joanna's opening statement or what you've just heard. Well, thank you. This is a very challenging topic because our knowledge of what trans women, their physiologic makeup, our knowledge of that is very limited. But at the present time, the challenge is that we have a lack of so much data or information on trans women, that it's hard to say that they have an inherent disadvantage,

or is that simply because of their transgender identification, they do not engage in normal levels of physical activity that cisgender men do, that therefore their strength might be reduced, but not due to physiologic factors so much as well. behavioral factors. If we look at things like hemoglobin levels, which I appreciate Joanna pointing that up, hemoglobin is an important determinant of aerobic performance, but yet we don't even have any measurements of VO2 max in transgender individuals before and or after treatment for gender affirming hormone therapy or with training. And so it's really premature to say that the

advantage of maleness, inherent biological maleness, is erased or reduced in transgender individuals. And I'd also, just know, not sure what is meant by meaningful competition. Generally, if you're going to compete, you should have a chance to win. And if we're looking at a trans woman who runs 12% faster than a cisgender woman or has tremendous advantages and strength, that makes it very difficult for it to be a meaningful competition. Thank you, Greg. My chance now to join this debate and think of some questions that are top of mind to our audience, listening to these excellent opening statements and rebuttals. And Joanna, let me come to you first. You know, at a high-level elite sport like we're seeing at the

Olympics, the differences between ending up on the podium or having a silver medal versus a gold metal, I mean, these are measured in fractions of a second, in centimeters, millimeters of distance. They're very fine gradations. So how do you reconcile the idea that, as you're seemingly acknowledging, that the legacy advantages of being born as a biological male don't go away, that these transgendered athletes carry these advantages, despite the hormone therapy, into their elite athleticism. And as a result, you know, the question of fairness

really is front and center here. If the differences between winning and losing, becoming first and second, being on the podium or not, are just so, so tiny. They're so small. Well, they're not necessarily small in every sport, but generally speaking,

they are fairly small differences. and certainly substantially smaller than the differences between male athletes and female athletes. However, the limited experience that we have shows that when trans women do go on hormone therapy, that their performance is reduced to a level where they won't dominate, even in perhaps the most obvious case of Laurel Hubbard, who will be competing. in Olympic weightlifting, which is a strength sport. Olympic weightlifting is the total of two lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk.

Laurel's best is 285 kilograms total. The Olympic gold medal favorite Li Wen from China has a best of 335 kilograms. Now, that's not a small difference. In fact, that's an enormous difference between those two athletes. And Laurel has basically no chance to beat win-win. So the idea that these are always incredibly close competitions isn't necessarily true.

And even in this case of Laurel Hubbard, where she undoubtedly has maintained advantages, her advantage is not overwhelming. She's not going to win. She's unlikely to even medal. Okay, Greg. So glad we brought up Laurel Hubbard because this is the big story of one of the big stories of this Olympics, a transgendered athlete here, the New Zealand team, making it into the Olympic weightlifting competitions. So why isn't Joanna right, Greg, that, look, Laurel's not going to come first. She may not even meddle here. You know, where's the, where's the anxiety, where's the concern about fairness? Well, I think that's a very fair question. I think it's important to consider that when competing as a male athlete before transition, Laurel Hubbard was definitely

strong, but not Olympic level as a male athlete. And then after transition, Laurel Hubbard is Olympic level ranked number six in the world as a female athlete. And so that just seems very unfair inherently when someone can go from being not world class to world class, that seems unfair. If we look at will Laurel win or not, it's always hard to unfog the future there, but there are always instances in the Olympics of athletes who come out of the blue, you know, the dark horse candidates that come forth and suddenly win a gold medal because it's possible that someone else could get injured or, you know, that thrill of competition and being on the world stage can drive athletes to do better than they previously have before.

