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Originally Posted by fixed_truth
(I doubt) a transwoman receiving therapy from 12 years of age would be out of the normal variation of ability of ciswoman.
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Preventing androgynisation by administering puberty blockers does not turn a boy into a girl. It prevents a boy from becoming a man. HRT can give that boy more of the outward physical characteristics we associate with femininity. However a boy who has not experienced puberty will not, for example, grow a larger pelvis or a more-curved spine. Those female characteristics reflect the fact that women's bodies are engineered to grow babies. Preventing a male child from becoming a man does not give that child a female body. The geometry of a female body is a physical disadvantage in many athletic events regardless of puberty (or, the shape of a male one is if the competition is
not dying during pregnancy)
For males who have passed through the one-way door of puberty, hormone therapy (for example, reducing testosterone) reduces the male athletic advantage by about 6%. An elite male competitor post-puberty will have a 15% advantage in speed over an elite female, a 40% advantage in upperbody strength, a 160% advantage in punching power. Male blood carries 11% more oxygen than female blood and male hearts pump 30% more of it. Take 6 off any of those numbers and the contest is still unfair.
If we as a society value fairness in sport, there must be competitions of those sports in which maleness confers an advantage in which females are not forced to compete against natal males. Sport is an example of a human activity in which "female" should be a protected category. My understanding is that it's for reasons such as this that the Speak Up For Women group is concerned at the prospect of a law change that would give "self-id as gender woman" the same legal status as "female".