https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/01/26/trans-women-no-unfair-advantage-elite-sport-new-report-finds/
A new report has found that trans athletes do not have a biological advantage from things such as lung capacity and bone density.
I think this article is overstating the report's findings. From the executive summary of the report:
The research findings in the biomedical area are inconclusive. Studies which make conclusions on pre- and post-hormone replacement therapy (HRT) advantage held by trans women athletes have used either cis men or sedentary trans women as proxies for elite trans women athletes. These group references are not only inappropriate for the context but produce conclusions that cannot be applied to elite trans women athletes. Further, there is little scientific understanding about the attributes or properties of HRT, namely testosterone suppression and estrogen supplementation, on the physiology and athletic ability of trans women athletes. This ignores the potential for estrogen supplementation to reduce Lean Body Mass (LBM), and for testosterone suppression to produce holistic health disadvantages.
Which in my reading basically says all the current data is invalid for elite level athletes and shouldn't be used for policy making. That's not quite as powerful as the conclusion as saying there are no differences.
I hate to say more research is needed since it's an argument made by people who just want to exclude trans athletes until it can be definitely proven there are no advantages, but I don't feel like I can't come to a conclusion from this.
My gut feeling is that there is probably a very complex relationship between an individual historic hormones and their performance in any given sport. And that performance is probably very dependent on the sport in question as well, e.g. any potential difference between trans women and cis women will present differently in long distance running vs weight lifting.
To expand on this. I think saying there are no differences between trans women and cis women in sports is a losing argument. Transphobes will just point any of the obvious differences in existing studies and try to make you attempt to prove the negative of no differences existing.
A better argument might be that in most cases any difference are irrelevant.
Such as sports where the womens categories exist to promote them as a marginalized group not for differences between cis men and cis women. Womens chess and W Series racing being two examples. Trans women are a marginalized group in a marginalized group they obviously should be included.
Sports where the importance of any difference isn't enough to support the argument of separating out trans women. I view this as any sport without any monetary or prestige standing on a national or international stage. Basically any sport that isn't a collegiate or elite level. Any difference just doesn't matter enough for middle or high school, recreation or any petry league. Just let them play.
The last group of high level competition is a bit harder to crack because this is where data just doesn't exist. If in the short term we have to split women's sports into a cis, trans and combined categories or put an astrix next to trans athletes so be it. Long term I think something akin to weight classes everyone will be categorized into should be created. These will probably be very sport specific and we need to gather data. The only way to do that is to let trans athletes compete.