#1332 Cara Ocobock: Trans People in Sports

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lops, and today I'm joined by a return guest, Doctor Kara Okerbach. She's associate professor and director of the Human Energetics Lab at the University of Notre Dame. And today we're going to talk about trans women in women's sports, because, I mean, apparently that's a topic people have to talk about now, so, you know, but

00:28 Cara Ocobock: we ignore trans men entirely, but you know.

00:33 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, no, no, but I, I, I mean, putting the jokes aside, uh, I, I mean this is really, I mean, particularly what the Olympic Committee decided, uh, decided a few months ago, I mean it's. It's just pure BS, but I guess we're going to address that in a bit, but before we get into uh the sports bit directly, why would you say it's important not just when it comes to this topic, but also, uh, I don't know, anthropology more broadly to distinguish between sex and gender.

01:11 Cara Ocobock: Yeah, that's an excellent question and a, and a good place to start off. And we, we might even just discuss two of how one defines sex and the, the different variables that go into it at some point. Uh, BUT as I tell my students, so sex, however, we are specifically defining biological sex. IS your biological makeup. And I'm not necessarily a sex as a spectrum person. I kind of like the idea of sex is multimodal with multiple different inputs, and each input could have its own kind of sliding spectrum from one edge to the other. Uh, THAT is the biological makeup, and everybody is a little bit different, uh, and we all kind of have different combinations of the different variables that make up biological sex. And then gender is how you feel as a person and how you identify as a person. Uh, AND this is the kind of thing that A person themselves can change. But also, what has been defined as gender and gender roles varies drastically from place to place and over time as well. Uh, AND, you know, it is still currently a hot topic, particularly with an American culture right now of sex and gender, and And how we grapple with these different things. Uh, BUT both the biological aspect and the cultural aspect, cultural being and social being the, the gender and biological being the sex part of it. It absolutely impacts the way we interact with the world and the way the world interacts with us. Uh, AND so, I, I think that is a very important place of study and topic of study, because it has real implications for health, well-being, stress, exposures, environment. Uh, AND it's, like I said, a worthy topic of discussion and, and inquiry.

03:02 Ricardo Lopes: So when it comes to questions surrounding trans people in sports, as, and as you've already alluded to, apparently no one cares about trans men in sports whenever people uh discuss this topic or, um, I mean, get into hysterious. TRANS people in sports, it's always about trans women and we're going to talk about that, but do you think that uh sex assigned at birth, that is whether someone is male or female, should really be considered? I mean, is that really that important?

03:40 Cara Ocobock: Well, I'm, I'm gonna give you probably like a weird answer in that sex assigned at birth also isn't always right. Uh, I mean, doctors are making the decision based on what external genitalia they see. And sometimes that can be indeterminate, not just because a difference in sexual development, so like sex differences in sex development, that can happen too, and make that call a little bit more murky and, you know, a subjective call to some degree. But also, The trauma of birth itself can lead to temporary morphological changes in the penis or the clitoris or the labia, and that it might actually be kind of hard to tell, um, you know, right off the bat when a baby is born. And so, when it comes down to transgender athletes and or transgender individuals, Sex assigned at birth is not 100% accurate. Um, AND it also is not gonna necessarily tell you how that individual will be interacting with the world and how they will develop, um, after they are born. So there is a role for it, as there is a role for sometimes treating sex as a strict binary when we're asking questions about Evolution and genetics being passed down and things like that, and, or if we're dealing with historic demographic data in which we only get a female or male category. There are times where sex assigned at birth and that binary category is kind of what we have to work with. Uh, BUT that's rarely ever the case, or I shouldn't say rarely ever the case, but that's only one part of how we ask questions. Other parts of how we ask questions require far greater nuance than just what you were defined when you were born.

05:27 Ricardo Lopes: Right, but in the particular context of sports, I mean, is it really, or, or of course we have usually separate sports by sex, but, uh, but, but that's just something that we do, but we can question it, right? I mean, is it really something that we should do or not, and what I'm trying to ask you is, is it really that important whether someone is a male or a. Female when it comes to questions surrounding, for example, uh, fairness and fair play in sports, I mean, the, does the simple, the simple fact, not, not other bodily traits or athletic ability, uh, uh, actually we, I, I, um, I, I also want to ask you whether really there are uh established sex differences in terms of athletic ability, but just sex itself just by. Self, does it tell us enough information as to whether someone can fairly compete with another person of the same sex or the opposite sex? Yeah,

06:37 Cara Ocobock: so sex very loosely defined because as we talked about there, um, it does, it absolutely does make a difference. And there are on average differences, if we think of sex as a binary for the moment, there are on average differences between females and males. And who has the advantage depends on. Honestly, what sport we're talking about. Um, SO this is something that goes back to the woman, the hunter work that I, you know, we, you and I talked about, I don't know how, 2 years or something like that now, uh, 2 years ago, uh, that on average, females, when we control for differences in body size between females and males, females have greater lower body muscle mass, whereas males have greater upper body muscle mass. Males do have absolutely more muscle mass, and on average are taller and heavier. Uh, SO, females tend to have the advantage in endurance sports. And we're, we're seeing this really play out wonderfully this year in particular, uh, because multiple females have outright won and set overall records that includes females and males in ultra endurance events. There have been numerous females dominating the. YEAR. Uh, WHEREAS males, the, the, the sort of physiological attributes that would be with average stereotypical male in, in the sex, um, they're gonna be better at kind of the strength and speed burst style of sports. So there are absolutely some differences. It's gonna be bimodal, there's gonna be overlap, as always, but on average, there are, uh, conferred advantages to females in some areas, and conferred advantages to males in other areas.

