Women, Men and Sport (Part 2)

whether considering averages or extremes, men have physical advantages in sport

This type of picture still strikes fear into my heart

When I was in high school, I used to pay a lot of pickup basketball with a group of friends at our church gym. It kept me from being even more of a layabout than I might have been otherwise. We were a motley crew. A couple of the guys played seriously, but we were mainly just hacks who loved getting together.

When I was in grade 11 or 12, one of the local high school girl’s teams won the provincial championship. One of our players had one of those magnetic personalities that resulted in him knowing everyone in town, and landing him in the middle of everything a la Forrest Gump (albeit a brilliant version). Through a connection he arranged for that girls team to come play us.

We were terrified. Or at least I was (I didn’t want to admit it to my buddies). The girls were organized, knew drills and set plays, and to boot they were beautiful athletic women. Hell, they were provincial champs! It was going to be totally embarrassing when they (inevitably) handed our butts to us.

That’s pretty much what I looked like in my b-ball days…

The day arrived. We went out onto the court expecting to get pasted. But the oddest thing happened. We won the opening tip, then scored. Then we stole the ball. Then stole it again. And blocked every shot. Pretty soon it was 20-to-nothing, and as with every lopsided game nobody was having any fun. We mixed the teams up and had a fun day of it after all.

This was a lesson for me in just how much of a gap there is between post-pubertal males and females in terms of sport performance.

Extreme examples don’t negate averages

Just so nobody misunderstands what I’m saying, the statement “men are a lot better than women at sports” means “on average”. It doesn’t mean “every man is better than every woman”. I have a female friend who is 6’5”. But it doesn’t mean that the statement “men are taller than women” isn’t true, because the “on average” is implied.

Haley Wickenheiser would turn me inside out on a hockey rink. Rhonda Rousey would pummel me to a bloody pulp in the octagon. (truthfully, I’d turtle and cry early to get it over with). A high-end female sprinter would leave me in her dust. But a similarly-gifted, similarly-trained male always has the advantage over a female in sport. The male-female gap is variable and depends on the exact sport (larger in power and sprint sports, smaller in endurance sports).

My only hope with Rhonda Rousey is that I could outrun her…

There has been a push in the mainstream media, and by certain “researchers” to convince the world that MTF trans do NOT have an advantage over natal females once they have transitioned. This is clearly not true, which I’ll explain in some detail. This trope has been repeated so often that many people believe it. But reality is reality, and doesn’t change to conform to ideological beliefs and utopian dreams.

Testosterone, and my final time listening to CBC

I used to be an avid listener to Quirks and Quarks on CBC radio. Even long after I found the rest of CBC completely biased and unlistenable, I felt that at least the science show was still good. Then they started to be taken over by ideology as well.

It’s an aside, but the first time I really noticed that even their science show was overtaken by ideologues was when there was a piece on the dangers of concussions. Who did they interview? A lawyer for the NFL player’s association. A lawyer, even an unbiased one, is not a scientist. I’ve done a deep dive into concussion research over many years, and knew most of what he was saying was exaggerated, unproven, or just wrong.

The last time I listened to the show was when they interviewed a “gender expert”. This person was a social “scientist” from a prominent Canadian university. She confidently stated that testosterone levels in men and women overlap greatly. I turned the radio off, and never tuned into the show again.

A bimodal distribution

Male and female testosterone levels CAN actually overlap if you compare, say, a 60-year-old man (whose testosterone levels have fallen greatly with age) with a 12 year old girl at her pubertal maximum, who does produce (along with large amounts of female sex hormones) a bloom of testosterone. But comparing apples to apples, the “testosterone levels overlap” story is simply not true.

A typical woman will make less than 75 nanograms of testossterone per deciliter of blood. For men, the range is from 240 to 1200. So the low end of the male range is 200 percent higher than the high end of the female range. Except in people with disorders of testosterone production or metabolism, males and females of the same age almost never overlap in their testosterone levels. Rather the distribution is called “bimodal,” as this study concludes.

Testosterone levels don’t predict athletic performance just like height doesn’t predict basketball performance

The person in the middle of above picture is Rachel MacKinnon, who identifies as female and often wins the female category at high-level amateur cycling meets. Rachel also identifies as a scientist, and uses the credibility provided by a position as a professor of philosophy and (ironically) ethics to expound on issues like the relationship of testosterone levels to athletic performance. Not surprisingly, Rachel’s interpretation of the science conveniently justifies that it is fair for people like Rachel to compete (and win) against natal females.

