Next wave of female UFC fighters have high hopes for the future of their division

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/next-wave-female-ufc-fighters-high-hopes-future-194401152--mma.html

11 in the division? Pretty cool. Would like to see them get more weight classes going. Would also love to see a female only TUF. Heck, they did a British version, a female version would have to be viewed as a huge step up from that.

They need at least one heavier division going, as well as a lighter division. I take it with Cyborg, they'll try to put together a heavier division - good news for Kayla after Brazil, should she decide to go in that direction, but I see nothing for lighter. Maybe they're just waiting for Marti Malloy.

Would be cool to see an all women's judo line-up. Wondering, too, with wrestling out of the Olympics and the first generation of women who've been wrestling since they were tots, if we'll see a few more wrestlers try to make the jump. If TKD goes the way of wrestling, then maybe we'll see some better strikers (though TKD isn't noted for protecting or punching to the head - would have thought there'd be a few more boxers coming in, except that Ronda's shown how pointless boxers can be when all they have is a "striker's chance". Not even that, since women aren't known for having a ton of knock out power. becomes much more of a grappler's game, and great for judoka making the transition)

Agree with the notion of potential wrestlers jumping over to judo; however, with another vote remaining to allow one more core sport into the olympics the international wrestling community is mounting a huge campaign with the aspirations of winning the vote for that last remaining olympic sport spot...

FightingSpirit wrote:Agree with the notion of potential wrestlers jumping over to judo; however, with another vote remaining to allow one more core sport into the olympics the international wrestling community is mounting a huge campaign with the aspirations of winning the vote for that last remaining olympic sport spot...

I hope they win. Can't see an Olympics without wrestling - 1. I love wrestling, 2. there's really no sport with that level of historic value (beyond a few track and field events).

Shame on the IOC for trying to get rid of wrestling, just from the historic perspective. From the personal perspective, what, IOC, did you think getting rid of wrestling would make me actually watch ballroom dancing? pftttt!

FightingSpirit wrote:Agree with the notion of potential wrestlers jumping over to judo; however, with another vote remaining to allow one more core sport into the olympics the international wrestling community is mounting a huge campaign with the aspirations of winning the vote for that last remaining olympic sport spot...

They will surely be able to pool enough "resources" to overcome karate etc. and get back into the olympics.

What some people are willing to do for a female MMA title shot:
Post-operative transgender female fighter Fallon Fox’s license under review

FightingSpirit wrote:What some people are willing to do for a female MMA title shot:
Post-operative transgender female fighter Fallon Fox’s license under review

She transitioned well before taking up MMA. It wasn't like Renee Richards, where she had a history in the sport prior to transitioning. Further, I doubt that she has much of an advantage at this point, post transition and with that many years of female hormones. Too bad she was outed before she was ready to do it herself - hate to see that sort of thing happen. She should be able to have the career she earns. Instead, she's going to have to deal with a heck of a lot more bias because of her gender identity and transition.

Stacey wrote:

FightingSpirit wrote:What some people are willing to do for a female MMA title shot:
Post-operative transgender female fighter Fallon Fox’s license under review

She transitioned well before taking up MMA. It wasn't like Renee Richards, where she had a history in the sport prior to transitioning. Further, I doubt that she has much of an advantage at this point, post transition and with that many years of female hormones. Too bad she was outed before she was ready to do it herself - hate to see that sort of thing happen. She should be able to have the career she earns. Instead, she's going to have to deal with a heck of a lot more bias because of her gender identity and transition.

I find this an ethically somewhat difficult topic to discuss online, even if the person has publicly revealed her situation. I am reluctant to discuss a private person's medical history on a public forum. However, there may be some merit to the reflecting on how rules should deal with the hypothetical case of transgendered people in combat sports.

