None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who’s studied male-female differences in other sports that involve throwing. The world javelin record, for instance, is 98.5 meters for men, but just 72.3 meters for women. In shot put, hammer throw, and discus, men and women tend to throw similar distances, but do so with differently weighted objects: For men, the metal ball used in shot put and hammer throw weighs more than seven kilograms; for women, just four kilograms. In discus competition, the disc used by men weighs two kilograms, while women use a disc that weighs just one kilogram. Earlier this year, The New York Times profiled pitcher Kelsie Whitmore, the first woman of our era to play in any league partnered with Major League Baseball. Whitmore’s fastball tops out below 80 mph, a speed that’s commonly achieved by male high schoolers in their mid-teens.

On August 2nd, days after Ryan won the female division at DGLO, the Disc Golf Pro Tour put out a statement titled DGPT Reiterates Statement on PDGA Transgender Competition Policies, noting (somewhat euphemistically) “an increase in the volume of questions and feedback from the disc golf community on the topic of gender-based divisions and fair play,” and emphasizing that Ryan, and the tour itself, are simply going by the policies set down by the PDGA—policies that permit biologically male players to compete as females, so long as they bring their blood testosterone levels down below 10 nmol/L.

The problem, as critics of male-bodied participation in female sports often have pointed out, is that academic reviews of musculoskeletal changes in transwomen have shown that the strength loss associated with post-pubescent testosterone-reduction regimes is small, and so the trans strength advantage over biologically female competitors persists. As discussed below, moreover, there seems to be some confusion about whether the PDGA is enforcing even its own loose standards.