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July 30, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A new study recently published in the Journal of Medical Ethics reinforced what many claim to be obvious yet LGBT activists intensely deny: that men who “identify” as women enjoy significant physical advantages over actual biological women.
The paper, by New Zealand bioethicists Taryn Knox and Lynley C. Anderson and psychologist Alison Heather, recognizes that “transwomen” retain some performance advantage from male biological characteristics such as high testosterone, and sets out to “determine whether the advantage is unfair.”
“We conclude that the advantage to transwomen afforded by the IOC guidelines is an intolerable unfairness,” the paper’s abstract says.
Previous research found that “healthy young men did not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” the paper says, according to the Daily Caller. Moreover, “indirect effects of testosterone will not be altered by hormone therapy.”
“For example, hormone therapy will not alter bone structure, lung volume or heart size of the transwoman athlete, especially if she transitions postpuberty, so natural advantages, including joint articulation, stroke volume and maximal oxygen uptake, will be maintained,” they explained.
“Moreover, retention of muscle mass could be compensated for by training or other ergogenic methods,” the researchers noted. “In addition, the phenomenon of muscle memory means muscle mass and strength can be rebuilt with previous strength exercise making it easier to regain muscle mass later in life even after long intervening periods of inactivity and mass loss.”
The conclusions are consistent with those of organizations like USA Powerlifting, which contends that “men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women. These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone, do not go away. While MTF (male-to-female) may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over than (sic) of a female.”
While the authors’ scientific conclusions fly in the face of LGBT orthodoxy, their social recommendations will likely be more palatable to trans activists. They suggest that “the existing male/female categories in sport should be abandoned in favour of a more nuanced approach satisfying both inclusion and fairness.”
Such an approach is unlikely to resolve the ongoing controversy over gender-confused athletes competing in sports that are typically separated by sex to account for the biological differences between the sexes, or to satisfy prominent female athletes who have spoken out against relaxing the traditional standards.
“A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires,” tennis legend Martina Navratilova argued in February. “It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.”
In March, Olympic swimming silver medalist Sharron Davies warned that letting “trans men” into women’s categories “has the potential to ruin women’s sport. … It’s not anything to do with saying sport isn’t for everybody, it’s asking how we classify it.”