Cough Israel cough.

I think you're right the most of the argument for the ban relates to fairness, and I frankly doubt that there have been any sort of safety studies done in cricket that would speak to my point.

[1] Because while strength decreases, empirical research shows that it does not decrease to the level of removing the competitive advantage in women's sports.

[2] This article contains utterly no discussion about transgender athletes that have already undergone male puberty.

[3] You're relying on ad hominem attacks instead of actually addressing any of the substantive findings. Moreover, your articles do not contain a single empirical study.

[4] If you read the full article, you would see that it doesn't decline to the point of removing the advantage, as my quoted sections show. In fact, the very next sentence after the one you quote reads "However, transwomen still had a 9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events." Your claim of cherry picking is ironic.

[5] Yes, the meaning of a case study is that it studies a single case. Notably, there are only five known transgender swimmers in the NCAA's Division I, which was the subject of the study. I'm not sure what you're trying to do by citing another study (ultimately finding that transwomen "were still stronger and had more muscle mass following 12 months of treatment") in support of my point, but go off I guess.

[6] Your "systematic review" is close to a decade old and, unsurprisingly, doesn't address any of the studies I cited. Moreover, the study you're citing consistently admits that it doesn't have enough information to really make any judgments - and its conclusion is based on the importance of sports for the physical and mental health of transgender people. To the extent it discusses competitive advantage, it does so entirely within the context of androgenic hormones, and contains no discusses of anatomical differences (e.g., larger bodies, longer legs, bigger bones, larger lungs). In addition to citing an outdated study in a rapidly evolving field of research, you then you cite a Daily Beast article -- lmfao.

It's impossible to buy a house, gas prices are insane, and the cost of consumer goods are still through the roof. The article tries to point to average wage increases over the last few years, but this categorically ignores the fact that most Americans haven't seen a wage increase during this time. This suggests that the wage increase isn't happening around the median of wages, where most hourly Americans find themselves, but rather is occurring at either the floor or ceiling — neither of which has an impact on most Americans. If I had to guess, I would think this is probably happening at the floor, given how many states have been raising minimum wage recently.

Of course, this is great news if you're earning minimum wage. The issue is, most Americans aren't.

Why isn’t anyone in the liberal media saying how good Biden is doing on the economy?

Because he isn't. It's borderline impossible to buy a house, gas prices are still through the roof, and consumer prices have skyrocketed. The article tries to play down the latter two increases by pointing to the average wage. However, studies show that most Americans have received a wage/salary increase in the last three years. This, in turn, suggests that the average wage increase championed by the EPI (which, by the way, is essentially the liberal version of the Heritage Foundation) is more likely related to a significant increase at either the floor or ceiling of wages. With the Fight for 15 movement gaining increasing popularity over the last few years, and a growing number of states increasing their minimum wages, it wouldn't be surprising if its mainly the floor that's increasing. If that's the case, the fact that the average wage is increasing is relatively meaningless for most Americans.

I think you're conflating the severity of being hit with a thrown ball with the frequency of being hit with it. I agree that getting smacked with a rock going 80 mph vs. 60 mph both carry a significant risk of harm, even in protective gear. My point is that women are more likely to be unable to effectively respond to those faster pitches, particularly towards the end of a match, and thus are exposed to a greater frequency of being hit by the ball and injured.

If you have ever been in a batting cage, you should understand how much more difficult it becomes to read a ball with even a 5-10 mph increase in speed. Not only do biological women lack the same muscle and skeletal composition that allows men to respond quickly in dodging or turning into a misguided pitch, but they also exhaust quicker and thus are more likely to be suffer from a delayed neurological response in doing the initial mental read of the ball's path. If you suddenly turn the speed of those pitches up by a third, you're increasing the likelihood that those women batters will be hit, regardless of whether the injury is likely to be the same.

My bad, I actually wasn't aware of that. That's fucking ridiculous.

Doubt it. No way the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, would ever let any ruling like that stand, and Trump will just use it as fodder to further bolster his whole "witch hunt" argument.

By this logic, we should all go back to open division sports, which is what historically led to a de facto exclusion of women from all sports because, unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them were unable to be competitive in divisions that had men in them.

Cricket balls are hard dude. Like really hard.

Sorry dude, but you're objectively wrong. There is a wealth of academic studies demonstrating that transgender players have an advantage in women's divisions, and that gender-affirming treatment fails to rectify that.

Testosterone drives much of the enhanced athletic performance of males through in utero, early life, and adult exposure. Many anatomical sex differences driven by testosterone are not reversible. Hemoglobin levels and muscle mass are sensitive to adult life testosterone levels, with hemoglobin being the most responsive. Studies in transgender women, and androgen-deprivation treated cancer patients, show muscle mass is retained for many months, even years, and that co-comittant exercise mitigates muscle loss. Given that sports are currently segregated into male and female divisions because of superior male athletic performance, and that estrogen therapy will not reverse most athletic performance parameters, it follows that transgender women will enter the female division with an inherent advantage because of their prior male physiology.

Heather AK. Transwoman Elite Athletes: Their Extra Percentage Relative to Female Physiology. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 26;19(15):9103. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159103. PMID: 35897465; PMCID: PMC9331831.

Transwomen retain an advantage in upper body strength (push-ups) over female controls for 1–2 years after starting gender affirming hormones. Transwomen retain an advantage in endurance (1.5 mile run) over female controls for over 2 years after starting gender affirming hormones.

Roberts TA, Smalley J, Ahrendt DEffect of gender affirming hormones on athletic performance in transwomen and transmen: implications for sporting organisations and legislatorsBritish Journal of Sports Medicine 2021;55:577-583.

[T]he transgender woman swimmer experienced improvements in performance for each freestyle event (100 to 1,650 yards) relative to sex-specific NCAA rankings, including producing the best swimming time in the NCAA for the 500-yard distance (65th in the men’s category in 2018–2019 to 1st in the women’s, 2022). Similarly, NCAA-ranked male swimmers had no improvements in rank in the men’s category during the same time frame. Our findings suggest that the performance times of the transgender woman swimmer in the women’s NCAA category were outliers for each event distance and suggest that the transgender woman swimmer had superior performances relative to rank-matched swimmers.

Case Studies in Physiology: Male to female transgender swimmer in college athletics Jonathon W. Senefeld, Sandra K. Hunter, Doriane Coleman, and Michael J. Joyner Journal of Applied Physiology 2023 134:4, 1032-1037