The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
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Just to clarify, transmen are almost never an issue people care about. This debate is usually focused on transwomen who may have even gone through puberty before transitioning.
If we accept that cismen have more muscle mass than ciswomen and that transitioning, physically, is a gradual process then there are two questions 1) after transitioning will transwomen ever be indistinguishable from ciswomen when it comes to sports and 2) how quickly does that happen.
We’ve only got a few pretty flawed papers to go by but they say that ciswomen and transwomen will always be distinguishable when it comes to sports. If those papers are wrong then it’d still be good to know how long it takes and what factors effect it (I.e. it’s likely that someone who fully went through puberty will take longer to adjust to the new hormones).