XY athlete Francine Nyonsaba outkicks XX double Olympic champ Faith Kipyegon in Doha

Exactly. XY males should NEVER be allowed into women's events.

When was the last time that a white guy was ranked in the top 10 at 100m?

…a very long time ago.

White guys are inferior to black men at 100m. In a sense it’s unfair. Should white guys have their own category? Probably not. How many categories would we need? If white guys can’t have their own category (which would be very well represented) does it make sense to have an entire category for a few intersex athletes?

Clearly Niyonsaba is much closer to women times than men times. She is probably in the category where she needs to be.

Wow. I’m shocked by the complete lack of logical ability here. Are so many people this stupid? Let me explain it to you further: It’s not about the individual, it’s about the entire class and the overlap (and lack thereof).

Think of 2 curves overlapping each other (or mainly). it’s appropriate that we have those 2 populations competing against each other, because they are mainly equal. Some individuals suck; some are outrageously good - but, in general - the two populations overlap. 2 curves closely overlapping.

Now think of the other extreme: 2 curves that are very far apart, and don’t overlap at all, with a wide distance between them. Kind of like the average speed rating of a turtle vs the speed rating of a cheetah.

Now think of 2 curves that barely overlap, but only at the very corners. That is somewhat similar to the male vs female human. Due to the lack of overlap, except at the very corners, it is appropriate that these two groups are in distinct categories. Ie. Bad club runner males still beat elite women. Not even the most talented female the world has ever produced has even the tiniest chance against elite or very good males. Hence, different categories required!

Does that help you?

This situation arose because in the 1990s, the IAAF and IOC decided to stop doing mandatory buccal cheek swab testing of athletes seeking eligibility for female elite international competition in order to keep out athletes with disorders of male sex development. Used to be, eligibility for female elite international events was determined by test results showing an athlete had only X sex chromosomes and did not have the male-determining SRY gene. This criteria automatically confined the female category to athletes born with ovaries, and ruled out all athletes born with testes (regardless of their location).

A benefit of this criteria is that it made the outward appearance of athletes' genitals completely beside the point. Women's competition was for athletes born with ovaries no matter what their genitals looked like. All athletes born with testes were excluded as a matter of course, even if they had rare medical conditions that caused their testes to be wholly or partly undescended, and/or they were born without penises.

In the 1960s and 70s, athletes whom the mandatory testing determined were XY with disorders of male sex development either were booted out of women's sports, or chose to bow out. But by the 1980s, many male DSD athletes started to believe they were being badly discriminated against. In the late 1980s, a Spanish hurdler competing in the women's division who turned out to be XY with a disorder of male sex development successfully lodged a legal challenge to the IAAF and IOC rules then in place - and eventually won the right to compete in women's sports. Soon after, the IAAF and IOC decided to stop the mandatory sex chromosome and SRY gene testing - and to expand eligibility for women's sports to XY athletes with certain rare conditions affecting male sex development.

In the process, the IAAF and IOC fundamentally changed the definition and purpose of women's sports. Originally, a separate category of sports was created for girls and women in order to give female athletes a female-only arena in which they'd have a chance to compete fairly and to excel. But under the new rules ushered in over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, the women's category became a catchall category that included female people AND males with born with disorders of male sex development which caused the location of their testes and outward appearance of their genitals to be atypical. With the change, women's sports took on the additional purpose of a consolation prize used to compensate some XY persons for having the bad luck to have been born with their testes in the wrong place and with minuscule, misshapen or missing penises.

This was all done by male sports authorities without consulting or taking into account the views and feeling of female athletes, and without concern for fairness to female competitors. The last time that mandatory sex chromosome and SRY testing of elite international female athletes was done was at the 1996 Olympics. When they were tested, all the athletes were asked if they thought the testing was fair and whether it should continue. 87% said they thought it was fair, and 82% said it should continue. But sports authorities paid no heed and discontinued it anyways.

But Niyonsaba wasn't born 100 years ago. Niyonsaba was born in May 1993, 29 years ago. It's disingenuous to suggest that medical understanding and social awareness of XY DSD conditions during Niyonsaba's lifetime hadn't advanced beyond what it was in the 1920s.

In fact, the particular medical conditions that Niyonsaba was born with - and the other XY DSD athletes competing in women's international track & field in the 21st century all were born with - have been very well documented, described and understood for many decades.