I also think that we need to consider. It's not always just about, okay, so maybe Laurel doesn't gold medal, but by Laurel being there, it inherently means there is one less cisgendered woman who has the opportunity to compete. And whether that person who didn't get the opportunity, whether they would have meddled or not, they would still have that Olympic experience. Another case I'd like to point out here is if we look at C.C. Telfer, who ran for two years in college as a male and then took a year to transition, meet the NC2A guidelines, and then

ran as a female. As a male, C.C. was ranked about 390th. As a female, C.C. wins the NCAA Division II 400 meter hurdles. And if you look at the times of C.C. Telfer before transition and after transition, they're not different. In fact, Cici got a teeny tiny bit, like 0.3 percent faster overall than when running as a male. And so that indicates that these cross-sex hormone treatment did not erase the advantages at all. And Cici went to win and displace a number of female athletes from opportunities to be all Americans or medalists. So, Joanna, to come back to you on Greg's first point, because this is, I think, an interesting one. You know, the debate around fairness is not who ends up on the podium whether Laurel Hubbard is there or not, whether she medals or not.

It's that Laurel Hubbard has displaced a whole series possibly of cisgendered women who trained, who were dedicated to their sport, who poured themselves into these competitions. to try to do precisely what Laurel Hubbard is doing, which has become an Olympian, arrive in Tokyo and compete at these games. They're not because she's there because of her legacy advantages, having been born biologically male. I'd like to hear you on that point first, and then we can explore Greg's other arguments. So Laurel Hubbard has trained as hard as the other athletes and to suggest that she gets there just because of legacy advantages, I think, would be false. I would also suggest that this sort of argument revolves around the fact that trans women aren't really women after all, but are really men pretending to be women. We certainly

wouldn't say, oh, look at all those lesbians on the U.S. women's soccer team. They are displacing straight women who trained hard, who really tried to make it to the US women's soccer team, but couldn't because there were all these lesbian women. So I think that we need to be very careful when we make these arguments that she's displacing women because Laurel is, in a sociological sense, a female. What people probably don't realize is that I actually stopped lifting in 2001 when I was 23 because it just became too much to bear. But the world has changed, of course.

And I feel like I'm now in a place where I can train and compete and cope with all of that. And so not everyone qualifies for the Olympics. I would also suggest that there's a trans woman on the American team as an alternate. Her name is Chelsea Wolf. And she was displaced from the Olympics by several cisgender women, and Chelsea trained very hard and didn't quite make it, but was displaced

by all those cis women. Well, isn't that unfair to Chelsea? Okay, Greg, come back on those points. In a sense, Joanna's saying, look, let's use the analogy of lesbian versus straight women. Are we discriminating against Laurel Hubbard on the basis of gender? And we're using that and effectively as a way to really try to get at our anxieties about her biological sex. We're using this as a wedge. Well, thanks, Roger. I think that's a very important concept is that we understand that sex is a biological variable. human beings are sexually dimorphic. We have sexually male and female. And so currently there is no known biological underpinning for gender identity. And that was reaffirmed in 2021 Endocrine Society Consensus Statement on sex as a biological variable. So we have divided sports into male and female based on biological sex, based on these biological.

biological advantages that men have in regards to greater muscle strength, in regards to greater cardio-respiritory capacity. And those are well documented. So I think that if we wander into identity, which currently we don't have any known biological underpinning explanation for, it then gets very, very difficult to how would we then clearly say that this person really is transgender versus someone who is not, we would hope that no one would identify as transgender simply to get a medal. I don't think people would, but it's hard to say. People have done all sorts of crazy things that have been unethical in order to win in athletics. So adopting a gender identity to do so isn't outside the realm of plausibility. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and

moderator, I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world. And you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members-only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www. www.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. So Joanna, this debate's interesting because I think we're engaging with the key issues here.

So Greg's in effect saying, look, the lesbian versus straight analogy, just it's not a valid argument because the lesbians don't have these legacy advantage. having been born biological males, whereas the transgendered athletes who are participating against lesbian or non-lesbian cisgendered females, they do. And this is different. This can be measured scientifically. It exists. It's real. And it is tipping the balance in terms of what we hope is a more rather than less level playing field in elite athletics today. So there are any number of ways that somebody can be advantaged in sports. And one of the things that holds many women back in sports is this idea that competing in high-level

sports makes one too masculine. And I think it could be argued that lesbian women are less inclined to be affected by that. And so could have not a biological, but a sociological advantage over other women in sports. And sociological advantages are no less real than biological advantages. So we could make arguments that lesbian women do have advantages in sports. I would also like to say that there is a well-known biological underpinning for gender identity. It's not proven. It's a theory, but it's a theory that most experts in transgender medicine believe is true

and that gender identity is mostly or perhaps entirely biological. So gender identity does indeed have biological underpinnings. So, Greg, as we move this debate forward, let's talk about the rules that are in place right now, because I think it's important for listeners to understand how the IOC has attempted to kind of square the circle here to allow transgendered women to participate on a basis the IOC says is fair.

