Rex Kerr
1 min readNov 23, 2022

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Well, no, the rates of "solid" XYs wanting to compete with XXs are comparable to the rates of XXX etc., at least for the time being. The potential is higher, but the reality is still comparable.

But, anyway, sex chromosomes don't precisely determine athletic capability. Development counts for a lot, and hormones count for a lot, and other factors (which we accept as natural variation) counts for a lot, and residual sex-specific genetics probably counts for a bit. There's a decent argument to be made that if male development or genetics is a "performance enhancing drug" then it's unfair to women to allow XY individuals (absent some really profound change in sex regulation, e.g. changes to enhancers of SOX9) to compete.

But this is conditional on there actually being a performance advantage. And that both needs to be documented, and is something that presumably varies sport by sport (because different physical characteristics are differentially important in various sports, and male development affects only some of those). If there's no performance enhancement, it's just a cultural division, and there the usual rules of culture apply (i.e. if we decide trans women culturally "are women" in this regard, it would be totally fair and natural for them to compete with cis women).

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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