08:17 Ricardo Lopes: Right, but I, I mean, don't you think that when we talk about sports, of course, usually when people bring up this topic, they're talking about er professional athletes, but shouldn't, shouldn't we er expand the conversation to include all kinds of sports, even er sports that people can participate in without being professional athletes. Because, of course, uh, maybe I was wondering if, uh, when we're talking about professional athletes, maybe those sex differences would be, er, bigger because we would be talking about, er, peak female performers and peak male performers because we, if we were to compare, I don't know, peak female performers with the average male. Maybe the difference wouldn't be that big.

09:13 Cara Ocobock: The difference is they aren't that big, but the differences are still there, and, you know, the gap is shrinking in, in many respects, especially when it comes to the ultra endurance, and, and part of that is research is finally starting to catch up. They have not caught up, but research is finally starting to catch up on how to better train. Female athletes, better help with nutrition and better help with recovery rather than just treating them like smaller males or not really coming in with a solid plan anyway. Uh, WE are getting far better at training, nourishing, and helping recover amongst our female athletes and males. And so we're seeing that gap shrink, which is also why I think we are starting to see females really coming into play and dominating in these ultra endurance events. We're, we're getting the numbers and we're getting the proper training in.

10:05 Ricardo Lopes: But uh when we're talking about er trans people and trans women specifically because that's usually the, the kinds of the people that er people who like to discuss this focus on, I mean, um, let's assume just for the sake of the argument because as you said, even the sex assigned at birth, sometimes people might get it wrong, but let's just assume that, Uh, Pretty much all the trans women out there, uh, were assigned male at birth and, uh, in terms of sex are males. I mean, does that just by itself, er, translate necessarily into questions surrounding whether it's fair for them to compete against cis women.

10:58 Cara Ocobock: Yeah. So, a recent study came out, I believe, just this past spring, May-ish. Oh, no, it was actually in February of this year, uh, but maybe I only came across it in May. It was this, it is the largest meta-analysis to date, comparing transgender women to cisgender women, and it's, uh, transgender women. Prior to transitioning and after transitioning. Uh, AND they also looked at cisgender men and transgender men as well. And this was a massive meta-analysis where we have close to 2500 transgender women and 2500 transgender men. So, I will also be 100% clear with this, this was not done on elite athletes, and I don't think This kind of study will be able to be done on elite transgender athletes, because I don't think we have the numbers. That's just such a tiny, tiny percent of the population that we can't do that kind of study at this point. Uh, BUT overall, comparing transgender women to cisgender women, they looked at what happened after transition and compared, uh, body fatness, muscle mass, and both of those were done absolute amounts and then relative to size, so height and whatnot. They also looked at strength differences and differences in VO2 max. And everything except one metric was not significantly different from cisgender women. So, once transgender women undergo transitioning, and it seems that two-year mark after transition, once they've been on hormone replacement therapy, Uh, gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy for 2 years. That's where things seem to have leveled out and whatever changes in the physiology have occurred within that 2-year period. Uh, SO, the only difference was in absolute muscle mass between transgender women and cisgender women, and transgender women did have absolutely more muscle mass. But that didn't translate into a Strength advantage when they tested strength of the upper body and they tested strength of the lower body, there were no significant differences between transgender women and cisgender women for strength or for VO2 max, so, a test of the endurance capacity there. The relative muscle mass and fat mass and relative fat mass, none of these things were significantly different between transgender women and cisgender women. And so this suggests, again, not among elite athletes, but what the athletics world called NAARPs, non-athletic regular people. So among the NAARPs, um, there were no significant differences in performance ability. Uh, WHICH makes the, you know, like you said, the, the, the ruling by the Olympic Committee really questionable, because it's not based on data, because the data is saying one thing and sporting bodies are saying another thing.