So can you give us a recap of what those rules are and why you believe that they haven't addressed fundamentally the question of fairness in terms of competition between cisgendered and transgendered people? Well, thank you. I think that is a very important question for people to understand. The IOC rules state that a trans woman

needs to suppress testosterone concentrations to below 10 nanomoles per liter that's a measure of concentration for a full year in order to then compete in female sports. A couple of problems with that is a typical woman's testosterone concentrations are about one nanomole per liter. So the IOC guidelines are saying a male to female individual can still have 10 times more testosterone than a typical female. And even if we look at women who might have polycystic ovary syndrome or something like that that causes them to have slightly elevated testosterone concentrations, they're still going to be about two and a half nanomoles per liter. And so that's allowing

trans women by the IOC guidelines to have four times as much. We also see the court for arbitration in sport with the case of Caster Somania stating that Caster needs to suppress testosterone concentrations and other individuals like Caster suppress them down to five nanomoles per liter. The South African athlete, Casta Semenia, has lost a landmark case against new rules restricting the amount of testosterone in female runners. Semenia, a double Olympic gold medalist, has a condition that means she has unusually high levels of the hormone. So this is an individual.

Caster and these other individuals are people who have a disorder of sexual development in which they were identified as female at birth, even though they had. have male chromosomes. And so they were raised as a woman. They were treated as a woman throughout their life. But to compete in sport, they must suppress their testosterone less than a male to female athlete. Another important thing to keep in mind here is the endocrine society recommends that for male to female individuals, testosterone should be suppressed to one nanom per liter, which would be equivalent to the typical female. So the IOC guidelines on testosterone reduction, are really not based on the guidelines by the Endocrine Society,

aren't based on testosterone concentrations of women, and as stated by Gurin in at least two of his papers, they're pretty much arbitrary. Joanna would love your views on this because, I mean, we know that testosterone is a banned substance, so how is it fair that some athletes are being allowed to compete with greater amounts of testosterone than other athletes, when arguably that should be a reason for them to have WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency,

knocking on their door and invalidating them from participating in any high-level sport. So this is actually an area where I agree with Greg. I do think that the IOC guideline, 10 nanomoles per liter, is too high. I support the World Athletics Rules of 5 nanomoles per liter instead. But it doesn't really make much difference. As Greg said, the Indicron Society guidelines are to bring trans women down to one nanomole per liter. And that's exactly what happens with trans women. We bring our testosterone down to approximately one nanomore per liter.

And that is true of trans women regardless of whether they are athletes or not. I have had the opportunity to work with over a dozen fairly high-level trans women athletes. and they all have testosterone of approximately one nanomole per liter, not because they are required to by the governing bodies of sport, but because that's where we're happier and healthier. I would also suggest that this idea that trans women in general are just going to lower their testosterone to just below 10 for sports, it doesn't happen.

Now, I will admit that there are potential, cheaters in every group, and that includes trans women. So I support this level of five nanomoles per liter just to weed out those potential cheaters among trans women. And to suggest that the IOC guidelines, which are 10, are binding is not true. It's actually the levels of individual sports, which in many sports are currently set at five for trans athletes, world athletics, the world cycling body, world rolling, et cetera, et cetera, have adopted the five nanomoles per liter. So it doesn't actually matter that the IOC has 10 when all of these other international sporting federations that actually set the rules use five.

