Adam Dhanji

Particle Physics masters graduate. Sports-lover: cricket, football, american football. Photographer.

[Kirsti Miller @KirstiMiller30]

I am a world champion athlete who has published peer reviewed research in this field and I say it is clear that there is male-performance advantage over females. 

Men on average are stronger than women due to the relative % of muscle vs. fat, and to power that extra muscle they have more oxygenating cells (haemoglobin) in the blood... ALL of which are controlled by hormones, they are not set at puberty. No-one disputes this.

What is less clear is what happens after cross-sex hormone therapy, in trans women in particular.

Trans women who compete in female sports are on gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) — typically oestrogen plus medications to lower testosterone. This therapy leads to measurable changes in body composition and function.

What the evidence says about performance?

After 2 years of GAHT, trans women show little to no advantage over cis women in tests like running 1.5 miles or number of sit-ups.

By 1–3 years on GAHT, many performance differences in studied metrics narrow substantially or disappear.

However, in strength tests (e.g. push-ups, grip strength), some small residual advantage may persist.

In contrast, some areas suggest worse performance: lung function, efficiency of breathing, and fitness (Braga et al., Saitong et al., and Alvares et al.) when normalised to body size.

In one study of national-level volleyball players, athletic trans women performed similarly to cis women (but below cis men) across multiple physical metrics.

In a UK study, athletic trans women (on hormones for 4–6 years) had worse performance in lung function, jump height, and relative VO₂ max (a measure of fitness) than cis women, but absolute grip strength was higher.

The most comprehensive synthesis to date, a 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis (Sieczkowska et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine) of 52 studies and 6,485 participants, found that trans women on 1–3 years of GAHT had upper-body strength, lower-body strength and relative VO₂ max comparable to cis women, despite higher absolute lean mass. The authors concluded the evidence does not support theories of inherent athletic advantage for trans women over cis women.

A 2025 longitudinal study (Harper et al., European Journal of Sport Science) tracked 9 trans women runners and 1 trans woman swimmer before and after starting GAHT. Race times slowed by around 15% in runners (with bigger decrements in longer-distance events) and around 5% in the swimmer. After adjusting for training volume, the runners’ age-graded performance scores did not differ pre- versus post-GAHT, meaning they were roughly as competitive in the women’s category as they had previously been in the men’s category. This is the first study to use both retrospective and prospective data on the same trans women athletes before and after GAHT.

In short: any advantage that exists is likely to be small, context-specific, and not universal.

Despite frequent public talk, there is no robust empirical evidence that trans women increase injury risk to cisgender women in sport.

Most policies that cite safety are based on theoretical models (assuming trans women are the same as cis men, and comparing cis men to cis women), not on observed injury data.

What rules currently exist

Many sporting bodies have eligibility policies. These often require:

Maintaining testosterone levels below a threshold (e.g. < 5 nmol/L) for a set duration (e.g. 24 months).

Submission of performance data (times, strength metrics, prior competition data).

Some sports, however, have banned trans women entirely — but these bans tend to lack scientific justification, and they ignore the diversity among trans women in body size, physiology, training history, etc.

In summary

Fairness and inclusion can coexist. With thoughtful, evidence-based policies, both can be achieved without resorting to blanket bans.

https://t.co/Zb5QHXINdg

[Here's What I Reckon: @angryaboutbikes]

Journalists are really bad at accurately informing the public about the world around them, but really good at saying things that increase hatred towards trans people, which makes me wonder what job they are actually being paid to do

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

Selling 1 ticket for @lights in London tomorrow due to illness 🙃 #lights #Londonmusic #London #gig
https://t.co/YuoqLjBrcT

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@MikedUpSports1 @HeedTheCallPod @DanHanzus @MarcSessler is that Danny Geronimo calling a player "Rams-y"?! Mock Sessler ahead of the curve once again!

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@TheMarcJohnNFL You don't think they should comPETE? 😂 Fr tho, I love Ted Hurst as an addition to the WR room. Reckon Bech will come on a lot this next year and hope Thornton can too, he was always more of a development than Bech

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@Realrclark25 @CrosbyMaxx Spot on 🎯. Even if you're backing out of the move before he arrives, at least fake the hospitality and make it seem more legit. If they really wanted him they'd have made more of an effort showing that

[Bark @barkmeta]

Let me get this straight…

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit. Open source. For everyone. “To benefit humanity.”

Then he raised billions of dollars.

Then he closed the source code.

Then he converted to for-profit.

Then he scraped the entire internet without asking anyone.

Then he used YOUR writing YOUR art YOUR code to train his models.

Now he’s on stage saying you’ll pay HIM to access intelligence. Just like a water meter.

He stole all of your data. He built the product with your work. And now he’s going to bill you to use it…

Corporate greed has reached an all time high, and they’re not even hiding it anymore…

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@DMRussini Trading for an elite edge approaching 30 to get you over the hump and win a SB whilst Lamar is in his prime and be happy with the short-term assessment. How much into the future were the Ravens thinking when they first made this pick? 100% they felt regret, feels like a cop out

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@neilreynoldsnfl Which potential new QB-team partnership is the most interesting to you? Vikings feel like a team with plenty of options for who their starting QB is

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@IzzardBecky We're losing recipes fr. Quaresma is always the shout!

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@Bart38163552 Literally everything you said here is wrong. A 2160 was landed in run 1, Svancer lands a switch 21 before his jump too. Frostad's 16 is flipping in the opposite direction to Mac which is harder and got scored accordingly. Go learn the sport and stop crying about "unfair" scoring

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@BrandonThornNFL That's a Raider right there!

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

I have been thinking a lot recently about this old interview with Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine about what "civilization" means.

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@NoContextCounty There's good leaves, and bad leaves... 😂

[Adam Dhanji @Dhanji12]

@englandcricket About time! Well deserved Daws, go well!

[Matt Cullen @Coo84_ff]

After the shambles of the past 48 hours, I wrote this during my lads drum lesson.

Will @NFLUKIRE, @nflukhank, @TicketmasterCS, @NFL listen to little old me? Absolutely not, but this echo chamber is only going to get louder…..

[Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana]

Under this Labour government we’ve seen:

☑️ Austerity targeting disabled people, the elderly &amp; children

☑️ Enoch Powell-style rhetoric &amp; cruelty toward migrants

☑️ Unconditional support for arming Israel — a state committing genocide

This is not the “change” people voted for.

[Tony Vaughan KC MP @tonyvaughanMP]

I have written to the Equality and Human Rights Commission asking them to withdraw their interim guidance on single-sex spaces ⬇️.

It goes beyond the Supreme Court ruling, increases risks of harassment and violence to trans people, and is contradictory & confusing. @EHRC please act!

[DAISY CUTTER @daisycutterzine]

we are with you 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