Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: The IOC policy should be the standard and my hope is that this trickles all the way down.

The IOC has now made up this boundary, but most biologists disagre that it's a plausible boundary.

If you get into the biological literature, it just — it doesn't work.

It hasn't ever worked.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To The Contrary, a discussion of news and social trend from a variety of perspectives.

The International Olympic Committee has a new policy banning transgender women fro competing in female categories.

Instead, participation will depend on a one time screening for a genetic marker of male sex development.

The committee claims this move ensures fairness and safety for all competitors, but critics say the test is too simple and medically inconclusive.

Joining me this week are Docto Anne Fausto-Sterling, Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University, and Marshi Smith, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women's Sports.

Welcome to you both.

So let's start with you, Anne, do you think this new rule that they have is fair or not fair?

Well, first, thank you for having me.

And I guess the question is fair to whom?

I think it's not fair to trans women who have completely transitioned and followed all the rules that existed over the last couple of decades.

It's really not fair to the younger trans athletes who are not even going through a masculine puberty.

So—and it's certainly not fair to certain categories of intersex people who—and again, that marker is not really for male development as a marker for a gene that has the potential to trigger male development.

But male development doesn't always happen.

That' one of the things about intersex and the Olympics have, over the years, encountered people like this.

They try to make some exceptions in the new rules for this, but they can't cover everybody.

And inevitably people will get hurt by this.

Marshi.

Your thoughts?

I think it's absolutely fair.

I just want to clarify an thank you also for having me on.

I, I want to clarify that the IOC policy does not ban transgender athletes.

It is clarifying the category boundary around the women's sports category, so that the participants in that category are female athletes only.

And I think we have a tendency to focus our attention on men and boys, or who identify into the women's sports, who want to identify into women's sports.

However, we need to center in women's sports.

We must center women and girls.

I'm sorry.

Youve made a distinction about who men and boys are that not everybody agrees with.

So you—trans women are not men.

They are women.

They are not maybe a woman who's exactly the same as a cis woman.

But they are women.

They cannot be— It's not fair to say, well, you can go, go compete as a man.

They are not men.

They have— They have gone— In what way are they not men?

They are genetically male.

The genetics doesn't matter.

That's the thing.

Sex and gender are way more complex than just the genes.

And we've known this for 50 years.

There's a whole series of levels of sex and gender development.

The chromosomes start things off, but hormones make a difference.

There's an ongoing difference.

Both fetal hormones.

Hormones during puberty.

These all combine to to create sex and gender.

One of these alone is not the definition of sex.

Except you've made it that way.

I disagree.

Sex is clear and simple.

It is binary.

There are males and females.

Sex is define by the type of reproductive cell or gamete that an individual produces.

Females produce eggs.

Males produce sperm.

This is the boundary that we are utilizing.

The IOC is utilizing now to determine who is eligible for two categories: men and women's categories.

So in order to protect female athletes fairness safety and equal opportunities, we have to make a distinct line as to who is eligible.

And that is for female athletes only.

So yes, the policy is absolutely fair to women and girls.

We clearly fundamentally disagree.

You have— It's true that the IOC has now made up this boundary, but most biologists disagre that it's a plausible boundary.

If you get into th biological literature, it just— it doesn't work.

It hasn't ever worked.

And it's not going to work now.

It will I—believe me, it will explode.

You can make that definition that women make eggs and men make sperm, but then you immediately get into, well, not all women make eggs and not all women make sperm.

You get into all of the combinations of people who are intersex, and you get into trans people, trans women who no longer have testes, are no longer making male hormones, are no longer making testosterone, or are using chemicals that inhibit testosterone and who are taking— taking estrogens.

And they have transformed their bodies.

So—and they are women.

And we will disagree on that.

But I think the idea that there's just a universal agreement on your decision, on your point of view and wha the IOC has taken up is wrong.

And so it will not solve the conflicts and it will not particularly protect women.

Let me throw this question out there.

If the men who take female hormones and become women ar of equal caliber to the women, then why are they pushing so har to get into the female category?

Why are so many men so interested in competing in the women's categories?

Okay, so first of all, there aren't very many men.

It's only, you know, at the most over the last decades.

I looked up some numbers.

It's only a couple of percent of people who are transgender people who are good athletes and good enoug to compete in those categories.

Even fewer of them have won in those categories.

They want—theyre the trans women and they are not men.

So I need to correct your use of the words.

They are trans women and there are also trans men who are competing in male categories, but they are trans women who are good athletes and like all of the other athletes who compete in the Olympics, they're highly competitive.

They're good enough to get in.

And that's what they d for all the reasons that anyone competes, their interest in competition is not any different than Marshis is or other of the great athletes who compete.

