Originally a comment by Piglet on Could be.

There’s a theory that gender identity is more important than biological sex as a cause of gender disparities in outcomes? How could that be?

No, I’ve seen this being seriously argued. The idea is that men are faster, stronger etc than women because they have stronger encouragement to do sport, better coaches, more resources etc. Which is why it’s so important to let male people barge in and hog the meagre resources that female athletes DO have. /s

I read the paper and it’s actually quite funny in a way—it reads like an assignment given to undergraduates so that they can demonstrate statistical methods. What I think they’ve done in this paper is the gender equivalent of The Art of War.

A lot of people read that book (there’s this peculiar idea that it’s useful in business management) and come away thinking it’s all too bleeding obvious. Understand your enemy, focus on his weak points, big whoop. But Sun Tzu was specifically writing a how-to guide for inbred idiotic noblemen whose family connections meant they were leading an army with no idea what they were doing, and he needed a basic handbook to throw at them (possibly literally). There’s a definite sense of “FINE, I’ll actually codify these extremely basic and obvious principles so you don’t lose ANOTHER thousand men in another rout…”