Video summary
The podcast highlights a significant and often overlooked biological distinction between sexes: throwing accuracy among children, which emerges very early in preschool years and widens considerably by early adulthood. Research indicates that even young boys throw with greater distance, velocity, and kinetic energy than girls of the same age. This disparity is not merely physical but involves complex interactions where male forearms are relatively longer compared to overall body size, shoulders are structurally different, and there are distinct prenatal origins associated with sex differences in the dorsal stream—a brain system responsible for tracking moving objects. The ability to accurately hit a target or dodge an incoming projectile requires both cognitive systems capable of motion detection and physical mechanisms to execute those movements effectively. To illustrate these defensive capabilities, researchers conducted studies using tennis ball shooting machines aimed at undergraduates to test how many projectiles could be blocked by males versus females. While the study design has evolved due to safety concerns regarding hitting people with balls, historical data showed a clear ceiling effect where men successfully blocked most shots while women were less successful in similar tasks. This defensive advantage is linked to male competition and hunting engagement, though modern research suggests that spatial abilities are more strongly correlated with early postnatal hormonal exposure rather than adult circulating testosterone levels alone. Consequently, the biological capacity for tracking moving objects integrates physical architecture, behavioral components like throwing accuracy, and cognitive processing into a unified system where males consistently demonstrate superior performance across these integrated traits. The speaker argues that this fundamental capability difference offers one of the most compelling justifications for carefully considering transgender athletes in sports beyond simple metrics like muscle mass or bone density. While common debates focus on reducing power through testosterone suppression after a year of hormone therapy, such measures do not address deeper perceptual and spatial predispositions rooted in early development. Even if a biological male were to transition physically—matching height, build, and average female dimensions—the underlying neurological wiring for seeing the world of throwing and spatial rotation would remain distinct. This suggests that reducing testosterone alone cannot equalize performance because it fails to alter the foundational ways brains process motion detection and integrate those signals with physical movement. Furthermore, these inherent differences help explain broader phenomena such as why women's sports leagues like the WNBA may be less popular than their men's counterparts; this is not solely due to size but potentially because of a "supercharged" male capacity that makes competition appear more dynamic or difficult for female athletes to match in specific contexts. The speaker extends this logic to hypothetical scenarios involving other domains, such as lying detection or manipulating social groups, suggesting that individuals who have undergone female-to-male transitions might dominate fields reliant on socio-sexual cues even after long-term testosterone therapy and significant lifestyle changes. Ultimately, the argument posits that fairness in sports cannot be achieved by focusing exclusively on power reduction but must account for these deep-seated biological differences in perception, cognition, and motor integration that define male advantage across multiple dimensions of athletic performance.
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the most interesting thing that I've
learned about sex differences in the
last year is differences in throwing
accuracy amongst children can you please
red pill everybody that's listening on
the differences in throwing accuracy
amongst children
sure so um yeah so you find differences
in throwing accuracy uh throwing
distance and velocity
so uh even in preschoolers boys are
throwing more uh they can throw farther
um in with higher velocity higher speed
and so higher kinetic energy than girls
can uh it is it emerges very early as I
said the preschool years and becomes
extremely large by 19 early adulthood or
so where there's very little overlap
between uh men and women maybe a little
bit but not not much it is it is a very
big difference
it is correlated with um differences you
know the shoulders are built differently
um the forearms are longer in men
relatively uh relative to overall size
in women that um that difference is
evident prenatally it is associated with
the sex difference in this dorsal stream
sort of thing the ability to track
moving objects you know to hit something
that's you have to have the cognitive
system in brain and cognitive system in
place in order to hit something
accurately
um and if somebody's throwing something
at you you want to be able to track it
coming in so you can dodge it oh yeah it
didn't you looked at a study to do with
how effective males and females are at
dodging projectiles coming at them what
can you tell us that study yeah so um
some people have argued that or in fact
the initial argument and maybe it's
still the argument that the male
advantage in throwing distance accurate
speed and all of that sort of thing is
due to Shared child care and male
hunting
um you know and of course there is a big
sex difference in hunting engagement in
um in in traditional context no no
question about that
um but in addition to that men are
better at dodging things
so in this particular study uh you
