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• The higher levels of red blood cell count experienced by cis men is
removed within the first four months of testosterone suppression;
• There is no basis for athletic advantage conferred by bone size or
density, other than advantages achieved through height. Elite
athletes tend to have higher than average height across genders, and
above-average height is not currently classified as an athletic
advantage requiring regulation;
• On average, trans women who are pre-testosterone suppression still
have lower Lean Body Mass (LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA), and
strength than cis males. This indicates that the performance benefit
experienced by these individuals cannot be generalized by examining
cis male athletes;
• Non-athletic trans women experience significant reduction in LBM,
CSA, and strength loss within 12 months of hormonal suppression. It
is important to note that this 12-month threshold is arbitrarily
defined, and no significant studies examine the rate of LBM, CSA or
strength reduction over time;
• When adjusting for height and fat mass, LBM, CSA, and strength after
12 months of testosterone suppression, trans women still retained
statistically higher levels than sedentary cis women. However, this
difference is well within the normal distribution of LBM, CSA, and
strength for cis women (Jassen et al., 2000);
• LBM, CSA, and strength loss continues for trans women after the 12-
month initial testosterone suppression;
• The limited available evidence examining the effect of testosterone
suppression as it directly affects trans women’s athletic performance
showed no athletic advantage exists after one year of testosterone
suppression (Harper, 2015; Roberts et al., 2020; Harper, 2020);
• Post gonad removal, many trans women experience testosterone
levels far below that of pre-menopausal cis women.
Available evidence indicates trans women who have
undergone testosterone suppression have no clear
biological advantages over cis women in elite sport.
3.
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Key Sociocultural Findings
1. Biomedical studies are overvalued in sports policies in
comparison to social sciences studies.
• The literature on trans sport policies, their implementation, people
who write them and apply them, consequences for athletes, and the
debates they frame is constitutive of the social hierarchy of
knowledge, within which some sciences are discredited to the
benefit of others;
• Excluding certain types of knowledge from the restricted definition of
‘scientific’ makes it possible for sport governing bodies to obscure
the power relations at play in the creation, maintenance, and
legitimization of regulations;
• There are troubling links between some researchers, sport
organizations, and third organizations with anti-trans agenda;
• Some sport organizations use science strategically, drawing solely
and uncritically on data which appears to support their claims;
• Only certain biomedical factors are policed under a mandate of
‘fairness’ in elite sport, despite strong evidence that financial
material resources (such as access to infrastructure and equipment,
nutrition, time to train, higher salaries) are associated with advantage
in sport.