Great. Do you have any idea of like how much an advantage is one versus five versus 10? Like I guess as a layperson, I'm trying to understand, is this counting, you know, the number of angels on the head of a pin, or is this actually substantive in terms of the possible effects on performance? Well, that's a great question. And at this point, I don't think that we can give a clear answer to that based on the research that's been done. For instance, we have Shalindar Racine in his group looking at giving testosterone to healthy men, and there's a definite dose response relationship where in order for men to see an anabolic effect of testosterone, they have to see basically double their normal testosterone concentrations. It's much less known what happens

in a woman. If a woman's testosterone concentrations are increased by one nanimal or two nanimal, similarly, it's not really known what happens in men if we take a man and reduces testosterone to 10 nanomals or five nanomals or one nanimal. There's not been that type of dose response relationship established, we do know that in a female, a small increase in testosterone has a much larger impact than it would in a male simply because of the different physiology for males and females in which the male body, which produces testosterone, which normally has 20 nanomals per liter of testosterone, a one animal per liter increase in a man is probably within the normal day-to-day variation, whereas a woman that would, in essence, double the testosterone concentrations

would probably have a much more meaningful physiological effect. And so I think, you know, there are so many questions right now that we don't know that to try and include trans women in women's sport without having these answers in much of any form is really, really premature. So, Joanna, that's exactly where I wanted to go with you next. I mean, you've studied this deeply, and I appreciate the intellectual honesty that both of you are bringing to this conversation. I mean, the science seems very unsettled. So should we be pausing here and saying, look, this is something absolutely to consider, but we need good science. We have to do the science on elite trans athletes. We have to understand their performance metrics, how those metrics are affected by different therapies.

and we're just, we're a long way from that level of insight and understanding to then go ahead and make these types of very precise regulations that we're seeing at the Olympics today that are governing competition between cisgendered and transgendered athletes. So I agree with everything that Greg said about the dose response and about how little we know. And I agree with you, Roger, too, that the science is in. its infancy, and we don't really know very much yet about the science of trans athlete performance. I'm hoping to be at the first wave of changing that, but it'll be 10, 20 years before we have a body of evidence. However, there are those who would argue that given this lack of body of evidence, we shouldn't put any restrictions on trans women at all. Trans women have, and trans people in general, so many disadvantages in society that trans people are never going to be equals in almost anything

because of all these sociological disadvantages. And I'm not saying I make this argument. I'm saying others do. So that there are both sides of this argument that, oh, there's not much data. So we should either, A, let trans women compete without restriction, or B, not let them compete at all, I would suggest that sporting governing bodies need to do the best they can with the evidence that exists, and hopefully when we get more data, we'll have better policy. Greg, do you think that's a viable approach, you know, that this is a fast-changing issue in society, that big international events like the Olympics need to be reflective of where society is at now? And if our society now includes, and we all agree, this is a great thing.

You know, openly transgendered people who are asserting themselves, you know, not just through athletics, but politics and culture and wherever, well, the Olympics needs to be representative. So let's get on with this and, you know, we'll figure it out as we go. Yeah, I have a real concern with the, you know, kind of figure it out as we go when we are looking at world-class competition, which can mean the difference between huge amounts of money and fame and fortune and not. You know, someone gets on the Wheaties box because of an Olympic gold medal. That can be a significant financial benefit for that person.

And to try and rush transgender athletes into women's sports until we know for sure whether there is or is not an advantage, I think that's just. not the right thing to do, there are all sorts of athletes that have medical conditions that are not able to participate in sports. If somebody has a congenital heart condition, they're probably not going to be allowed to participate in sports because of the risk to that individual. If you have someone with severe asthma, they need to control their asthma to participate in sports. If you have someone with uncontrolled diabetes, it's not going to be safe for them to compete in sports. So I think that the transgender individuals,

need to be patient. I know that is hard to ask someone to be patient, but I think that they could kind of take a moral high road here and say while we want to compete, we're not going to until we can calm all fears of a legacy advantage. Joanna, replied to that, but also let's talk a little bit as we move towards closing statements about possible solutions here. I mean, is there a way to divide up the Olympics and say, look, there could be certain sports like sports that emphasize skill more than, let's say, strength or endurance, where these legacy advantages that we all agree is the kind of the black box that we're going to try to figure out to ensure that there is fairness between cisgendered and transgendered athletes, that maybe we could focus

transgender participation in those sports and leave out for now. the sports that are more likely to create complexity and uncertainty around what, in fact, the legacy advantages are of being born biologically male versus female? Well, I certainly agree with the idea of sport-by-sport regulations for transgender athletes. The IOC has announced that there will be new regulations after this upcoming Olympics. and in a recent statement, IOC President Thomas Bach suggested that sport-by-sport regulations was a way to go. Personally, I've been saying this since 2018. So I believe that that is the future, is sport-by-sport regulations.

