Lia Thomas sues to be allowed to try out for US Olympic Team

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Lia's high performance is an outlier among the transfem athletes we've seen iirc. And even then it wasn't enough to warrant banning her from competing. A study by the Olympics people found that the narrative that trans women are inherently stronger overall is deeply flawed.
 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Disgusting. I hope she gets laughed out of court. Is she trying to hurt the trans rights movement? No one can really be this delusional, right?

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437
What are your thoughts on the report described in this article?

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Lia's high performance is an outlier among the transfem athletes we've seen iirc. And even then it wasn't enough to warrant banning her from competing. A study by the Olympics people found that the narrative that trans women are inherently stronger overall is deeply flawed.
 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437

Lia Thomas is not a biological female. 

That's a bottom line here.  I don't care about the studies, and I don't necessarily believe your sources.

Well God forbid facts and studies about biology get in the way of your feelings on it.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Lia's high performance is an outlier among the transfem athletes we've seen iirc. And even then it wasn't enough to warrant banning her from competing. A study by the Olympics people found that the narrative that trans women are inherently stronger overall is deeply flawed.
 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437

Lia Thomas is not a biological female. 

That's a bottom line here.  I don't care about the studies, and I don't necessarily believe your sources.

Well God forbid facts and studies about biology get in the way of your feelings on it.

That Lia Thomas is not a biological female is an indisputable fact.

It's highly disputable. She's been on hormones a long time by now, her body chemistry, fat distribution, etc are unambiguously female at these stage. The claim that biological sex is based on chromosome variations that's direct effects IIRC basically amount to controlling hormones in the womb is not any more valid than the idea that it's based on the measurable differences caused by hormonal factors over a long period of time.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Lia's high performance is an outlier among the transfem athletes we've seen iirc. And even then it wasn't enough to warrant banning her from competing. A study by the Olympics people found that the narrative that trans women are inherently stronger overall is deeply flawed.
 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437

It’s pretty telling that the three usual suspects (Pres Mike, VBM, Horus) have completely ignored this.

The transphobes know deep down that they don’t have any facts to back to their arguments, and that their entire perspective is no more sophisticated than that of a toddler looking at asparagus and going “yucky, I don’t like it!”.

I literally did though? This study is irrelevant to the Lia Thomas issue because the trans women in this study were on HRT for over a year, while Lia Thomas wasn’t.

She's clearly been on HRT for more than a year now, so even if your claim is true, it isn't relevant right now.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Lia's high performance is an outlier among the transfem athletes we've seen iirc. And even then it wasn't enough to warrant banning her from competing. A study by the Olympics people found that the narrative that trans women are inherently stronger overall is deeply flawed.
 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437

Lia Thomas is not a biological female. 

That's a bottom line here.  I don't care about the studies, and I don't necessarily believe your sources.

Well God forbid facts and studies about biology get in the way of your feelings on it.

That Lia Thomas is not a biological female is an indisputable fact.

It's highly disputable. She's been on hormones a long time by now, her body chemistry, fat distribution, etc are unambiguously female at these stage. The claim that biological sex is based on chromosome variations that's direct effects IIRC basically amount to controlling hormones in the womb is not any more valid than the idea that it's based on the measurable differences caused by hormonal factors over a long period of time.

What?

If you have a Y chromosone, you are a biological male. End of story. Even the crazist activists don't even argue this fact

lol. You do know that the concept of "biologically male" is a category made up by humans, right?

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Lia's high performance is an outlier among the transfem athletes we've seen iirc. And even then it wasn't enough to warrant banning her from competing. A study by the Olympics people found that the narrative that trans women are inherently stronger overall is deeply flawed.
 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437

Lia Thomas is not a biological female. 

That's a bottom line here.  I don't care about the studies, and I don't necessarily believe your sources.

Well God forbid facts and studies about biology get in the way of your feelings on it.

That Lia Thomas is not a biological female is an indisputable fact.