It isn't as simple as exposure to female hormones. If one is only phenotypically female, but genetically male then there are some anatomo-physiological issues. For example, everyone will agree that 'genetics' is a factor in doing well in sport. Going through a transgender process does not change those genetics. Examples of this could be the relationship of the body's levers and attachment of the agonist muscles. One factor that would make a difference is whether the person became transgender, i.e. before or after puberty. Among the factors that determine strength and trainability there is not just the how 'big' a muscle is, but also the number of fibers, muscle fiber cross-sectional area, etc. The general thought (with some caveat) is that the number of muscle fibers is highly genetically determined and established at puberty. Training afterwards (in general) produces mostly hypertrophy or increase in size of the fibers, but not hyperplasia or increase in number of fibers (I am skipping the topic of satellite cells to keep the discussion simple). A genetic male will likely have more fibers than a genetic female, thus even if training bi an female-hormone physiological environment there is "more equipment available to train" than if one were a genetic female.

Puberty is a critical moment in establishing the number of fibers, and pre- and peripubertal activity may affect that too. In other words, in most (not all, but most) cases the societal-sociological circumstances and type of activities male children engage have different distribution than the activities the average female child engages. Because of that different preparation and the effects it may have on muscle fiber quantity, it may significantly have affected the "trainable equipment".

My reason for mentioning this is not to be disrespectful to the individual or start any controversy whatever, but simply to point out that it isn't as simple as one might think. Within the IOC Medical Committee the issue of gender verification/identity has been a major. In what I wrote above when I use the terms female and male, I am referring to XX and XY chromosome individuals, and not to the potential genetic variations such as Klinefelter and others to not overcomplicate the issue.

According to the IOC, she could compete in the Olympics as a woman. The IOC got rid of genetic testing because they discovered a number of xy females. Hard enough to find out you're xy, worse to have the IOC do it for you and accuse you of cheating.

Sure, gender is a bit different, but this woman has been a woman in her mind for a long time. According to her interview with SI, her father refused to believe she was a woman, trying to get her mentally converted to a gay male so that she could then be treated so she could become a conventional, heterosexual male. What manner of hell was that? Especially for somebody who mentally thinks of herself as a woman who's primarily sexually attracted to women?

The Girl Scouts will take children who identify as female, whether they have a penis or not, and whether they stay identified as female or not. Here, we have a woman who identified as female for as long as she could remember, who began her transition more than 10 years ago (probably the earliest she could), who's been psychologically evaluated as having a female mentality (whatever that means), and is now in MMA, and has been for the last 5 years. Nobody complained about beating or getting beaten by her. Now, however, FL is re-evaluating her license for her next fight and the MMA world is going to know her as a transgender, instead of a woman. I really hate that she was forced out by some idiot reporter who thought it was his/her right to out her. She did not deserve it.

Now, she runs the risk of becoming a joke for women in sports, a freak show for MMA, or compared with Lance Armstrong. She's worked hard to get where she is, and now, if people aren't understanding of her struggle and her transition, then all of her hard work could be down the tubes. Total shame - takes a lot of guts to transition and go through a second puberty. Takes a lot of guts to be in a combat sport once outed for your status as a transgendered female. And we wonder why people are afraid to come out as GLBT?

Stacey wrote:According to the IOC, she could compete in the Olympics as a woman. The IOC got rid of genetic testing because they discovered a number of xy females. Hard enough to find out you're xy, worse to have the IOC do it for you and accuse you of cheating.

Sure, gender is a bit different, but this woman has been a woman in her mind for a long time. According to her interview with SI, her father refused to believe she was a woman, trying to get her mentally converted to a gay male so that she could then be treated so she could become a conventional, heterosexual male. What manner of hell was that? Especially for somebody who mentally thinks of herself as a woman who's primarily sexually attracted to women?

The Girl Scouts will take children who identify as female, whether they have a penis or not, and whether they stay identified as female or not. Here, we have a woman who identified as female for as long as she could remember, who began her transition more than 10 years ago (probably the earliest she could), who's been psychologically evaluated as having a female mentality (whatever that means), and is now in MMA, and has been for the last 5 years. Nobody complained about beating or getting beaten by her. Now, however, FL is re-evaluating her license for her next fight and the MMA world is going to know her as a transgender, instead of a woman. I really hate that she was forced out by some idiot reporter who thought it was his/her right to out her. She did not deserve it.

