NPR didn’t really concede much with its correction. Here it is:
Correction: An earlier tweet incorrectly stated there is limited scientific evidence of physical advantage. Existing research shows that higher levels of testosterone do impact athletic performance. But there’s limited research involving elite trans athletes in competition.
To me, NPR’s statement is so stupid that “scientific research” is not required to refute it. Let’s look at some anecdotal evidence:
- Lia Thomas, a biological male, a total nobody as a swimmer in men’s competitions, won an NCAA championship when swimming against women.
- CeCe Telfer, a biological male, a total nobody as a hurdler in men’s competitions, actually won a national championship by a full second-and-a-half when competing against women.
- Tiffany Thomas (no relation to Lia AFAIK), a biological male, recently won a New York City women’s cycling race. Thomas is a Category 1 (i.e., elite) women’s cyclist, despite being 46 years old, not starting cycling until age 40, and competing against women in their 20s and 30s.
- Look at the track and field world records for women. I only saw one event (marathon) where the world’s best women were able to outperform even the best U.S. high school boys.
- Look at the swimming world records for women, and again the high school boys records are significantly better.
I’m not making a list like this to imply anything negative about women, just to point out that it’s delusional to say that men don’t have a significant physical advantage in sports.
I’d make a list of trans-identifying men (i.e., women) who’ve competed successfully against male athletes but I’m not aware of any.
I saved my favorite example for last. Anne Andres, a biological male, competes in women’s powerlifting competitions in Canada. Apparently the male-or-female rules are pretty loose in Canadian powerlifting and if you say you’re a woman, you can compete as a woman. There are no rules about testosterone, hormones or surgeries.
Naturally, Anne Andres wins all these competitions and also likes to badmouth the lackluster quality of his competitors.
One of the powerlifting events is the bench press, in which Andres, until recently, held the record at 275 pounds, which seems pretty good for a woman, but Andres is a pretty big (fat) guy who probably weighs about 275. Not to mention, you could walk into any gym in America and find at least one guy who can bench 275 pounds.
So at the recent Heroes Classic powerlifting tournament in Lethbridge, Alberta, Avi Silverberg, the head coach for Team Canada Powerlifting since 2012, made a mockery of Anne Andres and the whole transgender sports issue by entering the women’s bench press.
Silverberg is a biological male, which, if you couldn’t tell by his name, you could certainly tell by looking at him, including the fact that he has a full beard.
Silverberg won the women’s bench press, although I couldn’t tell just from watching the video below how much weight he was using. The competition was in Canada, so the numbers on the screen are in kilos, but it turns out that what you’re seeing is Silverberg pressing, quite easily, 380 pounds, breaking Andres’s record by more than 100 pounds.
Andres made some obligatory statement about Silverberg being “a bigot and a coward,” even though Silverberg is doing the same thing Andres is doing, but he’s just a lot better at it.