It's highly disputable. She's been on hormones a long time by now, her body chemistry, fat distribution, etc are unambiguously female at these stage. The claim that biological sex is based on chromosome variations that's direct effects IIRC basically amount to controlling hormones in the womb is not any more valid than the idea that it's based on the measurable differences caused by hormonal factors over a long period of time.

What?

If you have a Y chromosone, you are a biological male. End of story. Even the crazist activists don't even argue this fact

lol. You do know that the concept of "biologically male" is a category made up by humans, right?

I'll bite. Is male-female sex distribution not a common feature throughout the animal kingdom?

The existence of sex differences definitely exists, but how humans perceive and interpret these distributions is socially constructed. Some animals can switch sides of the reproductive binary(eg some frogs). More importantly for our purposes,  most of the things that differentiate male and female humans in our minds can be changed from one to the other with the right technology. Chromosomes cannot be changed with our current technology, but pretty much all of the differences in biology between post-pubescent males and females are either changeable via hormone replacement at any time(eg fat distribution, skin character/texture, muscle character, internal chemistry, body fat percentage, sense of smell, subtle differences in emotions, certain subtle aspects of the voice, bone density AFAIK) or are determined by the hormones present during puberty*(eg differences in bone structure, the character of the vocal cords** breast growth***). The few that can't be swapped at all aren't usually relevant to day to day life(reproductive sex organs, chromosomes). Is the idea that we should define biological sex based on the differences that have large impacts on our daily lives rather than ones that require genetic testing or nudity to notice not a reasonable one? And in the concept of sports in particular, shouldn't biological sex be determined specifically by the factors that influence sports performance?

*whether at the "normal" age or after puberty blockers are stopped

**The vocal cords drop when the body has high t levels for a while, and doesn't undrop with estrogen. This is why trans woman sometimes "sound like men" when they talk.)

***breast growth is the reverse of vocal cords, happening when the body is exposed to large amounts of estrogen and progesterone and not going away when testosterone levels are heightened)

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

It's "funny" how all the anti trans sports people are ignoring the best points made in this thread except for a few people calling me crazy, asserting I'm wrong without even the barest hint of an argument, scientific illiteracy, or "this is a simple issue. Anyone who disagrees with me is just an activist who can't think for themselves".

Lia's high performance is an outlier among the transfem athletes we've seen iirc. And even then it wasn't enough to warrant banning her from competing. A study by the Olympics people found that the narrative that trans women are inherently stronger overall is deeply flawed.
 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437

Regardless of the long-term averages, it’s obvious that Thomas succeeded because of a biological advantage from having lived and trained for 20 years before transitioning. She got progressively worse throughout the one season she competed in Women’s swimming and I doubt that she could actually make the team at this point, but she still reaped an unfair advantage in 2022.

Is it? She had been on HRT for close to three years by the time she switched to the womens league, and her commonly cited 89th place ranking in the mens division was before she had started at all. Athletes bodies change as they grow older, and the age of peak performance at a sport varies based by sport and by individual. I found a study on it but it only takes the results of the top three swimmers among swiss elite freestyle swimmers for a given age and sex into account, so it's applicability is limited in this case. It's entirely possible that Lia's improvement in place was mostly or entirely a result of age differences rather than sex differences. This is one of many reasons that taking a quick glance at one case is a terrible way to evaluate a question as complex as this, even of you don't follow it up by declaring a study based on a large measured data set with actual controls, etc as "just hypothesizing endlessly".

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Here is my impression of why the situation is a bit of an outlier.

There are some things HRT changes, and they are greater earlier on, but one of the things it doesn't is Height. And height matters a lot in swimming.

 The issue with Lia Thomas is not that they transitioned. It was that they were above 6ft before doing so, and no matter what HRT did to muscle mass, that height was going to remain. Post-transition they are either 6' 1 or 6 4' with the lower one still taller than 99.99% of  biological women.

Just say she bro.