13:55 Ricardo Lopes: Right, we're going to talk more about that in a bit, but I was also wondering, uh, I mean, those. Uh, DIFFERENCES that we see even over by the end of those two years of hormone replacement therapy, there are trans women taking in estrogen. I mean, in physiologically, uh, I mean, what, where does that come from? Does that come from lowering testosterone, testosterone levels or is it some. Other thing, I mean I, I'm asking you that also because, and I guess we're going to get more into this when we talk about the Olympic Committee decision from a few months ago, um, that there have been cases I'm remembering, for example, Caster Semenya where, I mean, I don't think that there was any evidence that she was not. A cis woman, but just on the basis of her testosterone levels being er elevated compared to what is the average for a female, er, they decided to ban her from sports, I mean an actual cis woman, right, so that could even have implications for, for example, some intersex people. And I'm not saying that she was even intersex, but

15:20 Cara Ocobock: yeah,

15:21 Ricardo Lopes: that could also apply

15:22 Cara Ocobock: there. So there's, there are a couple of questions in here. So I'll do the short answer first to the first question, which, yes, transgender women who undergo transitioning, uh, with hormone, if you're going to do testosterone blockers, and then you're going to supplement with estrogen. Uh, THERE might be other things they do as well. But for transgender women, yes, that is the case there. Uh, SO when we're dealing with cases like Caster Semenya and then um the, the boxer as well, whose name

15:49 Ricardo Lopes: is Iman Khalif, yes,

15:51 Cara Ocobock: Iman Khalif, uh, so these are really interesting cases because more than anything, Ricardo, they demonstrate people's complete. Lack of understanding about what leads to sports performance and ability. We have, we as like a human population, anyone with sports, have decided to boil down athletic ability to one variable, and To most people, that's testosterone, and that's just insane to think that that like, one thing is going to be the determining factor in how you're actually going to perform, and that is absolutely not the case. When you take a look at testosterone levels. And performance. There's so much variation all over about how somebody performs and their, how high or low testosterone levels, excuse me, are. Um, AND so that is the first thing that really upsets me. And we're, we're also seeing this happening in US policy in the military right now that they're gonna be testing all the male soldiers for testosterone levels and then they're gonna be supplemented with testosterone. It comes from a just complete lack of understanding of what testosterone is, what it does, as well as natural human variation in testosterone levels. So, that's part one of that whole story is that we just People want to think testosterone is the end all be all of a lot of things, and sports being a main one, and that's just not true.

17:19 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, ALSO, uh, I mean, uh, uh, if I may add, before we, you get into the intersex, uh, aspect of it, I mean, uh, I, I think that one thing that people tend to get wrong is, OK, sure, there are, uh, there's calculations as to what is, what tends to be the average levels of testosterone for females and males in, in the of the human species, but that. Just averages, right, that that that doesn't exclude statistically outliers who might be at the upper end or the lower end of the variation or even outside of the of the curve,

18:02 Cara Ocobock: and that goes back to this idea of sex as a binary, which is you are either one or the other and there's no overlap, and that's. That's Again, rarely the case. Calling it bimodal is the, the far better way to do it, where the averages are going to be separate. But if you think of the bell curves, you're gonna have overlapping tails on those bell curves for just about all of the variables we associate with sex. Um, SO yeah, it is a bimodal thing, not a binary thing. Um, AND even bimodal sometimes doesn't fully express the range of variation that we see. Uh, SO the other part of this that's really interesting, that Caster Semen Caster Semenya especially, uh, before we get into Imman Khalif, uh, but for Caster Semenya, because when Caster was competing, this is when the Olympics also started implementing more narrow ranges of acceptable testosterone levels for female athletes, and this was based on a study that looked at testosterone levels among elite athletes and their performance in various track and field sports. And for the vast majority of those sports, including the event that Casher Semenya ran, which is middle distance running, they found no association between testosterone and performance. They did find an association with something like hammer throwing was one of them, that they found a positive association, increased testosterone, better hammer throw. But then the Olympic Committee takes this data and decides to implement the narrow range testosterone level for middle distance running, but not for hammer throwing, which went exactly opposite of what the study actually said. And and so this becomes a question of what in the world they're thinking was, the rationale behind this was, when, again, the evidence did not back up the policy they were implementing. Uh, SO that's the one thing about the Caster Semenya case that drives me absolutely insane, is that a study literally funded by the International Olympic Committee. Did not back up the policy the committee ended up implementing. It was just bonkers to me. Uh, AND so the other part of it that I, I think is another really important thing to understand, and it goes back to your point about how there's this natural range of human variation, and you're gonna have people clustered in the middle, and then you have the tails coming out in the end with the more extreme low or extreme high levels in testosterone in this case. The thing is, is that everyone operates within their own natural range. We all have our own individual ranges, and our bodies operate within our own range, which means that's our homeostatic condition, that's our happy medium. If you are telling Caster Semenya she has to lower her testosterone levels in order to compete. That's not just going to affect her performance, it's going to affect every part of her physiology and likely lead to her feeling like garbage overall, and not being a happy functioning human being in the world, forcing people to be outside of what their natural ranges are, to fit within a rule that's not actually backed by evidence, that is unethical, inhumane, immoral, all of the things that you can put onto that, you are damaging a person. Uh, TO fit within, again, a lack of evidence-based policy.

