This won't work. People who are XY and have an SRY gene can have varying degrees of androgen insensitivity, all the way to complete androgen insensitivity. Literally every single thing about them fits into the bimodal definition of "female" except for two things - no ovaries, and no uterus. They often have very high levels of testosterone, which doesn't do anything to them because they don't have functioning androgen receptors and the negative feedback system doesn't work. So, you can't even use their testosterone level to ban them. The vast majority of these women find out their genetic make up and reality only once they either cannot get pregnant or reach and age old enough to be concerned about never having a period.
You are conflating the age at which women begin to worry about not being able to get pregnant with the age at which girls get concerned about never having a period.
[…mostly blather]
You are the one conflating, The Stache isn’t. Typical RunRagged post that will jump on some deliberate misinterpretation of the writer’s words and wax eloquent condescendingly for several paragraphs on basic facts that any adult — especially someone speaking in a nuanced manner in complete sentences on the topic — would obviously know, and furthermore, the point itself being belabored would be unsubstantive to the issue either way. And it will be peppered seemingly with self-proclaimed expertise on the topic on account of being a menstruating woman and mother.
I'm all for limiting women's competition to biological women, because the category was created to allow women a chance and without that limitation, we'd be back to the days of Semenya, Niyonsaba, and Wambui going 1-2-3 every race. But testosterone levels alone do not define athletic success. It's just too simplistic a claim. You'd be closer if you defined it chromosomally, because there are dozens, probably hundreds, of differences between men and women from brain structure to nervous system to muscular development, bone structure, hormones, and many others. But there are exceptions, somewhere between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100 where there may be an extra chromosome or a disorder of sexual development. Those raised as girls may be chromosomally male, like the 800m runners, and they may have two x and one y, or two y and one x, or they may have high testosterone but the inability to use it like the Indian athlete. The reason that the exceptions matter is that rules may not exclude them and they may have major advantages. That may include testosterone but it may not. It can also include past testosterone. Testosterone suppression will not annul hundreds of differences from puberty and earlier, which is why testosterone alone is not going to eliminate the trans-athletes taking hormone blockers but still having an advantage. This is why you can't get away with just saying it's all about testosterone.
You are conflating the age at which women begin to worry about not being able to get pregnant with the age at which girls get concerned about never having a period.
[…mostly blather]
You are the one conflating, The Stache isn’t. Typical RunRagged post that will jump on some deliberate misinterpretation of the writer’s words and wax eloquent condescendingly for several paragraphs on basic facts that any adult — especially someone speaking in a nuanced manner in complete sentences on the topic — would obviously know, and furthermore, the point itself being belabored would be unsubstantive to the issue either way. And it will be peppered seemingly with self-proclaimed expertise on the topic on account of being a menstruating woman and mother.
I want to address the use of the words men and women when referring to these athletes. They are women. They were identified at birth as girls by their families, by their doctors, by their cultures. They have been raised and brought up as girls and women their entire lives. They have identified as women their entire lives. They did not choose their genetics any more than you or I did. They have always lived and continue to live as women, and that should be recognized. Stop calling them men. I highly doubt any of them decided to engage in athletics as an intentional way to "cheat" as is the implication that many of you are throwing around.
I agree that none of us chooses our genetics.
But how do you know that all the XY DSD athletes competing in women's elite sports were all "identified at birth as girls by their families, their doctors, by their cultures?"
AFAIK, none of these athletes were born in medical settings with doctors around, and none of them saw doctors or other HCPs growing up. There are no medical records. No birth certificates or other documentation dating to their childhoods to check either.
You confidently assert that, "They have been raised and brought up as girls and women their entire lives. They have identified as women their entire lives."
How do you know this? Have you checked into all their backgrounds? I think if you had looked into their individual backgrounds, you'd find no evidence that they all "have been raised and brought up as girls and women their entire lives. They have identified as women their entire lives." In fact you might find reason to doubt these oft-repeated claims.
Take Semenya, for example. From a story in the NY Times in 2021:
Books for children and young adults have portrayed Semenya as a race and gender activist, a hero, an athlete who overcame bullying to find her identity and confidence on the track. She was the fourth child in a family of five daughters and a son...
Her parents, Semenya said, understood that her life would be uncommon and prepared her for it. They let her wear boys’ clothing, take on a household role traditionally reserved for sons and join a teenage boys’ soccer team.
She spoke affectionately of her younger days of playing on a dusty field in a rural village, and being celebrated, not isolated, for standing out, for being singular and distinctive.
“As a kid, you’re walking home to the sports ground, you’re playing with boys and your childhood becomes marvelous because everyone loves you because you’re different,” Semenya said with a grin.
Whether or not she qualifies for the Tokyo Games, the South African runner will have provoked an important debate about who should compete in women’s sports.
If Semenya really was raised as girl, how come Semenya is the only supposed girl in Semenya's family who got to do sports growing up? Why was Caster given that freedom and opportunity but Caster's genuinely female sisters spent their time when not in class doing the kinds of household and farmstead chores that girls in SA are customarily saddled with?