One of Rachel’s claims is that lack of correlation between testosterone levels and athletic performance within groups of males, and poor correlation within groups of females, is proof that testosterone doesn’t matter to athletic performance. This is suspect at best, and more accurately specious. Lack of this correlation WITHIN sexes does not mean that the difference in testosterone levels BETWEEN sexes means nothing.

The best basketball players aren’t the tallest, so height has nothing to do with basketball

Saying that testosterone doesn’t matter in determining athletic differences between men and women is analogous to saying that height doesn’t affect basketball performance. Allow me to explain.

If you’ve ever walked by a pro basketball team, you’ll notice they are all tall. (I once drove a local semi-pro player who was 7’1” home in my base-model 3-door Hyundai Accent. His knees were by his ears. I looked at him and said “you can move that seat back more I think”. He said “Nope, it’s all the way back”.).

But within any league or team, the best performers can’t be predicted by their height. Michael Jordan was “only” 6’6” and was debatably the best basketball player ever in history. Manute Bol was more than a foot taller, but will be remembered more as being a good dude, and not for his basketball.

That’s Charles Barkley that Mr. Bol is towering over. We used to jokingly call one of my short basketball buddies “Minute Bol”.

The wrong conclusion to take from this would be “height has no impact on whether someone can play in the NBA”. Of course it does. It’s just that there are other factors as well

Male testosterone levels are a prerequisite to get you “into the club” of male elite sports in the same way that being in the top 1 or 2 percentiles of height is a prerequisite to be in the NBA. After that, other factors determine exact performance. You can’t predict that the winner of a boxing match will be the guy with the higher testosterone level, but you can predict he won’t have a female-typical testosterone level.

Sexual Dimorphism

Male-female physical differences start in the womb. Although boys and girls are much more similar in sport in early years, the gap between the sexes widens rapidly during puberty, when boys get the natural blood-doping that comes with testosterone surges (and other hormonal and genetic physical advantages) provided by their male sex. Many body changes that occur during male puberty are advantageous in sport.

From the above-linked study

To use a technical term, humans are “sexually dimorphic”. i.e.: females and males have different characteristics. This is true of many animal and plant species, and is true of all primates, including us, even though in 2023 saying this is controversial.

I HIGHLY recommend reading the book “The Sports Gene” by David Epstein if you are at all interested in these issues. Much of what I talk about here is taken from his book, which is an incredibly good explanation of the genetics of sport. (If I say a fact and don’t have a directly link or reference, it’s from this book.) He is fearless in talking about hot topics including sexual dimorphism.

Post-pubertal males have numerous advantages in sport

There are numerous physiologic differences between the sexes which can be advantageous to males depending on the sport. As per above, all of these are “on average”. Men have more acute eyesight, and more of a prewired genetic ability to track objects in flight. Men have a higher red blood cell mass (which determines ability to transfer oxygen from lungs to muscles, thus “aerobic capacity”). Men have a higher muscle-to-fat ratio. The angle and shape of their hip bones and femurs is advantageous to both speed and efficiency in running at all distances - from sprinting to distance running.

One of the most “dimorphic” physiologic features (the one with the least overlap between women and men) is in throwing. Even in the womb, male babies develop a different forearm-to-height ratio, with longer forearms that provide an incredible advantage when throwing, as well as a different “carriage angle” of the elbows. “You throw like a girl” is a trope for a reason. Take a thousand men off the street, and 998 of them can throw a ball harder than the average woman. (This dimorphism reduces slightly, but continues to hold very true even in societies such as Australian Aboriginees where both sexes are taught and practice throwing regularly during development).

More importantly to the upper echelons of sport, even small differences in mean or average ability statistically translates into big differences in extremes. (a fact of “normal distributions”, such as are pictured in the above graph depicting a bimodal distribution). For instance, there are estimated to be somewhere around 2800-3000 people in the world who are 7 feet tall or more. The number of these who are women is probably less than 10. With throwing ability, the fastest pitches ever measured by a female are just over 60 mph, whereas numerous professional men throw more than 100 mph. Some standout high-school boys pitch more than 60 mph.

He floated like a butterfly too.

Upper body strength and punching power are also extremely sexually dimorphic, with little overlap. There is essentially no overlap in punching power, with similarly-fit men punching more than 2.5 times as hard as a woman. Even the weakest men can generally punch much harder than the strongest women. Upper body strength in women in absolute terms (not factoring in that males are larger and heavier) is less than half that of men. Even a well-trained woman can often not match a much less-trained man of the same weight for upper-body strength.