Now, she runs the risk of becoming a joke for women in sports, a freak show for MMA, or compared with Lance Armstrong. She's worked hard to get where she is, and now, if people aren't understanding of her struggle and her transition, then all of her hard work could be down the tubes. Total shame - takes a lot of guts to transition and go through a second puberty. Takes a lot of guts to be in a combat sport once outed for your status as a transgendered female. And we wonder why people are afraid to come out as GLBT?

As you point out it is a complicated issue because in addition to the hard science that are the many personal and sociological issues. On top of those there now come legal issues with all or some of the potential consequences you mention. The IOC's history on this has been very long, very controversial, something that I have seen come on the table with regularity over the past 30 years. The IOC starts from the idea that people would start with equal chances and thus the one who wins does so as a result of his commitment and training. That's the fairytale. In reality people do not start with equal arms. Even if one puts aside gender, or Armstrong, there are many significant differences that may mediate one's training and outcome, things going from social situation, finances, parents, ethnicity, diet, and many others. contrary to gender and doping, most of these are historically not taken into effect, either because they are difficulty to standardize, measure, or are considered offensive and undesired. The same applies to 'doping', an ill-defined topic since in a sense people have used and still use ergogenic agents for ever; it only becomes 'doping' from the moment the ergogenic agent arrives on the list of prohibited products. Gender in simple terms (if one assumes that phenotype equals genotype, which evidently it does not always do) was easy to ascertain though for decades it also meant a humiliating situation for females, since the gender of males never had to be 'verified' as there was little reason for females to participate in male contests as a "fake male" ...

If one listens to stories from transgendered people they often have been to hell. It seems though that the situations that become most critical as perceived by non-transgendered people are limited to a number of situation:

1. competing in physical events with genetic females.
2. access to female changing rooms (there were several cases about this in the news lately)
3. initiating or establishing love/sexual relationships with heterosexual genetic males, where many testimonies I have heard the medical history is not promptly revealed, and situation could quickly escalate to outright dangerous because of the perception of the male and ensuing homophobic or anger reaction

In other words, it seems that one can almost anticipate that any of those three above situations will cause turbulence, whether it be with a reporter, hateful audience, a not necessary hateful but audience with a fundamentally different view whether scientifically ill informed or not, a potential adversary, or anyone else subject to the zillion of negative emotions humans can have and that may lead to unfortunate confrontations. I have had a number of transgendered students in college where I never saw any problem in class, but one obviously do not know how many incidents or hurtful comments (even if not intended that way) the person might be daily subject to. It do not have to be students or faculty but could just be a waiter in the student restaurant, or a funny look in Admissions. In any case nearly all of them dropped out which likely was not because everything was so warm and cozy. My point is that we may have as much sympathy as we want, their road is immensely difficult, as all the caveats you mention underline. In any case my reason for posting the link had nothing to do with the orientation or history of anyone; in fact, I did not even know until I read one of the posts higher up here.

CK,
regret the confusion with this additional link... The individual in the story from this transgender discussion is not infact one of the eleven women listed on the new UFC female roster... This subsequent discussion should probably be moved and posted within a seperate topic/thread... regrets..

FightingSpirit wrote:CK,
regret the confusion with this additional link... The individual in the story from this transgender discussion is not infact one of the eleven women listed on the new UFC female roster... This subsequent discussion should probably be moved and posted within a seperate topic/thread... regrets..

My confusion. Thanks for the correction !

Joe Rogan's take on the issue:

Warning: PG 13 due to crude language


http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=k6_7BOGUXHM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dk6_7BOGUXHM

JFTW wrote:Joe Rogan's take on the issue:

Warning: PG 13 due to crude language


http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=k6_7BOGUXHM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dk6_7BOGUXHM

By Rogan's logic, a FTM transexual should be able to fight women.