couldn't do it anymore but but the the
researchers I if I remember correctly
got um one of these tennis ball shooting
machines
um and uh
decided to shoot him at undergraduates
um to see what would happen I'm sure the
professors had a fantastic time when
they were aiming it at the annoying
child in the the front row that keeps on
distracting them during their lectures
yeah yeah would unfortunately we can't
do that anymore
um but it I'm I'm sure it was at fairly
low speed and you know so nobody would
get hurt and so if relatively easy task
and so they just looked at the number of
balls that could be blocked and Men
blocked most of in fact there was a
ceiling effect
um in women were not as successful uh at
that and that's obviously a defensive
mechanism if other males are using
projectile weapons the ability to track
and Dodge that is an important component
of male male competition that's that's
when my argument's not which came
probably before hunting
what is the suite of traits that we're
talking about here when it comes to
throwing accuracy throwing velocity
dodging seeing things moving through the
air Etc yeah so yeah so so we have the
throwing component to it it has you know
the behavioral component actually
throwing something and hitting it
accurately
um it has physical components to it you
know the upper body upper body strength
is big sex difference here the
architecture of the shoulder and arms
there are um there's brain area
associated with motion detection
and integrating motion detection with
physical movements as in blocking
something or throwing something uh and
so there's brain and cognitive systems
involved there
um that you see physical systems the
behavioral component of the brain and
cognitive component and guys are better
on all of those components or at least
the most of them integrated together
you get a quite quite a large sex
difference
so this learning that and it was
specifically the accuracy thing that
really drove it home to me uh
is for me now one of the more compelling
justifications
for us thinking about transgender
athletes in sport a lot more carefully
because everybody has heard to death uh
someone talking about how a biological
male shouldn't be able to step into the
ring with a biological female after a
year of estrogen and testosterone
suppression and then punched their face
into the ground like you know that's
it's self-evident and
a lot of the arguments that I've seen
stem exclusively from well we can reduce
Power by x amount by putting them on
this particular type of hormone blocker
testosterone and androgens aren't all
that drive power then someone comes back
and says well look at bone density look
at muscle mass look at all of the time
that you've gone through puberty blah
blah blah that's that's done like it's
interesting I guess it was interesting
but it's no longer interesting to me
what is much more interesting to me are
the fundamental capability differences
especially when it comes to things like
accuracy because if let's say for
instance that you were to have a
biological male that is going into the
uh
what is it the baseball Envy
NBA no what's the what's the baseball
league called
is there a women's lead yeah well there
must be I'm oh yeah I've got to imagine
so but the same as a WNBA right okay so
let's say that male goes into WNBA
they're not taller they're not bigger
they're built the same uh on average as
the average female basketball player
because I would imagine that female
basketball players probably pretty tall
taller than me taller than you
um
but what we're saying is that there is a
fundamental capacity capability
difference that biological males have
with just the way that they see throwing
and spatial rotation generally not just
to do with the physicality of the
architecture of the shoulder changes in
forearm length Etc but the the way that
their brains are able to see the world
of throwing overall this also explains
to a degree why the WNBA may be
significantly less popular than the
men's division not because women are
smaller and something else and something
else but they have a predisposition that
is oh you could say um that male's
capacity is overclocked uh and it is um
supercharged comparatively with women so
this to me is the most or one of the
most compelling reasons because it gets
Beyond this sort of messy conversation
about power and it gets more into
fairness uh and it's why it's so
compelling and I've never really heard
anyone do a full Treatise on on this
area of transgender athletes in sport
what is it let's say that there was a
sport
um where you had to do lying detection
or you had to manipulate different
social groups or you had to be able to
detect facial cues or something uh if
you were to have female to male
transitioners in that sport they're
going to absolutely dominate The League
even if they have taken testosterone for
ages and they're walking around with the
socio-sexuality through the roof and the
the sex rides really high or whatever I
I just found this it's really
fascinating I think this is really
really interesting stuff yeah yeah yeah
some some of the spatial differences and
the perceptual differences that I
mentioned are more strongly related to
prenatal or an early postnatal hormonal
exposure the natural circulating
testosterone so you can the men's
circulating testosterone isn't really
highly correlated with their spatial
abilities but the earlier exposure seems
to be what what's important there so
yeah you can decrease muscle mass a
little bit by reducing testosterone but
there's other things you're not going to
change that people have as you said
people have to talk what's happening
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