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The Boy-Girl Difference in Swimming Records
Earlier this week, @barfly wrote a post reporting on the rules adopted by the international governing authority in swimming, FINA, on so-called transgender athletes. Specifically, the rules addressed the issue of biologically male swimmers who wished to engage in so-called transition, and then compete as females.
Barfly’s post includes the specific text of the rule, the essence of which is to prohibit anyone from competing in swimming as a woman if he has “experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later.” There is also a requirement for demonstrating the continued maintenance of a low testosterone level.
I did some digging into the differences between boys and girls in swimming performance. Specifically, I looked at the male and female national age group records in swimming, for five age categories: 10 and under, 11-12, 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18. Depending on the age group, there are between 12 and 18 events with official national records. I have a particular interest in swimming, as I was a competitive swimmer as a kid, through high school.
For this analysis, I looked at records in short course yards (i.e. swimming in a 25-yard pool), rather than long course meters, principally due to my recollection and impression that American kids usually compete in short course yards. This is true in most summer swimming, high school swimming, and even NCAA swimming.
My methodology was to compare the national record for males and females, for each event. The time differential varied widely, because events ranged from the 50-yard sprints to the 1,650-yard distance freestyle. I normalized the difference for each event by converting it to the difference per 100 yards.
Remember that this is not a comparison of typical American boys and girls in swimming. It is a comparison of the very best boy, and the very best girl, that we’ve had in each event. There are a total of 72 event records for boys, and another 72 for girls, for these five age groups.
Of those 72 events, the female record is faster than the male record in two (2). By age category, it breaks down as follows:
- 10 and under: The male record is faster in 10 of 12 events
- 11-12: The male record is faster in all 18 events
- 13-14, 15-16, 17-18: The male record is faster in all 14 events
My calculations allowed me to quantify the average difference in the male and female records, normalized to the difference per 100 yards of the event. Here are the results:
- 10 and under: The male records averaged 0.57 seconds faster per 100 yards
- 11-12: The male records averaged 3.01 seconds faster per 100 yards
- 13-14: The male records averaged 4.53 seconds faster per 10o yards
- 15-16: The male records averaged 4.45 seconds faster per 100 yards
- 17-18: The male records averaged 4.71 seconds faster per 100 yards
This indicates that, at least in swimming, there is only a small male advantage, if any, prior to age 11. By age 12, most of the male-female difference has appeared, averaging about 3 seconds per 100 yards. By age 14, and thereafter, the male-female difference is about 4.5 seconds per 100 yards.
I did this analysis for my own information, but thought that some of you might find it interesting.
If anything, it suggests that the FINA rule doesn’t go quite far enough by establishing a cutoff for male athletes engaging in so-called “transition,” as the FINA rule provides a safe harbor permitting such athletes to compete as females provided that they “transitioned” by age 12 (or later, depending on the timing of a particular athlete’s “Tanner Stage 2”). As you can see from my analysis, about two-thirds of the eventual male-female differential in the performance of top swimmers emerges by the age of 12.
Published in Sports
Jerry, I don’t share your frustration with rational debate. However imperfect, I find it vastly superior to the alternatives.
Regarding “for the children,” my point is that I don’t find it a universally compelling argument. I think nudity and explicit sexuality have an immediate, visceral impact on kids, particularly on boys, and that’s something from which parents should be free to protect their children while out in public. I don’t think a man dressed as a woman, however bizarre that may be, has the same visceral impact, and so I don’t consider “for the children” to be a sufficient argument in that case.
Yes. And it’s messy and imperfect. One wants to speak of competing virtues in purely moralistic terms, but that only works within the choir. One can cow and intimidated people of different moral sensibilities into compliance, but the only way to persuade them is to make rational arguments that demonstrate a practical superiority to one set of precepts over another. So we are in the realm of pragmatism and compromise, even on issues that some of us may consider important points of morality. That’s how we survive in a large and diverse polity without engaging in endless holy war.
(cont’d)
(This is why you may be my favorite Ricochet interlocutor, Jerry.)
I agree: we don’t “know how to do this.” That is, we don’t have a closed-form solution that can somehow magically balance conflicting values in a way that pleases everyone. There’s no equation, no algorithm — no guarantee that it’s even possible.
