The unfalsifiability of the anti-trans sports movement

Few war issues have had such an immediate political impact as the trans athlete debate. Over the last several years, conservative state governments in tk states have succeeded in banning trans girls and women from girls and women’s competitive sports.

But the science on this issue is largely inconclusive at best, and at most, supports trans women’s place in women’s sports. This has run into intense opposition from those who aren’t well informed on the issue who come into it with the assumption that men are by default better athletes than women due to birthright.

This assumption is exploited by anti-trans campaigners, who use it as a substitute for scientific fact. “Everyone knows” folklore about men and women then takes the place of actual scientific analysis of hard data. This is further stoked by a common gender critical messaging tactic: showing sporting and athletic data of the difference between cisgender men’s and women’s athletes and declaring trans women’s participation fundamentally unfair.

It’s a neat trick when you think about it. You can use this tactic to sell a ban on trans women athletes without ever scientifically looking at what a trans woman’s body can and can’t do.

The problem with this is, of course, science. Humans are naturally inquisitive creatures, and scientists are going to examine questions like these despite whatever policy discussions are happening.

And the science is starting to go in the direction of trans athletes. It’s a pretty obvious fact that hormone replacement therapy makes permanent changes in trans people’s bodies. In fact, it’s a talking point in the transphobe campaign against teen transitioners. One of the most prominent books against trans rights is even titled “irreversible damage,” referring to permanent bodily changes.

The anti-trans folks want things both ways here. They want to ban teens from transitioning because hormones cause permanent changes in bodies, but they want to ban trans women from women’s sports because trans women’s bodies don’t change when they start hormones.

Transphobes are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

It’s a worldview that can’t hold up to serious scientific scrutiny, and so its propagators must create conspiracy theories to explain why the data says they’re wrong.

The most ridiculous theory yet is one that says that trans women who are being studied are deliberately underperforming in order to throw the results in their own favor. They’ve rolled this one out before too. Earlier this year, they claimed that collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas had intentionally lost several races at the NCAA Division I swimming championships in an effort to make it seem like trans women aren’t as dominant as the anti-trans activists claimed they would be.

They also did this when Olympic weightlifter Laurel Hubbard finished last at the 2021 Tokyo summer games. Whenever a trans woman doesn’t win by a large (and male) margin, the claim is that she must have been throwing.

But this makes their theory unfalsifiable. It elevates the assumption that men are physically superior to women for all time, always into a pseudo-religious belief. It’s a clever trick and it appears to be working. Sad.