Stacey wrote:

By Rogan's logic, a FTM transexual should be able to fight women.

makes sense. but should a MTF transexual be able to fight women? that's the kicker.

I tend to side with this view.

Excerpt:

"What does the scientific/medical research suggest? Unfortunately, pitifully little, if anything. This very specific and important question has not been adequately and scientifically investigated. Many medical professionals have voiced well-phrased opinions regarding muscle mass and bone density, but none has cited specific, scientifically supported information that answers the athletic/physical performance capacity question. Hunches, gut feelings and anecdotal experience don't pass muster in the medical arena when a person's heath, well-being and life are truly at stake.

Until we better understand the physical/athletic performance capacity of transgender athletes, it is imprudent to allow participation in contact/combat sports. Merely hoping that it is a safe practice in an already inherently dangerous arena of contact/combat sports is unacceptable.

Once we know the facts, only then can we proceed safely."

One of my objections is that she lied on her application and said she was licensed in California when she was not.
She said that she thought she was licensed because she had received a receipt for the application.

Now, I have applied for many things - graduate school, admissions to high schools for my children, drivers licenses - and never once was I confused that the receipt of the application was anything but that.

Let's put this aside and suggest she had applied for a drivers license in California and had not received it, for some very innocent reason, say that she had not provided proof of insurance, and not because she had deliberately run over a bevy of nuns.

Now she goes to Florida and says she has a license in California and they issue her a Florida license. If anything happens - she accidentally runs over the neighbor's dog which happens to have won Westminster last month - I think she would end up in a world of trouble for obtaining her license under false pretenses.

I have a number of questions about Ms. Fox, some of which I addressed here,

http://drannmaria.blogspot.com/2013/03/transgender-competitors-in-mixed.html

But the first red flag for me was when she said she "mistakenly" thought she was licensed in California. I'm always very skeptical of mistakes that are in the individual's favor (so, I have noticed, is the IRS).

Maybe Stacy and Ms. Fox are both correct in that she was justified in her belief that if she was forthright she would be judged, ostracized and ridiculed. I have had this conversation with all of my children many times throughout their teen years, "Because I won't get my way if I tell the truth" is no justification for lying.

Stacey wrote:According to the IOC, she could compete in the Olympics as a woman. The IOC got rid of genetic testing because they discovered a number of xy females. Hard enough to find out you're xy, worse to have the IOC do it for you and accuse you of cheating.

Sure, gender is a bit different, but this woman has been a woman in her mind for a long time. According to her interview with SI, her father refused to believe she was a woman, trying to get her mentally converted to a gay male so that she could then be treated so she could become a conventional, heterosexual male. What manner of hell was that? Especially for somebody who mentally thinks of herself as a woman who's primarily sexually attracted to women?

The Girl Scouts will take children who identify as female, whether they have a penis or not, and whether they stay identified as female or not. Here, we have a woman who identified as female for as long as she could remember, who began her transition more than 10 years ago (probably the earliest she could), who's been psychologically evaluated as having a female mentality (whatever that means), and is now in MMA, and has been for the last 5 years. Nobody complained about beating or getting beaten by her. Now, however, FL is re-evaluating her license for her next fight and the MMA world is going to know her as a transgender, instead of a woman. I really hate that she was forced out by some idiot reporter who thought it was his/her right to out her. She did not deserve it.

Now, she runs the risk of becoming a joke for women in sports, a freak show for MMA, or compared with Lance Armstrong. She's worked hard to get where she is, and now, if people aren't understanding of her struggle and her transition, then all of her hard work could be down the tubes. Total shame - takes a lot of guts to transition and go through a second puberty. Takes a lot of guts to be in a combat sport once outed for your status as a transgendered female. And we wonder why people are afraid to come out as GLBT?

This has already been addressed on Southpark.

Can walk like a duck, can talk like a duck but can't ever lay eggs like a duck.

I support fair play and equal treatment and that's why I wouldn't allow transgender athletes to access combat sports unless they could have their own division just like the other genders do.

