(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Crack scientists in the U.S. and UK have discovered what most people already knew: Biological sex matters in sports.
The scientists found that biological sex is a better predictor for sports outcomes than one’s preferred gender identity—in other words, men tend to outperform women, regardless of their preferred pronouns.
Astonishing news https://t.co/MXa9hhk2Ih pic.twitter.com/jWspZ4lYx1
— Fiona (@DerryBanShee) December 21, 2023
To reach this stunning conclusion, Dr. John Armstrong of King’s College London, Dr Alice Sullivan of University College London and independent U.S. researcher George M Perry studied the performance of people who competed in the non-binary category of 21 races in the New York Road Runners database.
“The researchers found a sex gap in race times between athletes who identify as non-binary, and that there is no evidence that the gap between biological males and biological females is less for athletes who identify as non-binary,” a summary of the study said—a convoluted way of saying that biological men were just as much faster than biological women in the non-binary category as they were when separated by sex.
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“The results also indicate that non-binary athletes may have slower race times than other athletes once sex and age are controlled for.”
According to the study, the researchers measured 166 race times achieved by non-binary athletes within a data set of 85,173 total race times. Researchers found the non-binary runners’ biological sex by looking up their past races when they competed as a male or female, or by using Social Security Administration data.
Commenting on his results, Dr. Armstrong, said: “Gender identity is clearly important to many people, but nevertheless sex matters.
“Given the lack of empirical evidence supporting gender-identity theory, one should not assume by default that gender-identity is a more powerful explanatory variable than sex. Being an objectively measurable binary variable, sex has considerable explanatory advantages over gender identity,” he added.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.