Marshi, your thoughts?

Why a male athlete wants to compete in women's sports is irrelevan when it comes to sport policy.

We have to look at quantifiable, measurable characteristics that determine the boundaries of a category.

We do this with age based on a birth date.

We do this with weight in certain sports based on what's on the scale.

And for as long as women's sports has existed, we have recognized until recently that women need to have a separate se based category in sport as well.

Men can never change their sex.

No human can change their sex.

There has never been any literature that prove that a male can become a woman, and we have done extensive research on testosterone suppression and the effects of male advantage in athleti performance, and have never been even 14 year out of testosterone suppression, been able to mitigate mal advantage into women's sports.

However, if we could do that if, hypothetically, we could say that testosterone suppression could hamper or weaken a man enough that he would be pathetic enough to compete against the world class female athletes, that messaging to not only the world's most elite female athletes, but also to the next generation of young girls coming up in sport, is absolutely misogynistic and not the talking points that empower women in women's sports.

Let me jump in here.

Are you saying then, Marshi, that these trans women only want to get into the women's category in sports because they are superior to physically, they have bigger hands, longer bones, etc.?

When it comes to sport policy, the reason why someone wants to take advantage or cheat in a category of sport and create an unfair playing field for the other opponents is irrelevant.

Women deserve a fair categor of sport, and in order to have that, we must preserve female categories for female athletes only and exclude male development.

Okay, so a couple of things.

One is back to what I said before that, that as younger trans athletes come into existence, they will not have gone through male development.

That's one thing.

The other thing is that it really is insulting to continue to refer to them as men and as people who are cheating.

They are neither of these things.

Everybody knows who they are.

Their medical records have been made clear, they are not cheating.

They're very upfront about who they are.

And there are recent studies that show—that do not show huge differences.

For instance, just 2026.

A study that synthesizes 52 of the earlier studies of the ones Marshis referring to and covers over 6000 participants, shows that transgender women do not exhibit differences in upper body strength, lower body strains, or minimal oxygen consumption relative to cisgender women if they've been on hormone treatment for up to three years Now, the old number requirement was two years.

Maybe it could go up to three years.

But the evidence that Marshi refers to just doesn't exist.

She's making it up.

And also there is a long history of trans women throughout history that if you— if you—I could give you and if you had a reader who wanted, I would give you a reading list of 10 or 15 books that go through the history of trans people in our culture, in older cultures, in contemporary culture.

So the idea that this is just a made up category that we can make go away by saying it doesn't exist, and by saying, well, they're really men.

I just think— I think it's a wrong idea.

They are not just really men and gender is not binary But Anne, this question to you and then Marshi, I've seen some of these trans athletes and their hands are bigger for the most part.

Their legs are longer.

They are more athletic looking.

How can you say that it's fai for them to compete with women?

Well, for one thing, they— the ones who transitioned late are taller.

They do have a height advantage.

And in some sports maybe, maybe that matters.

They aren't winning.

I mean, only a small percent of of trans competitors have actually ever won in the Olympics that are participating.

So the idea that if they enter the sport, that's it, all women lose, I think is just not true.

So whatever physical differences you're observing don't seem to necessarily mean that they will automatically win.

And as I said, what you're seeing— I mean, maybe you're thinkin as in my generation of the Renee Richards or some of the other late transitioning trans women just isn't looking the same.

I used to be able to be sure I could tell who was a trans man and who was a trans woman just by looking at them, and I could.

I can't anymore because they're transitioning as teenagers, whatever those advantages might have been.

And I— and what I hear is from Marshi and other people, as I read this, as I was preparing for this, it was just a huge amount of fear.

The fear about something that's not binary, fear that doesn't—of things that don't fit into a neat category.

And I say, take a deep breath, get to know people, get to see what they actually do.

It is unfair to allow male development and male advantage into the women's sports category.

No one is excluded from sport.

Everyone can participate.

In order for i to be fair for girls and women, you must hav a designated category for women.

I do agre that we are reaching the times where boys are bein medicalized at such young ages that it's becoming increasingly difficult to visually, quote unquote, clock them as male, and therefore it's more important than ever that the IOC has protocols in place that determine, through screening, the genetic sex of each individual athlete, because we're reaching a time where we're not going to be abl to visually see, and I do know of many instances of these boy participating in girls sports, high school sports right now, at elite level competition, winning state championship titles, winning competitions.

Now, if the transgender pro forma is followed, and these people who were born as either gender or men become women, is that a fair competition between two people?

Let's start with you, Anne.

I believe that it's a fair competition.

And I— what I'm hearing from Marshi is she's focused on chromosomes.

And because they— she hopes they will give an absolutely clear category.