Cheers

On another note, sort of, a friend of mine Fiona from Australia has just signed to fight christine "cyborg" santos.

Should be interesting to see cyborg now they are starting to really test for hormones etc.

Cheers

Ricebale wrote:This has already been addressed on Southpark.

Can walk like a duck, can talk like a duck but can't ever lay eggs like a duck.

I support fair play and equal treatment and that's why I wouldn't allow transgender athletes to access combat sports unless they could have their own division just like the other genders do.

Cheers

There are plenty of women who can't "lay eggs", and plenty who could never "lay eggs"

I'm not knocking the literature about transgendered people. WHat I am acknowledging is gender itself. The IOC and others have had to wrestle with the notion of "what is gender", what makes a woman a woman, and a man a man. The history of sports trying to determine if a woman is a woman is fraught with problems, and to some extent, they've thrown up their hands in the matter. They got rid of the naked parade because it was fallible. They got rid of the chromosome tests because they were fallible. They got rid of a mess of other tests because hormonally there's a ton of variation in both genders. Naturally, there's a ton of variation. Does Ms. Fox fit into this ton of variation? Dunno, but probably, since we really haven't documented the edges of gender, nor paid a lot of attention to the areas of overlap.

I know women with big hands and big feet, hands and feet that probably rival Ms. Fox. I'm not one of them - I got stuck with the hands and feet of a 5' nothing woman on my 5'7 1/2" frame, which kind of pisses me off, or did more so when I was swimming and the size of those paddles really could have made a performance difference.

I'm not a medical professional. I cannot say, "this is a male, this is a female" with any certainty. I have no business saying that. The IOC discovered that when they started accusing women of cheating because of chromosome tests. There's just too much variability for there to be hard/firm lines drawn that say, "this is a woman, this is a man".

Is Ms. Fox an XY female? No, she's a transgendered woman. There are plenty of XY women out there who don't even know they are XY females. Is a F2M transgendered man an XX man? No, there are plenty of XX men out there who have no idea that they are XX men. And all of that is before we get into mosaicism and other "complications" of gender.

Stacey wrote:

Ricebale wrote:This has already been addressed on Southpark.

Can walk like a duck, can talk like a duck but can't ever lay eggs like a duck.

I support fair play and equal treatment and that's why I wouldn't allow transgender athletes to access combat sports unless they could have their own division just like the other genders do.

Cheers

There are plenty of women who can't "lay eggs", and plenty who could never "lay eggs"

That is indeed so. A guy who shoots blanks is still a guy and his reproductive status has little bearing on his sports performance. So indeed, let's not trivialize the topic.

Stacey wrote:
I'm not knocking the literature about transgendered people. WHat I am acknowledging is gender itself. The IOC and others have had to wrestle with the notion of "what is gender", what makes a woman a woman, and a man a man. The history of sports trying to determine if a woman is a woman is fraught with problems, and to some extent, they've thrown up their hands in the matter. They got rid of the naked parade because it was fallible. They got rid of the chromosome tests because they were fallible. They got rid of a mess of other tests because hormonally there's a ton of variation in both genders. Naturally, there's a ton of variation. Does Ms. Fox fit into this ton of variation? Dunno, but probably, since we really haven't documented the edges of gender, nor paid a lot of attention to the areas of overlap.

I know women with big hands and big feet, hands and feet that probably rival Ms. Fox. I'm not one of them - I got stuck with the hands and feet of a 5' nothing woman on my 5'7 1/2" frame, which kind of pisses me off, or did more so when I was swimming and the size of those paddles really could have made a performance difference.

I'm not a medical professional. I cannot say, "this is a male, this is a female" with any certainty. I have no business saying that. The IOC discovered that when they started accusing women of cheating because of chromosome tests. There's just too much variability for there to be hard/firm lines drawn that say, "this is a woman, this is a man".