What those will look like is it's hard to say right now. But I absolutely agree that in some sports, we should be more restrictive of trans women than simply saying hormone therapy is enough. exactly what those restrictions should look like. I don't want to go into possibilities, but that's far different saying restrictions than banning trans women. The idea that this is something new isn't true, Renee Richards competed 45 years ago.

Good evening. Dr. Renee Richards, the 42-year-old transsexual tennis player, moves into the second round of the Tennis Week tournament at South Orange, New Jersey tomorrow. But she's no nearer gaining admission to the U.S. Tennis Open at Forest Hills, which begins next week. Forest Hills officials have demanded that she take a chromosome test, like those required of women athletes in the Olympics, to prove their femininity. People were saying, oh, trans women will soon be taking over women's sports.

45 years later, it still hasn't happened, and it's not going to happen in the next 45 years either. But yes, look, I absolutely agree with sports. by sport regulations for trans people. Greg, your views on, you know, is that as, you know, a way forward in the short term maybe as we try to, again, go deeper on the science, but also it's really confusing to the layperson. If you look at the case of Castor Semenes, you know, they're saying that she has to reduce her testosterone levels if she competes at certain distances, but not at others. Like, is it just me that's confused about this? It seems like a kind of smorgasbord of

regulation and response that really isn't getting at the underlying questions around fairness, around equity. No, and that's a great question. So why Castor Somania and the other 46xY disorder or difference of sexual development individuals, why they cannot compete in some sports unless they reduce their testosterone, but they can in others, really doesn't make much sense as an exercise physiologist. I don't understand how they made a distinction there. I think some challenges with discerning sport by sport if we look at the case of world rugby.

World rugby evaluated the risks in rugby of allowing trans women to compete in women's rugby. And world rugby was slammed in social media and all sorts of other organizations. And people have accused world rugby of all sorts of terrible things. And world rugby did a great job of trying to have an inclusive and multifaceted panel to evaluate. this challenge. And then World Rugby has put their position out, and then other subsidiaries of World Rugby have stated they are not going to follow those guidelines. And so this is where it gets to be a challenge. And so then if you're at the Olympic level, how do you discern if a team has followed these guidelines or other guidelines? That gets to just be a mess. It gets to be so confusing.

I think the other thing is really trying to tease out if a sport has a legacy advantage for males or not can be really, really hard. There was a recent paper where the authors were arguing that trans women should be allowed to compete in archery, and I wanted to ask those authors, have they ever shot a bow and arrow? It takes a certain amount of muscle strength and muscle endurance to draw that string back 72 times in a single competition, to draw that string back and hold until you're stable enough to release the shot. And so a person with a strength advantage would definitely have an advantage in archery.

And in bowling, in all sorts of sports, it's really hard to tease out and say, oh, a male would have a legacy advantage here, but not here. So that's a whole can of worms that it might make sense to talk about, but the practical implications are just almost insurmountable. And Joanna, before we go to closing statements, I think what's really neat about what you do is you yourself transitioned from being self-identified. as male to a transgendered individual now. And you did that while having had a career as pretty kind of elite runner as an athlete. So what was your own personal experience going through that transition in terms of your own performance,

in terms of how you felt about yourself as an athlete competing originally as a male and then later as a transgendered female? It would probably be more correct characterize me as a sub-elite athlete as opposed to an elite athlete. When I was young and running in the men's category, I ran a 223 marathon. That's very good, but it's- That's pretty good, Joanna. But it's not going to get me to the Olympics. And so within nine months of starting hormone therapy, I was 12% slower. And that's the difference between serious male distance runners and serious

female distance runners. So on a personal level, I had lost my male advantage with nine months of hormone therapy. And the race times told me so. At the time, I was working in health care in the US. I have a physics background. And that's what compelled me to start on this journey to try to understand what happens to trans women and men when we undergo hormone therapy as athletes. And it's a journey that's brought me to England to Leffborough University, and it's a journey that I hope will continue for a while. But look, we don't really have answers yet, and then I agree with Greg on that.

