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Old 04-09-2015, 02:49 AM   #8 (permalink)
PsychoLoco
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Ukraine
Posts: 316
I wouldn't go so far as to say it "could never" be fair, but I'm with Keith on this one, and I don't need to look at trans-bovine match-ups.

At age 13 in 8th grade, my athletics class had about 75 boys just hitting puberty and the weight room preparing for high-school football. At least half of the boys, myself included, were able to bench press in excess of 225 pounds. There were at least ten 13-year-olds that could bench-press over 300 pounds in 8th grade. The 2014 national male high school power-lifting champion bench-pressed 396 pounds. The 2014 national female open champion (meaning any female in the U.S. - adult or minor) won with a 391 pound bench-press. The point being that the physically-strongest women of any age will find it difficult to compete with the physically-strongest male teenagers. One of the female coaches in my high-school was a power-lifting competitor who was considered one of the strongest women in Texas because she could bench-press 225 pounds. I was regularly bench-pressing 250 pounds during rain-out days at age 16 when the baseball team had to stay inside.

Rhonda Rousey is more correct than not that someone who had testosterone pumping through them from age 12 to 25 to build muscle mass and bone structure will have one hell of an advantage physically over someone who did not. I'm not at all aware of how long the effects would take to reverse with hormone treatment, or if it is possible to reverse, or even if having a gonadectomy completely removes the body's ability to produce testosterone. If it doesn't completely remove it, what's to stop a woman that transitioned from a male from slowing down her female hormone shots for six months before a major fight and letting the testosterone flow a little more freely?

We have a brain expert in the fan base (Rosa Rosa Rosa), so hopefully there's an endocrinologist or MD out there listening that could shed some light on the subject.
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