21:27 Ricardo Lopes: I also think that it's kind of nonsensical because er when people that worry about trans women in women's sports talk about it, it's always like, oh we have to divide people by sex, oh but then Caster Semenya comes around and suddenly it's about hormone. Levels, so is it sex or

21:50 Cara Ocobock: is it hormone levels, is it hormone levels? Is it because,

21:54 Ricardo Lopes: because if, because if it's hormone levels, then, uh, I mean, should we just, should we start dividing people by hormone levels now, whether they're female. Or male, it doesn't matter anymore. It's just that that they have to have a close, they have to be close in terms of their hormone levels or. Yeah,

22:17 Cara Ocobock: I mean, and this is the thing, and I don't think I necessarily have what would be considered a satisfying answer to how we should actually implement policies and rules on all of this. But trying to define sex based on one variable and one variable only is always going to lead to failure. They, they like, if that's just the way it is, whether it be hormone levels, I've seen people, I think my new quote unquote favorite definition by meaning I don't think it's good at all, and it's stupid, is based on what gametes you should or would produce. And like, this sounds not like a hypothetical. And it's like, so you have to come up with these hypothetical gametes, and then what happens when, you know, somebody reaches menopause and no longer produces gametes, all of these things. And so I, I find such narrow definitions to not fit the reality of actual human variation. Um, AND, and people seem very, very willing, unfortunately, to go with easy boxes rather than grappling. What, what's honestly a beautiful range of variation that makes us so kind of cool. I gotta say.

23:25 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, BUT do you think that perhaps, uh, whether sex is more or less relevant in terms of sports fairness would depend on, on the kind of sport we're talking about.

23:40 Cara Ocobock: Yeah, so this goes back to, I think I had mentioned it earlier, that there are certain types of activities where females seem to have the advantage. And there are certain types of activities that males seem to have an advantage. I, I think at the high school up level, once puberty does kick in and you start seeing more divergence, it does make sense in, in some ways for at least those like competing in hopes of getting scholarships, going pro, making money, where there's a lot on the line. Uh, FOR somebody's life, it does make sense to separate sexes. Um, ANYTHING that it doesn't matter, and especially youth sports, I see very little benefit to separating the sexes, and I think it would honestly be a whole lot better to bring them together. Um, I've watched my niece play soccer. This was a few years ago when she was much younger, but like, all six year olds are kind of terrible at Soccer, whether they're girls or boys, why are we separating the girls from the boys, and, you know, ages 6 to 10, soccer. That's silliness to me, and it would probably be a lot better for the world if boys and girls started interacting more at younger ages in collegial ways, rather than antagonistic ways.

24:57 Ricardo Lopes: OK, another question is, er, and of course I want to ask you this because people always make a huge fuss and come up with moral panic surrounding trans women in women's sports. What do we actually know about that? I mean, do trans women really, er, necessarily. Have an unfair advantage some people claim and, and by the way, and by the way, related to that, is there really any data out there to support the idea that whenever trans women start competing with cis women that they just suddenly dominate every sport out there.

25:43 Cara Ocobock: Well, we haven't seen that yet. That's the easy question to answer right off the bat. We don't see transgender women dominating in cisgender women's sports. Everyone will point to the Leah Thomas case. And if you actually look into Leah Thomas's background, prior to transitioning, Leah Thomas was actually holding records at UPenn for swimming in the men's division. Many people like to point to, like, the overall national ranking, which was pretty terrible for Leah Thomas pre-transition. That was based on one tournament for which Leah Thomas didn't actually prep for that tournament. It wasn't the whole body of Leah Thomas's swimming career prior to transition. And if you look at Leah Thomas's times, even the year that she won, uh, the championship, there are, if you compare her times to like the past 10 years before Leah Thomas competed in the women's division, there are years she wouldn't have even made the top 10. So, like, the idea that she's dominating, she had a good year. It turned out the the field of competitors that year were maybe not as strong as previous years, and so she had a really good year and won that. Um, THAT is probably the only case that people can point to of like someone doing well, but not dominating the way people dominate. Leah Thomas lost many a race to many a cisgender women, so it's just like. It's kind of mind boggling to me in some ways that We'll get to that part later about the, the various policies, but we don't see transgender women dominating in cisgender women's sports. That's just not happening. Uh, PART of it is also, we're talking about such a tiny, tiny percentage of the population, um, 0.06% of all Americans identify as transgender. How many of them are athlete, how many of them are transgender women? How many of them are athletes, how many of them are athletes at an elite level, and then break that down by sport. I mean, but right before the NCAA ban came out, we were talking about a total of 10 transgender athletes at the collegiate level. 10 So the moral,

28:06 Ricardo Lopes: so we're, we're talking, we're talking about, we're talking about at most double digits among probably hundreds of thousands of elite athletes in

28:17 Cara Ocobock: America. Correct, correct. I think we're up over 500,000 in the NCAA student athletes, something around that, um. Yeah, and it ends up being like 0.001%, I think is the, the percentage I calculated when I did this for my class, a tiny percentage. Uh, AND so we are, this is also why when we talk about the data, it's gonna be very hard to get numbers on elite athletes if we're talking about 0.001%. Uh, that's gonna be a tough thing to get a large enough sample size to have a detailed analysis, which is why we have to rely on analysis of transgender individuals who are not elite athletes. We're just gonna have a bigger pool of people to draw from.