Articles describing XY 5-ARD - Semenya's condition, and very likely Niyonsaba's too - first made headlines and in the medical world and a big splash in the popular press in the early-mid 1970 after papers appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine and Science.

In the 1990s, case reports were published documenting that persons with XY 5-ARD had been able to father children through use of then-newly emerging methods of medically assisted reproduction such as IVF using sperm retrieved directly from the testes rather than from ejaculated semen.

The contention that it's "natural" to assume that every male child born with a missing penis must be female is preposterous. You say that if there is no penis, no one would know a child isn't female. But trust me, lots of people who belong to the sex that for millennia has been tasked with the jobs of diapering kids, bathing them and toilet training them could tell. Because males born with missing penises - and minuscule, misshapen penises as is often the case in these sorts of DSDs - still don't have female urethras. Therefore, they don't pee from the same place and in the same exact way that female children do. That's one of the reasons that in certain parts of the world such as remote areas of the Dominican Republic, Turkey and Papua New Guinea, midwives and "village elder" women with no formal medical training have long been able to spot and correctly diagnose certain male DSDs such as XY 5-ARD based mostly on careful visual observation, without any sophisticated medical testing.

But what Niyonsaba's genitals looked like when Niyonsaba was born nearly 30 years ago, and whether Niyonsaba was genuinely thought to be female as a child, are immaterial here. The relevant issue today is whether Niyonsaba and other XY athletes with disorders of male sex development should have been allowed to compete in women's sports as full-grown adults - and whether it's fair for them to continue to do so under any circumstances such as the loopholes afforded by the WA regulations put in place in 2019.

By the time Niyonsaba had become old enough to start competing in women's events, Niyonsaba and everyone close to Niyonsaba would have known or at least very strongly suspected that Niyonsaba is not female. Because Niyonsaba would have gone through the male mini puberty of infancy, then later on the much longer male puberty of adolescence. Which means no female puberty, no female sex development.

Niyonsaba would have reached age 18 without ever having had a menstrual period. That's something virtually unheard of in female people, most of whom start menstruating at age 11-13. Some girls get their periods at 9 or 10, some late bloomers at 14 or 15. But with the once-in-a-blue-moon exception of persons with the vanishingly rare female DSD known as MRKH, no female person makes it to age 18 without menstruating. No periods ever at age 18 is a very big tell. More of a tell IMO than having an absent, atypical or very small penis at birth.

Indeed, this is just stupidity to the power of 3. As if steroids only helps for 400 - 1609 meters. Ask, for example, Baumann or Decker or Houlihan or Kisorio or common sense.

Even 20-30 years ago we had XY with female genitalia competing. We always assume the oldest WRs are PED driven, and maybe they are, but I would bet they are also XY athletes who looked every bit female.

Personally, I think intersex should be able to compete un-cucumbered in the women’s division

Even the commentators talk about her being DSD and it's listed on her wikipedia page.

That makes no sense at all.

Many of the males on this message board have times closer to elite females than to elite males. Should they be allowed to compete in the female division?

Maybe you can call up the people at CAS who made that decision and educate them, because they don't seem to understand that.

Someone I know who is VERY conservative says- there's ONE test if you're a male or female- just look at their genitals. He's very ignorant but so are so many others.

Rojo made a good point- 100 years ago, 40-50 years ago, no one would have known they were intersex.

I, too, have sympathy for them and my feelings on males choosing to become female is that they should sacrifice participating in sports (by their own choice).

They understand it perfectly well like anyone with common sense. They are just very worried about a misstep in this PC environment. Some people love to push obviously absurd positions just to challenge the status quo and be progressive.

I said Niyonsaba because we were talking about her. The whole group of intersex athletes are running women times. on the top end, but…. Caster, Wambui, Masilingi, Mboma… none of them are even running good HS boy times.

Yes, they could have their own category. However, white men sprinters could also have their own category. But I don’t think so. It’s fine the way it is.

African Americans make up 12.4 percent of US population. Everything being equal, there would be 0.0000055895067% chance that all 8 finalist at the 100m US trials would be African Americans. 0.0000000000003% chance that it happens in 2 consecutive trials. You can continue that way and see what the odds are for 3 trials. I am not even looking at medalists, but going all the way down to simply being a finalist.

Everything is not equal.

Some white guys do make standard to run the 100m at the trials however. So they should run in the men category.

