The New York Times Advocates for "Credible Women's Health Science in Sports"

They argue that women aren't "little men" but somehow miss the point that men can never be women.

Yesterday, The New York Times sports section The Athletic published an article entitled “ACL tear fears, TikTok myths and the fight for credible women’s health science in sports.” It was written by Megan Feringa (The Athletic’s UK-based women’s football writer).

Feringa argues that female athletes are increasingly demanding reliable, evidence-based information about their bodies, but sports science has historically treated women as “little men,” leading to a decades-long data gap (only about 6% of research has focused on females).

This male-centric model is slowly shifting, she outlines, thanks to growing investment and visibility in women’s sports, but progress is hampered by slow peer-reviewed research, poor translation of findings to athletes/coaches, and rampant misinformation on social media (she cites TikTok, specifically).

I’m sure you see where I’m going to go with this — so let’s keep going.

A few key area of focus in the article:

• ACL tears: Often called an “epidemic” in women’s soccer and other sports (e.g., nearly 30 elite players missed the 2023 Women’s World Cup). The causes are multifaceted — biomechanics, hormonal fluctuations (linked to menstrual cycle phases), neuromuscular control, workload, and training intensity — not a single simple fix. Prevention tools exist (e.g., video analysis of movement patterns), but there’s no standardized “guidebook” for widespread use.

  Of note, this injury is often considered career ending in sports. When I broke my femur in 1985, we feared it was my knee, not the bone above the knee. When I was rushed into surgery, we — my parents, my coaches, me — assumed it was the knee and my career might be over. Upon learning is was “just the femur” we were ecstatic. A bone heals nicely (often times); the knee/joint and attendant ligaments — not so much.

• Menstrual cycle and related myths: Elite athletes and staff often have low knowledge (<50% accuracy in surveys). Claims like “cycle syncing” (aligning training/nutrition to menstrual phases for performance gains) have hundreds of millions of TikTok views but lack strong evidence. Experts stress nuance: effects “depend” on the individual, and oversimplified advice can backfire.

  Here’s how we solved it when I was a gymnast — remain so skinny that you don’t menstruate! (Not a good solution, one fraught with its own impacts, of course, including weakened bones, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and infertility). Point being, a woman’s period has an effect on athletic performance. Stalling it or stopping it has its own problems. The New York Times argues more research — vs Tik Tok videos — are needed. In all of this, they somehow miss the point that males pretending to be women don’t menstruate and this, in and of itself, is an advantage in women’s sports, no matter how much estrogen these guys take.

  

• Misinformation vs. credible science: Social media fills the void with influencer anecdotes (92% of young U.S. women get health info from TikTok; many from non-credentialed sources). Researchers like Kirsty Elliott-Sale warn this could “push us back five to 10 years” by eroding trust. Initiatives like Stanford’s Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance (FASTR program) and the Michelle Kang Women’s Institute are working on education and better frameworks, and “bare minimum standards of care” from elite to grassroots levels.

Of note, Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a billionaire-backed research organization, has funded a study on “transgender” youth. The purpose of the study is to understand if suppressed male puberty and ingestion of wrong sex hormones (estrogen) hinder male performance enough for these boys to compete in the girls’ category without obvious advantage. Essentially, Wu Tsai is (was?) researching whether hindered boys can credibly compete as girls. Which assumes girls are nothing more than boys with hampered athleticism.

So yesterday’s article defends Wu Tsai’s research without acknowledging this other contradictory research that the organization has undertaken. Oh and by the way, Nike was a key funder of this research, though they deny it now. And have seemingly backed away from it.

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The main thesis of the article is optimistic but cautious: a “sea change” is happening through funding of research on female athletes, but good science is slow, and athletes/coaches need rigorous, accessible info to make informed decisions about optimizing training. Experts repeatedly say answers often start with “it depends,” and the goal is empowering women with real data about their physiology.

Ok. Yes. Credible research on actual women/female athletes can help inform training and improve overall performance and reduce injuries.

But here’s some credible women’s health science: men can’t become women and therefore have no place in women’s sports.

How does The Athletic/The New York Times not see the hypocrisy here in their own article?

The article posits that credible, biology-centered science on female-specific health and performance issues can improve performance and reduce injuries of female athletes. It implicitly (and repeatedly) relies on the reality of immutable sex differences: women have distinct injury risks (ACL tears are 2–8× more common in females due to hormones, wider pelvis, ligament laxity, etc.), training needs, and physiological responses that male-centric models ignored.

The entire push for “credible women’s health science” only makes sense because female athletes are biologically different from males and deserve tailored research, training, and protections to compete fairly and safely.

Yet the broader New York Times view leans towards allowing males (trans identified males) to compete in women’s sports categories.

While the paper itself has run polls showing overwhelming public opposition (79% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, say males should not compete in women’s sports), most of its news framing, opinion pieces, and letters have downplayed fairness/safety concerns, portrayed protective policies as “targeting” or “anti-trans bigotry,” emphasized the “rarity” of cases, or argued for inclusion on a sport-by-sport or “evolving science” basis.

Like here, in this article on January 13 of this year, the day the Supreme Court heard two cases on whether states can have laws protecting the women’s category. Juliet Macur opens the article as follows:

The science is still evolving when it comes to whether transgender women have an unfair advantage when they compete in the women’s category of sports.

The issue is complex: Individual sports rely on different physical and physiological attributes, and athletes undergo their gender transition at different times, in different ways.

How can The New York Times argue, on the one hand, there are immutable differences between men and women and research about female athletes tailored to those differences would allow female athletes to improve training, performance and reduce injury — and on the other hand say that it isn’t clear men have unfair advantage in women’s sports?

The hypocrisy and inability to see it is pretty mind blowing.

The article’s core premise — that sex-based physiological differences are real, significant, and worthy of dedicated scientific investment to protect female athletes —directly undermines any defense of male inclusion in women’s sports.

If female-specific biology matters enough to require new research institutes, injury-prevention programs, and warnings against TikTok myths (to safeguard women’s knees, performance, and long-term health), then erasing sex as the basis for category separation does the opposite: it exposes female athletes to higher injury risk, unfair competition, and lost opportunities precisely because male biology is not female biology.

You can’t champion “women are not little men” science and then pretend sex doesn’t matter for eligibility on the other.

You can’t champion “women are not little men” science and then assert that hampered men are the same as women.

The two positions are logically incompatible; one treats biological sex as a critical variable that must be studied and respected, while the other treats it as optional or socially constructed.