What would we do without studies?
Despite a growing trend of downplaying biology’s significance in athletic performance, a recent study — refreshingly — shows what should be obvious: Biological men are stronger and faster than biological women.
The study “Performance of non-binary athletes in mass-participation running events” by two U.K. university scholars and an independent researcher found that biological males who identify as “non-binary” outperformed biological females who identify as same.
The Publica reports the researchers examined results from almost two dozen races in the New York Road Runners “non-binary” category, in which both biological males and females can compete.
Their conclusion: “There was zero evidence” to support the theory that runners’ gender identification as “non-binary” shrinks the biological sex athletic performance gap.
Lead researcher John Armstrong of King’s College London said that as an “objectively measurable binary variable, sex has considerable explanatory advantages over gender identity.”
He added there is a “lack of empirical evidence supporting gender-identity theory.”