What we have is a process that keeps us, most of the time, from burning down each other’s houses as we work through such things. That process is the rational debate you mentioned. It’s a tool of persuasion, imperfect but the best one we have for bridging the value gap. When coupled with democratic representative constitutional government, it gives us a way to choose compromises with which almost everyone can live.
That requires that the vast majority buy into the framework — into the idea that the law matters, that the institutions matter, and that losing one or another electoral or policy battle doesn’t justify going to war.
(I do have some serious concerns that we’re raising a generation that no longer understands that last part, because it’s been educated by people who have no respect for our political traditions.)
(cont’d, again)
I was speaking of broad hypothetical executive fiat authority: imagine you were the king and could simply decree the law of the land. That’s the test I was proposing.
But we have different spheres of influence. There are many things I wouldn’t tolerate for my own children that I would tolerate for society at large. If I were king, I’d tolerate rap music, even though I didn’t let my kids play it at home. I’d tolerate swearing in public, even though my children have never heard me swear and there was no swearing in our home. I’d tolerate blue grass music in public… and I tolerated it at home, even though I don’t like it: there was no personal moral component to that for me, just a matter of taste.
We agree. And I think one important question is: what language do we use to persuade the people that traditional American values best serve us all?
(cont’d, finally)
For me, that language is one of pragmatic yet compassionate rationality. As an agnostic who lacks metaphysical moral bedrock, I choose to root my arguments in an acknowledgement of human nature and its limitations. That means I don’t have quite as much latitude, when it comes to edge cases, to assert an unambiguous right or wrong: I can’t convince myself to condemn the man in mascara and stockings as a moral deviant. I can, and do, describe him as an outlier who falls short of what most of us consider admirable and attractive masculinity, and as a bit sad and ridiculous. Those are judgments with which I think most people can find some common basis, even if they don’t agree have strong feelings about the larger moral dimension.
Slippery slope arguments have some use as well, because such progression is part of human nature (as Moynihan noted in his famous essay, referenced elsewhere recently here on Ricochet). I opposed same-sex marriage in part because of that, even though I have no moral objection to it.
Of course, my being limited to non-metaphysical arguments doesn’t mean that anyone else should be so limited. I said pragmatic rational argument was my language. If others want to speak from a more spiritually enlightened perspective and can do so honestly, I welcome them to do so. I just don’t have a lot of confidence that that approach reaches as far beyond the pews as does a more secular one.
They used to. Nowadays, everything is geared toward “gender-affirming” treatment. Put another way, no therapist or psychologist (in some many states) can make the person question whether or not he (or she) is wrong about how they feel . . .
Again, true is this day and age. But the therapist used to (IIRC) have say in whether or not the person continued the process to transition.
Again, I’ve read that the suicide rate for actual transsexuals is higher than the general public. I’m not aware of any follow-up to determine why. Maybe it’s because the answer may not be what the left wants . . .
I have read that if you do nothing, most cases of gender dysphoria corrects themselves. However, I beleieve the cost of requiring some kind of therapy or psychological treatment shoulod be required. In Irreversible Damage, Shrier raises the issue that breasts cannot simply be replaced if someone changes her mind, as the left claims. Breast tissue is unique, and simply grabbing fat from the buttocks and thighs (or silicone implants) and stuffing it in some skin-grafted “breasts” does fully restore normalcy. It truly is “irreversible.”
Great questions! Too the bad left doesn’t want to engage in civilized conversation like this . . .
This is apparently the case, and by an overwhelming margin.
Whatever one thinks of the efficacy, sensibility, or even the right of adults to pursue various degrees of “transition,” from purely cosmetic to pharmacological to surgical, I think it is profoundly unwise and destructive to involve minors in this business. The medical and psychological communities are engaged in systemic malpractice that will, I think, someday soon be perceived correctly as institutionalized child abuse. Those parents either cowed into submission or consumed with their own narcissistic eagerness to sacrifice their children on the alter of “specialness” are failing at the only essential job they have.
The figure I’ve seen most often is 70% of gender dysphoria cases in children resolve themselves.
If you had been paid a fortune for tailoring the Emperor’s new clothes, you probably wouldn’t want to engage in civilized conversation about it, either!
I agree! Any parent who allows their kid to start transitioning is guilty of child abuse, IMHO . . .