Women’s soccer may be about to get a testosterone boost.

As reported by the Daily Mail, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) — soccer’s international governing body — might end its testosterone-level requirements for males who identify as women.

The ruling body’s draft framework has removed its testosterone threshold for transgender women and proposed that footballers should be allowed to compete as their self-identified gender.

“The new regulations,” the outlet makes clear, “are still at the consultation stage and it is understood that some members of FIFA’s senior management are unconvinced that they should be published in their current form.”

Obviously, if the testosterone requirements are dropped, women’s soccer will be more ready than ever for males to dominate.

The Daily Mail calls the prospect a “radical development.”

It’s a noted contrast to cycling:

Cycling’s ruling body, the UCI, last week tightened their eligibility criteria for the female category, having been sparked into a review by the case of the British trans-cyclist Emily Bridges.

The UCI lowered the testosterone limit from five to 2.5 nanomoles per litre and doubled the length of time a trans-athlete must suppress her testosterone to within this range to two years.

FIFA, however, following an internal review that began in 2020, have dropped their old limit of five nmole/L over 12 months and recommended that no threshold is adopted.

FIFA may instead look at puberty:

[FIFA has] proposed that a transgender woman should not be allowed to compete in the female category if she has retained a competitive advantage as a result of male puberty. How that would be determined is unclear but a panel of independent experts from the fields of medicine, psychology, law and human rights would be called to assess each individual case.

In 2019, MMA commentator Joe Rogan sounded off on differences in sexual development related to athletics. He listed male advantages apart from adult hormone levels:

“[I]f you’re a woman, and you’re a natural woman, and you don’t take any extra hormones or male hormones, you’re not taking steroids or any sort of performance-enhancing drugs, you’re doing your very best to compete and you’re at the top of the heap, and someone comes along and they were a man for 30 years, and decides they’re going to be a woman…and competes as a woman and destroys records and dominates you in that sport, that’s [nonsense]. … That’s a person who is biologically a male, and who was a male for 30+ years of having testosterone run through their body and affect their tendon strength, and affect the shape of their bones and the mechanical advantages of the male hips vs. the female hips, and then they’re competing with smaller people who have been a woman their whole life. It’s not fair. It is as much cheating as taking steroids when the other person doesn’t or taking performance-enhancing drugs when the other person doesn’t. … Maybe even more so, because you also have — there’s a bunch of advantages in terms of reaction time that males enjoy. It’s some significant difference in reaction time between males and even untrained males vs. female professional athletes.”

Speaking on the soccer situation, World Rowing’s Sports Medicine Commission Chair Jurgen Steinacker seemed to indicate he’s of a mind similar to Joe’s:

“If you are allowed to self-identify, and your suitability is then determined by a set of medical factors, you could end up dissolving the female category.”

Meanwhile, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) has just dissolved Lia Thomas’s chance to participate in world swimming events:

World swimming’s governing body effectively banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s events.

"If you transition after the start of puberty, you have an advantage, which is unfair,” the spokesperson for FINA says. https://t.co/PC7Vwgm4Cs

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 19, 2022

Nonetheless, Lia has insisted, “I am a woman.”

'I AM a woman!' Trans UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas defends competing against biological women in Sports Illustrated interview https://t.co/wNXsU0iiyd

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) March 4, 2022

FINA may create an “open” league for swimmers such as Lia.

Across soccer, swimming, cycling, weightlifting, and other sports, the advent of transgender athletics has opened a colossal can. And surely, it won’t be soon shut. Stay tuned for more.

-ALEX

See more content from me:

Bill Maher Blasts the Anti-Free-Speech Fining of Jack Del Rio, Compares It to ‘Pee’

Biology Professor Insists More Transgender Scientists Will Produce ‘Much More Robust Science’

New Study: America’s Faith in God Is at an All-Time Low

Find all my RedState work here.

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