At this week’s hearing on HB1251, I went up to Dr. Richard when the hearing was closed and introduced myself. I was intrigued by his testimony and his presentation style. While I’m waiting for the video to be processed, I’m going to put up his testimony now.
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Testimony for support of HB 1251
Richard E. Johnson, MD
Dunbarton, NH
14 January 2020
We could start by discussing how a society balances the benefits of competition with the benefits of inclusion? However that decision is made, there will be those who feel marginalized. The consensus in the education community is that athletics is an important part of a child’s total educational experience. True, it is not for everyone, nor is it the only way to gain leadership skills, confidence, and understand the value of the “team”. But if you were my daughter, you had to pick a sport in which to participate.
The bill we have before us is one that is defining the biological definition of a female athlete. Simply saying that, in today’s world, is dangerous because many want the ‘definition’ for who they are to be defined by how they view themselves and not on any biological or genetic data. Thankfully we have laws to protect all of us from discrimination. This works well until it hits head on with biology. The simple fact is that at puberty the male starts to produce testosterone at levels of 10 – 30 nanomoles per liter from testicles. The female produces testosterone levels of 0.5 – 1.5 nanomoles per liter from adrenal glands and ovaries. That testosterone gap widens as one ages from 10 to 18. The average adult male having 10 to 30 times more testosterone than a female. The effect of this large dose of testosterone on the body is that it gives the person (a male) a greater lean body mass (more skeletal muscle and less fat), stronger bones, larger hearts (both in absolute terms and scaled to lean body mass), higher cardiac outputs, larger hemoglobin mass, larger VO2 max (a person’s ability to take in oxygen), greater glycogen utilization and higher anaerobic capacity. The result is a performance gap between male and female athletics that extends after puberty to 10-12%. Without an eligibility requirement based on sex-linked traits there would be no persons who had “female” levels of testosterone winning any medals. Because of this reality, in 1975 when Title IX was crafted addressing equality for women in federally funded education, a special ‘carve out’ was made for female athletics. This gave recognition to the fact that female athletes could not biologically compete with males in sports requiring strength and endurance. It was understood that sexual equality in athletics did not mean equal opportunity to play on the men’s ice hockey team, but equal opportunity to have the school sponsor, support, coach and train a woman’s ice hockey team.
One can argue that there are a number of academic and social activities that support a young woman’s development into a contributing member of society. Title IV made it clear that athletics was one of these programs, and institutions that supported male athletics had to equally support female athletic programs, so that girls and women would have equal opportunity to benefit from the high value of personal growth, collaborative support, recognition, and leadership development that come from athletics.
If eligibility to participate in a “woman” category of sport were based on how one “identifies” themselves, or if we accept that some self-identified females have testicles, it would become impossible for female athletic programs to meet the goals of providing an athletic experience for females with the normal female level of testosterone. Let me illustrate this:
In just one year – 2017 – the lifetime best of World Champion Allyson Gelix in the 400 meters of 49.26 seconds was surpassed over 15,000 times by boys and men. This was not because the males had better resources, or training. It is simply because they have testosterone in the male range rather than the female range.
Missy Franklin is 6ft 2in tall and has a wingspan of 6 feet 4 inches. She set a world record in the 200 meters backstroke in 2012 Olympics in London – her time: 2:04.06.
The male record set by Ryan Lochte in the 2008 Olympics was a full nine seconds faster at 1:53.94. If Missy Franklin had been in that race with Ryan, she would have been a half lap behind him when he finished, she would not have a world record, she would not have been on the podium, she probably would not have made the team, and we would not know her name.
In 2016 Vashti Cunningham set the high school record in the outdoor high jump at 6 feet 4.5 inches. During 2018, and just in California, 40 boys jumped higher. Nationwide, in 2019 760 boys jumped higher. If this sport were open, Cunningham would not have made it to her state meet and would never have been on the national team.
Let me quote form Doriane Coleman (Law Professor at Duke, and 800meter National Swiss Champion). “A Victory for Female Athletics Everywhere” Quillette. 3 May 2019.
Sport has never sought to celebrate testes as special in either the men’s or the women’s category. Precisely the opposite is true: Gonadal sex traits define the categories, and then each separate category sets out to isolate and celebrate other characteristics. In the men’s category, testes and male T levels are perfectly normal and not at all special. Every single male in the category has them, and so the category isolates and celebrates different traits, like height and wingspan. And the women’s category was developed to exclude competitors with testes and T levels outside of the female range, so that biological girls and women could have the chance— as biological boys and men do—to have their equally exceptional but non-gonadal traits isolated and celebrated. It is within the categories that a Usain Bolt and a Katy Ledecky are properly held out as indomitable superstars.
You and I know that it is these same sex-based physical differences in strength, power and endurance which give males the upper hand in athletics, are also the ones that make females vulnerable to physical, domestic and sexual violence.
To quote again from Doriane Coleman
The movement to normalize and empower gender non-conforming people is enormously valuable, but this doesn’t explain why we would want to replace sex with identity in this of all settings, since the effect of this move is not only to erase our distinguishing traits from the conversation, but also—literally—our bodies from the podium.
For all the clear reasons I have stated, I support Title IX and its goals that have slowly been implemented over the past 50 years. We are now being asked to accept that gender identification of female includes both biological sexes. One’s sexual orientation is being viewed not as a fact of biology but as how one feels about themselves, and for some, that identity can change under various circumstances.
Female athletics is by design – and protected by Title IX – a biological sex classification. This is because of the performance gap that happens at puberty. Allowing anyone who wants to identify as ‘female’ into female athletic programs denies the goals and protection of Title IX.
Having said that, schools and athletic programs are faced with the problem of including all students into competitive athletic programs. How do we include a high testosterone person who identifies as ‘female’ into athletic programs and give them all the benefits that others have?
NH High Schools are divided into 4 separate divisions for athletic competitions.
We have “levels of play” in leagues from tennis to racket ball to bowling.
Since 1973 the NCAA is divided into 3 different levels based on school size and budget.
USATrack&Field uses age brackets to classify runners
These divisions are in place to provide an ‘equal playing field’ for athletes. It is obvious that a 20 yo would not be allowed to compete and medal in the over 60 yo marathon bracket. It is obvious that a NH Division I school (with over 900 students) is not allowed to compete in the Division IV league where the schools have under 285 students.
Before puberty, there is an equal playing field between girls and boys, and this is a non-issue.
Maybe there should be parity of testosterone level on a given basketball or soccer team.
Maybe there could be a bio-female league and an identity-female league or an open female league.
At present the NCAA and the Olympics are using testosterone level as the sole determining factor in placing an athlete in either male of female divisions.
If society bends to the demand that anyone, who for whatever reason, identifies as a woman –is therefore a woman – and we must accept it as truth in the world of athletics as well as the social arena, we will have no interest in or the stomach for protecting biologically female sport, and the last almost 50 years of advancing female equality rights will be for nothing. And once again we will have females dominated and marginalized by males (the person with testosterone).
The challenge for schools and athletic organizations is to come up with strategies that provide equal opportunity for all students to participate in athletics so that all students can gain those benefits while recognizing and accounting for the testosterone advantage.
VO2 max is measured in milliliters of oxygen used in one minute per kilogram of body weight (mL/kg/min). It is based on the premise that the more oxygen an athlete consumes during high-level exercise, the more the body will generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy in cells. ATP is often referred to as the “molecular unit of currency” of intracellular energy,