Is Ms. Fox an XY female? No, she's a transgendered woman. There are plenty of XY women out there who don't even know they are XY females. Is a F2M transgendered man an XX man? No, there are plenty of XX men out there who have no idea that they are XX men. And all of that is before we get into mosaicism and other "complications" of gender.

I do not really want to publicly speak about this particular individual for reasons of privacy. However, the general problem, namely one of transgendered male-to-female athletes participating in the women's category of combat arts can still be addressed as a contemporary overall sports-sociological and sports medical issue of acute interest.

I think one has to be careful here and not mix "gender identity" and "genetics". As much as gender identity and absence of discrimination are important in equality, respect, happiness, these concepts have little bearing on someone's sports performance range. If Jimmy Pedro tomorrow decides to wear a dress and comes out that he feels like a woman, he is still Jimmy Pedro who will kick most guys' ass on this forum in a jûdô match. Thus gender identity has nothing to do with it.

As to IOC, they work in a funny way. You'd be surprised at how decisions are often really made. It's a bit like the retired spy who largely by himself is responsible for the Iraqi war and who deliberately gave false information on the so-called weapons of mass destruction. So, it isn't a team of world experts. It may be a team who formally decides but oftentimes they are pretty clueless and usually it is one or two people who have independently consulted one expert who really understands what it is about. One day I will tell you the story as to how come there was a marathon for women for the first time during the Los Angeles Olympics ... The story starts somewhere on a Saturday morning in a distant past during a Toxicology-slash-Sports Medical Assessment exam in Sports Medicine where the professor was in charge of the IOC Medical Committee ...

Anyhow, it is true that regarding the whole gender issue has known a long evolution within the IOC, and it is true as you say that the issue for a long time was humiliating for women when it came to the notorious "visual inspection". Of course there is a reason why the gender verification existed in the first place. The 1966 Winter Olympics women's downhill ski racing was won by Erika Schinegger alias Erik Schinegger. This 'woman' later biologically fathered a child:

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-19/sports/sp-422_1_gold-medal

Dora Ratjen in 1936 won the women's High Jump. She later lived under the name 'Heinrich Ratjen'.

These were biological men pretending to be biological women. The issue was not their gender identity, but there biological gender. Why is the biological gender of importance, because the IOC strives to remove intrinsic unfair advantages. There obviously also exist extrinsic unfair advantages, and an athlete from the US likely has better training opportunities, equipment and survival chances than one from Bangladesh. The whole doping rationale relies on the same issue of "intrinsic unfair advantage" as it changes the internal biological situation. Still, the IOC reasons in terms of potential advantage rather than real advantage. Suppose that your discipline is shooting, and you take anabolic steroids. They are going to be irrelevant on your shooting sports performance, yet you will be disqualified. So the actual real advantage does not matter. Similarly, it isn't just the discipline but also the nature of the drug. If you take morphine you will be disqualified, yet it is almost unfeasible to imagine any situation where this could get you an advantage. You might argue, but what if you have an injury ? Well the other effects which will decrease your alertness and have suppressing central effects will far outweigh that possible concern. Now, if as a man you decide to take your wife's oral contraceptives you won't fail a doping test, since they are not prohibited, yet these won't have the effect in men they have in females. Yet, a female who takes testosterone will fail doping texts. Thus the situation is different for testosterone and other anabolic steroids than for estrogens. The reason is already in their category name: 'anabolic' steroids. Estrogens are steroids, but are not anabolic. For that reason one can't come up with any realistic advantage a man might get from taking female hormones sportswise. On the other hand a woman taking male hormones will have numerous advantages for several sports.

This has some bearing on why there is a different treatment when it comes to medicine in males vs. females. There are other examples. Males never had to submit a non-pregnancy certificate; only women did. The reason is obvious: only women can get actually pregnant, and thus only in women there is potential risk for miscarriage and ensuing law suits, etc.