Height is an advantage in many sports

Let’s focus in on just one factor - height, which is a major advantage in many sports. From rowing, to basketball, volleyball, football, and more - it’s much better to be in the 97th percentile of height than the 3rd percentile. On average males are taller than females after puberty. You can check to see what percentile you fall into for height here. For instance, if you are 5-foot-9 and a half, you are in the 50th percentile - an average male. But if you are female and the same height you are in the 98th percentile and getting recruited for your high school basketball team.

This is Lia Thomas, who competes in the female category

Let’s go back to the swimmer Lia Thomas who we discussed in the first article. Height is a BIG advantage for swimmers: there is a saying that “Longer boats go faster”. It’s actually a rule of hydrodynamics. The average height of a male olympic swimmer is 6’2” (96th percentile). The average height of a female olympic swimmer is 5’9” (97th percentile). Lia is 6’1”. When competing as a male, Lia was slightly shorter than an average competitor and thus at a slight disadvantage. When competing as a female, Lia is taller than the average swimmer, and far, far taller than an average woman and thus at a significant advantage. Someone who is 6’1” is well into the 99th percentile for height when compared to women. Male puberty gives this advantage PERMANENTLY, and no amount of hormone therapy takes that away. This is not to mention higher lean muscle mass, larger shoulders, longer arms, and larger hands and feet (bigger paddles!) that come from male puberty and development, which are all advantages in swimming. (Michael Phelps is 6’4”, with a wingspan of 6’7”, and size 14 feet. I know of no woman with those proportions).

Lia was a very good swimmer as a male, in the low-to-middle percentiles in the NCAA in certain events (which is an incredible achievement). In the same way that Lia’s height increased to the 99th percentile, switching to the female category increased Lia’s performance into the highest percentiles as well.

Does she look a bit tall? That’s because she is Anna Swan, who at 7’11” was one of the tallest women ever. It’s likely she was somewhat shorter, but was billed at that height for publicity purposes

The proof is in the pudding

MTF trans have, albeit unintentionally, been the beneficiaries of years of blood doping with testosterone and other naturally-produced male hormones. We know the results of hormone doping in women’s sport, which is why it is illegal, and policed by groups like the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

There was a good reason that Soviet-Bloc countries dominated women’s sports through the late 70’s and 80’s. This was a time when testosterone doping had just been discovered for women, and before reliable tests were available to police it. This is not speculation, but fact as many of those women have come forward to talk about being forced to take testosterone, and it’s short and long-term effects on their life.

Testosterone works to make females bigger, faster, and stronger. Some people have the rather shallow understanding that the advantages provided by testosterone and other male hormones somehow disappear when these hormones are suppressed, or are counterbalanced by estrogen administration. This shows a deep lack of understanding of the physiology of sex hormones and sport performance.

The advantages of male embryonic and pubertal development for sports never go away - height, shoulder width, pelvic structure, forearm length. So a natal male, even one who transitions and uses cross-sex hormones to promote female physical characteristics, will always retain these advantages. Even a male who dopes with testosterone will likely retain an advantage over other men in sport even long after he stops using it - perhaps for decades. So a MTF-trans athlete who has (albeit unintentionally) doped with natural testosterone for years can never be said to be competing fairly with natal females.

Sexual Dimorphism is recognized in societal traditions, taboos, and in sports categorization

Sexual dimorphism is simply a fact of life and an outcome of evolution. It creates certain disadvantages for women which have been addressed through the installation of social norms. For instance, there are reasons that good parents teach their boys “You never hit a girl”, when a male has 2.5 times the punching power.

“Women and children first!” is socially and physically enforced in crises such as the Titanic disaster. In the absence of social norms and taboos. a rush for the lifeboats would simply have been a free-for-all survival-of-the-strongest. Men could simply have pushed women out of lifeboats to take their place. What did actually happen was that 70% of women on the Titanic survived, but only 20% of men did because they voluntarily gave up those places in lifeboats and died. Toxic masculinity? I think not.

The Titanic Memorial in Washington DC. It is good to remember that indeed humans can be noble and brave.

For the same reasons we have structured other societal traditions to account for sexual dimorphism, we have long ago created a separate category for female athletes to provide natal females with a fair chance at competing. This category is necessarily restrictive. Political correctness should not trump fairness and scientific reality.

COMING UP IN PART 3 - Males, Females, Sports, and Politics