Of course, there's a huge variability in chromosomes that's unseen.

So you might have an XXY.

I mean, this test looks at one gene on the Y chromosom if it hasn't or in the genome.

But it doesn't, for example, categorize somebody who has two X's and a Y or two Xs and two Ys.

I mean she wants to focus on chromosomes as being the way we make two good categories.

But even our chromosome don't make two good categories.

We have a variety of categories.

We don't see it ofte because often it doesn't matter.

And we don't see our chromosomes unless we do a test to look at them.

So I see no reason why a set of fair protocols which the IOC had back in 2009 for what constitutes fair transition and can be put into place, and maybe those vertical need to be tweaked in some way based on data that is, you know, two years versus three years on estrogen or something like that.

But I absolutely don't see— I mean, the IOC tried before to base it on chromosomes and it didn't work and why it's going to work this time, I don't know.

Let me ask you this.

Why is it if you give these trans men— trans women, I'm sorry.

If you give them the female hormones, do they lose muscle mass?

Yes.

Do they lose height?

Do they become less strong—?

They dont lose height.

If their long bones are already developed, theyr as tall as they're going to be, but they definitely lose muscle mass and they lose upper body strength.

They lose— They lose oxygen capacity.

So yes.

Your thoughts, Marshi.

Again, convincing women that these men are a shell o the person that they once were.

And therefore it's fair for them to compete against our daughters and ourselves is not right.

And, you know, we—the way that the IOC policy is set up is that the SRY gene test is not a test.

It's a screen.

It's a screen that categorizes participant who want to compete in women's sports and extracts the individuals who test positive for the SRY gene or the male gene, so that there is further testing done to establish if these individuals have th advantage of male development.

They have recognize and come across many problems, particularly in world athletics track and field in the past, where they are determining very rare instances where a male athlete who has a DSD or a difference of sexual development would be eligible for the women's category, but it absolutely— the self-perception and identity of a male athlet and how they perceive themselves and recognize them selves as transgender or whatnot.

Those individuals are absolutely excluded from the women's category if they are male, and the DSD individuals will be tested after the SRY screen in order to determine the level of male development, and if they do have an advantage in sport and they will be categorized into the male category of sport.

And if they are in a women's— categorized as women, which they say they are, are they allowed then to go back and say, well, I was thrown out of the women's category, so I want to compete in the men's category?

The eligibility will be established.

You're either in category A or B, no one is excluded from the sport or kicked out.

You're just categorized in th eligibility category that you— that you— that is fair for all participants.

Some of the things that are showing up here is yes, this can work as a nice rigid category and we get back to it— first of all, there are times when it won't work because the category— there is no—there's more than two categories.

Second of all, what I hear is, again, this fear of trans people, the idea that the trans women who are, you know, glorious individual who are filled with the energy, enough energ to compete at an Olympic level, and you're speaking about them as the shell of their former selves.

If you talk to them, they have come into their own by transitioning, by becoming women.

And they deserve the kind of respect and glory that all athletes get and the kind of joy that comes from that competition.

They are not—they are not sort of shells of their former selves.

They have come into being of who they are.

And so to keep referring to them that way, it just—it's insulting, for one thing, to a whole class of people an denigrating and disrespectful.

So I think that's the main point I'll make right now.

Marshi, do you have a better way of categorizing men from women?

No.

The IO policy should be the standard, and my hope is tha this trickles all the way down, because girls should not have to reach elite levels of competition in order to deserve fair treatment in sports.

Therefore, every sport body across the globe should recogniz that women deserve a category, a sex based category of sport so we can participate on a level playing field and exclud men from the women's category.

That does not mean they are kicked out of sport.

It means that they can feel their joy and glory in the mens category of sport.

Why is it that women who identify as transgender are participating at al levels of sport in the women's category, and can still receive joy and whatever else beautiful feelings that you're talking about, and men cannot do that in the men's category?

It doesn't— It doesn't jive.

It doesn't make sense.

Anne, final thoughts.

Yeah, I'm very concerned about this trickle down thin because I think in some states now we've come to the point where elementary school boys and girls can't play together on the same playing field.

And certainly it means that young children who are not fitting into a clear binary category are excluded in some way.

But the idea that it's so precious at even at this elementary school level that we need to keep boys and girls separately because we want to go back to segregating Little League baseball.

Do we want— I mean, there's a whole se of things that come that really, I think, affect children in a very negative way, especially highly talented young girl athletes who will do much better competing, say, in a little league that used to bar girls altogether.

The need for sex segregation doesn't go all the way back down into elementary school.

I mean, it's ridiculous that we're treating kids this way and forcing them into these binary categories.

All right, that's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

Thank you both for a very enlightening discussion.

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