28:59 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and the other thing, and we'll probably come back to this when we talk about directly about the Olympic Committee decision from a few months ago. I mean, the other, the other, sometimes people say, oh then trans people should have their own category. First of all, how? If they're, they, they're such a little number, how would they have their own. Category that would make no sense at all and then uh I mean this is also a matter of course people like to focus on fairness, but this is also a matter I think of human rights, right, because I mean you have to allow everyone to have the opportunity to compete in sports in some way, right?

29:46 Cara Ocobock: Um, YEAH, so the question of fairness, this is something that comes up all the time. Uh, AND when talking about this in my class the other day, There are a lot of athletes in my class. I am currently teaching 1/6 of all student athletes at Notre Dame. So I have a lot of student athletes in my class right now. And this was a big topic and an uncomfortable topic for them to really grapple with. Uh, AND one of the things that they struggled with is the idea that we do allow for competitive advantages in sport. We do. If we didn't, there wouldn't be winners and losers. Somebody is going to have to have a competitive advantage, or there are going to be ties in every single thing. Like, that's true. We don't put height restrictions on people in the NBA and WNBA. We don't do that. We don't put size limits on linemen in football, like, We allow for advantages. And then the real question becomes, when does an advantage become outsized or insurmountable? And that's when we have to turn to the studies that I talked about earlier, that one big meta-analysis looking at, is there actually a significant difference between these things? And, and my students come back like, there are all these These non-significant advantages, because we're talking about milliseconds and microseconds. I'm like, OK, but how is that different than this is different? Because we do allow for advantages and things. Why are we putting these people in a different category when I have shown you the data that suggests transgender women do not retain an advantage once they have transitioned? Um, AND, and it, people struggle with seeing this data. Um, I had students ask, well, how do we know the transgender individuals weren't underperforming during this study in order to make it seem like transgender individuals don't have an advantage. And that question really took me back about The way students are viewing this data and trying to find ways to discredit it. And why wouldn't they ask, are the cisgender people maybe tanking their performance to make it look like transgender people do have an advantage? That question never popped into their heads, and it's because we're coming in with this preconceived notion that transgender women immediately have an outsized advantage over cisgender women. And the data doesn't fit with those preconceived notions, and so you see people twisting themselves in all sorts of different ways to try to discredit what is a solid study.

32:25 Ricardo Lopes: I, I mean, it, it, I guess that if the obsession is so much with particular kinds of physical advantages, then, uh, should we have banned Michael Phelps from swimming? Should we have banned Usain Bolt from running? Should we have banned Lionel Messi from soccer? I mean,

32:47 Cara Ocobock: yeah, that's the thing, and you know, Michael Phelps is an even more interesting case because he has an interesting genetic mutation where his body. DOESN'T produce lactate the way the rest of our bodies do. And so he doesn't get the lactate burn during, you know, his swimming sprints. Should we start testing for those kinds of weird genetic mutations? And it's so, you bring up these excellent points and that, you know, we do allow for these advantages. And The moment, at the moment, the data is suggesting that there isn't a significant or outside outsized advantage of transgender women athletes over cisgender women athletes.

33:25 Ricardo Lopes: Right, so let's focus now directly on the Olympic Committee decision to basically ban trans women from competing in women's sports via via testing positive for the SRY gene. So uh first of all, tell us a little bit. Whether even this SRY gene testing makes sense at all, I mean, is someone, a male or a man just because they have the SRY gene?

34:02 Cara Ocobock: No, the simple answer is no. Just because somebody has a gene does not mean that that gene is going to follow along and turn on the developmental pathway, the way we, might typically expect someone with an SRY gene to have. And this is where the, the case of, um, uh, Kalief comes in. Because she, and I also know that it's, it's hard to get good solid information on Kalief, because these are private medical records. And so they're, you know, there are rumors and things floating all over the place about, you know, if this is a difference in sexual development, or if this is a transgender individual, so on and so forth. Uh, BUT by all accounts, from what I can tell, uh, Kalief has two X chromosomes, but also has an SRY gene. Uh, BUT developed along the female pathway, even despite the SRY gene there, but has naturally higher testosterone levels, likely because of the SRY gene. And she had even undergone treatment to lower her natural testosterone levels before. Competing in the Olympics. And I believe she had done so for two-ish years, uh, prior to the most recent Summer Olympics. So, just the presence of an SR SRY gene does not indicate that you are quote unquote male or you again, have some. Undue advantage over those who don't have an SRY gene. Again, people want to make things really hard and fast in these very tight closed boxes, very specifically defined. But biology is never that clean cut. Biology is messy. Um, AND that's a good thing, at least for evolution. If we don't have lots of variation, there's nothing for evolution to act on. Uh, A side note there. So no, the existence alone of an SRY gene is not going to indicate an advantage, nor should it be the sole indicator diagnostic test for somebody's ability to participate in one category of sport versus another.

36:01 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and the thing about the case of Imman Khalif is that it also brings us back to how we think about human variation even within each sex, right, because I mean I think that I saw a lot back in 2024 was people assuming that she must have been or she must not have been a cis woman, she, she should have been. Like a trans woman or at the very least intersex just because of her appearance and I mean really, really, are we really going to say that someone doesn't look enough of a woman or enough of a man to make decisions on that basis?

