Pseudoscience subcultures are typically small, strange and harmless — but the denialists of biological sex are a prolific exception
Some people insist the Earth is flat, or that it’s 4,000 years old; others take evolution to be a hoax. Pseudoscience subcultures like these are typically small, strange and harmless — but one prominent exception has made itself known in recent days: the denialists of biological sex. And unlike flat-Earthers, they’re taken seriously by people who should know better.
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This cadre of science skeptics has grown loud with last week’s announcement by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who is daring to bring forth policies and legislation that will, among other things, explore protections for female, sex-segregated, no-males-allowed, sport.
To those who downplay the biological binary, it is transphobic to even explore such a policy because the “evidence” doesn’t support them. Though the differences are obvious to anyone who watches children’s track-and-field (where boys outpace girls even before puberty), to anyone who’s ever seen the Olympics (where men’s records are typically faster and higher than women’s) and anyone who winces at the thought of women playing a high-contact sport with men. Take a few basic biology classes and you’ll learn what exactly causes those differences at a cellular level, and why they evolved to be that way.
Even so, Global News just had to attempt a fact check on reality last week, and did its best to produce a work that, I predict, will be a point of embarrassment in a few years when the mania over gender has passed.
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“Smith suggested a trans athlete has ‘advantages’ over their cisgender counterparts, but the scientific literature disagrees, even with the existence of high-profile cases,” read the hook by Global News.
The story didn’t exactly disprove Smith’s position — instead, it provided greater support. To prove that trans athletes don’t have a physical advantage over natural-born women, Global News devoted much of its reporting to the example of intersex world-record-setting sprinter Caster Semenya. Semenya identifies as a woman — though not a trans woman — and was discovered mid-career to possess a Y chromosome and testosterone levels typical of biological males.
She is a prominent example of someone who, due to their male biology, has an advantage over female competitors, which just goes to show Smith is right, if anything.
Global’s “debunk” didn’t stop there, I’m sorry to say. The article went on to proclaim that “sociocultural factors have more effect than hormones” on athletic performance. The source: a 2022 research review by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, which, on the surface, declares the evidence to be often inconclusive, but supportive of the idea that trans-identifying women who have suppressed testosterone production are no better off than female athletes.
The review amounts to a big pile of bunk in the eyes of outside researchers, though. Sloppy errors of fact were found by a third-party multidisciplinary team, which included academics from the University of Manchester, the University of Saskatchewan and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
“The anonymous authors claim evidence showing that male advantage is lost after one year of testosterone suppression, while the two papers cited in support of this statement explicitly argue that male advantage is retained well beyond one year of suppression,“ read one critique of many.
Indeed, the male advantage comes about in many ways: tendon resistance, muscle mass, punch power, hemoglobin and oxygen capacity are all greater. This doesn’t mean men are superior as people, but it does mean that their physical reality is much different from that of women.
One ethicist involved in the above critique took a further swing at the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport study’s design, as it found that results were inconclusive — but only after a careful neutering of the data. Much of the study’s inconclusiveness came from its “correcting” for body size, lung volume, hand size, height and fat-free mass. This overlooks the fact that size differences are still a major real factor that sets men, on average, apart from women, however. And even when “corrected” for size, the study concluded that transwomen retained an advantage over natural females even when they suppressed testosterone.
The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport is a common, flawed source for those who would like to disregard biological sex; aside from Global, it can be found in the Tyee. The CBC, meanwhile, also seems comfortable quoting bio-skepticism as truth: “There is really no evidence to support that transgender women and girls have measurable advantages in sports,” it quoted one researcher. It’s about as appropriate as calling a creationist to be an authoritative source on natural selection.
Global News cherry-picked from a final source to downplay the differences in the sexes: a 2023 non-systematic review that found a few instances where post-hormone therapy performance was close between female athletes and trans women, and many more instances where the advantage was significant. The latter, of course, was ignored by the news.
Activists tend to argue a few lines: first, they claim the sexes are not significantly different. When proven wrong, they turn their focus to the edge cases: some males, trans or not, run at speeds and lift weights that are considered low for men but high- to mid-range for women, and therefore, the argument goes, they should be able to compete in the female category instead.
This would transform male-female segregated competitions into high-low segregated categories, which treats women as if they’re just poor-performing men. That’s exactly what women’s sport was supposed to avoid. Female athletes should be allowed to excel — and if you want to watch truly unisex sports, watch something equestrian-related.
Danielle Smith is in a Galileo Galilei-type of predicament. She can see the truth, just like a scientist can see that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. But she’ll be ridiculed and pressured to recant by the sense-making institutions of our time: that is, the media and the “experts” it calls.
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