The Case Of JayCee Cooper And The Media's Trans Activist Stenography

It is hard, truly hard, to think of a dumber piece about athletic sanctioning bodies permitting M2F transsexuals to compete against biological women, yet here is NBC parroting the trans activist party line. "It’s not fair to genetically eliminate an entire group of people," said JayCee Cooper, whom Powerlifting USA banned from female competition. @SwipeRight put together an excellent thread response on Twitter, the key parts of which are these two tweets:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to support them. Trans activists make the following extraordinary claim: reducing testosterone levels for 1 year totally eliminates the advantages bestowed upon males by virtue of going through male puberty.

7/21

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) April 29, 2019

But when asked for the extraordinary evidence necessary to support this claim nothing is provided. Meanwhile, we have every reason in the world to suspect an advantage persists, b/c reducing T levels for 1 year does not reverse most traits relevant to athletic performance.

8/21

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) April 29, 2019

Transgender activists thus employ ignorance at the heart of their arguments, disguising the lack of actual data on M2F transgender athletic performance as a justification for permitting such individuals to compete with women. The poor quality of the data is a feature, not a bug, as made very clear by Dr. Antonia Lee in Medium, who chides the IOC for using politically-motivated, low-power studies that aren't even well-constructed.

 I’ve written about the methodological flaws in the work of IOC consensus meeting participant, Joanna Harper before (5). Let me be as clear as possible: if you decide to do an observational study, you need to follow the appropriate, recognised and demanding observational study guidelines (6). Failing to do so means that, “any claim coming from an observational study is likely to be wrong” (7). I have nothing against Harper personally; my point is that she is neither an epidemiologist nor a sports scientist and simply doesn’t seem to know how to carry out meaningful health or sports science research.

But you would learn none of this from reading the NBC News story, which frames the whole matter as one of "inclusion", with opponents unfairly "dehumanizing" M2F transsexuals. Despite the spin, USA Powerlifting's position paper is clear — and fair, to biological women:

Through analysis the impact of maturation in the presence naturally occurring androgens as the level necessary for male development, significant advantages are had, including but not limited to increased body and muscle mass, bone density, bone structure, and connective tissue.  These advantages are not eliminated by reduction of serum androgens such as testosterone yielding a potential advantage in strength sports such as powerlifting.

The IOC (and the International Powerlifting Federation) have not endorsed M2F powerlifters, surprisingly, and the current rules permit individual sports the option at their discretion to include transsexual women. Hopefully, other sports will expand exclusions in the name of fairness to biological women.