36:50 Cara Ocobock: Yes, this is where we're at, Ricardo, and this is also the extremely. Concerning part of all the various policies and legislation going on here in the United States, especially for girls' sports, youth sports. We, there are plenty of anecdotal accounts, and I'm sure a full study will come out about this at some point, of cisgender girls having their sex and their gender questioned by parents on opposing teams, that they're trying to use the, the existence of transgender athletes as a cudgel. And calling out, you know, suspicion, and what is that gonna do to a child? Like, you gotta be kidding me with this, or this whole thought of, like, there are gonna be genital exams of young children before they're allowed to participate in sports, like, This all goes back to the gender aspect, uh, where we kind of started this conversation of people have very highly defined, very specific ideas of what a woman is supposed to look like, act like, and be like. And the same thing for men, that they're supposed to look, act, and be a certain way. And they're not allowing for what the reality of humanity is, which is one, gender is a very fluid thing over time and space, not just within a lifespan, but over generations, this kind of thing has changed. And so people are using this as a weapon, and it's only going to cause harm, especially the way it's being utilized. Uh, YOU know, I have been told I lift like a man, I might as well be a man. Like, so, I was literally told that in the gym. And again, this goes back to a stereotype of what women should be like and what we're apparently capable of doing, all based on really old outdated stereotypes that just need to die.

38:43 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, women who are too tall, who have mustaches or something like that, they're not real women, right? They're they're, they're faking it.

38:56 Cara Ocobock: Of course, of course, and yeah, so basing it on appearance, I, I mean. Uh, IT makes me sad. Honestly, when it comes down to it, it just makes me sad for the harm it is going to cause people. Um, AND it makes it even harder for, for transgender individuals who are already incredibly vulnerable and susceptible to violence, um, and, and, and suicidal ideation because of those societal violence against them. There are no benefits to this,

39:29 Ricardo Lopes: and everything, and everything surrounding this is just so silly because I mean, even if they. Even if they saw Imman Caliph's genitalia and it was female, would that even be enough?

39:45 Cara Ocobock: There's nothing, nothing is ever enough. Like that's the thing.

39:49 Ricardo Lopes: And the other thing is, if she had female genitalia, I, I mean, is the simple fact that someone has female genitalia, does that just by itself make them a man or a woman? I mean, is that enough or?

40:05 Cara Ocobock: No, like, you know, these are the things, and like, it, it's just, this is when, you know, going back to the Olympic policy and the NCAA and what we're seeing in the United States about, you know, controlling girls' sports. This is a solution in search of a problem. Transgender women in sports is not a problem. We are, and if you look throughout human history, and I, I think of it in American history, cause, you know, American centric, American, of course, and especially in sports, we have always found ways to exclude some minority group or another. We have been doing this for hundreds of years, and right now that group is transgender individuals. Um, AND, you know, I tell my students this because I'm now much older than my students, um, that I used to be, you know, 10 years ago, but Oh In grad school, my gay friends could not get married. And then legislation passed in which they could have the legal rights of married couples. I saw, and I lived through the period where it was the gay and lesbian community was the ones being excluded and, you know, having rights taken away from them. And then I saw legislation get enacted. I saw the moral panic of like, oh, this is going to ruin the institution of marriage. And clearly that has not happened, you know, now that we have legally allowed uh for gay marriage, and this is the thing, there's always a new cycle of exclusion. There's always gonna be some cycle of exclusion, there's gonna be something, and, and right now we are in the, the transgender individual exclusionary period. And I very much hope that it ends soon, because it is, it's harming people. Uh, IT'S harming real people. Uh, AND if I could put in, like, there's an amazing documentary, uh, following three transgender high school athletes called Changing the Game. And two of them are transgender women, and one of them is a transgender man, and it takes you through what their kind of day to day life is and the kinds of things that parents are shouting at them, um, and other student athletes are shouting at them. It gives you a really in-depth look of what that lived experience is, and it's really eye-opening to understand the actual human impact of these policies going into place.

42:39 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and the other thing I mean about the Olympic Committee decision or their ruling was they, if I remember correctly, they were exempting people who have a difference of sexual development like con congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and there was another exemption, I, I can't remember which was the other one from. Uh, I mean, if they had that, they could still participate in women's sports. But I mean, what I, what do they really mean by that? Do they mean that someone who has such a difference of sexual development is inherently a female, but it's just it it just so happens that they have a uh elevated levels of testosterone or, I mean, how, how. How is this supposed to work? Yeah,

43:34 Cara Ocobock: that I, I don't know how it's supposed to work. That's a good question for the Olympic Committee, and you might be thinking of androgen insensitivity disorder. That is one where an individual, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

43:44 Ricardo Lopes: that's, that's right. That's right, yeah,

43:46 Cara Ocobock: the, the XY chromosomes of the SRY gene, but their body doesn't make the receptors to like read testosterone. So they can have crazy high testosterone levels, but it's not actually active in the body doing anything. Um, AND so, yeah, that's one of the common ones is the androgen insensitivity disorder would be allowed. But again, what are we basing this on? We're again, basing this on testosterone levels and considering that to be the secret sauce to success in all things. And that is not how bodies work. There isn't one variable that is going to be controlling whether you win that gold medal or not win that gold medal. Uh, AND so, I feel like these rules are rather arbitrary, and if I'm honest, they're based on vibes, and the vibe right now is we're gonna ban people because we don't know, even though the data says one thing, we're gonna hold out until maybe there's hypothetical data in the future that says we should ban them, and yay us. But You need to be making your policy on the data in front of you, not hopeful hypothetical data you may or may not get in the future. That is a dangerous place to be in if we are making policy based on hope or vibes.