Zero intersex even come close to making men standards.

Have you seen those 80s 400/800m record holders? They didn't look every bit female...

Why are you blaming CAS? This is about the IAAF's DSD Regulations from 2018, that only cover events from 400 - 1609 m (and only 46 XY DSD). CAS (and later SFT) merely upheld the regulations, after Caster Semenya's and Athletics South Africa's appeal.

This is not true. 100 years ago, 40-50 years ago, people still went through puberty of adolescence - and back then just as today, puberty of adolescence brought about numerous significant physical changes that were markedly different in males and females. The physical changes that reshape and dramatically mark human beings in adolescence make it very easy for most people to tell whether a teenager or adult person is male or female pretty much instantly, and without putting any conscious thought into it.

(The case of people who get body altering medical interventions and/or wear elaborate costumes meant to disguise their sex are another story - but that's not who we're discussing here.)

100 years ago, 40-50 years ago, female humans menstruated, ovulated, had 28-day cycles, and teenage girls and women - including athletes - had to deal with a host of related issues such as PMS, PMDD, cramps, premenstrual breast tenderness, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and risk and dread of unwanted pregnancy. Back then as today, most girls on earth began having periods in their tweens or early teens - and spent an average of 5-7 days out of every 28 days with blood and tissue issuing from their vaginas. Periods - and their lack of them - are a major, obvious sign of a person's sex that everyone knew about 100 and 40-50 years ago. Persons of the sex that have periods have especially been acutely aware of them - and all the inconvenience and mess that periods entail - since the dawn of human history.

Even in the supposedly dark ages of a century ago, it's not true "no one would have known." Back then, any medical doctor, midwife or school nurse who took a history and did a physical exam of a person with an XY DSD would have known right off the bat that the person most likely was a male with a disorder of male sex development, not a female. Without further investigation, they would not have known which exact DSD condition the person had - but they certainly would have known that this person had a DSD, a DSD characterized by testes.

Plus, 40-50 years ago, mandatory sex chromosome testing was done on all elite athletes seeking to compete in women's international competition governed by the IAAF or IOC.

In late 1967 during the lead-up to the 1968 winter Olympics , the reigning women's World Cup alpine ski champion Erik - then known as Erika - Schinegger was withdrawn from the Olympics and disappeared from the world sports scene after the mandatory chromosome testing then required of athletes in women's events revealed that he was XY with a disorder of male sex development.

Schinegger has never named his DSD condition, but it has to be one of the handful of XY conditions that the present-day WA regulations pertain to. Most likely Schinegger has XY 5-ARD, the enzyme deficiency which impedes conversion of T to DHT that Caster Semenya and presumably Niyonsaba and Margaret Wambui have. I say it's most likely that Schinegger has XY 5-ARD because Schinegger went on to father a child - and XY 5-ARD is the male DSD that causes atypical genital anatomy and undescended testes which has yielded the greatest number of case reports of affected men whose sperm has been analyzed and described, and who've succeeded in their attempts to father children.

Also, one of the distinguishing features of this particular DSD is that whilst individuals with XY 5-ARD go through male puberty of adolescence that masculinizes them in most of the customary ways, they do not develop the male-pattern facial and body hair like most men do. Their lack of even peach fuzz mustaches in adolescence and adulthood is often taken as evidence that they are female even when such telltale signs as their lack of menstruation, absent breast development, male musculature, male pelvis and hip shape, male-typical Q angle, male explosiveness off the blocks/out of the starting gate, and male development trajectory all clearly indicate otherwise.

In 1967, Schinegger went to a clinic where he got psychological help to deal with the news that he is male with a disorder of male sex development, and he decided to have surgery to "normalize" his urogenital anatomy.

So clearly 55 years ago, there was enough known about the kinds of XY DSDs that persons like Niyonsaba was born with for someone else with the same sort of condition born in 1948 to have had his XY DSD properly and accurately diagnosed when he was still a teen. There was also enough known about these conditions in 1967 for Schinegger to get psychological counseling and medical treatment that he found beneficial, and which helped him go on to lead the rest of his life as a happy, well-adjusted man and proud father.

The SRY gene in chromosomally normally males is located on the Y chromosome. Yes, there are translocations of the SRY gene to autosomes and these individuals develop as fully male. So, I think just amend the rule to no individuals possessing the SRY gene are eligible to compete in the female division. Problem solved.