On the other hand, there are limits to what the IOC Medical Committee is able to do, even in situations that are extreme. There have been suspicions that during the 1970s women in certain DDR and Soviet Russian programs deliberately got pregnant and then had the fetus aborted solely to increase their sports performance. Indeed with pregnancy, progesterone sharply increases, and progesterone increases ventilation. Thus maxing progesterone, and then suddenly getting rid of those extra kilo's and well ... you understand the reasoning.

In the above we are talking medically simple cases: XY males and XX females, not genotypical intergender forms or hermaphrodites, Klinefelters and forms of mosaicism. A man has considerable advantages if able to participate in women's contests, but a woman has almost nothing but disadvantages and lower chances for medals in a male contests. There are obviously disciplines such as synchronized swimming, or ice skating pairs where women have advantages as far as they are in the women's role (lighter body mass), but as a biological men trying to compete with biological women in those aspects will be hard. Most males are larger, heavier, taller.

Since the IOC is interested in 'potential', or 'chance' rather than when there actually is a unreasonable disadvantage (the actual specific sports performance is multifactorial) there is little biological basis for allowing a transgendered man to woman to participate in women's division's. The medical situation is quite obvious. It's true as AnnMaria points out that there aren't experimental studies for obvious reasons (would have to be longitudinal, as the process of changing gender is a lengthy one that already starts way before corrective surgery with hormone treatment. Studies are, however, existent that demonstrate the effects of hormone treatment and also for full gender conversion on metabolic and hormonal parameters, even if these studies are not sports-related. Indeed the hormonal and metabolic internal environment of either gender starts to conform to biological women or men completely with increases or decreases in risks specific for that gender. However, this is no argument to justify participate in women's contests of a someone who transitioned from male to female. Why not ? Because (1) nothing prevents this new woman from the moment after she legally had her gender changed, and had the surgery for mere sports performance reasons to temporarily cut her female hormone treatment. She might well have had her junk removed, but testosterone is not merely produced in the testicles. It is also produced from peripheral conversion and because 'she' genetically still is a man, that conversion is higher and more effective than in a woman. (2) the transgendered man to woman has a much higher 'trainability' in relevant parameters than a genetic female. Why is that so ? Because number of muscle fibers is determined largely until the point of puberty. Therefore, this 'new' women will most likely have many more muscle fibers. Her training will therefore affect more muscle fibers than in a genetic female. In the production of strength and power, several things play a role. There is the size of the fibers (as generally produced through hypertrophic training and nutrition, and process that can evolve in either direction), but there is also the size of the lever, the location of the attachment/insertion, and the number of fibers. A transgendered female-to-male is advantaged in that area by her inborn equipment. Now whether that in the end will really result in a performance no genetic female can compete with is another question due to the multifactorial nature of sports performance. Likely the effect will be less pronounced in disciplines where times and records of females are very close or better than those of males. However, all political correctness aside, in combat in general the difference between males and females is substantial and no elite female fighter will be a match for an elite male fighter of the same body mass. In terms of doping control though, such a person in that case could not fail doping control since a sudden sharp increase in testosterone due toe temporary quitting estrogen supplementation is entirely natural and intrinsic. As said in the beginning, these are obviously biological issues and mentioned without prejudice with regard to the persons identity, or the respect we owe any person as a human being.

The theme of this thread originally was about progress for womens divisions being accepted as equals to mens to the general public, it has strayed a bit.

Whilst I feel sympathy for the plight of a transgender male to female who wishes to now engage in combat with natural born females I can't help but feel this issue is detracting from the progress of women in general.

I agree there is no easy answer and I also think that progress for females should be promoted strongly, this issue is not mainstream and is a seperate topic.

As the father of three girls I have a vested interest in global female rights advancement, I hope these other issues do not detract from that.

Cheers

speaking of the advancement of women in MMA, did anybody else catch this:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1573740-ufc-invites-men-women-to-tuf-18-rousey-tryouts-on-april-15-in-las-vegas

How cool is it that judo's own Rondadori will be a coach on TUF 18? That women are actually going to be competing in the TUF format? About time! Have great fun with it, Rondadori! (And kick ass and take arms at the UFC fight against the other female coach)