45:02 Ricardo Lopes: Also, because particularly when it comes to the Olympics, if I remember correctly, they were, they allowed for trans women to participate in women's sports for, for more. 20 years, I think they first allowed it in 2002 or somewhere around that and then now even with them not having any data from their own competitions to suggest that uh I mean trans women were suddenly dominating women's sports as we've already tackled that issue here. Or trans women having a particularly big unfair advantage, then out of left field they make this decision. I mean it seems pretty obvious to me that it was 100% a political decision and not a scientific decision or a decision based on any data or evidence.

46:02 Cara Ocobock: Yep, you and I are in complete agreement. I mean, as we talked about that one paper. The evidence does not support the policy. Um, THEY'RE making the policy on politics, vibes, whatever. But again, the IOC has often made, especially in terms of sexism, they don't make policy based on the data. They, I'm not sure what is actually going into their decision-making process. And if we want to start limiting testosterone levels, why are we not cutting males off with abnormally high testosterone levels, naturally, normally. Abnormally high testosterone levels. They don't put an upper limit on that. There's gonna be the performance enhancing drug level. But what about somebody who just has, like, at the higher end of that bell curve? Why aren't we policing male testosterone levels the way we're policing female testosterone levels? Um, THEY don't have the data to back up their policy, and that's a fact.

46:56 Ricardo Lopes: And why do you think that people apparently do not care at all about discussing a trans man? I mean, do you think that there's perhaps an element, of course this would be more of a I guess a social anthropology or sociology question, but do you think that there could possibly be an element of misogyny here?

47:21 Cara Ocobock: That's exactly what it is. I was going to say misogyny and sexism. This all goes into policing women, uh, and this idea that women or females are inherently inferior to males. That's what this is based on. And so in this view, a transgender man is not a man, they're a woman in this view. Uh, AND so because they're quote unquote a woman, they're not gonna be able to compete anyway. Even though there have been plenty of documentations of transgender men actually doing really well in their sports, um, and beating out cisgender men, uh, that doesn't fit that narrative. The narrative is not about transgender individuals and unfairness in sports. The, the, the whole thing is about. Females are inferior to males, and that underlying assumption is driving all of these decision-making processes.

48:13 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and another thing that I find really curious and I think also gives away the game that these more conservative right wing people are trying to play here is that. I mean, they never really cared about women's sports.

48:33 Cara Ocobock: How many WNBA games would they go to? I mean, I mean that that

48:37 Ricardo Lopes: that's, that's just the way it is, they never cared about it. Then suddenly trans women come into the picture and, and suddenly. Oh my God, we're so worried about fairness in women's sports. I mean, I'm always like, oh, you care so much about women's sports, which sports do you follow? I mean, name me 5 soccer players, female soccer players. You watch tennis. Name me 5 tennis players who are not named Serena Williams, and they can't.

49:07 Cara Ocobock: That's the thing. And, you know, it's, it is like we're protecting women and we're protecting women's sports. Like, you have never supported women's sports. You only just now care. You also don't actually care about protecting women because transgender women are not a threat to cisgender women. In the social, like the bathroom laws and all of these things. It's cisgender men who are the danger to, to both transgender women and cisgender women. You don't care about protecting anybody. You care about excluding, you care about keeping people angry. Uh, AND using this as a talking point to, to rile up the masses and get them to the voting box, if you say, You know, the transgender women are coming for your daughters. Like, it, it's all about rousing up rage and getting that kind of support, because that is an easy thing for people to latch onto rather than grapple with real problems, like real sexual violence. Uh, AND, and we're seeing this play out again now with the Cornell Seven case of like, all right, I don't, I don't think transgender individuals were involved in that case whatsoever, but, you know. I also just finished listening to the, uh, the book by Chanel Miller, uh, that was the Brock Turner rape case at Stanford. And the way that case was handled of like, that is not about protecting women. This is about, you know, comforting the perpetrator here and not about justice for the victim. Um. We, we care too much about men's feelings in these realms than we do about actual supporting women's sports. So actually putting in policy that helps to protect women and increase safety, actually putting in policy that doesn't make it so difficult to report sexual assault and have it properly investigated. These are the transgender women in sports argument is a distraction from real problems.