We're working on it, and we're doing the best we can. Thank you for sharing that with us, Joanna. So let's go to closing statements. Our debate today has been, be it resolved. Yes, you can have a fair Olympics with transgendered athletes competing against women, Greg, you've been arguing against our motion. Let's hear your sum up here, your key points that you want to leave our listener to think about as we all enjoy these Olympic games. Well, thank you, Roger. I think it's been very good. Joanna and I both agree that there are inherent advantages that males have over females when we're talking about, you know, sex determination between males and females. males have inherent athletic advantages, and those advantages are not erased by transgender identity or gender-affirming hormone therapy.

And so it's hard to then go in and say that there can be fair competition between trans women and cisgender women, when at this point in time, we cannot say that the legacy male advantages are eliminated in any individual sport or in terms of physiology of sport overall. Therefore, I think that we cannot have meaningful competition between trans women and cisgendered women due to those legacy male advantages. Thank you. Sucinct to the point, really appreciated your contributions to this debate, Greg. Joanna, we're going to give you the last word today in our debate. You've been arguing in favor of the motion, be it resolved, yes, we can have a fair Olympics with transgendered athletes competing against women. Take this debate home for us, Joanna. So we've spoken a lot about the advantages that trans women may have and they exist. But trans women also have disadvantages. Their larger frames are now being powered by reduced muscle mass and reduced aerobic capacity. And that can lead to physical disadvantages and things like recovery or quickness or other aspects of athleticism. And so the idea that trans women only have advantages is flawed. Secondly, I would say,

suggest that if we look at population studies, it's a good way to see whether we have meaningful competition. NCAA sports in the United States is the best population to look at. Every year, over 200,000 women compete. The NCAA has allowed trans women to compete after hormone therapy for 10 years. If trans women were going to take over,

we'd have seen it by now. Given that 200,000 women compete, we should be seeing over 1,000 trans women. every year. There are far fewer than that. Greg mentioned one NCAA champion in 10 years, who's a trans woman. We should be seeing trans women win NCAA championships every year. So if we look at population studies, we can see that there is indeed meaningful competition between trans women and ciswomen after trans women have been undergone gender-affirming hormone therapy. Thank you, Joanna. And thank you, Greg.

this has been exactly what I hoped we would have in the terms of a debate, civil, substantive, filled with science, the two of you engaging each other's arguments with mutual respect and a desire to kind of understand and move the conversation forward. So on behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you so much for coming on the program today. Well, Rudyard, thank you for the invitation. It's been great being with you. And Joanna, thank you for a wonderful civil debate. I appreciate it. And Rudyard, thank you for having me. And great. Thank you again for a civil debate. There's far too little civility in this issue,

and I'm glad that Greg and I could show people that it is possible to disagree and still be civil. While that wraps up today's debate, I want to thank our participants, Greg and Joanna. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK, DebateswithanS.com.

Here's a note from Ira about our recent monk debate on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Dear Rudyard, I very much enjoyed the Afghanistan debate. However, I was surprised by the lack of mention of the fact that the United States is not alone in wanting to contain and ultimately defeat radical Islamic terrorism. When the U.S. and foreign troops leave Afghanistan, its neighbors will have to begin actively engaging in counterterrorism. Our competitors have benefited for years from our being tied down in Afghanistan, but truly it is more their problem than ours, and let's let them deal with that briar patch for a change. Hey, thanks, Ira.

Appreciate the feedback. Keep it coming, Monk podcast listeners. A reminder also that our Monk members podcast, which comes out every Friday is yours to listen to free anytime as a perk of our basic membership, which is also free. at www. monkdebates.com forward slash membership. Thank you for being part of our community and helping us advance our mission

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