51:03 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, also because, uh, very curiously as well, it seems that er whether they consider someone to be a real woman, a real trans woman, or they call them a man, it depends on what favors their narrative because if, for example, if for example tomorrow someone would go into a. ' s bathroom and would violate the seized woman, then they would say if, if they were er um if their appearance was like a woman and if they identified themselves as a trans woman, then for them it would be a real trans woman, it wouldn't be a man because the crime statistics would would have to be under trans women and not men. But, but, but, but otherwise they say that trans women don't even exist. So for them they're all men.

52:01 Cara Ocobock: Yeah, yeah, it is. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance going on when trying to grapple with the reality of this, um, and I, yeah, like I said, it's a distraction. These policies are a solution in search of a problem, uh, and I would much rather see our time and energy be spent on solving real problems.

52:20 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, but, but look, just one last question, and, and since you, you also practice sports and all of that, I mean, what do you think that when it comes to people being able to have access to sports, to sports facilities, to be able to practice sports, whether it's at a professional level or not, and also In terms of human rights, people being able to, of course, broadly access sports and have opportunity to become professional athletes and even questions surrounding fairness. I mean, what are really the things that you think people should focus on if they say that they care so much about, in this case, women's sports,

53:09 Cara Ocobock: so. What people should focus, to make sure I get the question, what should people focus on if they say they care about women's sports? BOIL it. OK, good. Just making sure that I got it all. They need to focus first and foremost on research. Um, AS I said before, we're getting better at researching how women operate within sports science and getting female-specific data on this stuff that needs to drastically improve. We still don't have a full picture of how the menstrual cycle impacts performance. We still don't have a full picture of how birth control impacts performance. That's insane. Absolutely insane. Uh, AND then I think we also need to be, if we want, if we care about women in sports, we need to think about at the pro one, creating more professional leagues. We have seen the WNBA, the Women's Hockey League is kicking up and drawing big crowds, which is pretty great to see. Um,

53:58 Ricardo Lopes: AND how about more investment. That that's the

54:02 Cara Ocobock: thing. So more investment in those teams and the WNBA has made great strides with their players' union in trying to get better pay and better travel options, and that needs to happen. I don't want to hear any excuses from people saying the NBA has been subsidizing the WNBA. It took almost 40 years of the NBA being in existence to turn a profit. So all those people complaining about the NBA subsidizing WNBA need to learn their NBA history first and foremost. Uh, SO investing in the teams, promoting, like, we should see just as many ads. What was it that I saw the other day? It was a WNBA poster for the WNBA Atlanta team, and they had actual men's Atlanta NBA players on the promo poster for the women's team. What is that? That is insane to me. Anyway, um. We need to invest in the teams we have. We need to invest to actually increase more professional teams for women. We need to improve the research. We also need to start thinking about how to best support women on these teams, because their, their age range of when they are best in playing professionally is also the most likely time that they're gonna want to have kids, if they want to have children. So how are we properly supporting mothers and families in women's professional sports? How are we dealing with their, like, training during pregnancy and after to get them back into playing shape after pregnancy? These are massive areas that if you want to support women's sports, do that. And go to women's high school games, go to women's college games, don't just go to the men's sports. If you're gonna complain about supporting women's sports, actually do things to support women's sports. Put the effort in.

55:52 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and also I guess that, for example, people tend to say, oh my God, I don't watch women's sports because it's so boring, it's such low quality compared to men's sports, but then suddenly when they get more televised, when they get more marketing and publicity, then suddenly people start watching it. And find out that they're actually great. I mean, I remember just a few years ago, uh, the UFA Champions League women's final. I mean, it was in Camp Nou in Barcelona, and there were more than 90,000 people at the stadium. I mean that's a ridiculous number even, even for male sports, so

56:38 Cara Ocobock: yeah. This is the thing, is like, people will watch, this is terrible to say, but it is kind of true. People will watch what they're told to watch. So if you start promoting, if you start flashing more commercials for women's sports and putting it on more premier channels, and not just, I don't know, ESPN 8, whatever, like people are going to watch it. Uh, SO. Once you start putting more, and here's the thing, is it is actually starting to change now, uh, because media companies are realizing how much money they make off of people watching women's sports and women's sports advertising, and like, oh yes, women play and watch sports. So, yeah, maybe include us in your advertising campaigns. So, it's profitable to support women's sports. So let's kind of do that more, and then take some of that profit and put it back into women's sports.

57:32 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, great. So, uh, it's been a great discussion, Doctor Rockerbach. It's always great to have you on the show. And just before we go, where can people find your work on the internet? Uh,

57:44 Cara Ocobock: SO I'm barely on social media anymore, thanks to women the hunter vile people coming after me. Uh, BUT my professional website is still up and running, so if you literally just Google Kara Akabach and Notre Dame. You will find my department website, as well as my professional link to my own website there. You can also email me, which I'm terrified to do when talking about transgender athletes, because I'm sure more hate will come my way, uh, but it's COCO B O C K at ND.edu.

58:16 Ricardo Lopes: Well, don't worry because I'm going to promote the interview on Twitter, so I mean if people get come after me.

58:25 Cara Ocobock: I will have a whole new series of hate mail in my inbox.

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