If Semenya really was "identified as a girl" by Semenya's culture, how do you account for the fact that in the extremely sexist, misogynistic and male supremacist rural South African culture Semenya grew up in, no one had problems with Semenya playing on a boys' sports team as a teenager?
The NYT makes it sound like Semenya's parents were the only ones involved in deciding whether Semenya could play on a boys' sports team as a teen, but in the real world that's not how things work. All the boys on Semenya's team and on other teams and all the coaches, refs, parents and league officials would have to go along with this too. So would the companies that provided the insurance. That's not very likely if anyone really thought Semenya was a girl.
How do you explain that Semenya was always allowed to wear the boys' uniform to school? From what I know of SA culture and the preference for strict sex norms in school uniforms there, being able to wear the boys' uniform is not a privilege ever afforded anyone genuinely thought to be female in SA.
How do you explain that in 2009 the head of Semenya's secondary school told the press that he had no idea anyone thought Caster Semenya was a girl until Semenya's final year, which was after Semenya took up running and had started competing in girls' races?
How do you account for the fact that when the New Yorker magazine did a long piece about Semenya in 2009, Semenya's coach spoke about the up-and-coming runner as "he" and "him"?
The advantage is male puberty - caused by testosterone. Semenya went through male puberty due to his working testes. He looks and sounds like a man because of male puberty.
Testosterone is a powerful thing, even when males don't have extremely high levels of it. The testosterone male babies receive in utero are just the start of the physical advantages that males have from birth. Even among 8 year old children, males outperform females in all athletic events.
From my understanding of Ross Tucker's analysis of the Semenya case, Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is the most likely scenario for her. My guess is this is the type of scenario for many of the DSD women athletes under current scrutiny, if they are in fact DSD athletes.
No. Semenya does not have PAIS. She has 5-ARD. Both are covered by the current DSD regulations, but they are different conditions.
In Chand v. IAAF, expert witnesses representing Chand made an argument that she did not have the same advantage as other XY athletes because of her PAIS. Both CAS and IAAF accepted that argument.
In Semenya v. IAAF, Semenya's expert witness tried to make the same argument, and IAAF completely disagreed. Semenya's DSD affected her genitalia, but not her athletic ability. She is not as fast as Rudisha simply because she isn't as exceptional as Rudisha. There are many men with 1:54 800m PB. They are serious athletes, they just aren't as talented as Rudisha.
CAS did not make judgement on this point in Semenya case, and simply said it was irrelevant. Whether Semenya had the same advantage as other XY athletes or not, her advantage is still large enough to cause competitive unfairness.
Thanks for the clarification on Semenya. I admittedly did not follow the sport closely for a number of years, and was a bit out of the loop on the findings of her case.
Interestingly, there is a population of 5-ARD people in Dominican Republic referred to as "guevodoces". Basically, they're raised as girls because of their indeterminate genitalia, and around 12 or so their male genitalia start to grow, and they become boys/men after that.
The science isn't there. The big problem has been that when you start testing all the women athletes, you start finding athletes who on the surface appear to be cis gender, "all female" biologically but actually have chromosomal abnormalities or outlier levels of testosterone. ///
There are no normal women with elevated testosteron. They either have a DSD or a medical condition. No normal woman has T in the male range.
That is a reasonable point Heneie. It is quite possible that testosterone use was rampant in the days before they even tested for it. But I suppose weedy looking middle distance runners with a bit more muscle did not look too masculine. and were good for the sport.
And I totally agree, probably no one would argue women with CAIS participating in women's sports.
No "reasonable" person, that is. There are many right-wing cultural warrior types on this board who think no person with XY should be allowed to compete against women.
Their definition of a woman is probably something like "a person I can impregnate."
It's Hotel California Dear Friend. You posted on this thread. So according to the Eagles, you've already checked in. Good luck ever getting out of here. I don't know you from having back and fort posts between us, however I do read your posts.
Hotel California is, if you didn't know, is a metaphor for your life. It causes pause to reflect where you've been and where you're going.
It's Hotel California Dear Friend. You posted on this thread. So according to the Eagles, you've already checked in. Good luck ever getting out of here. I don't know you from having back and fort posts between us, however I do read your posts.
Hotel California is, if you didn't know, is a metaphor for your life. It causes pause to reflect where you've been and where you're going.
Love it! You can check out, but you can never leave...
I want to address the use of the words men and women when referring to these athletes. They are women. They were identified at birth as girls by their families, by their doctors, by their cultures. They have been raised and brought up as girls and women their entire lives. They have identified as women their entire lives. They did not choose their genetics any more than you or I did. They have always lived and continue to live as women, and that should be recognized. Stop calling them men. I highly doubt any of them decided to engage in athletics as an intentional way to "cheat" as is the implication that many of you are throwing around.
Here's a video of Semenya in late 2014 (when Semenya was supposedly on the T suppressing drugs Semenya has likened to torture) talking about how great it was growing up playing sports with boys, only boys and how Semenya wanted nothing to do with girls growing up:
"I grew up with boys, everything was just all about boys. Girls they were a little bit boring to me because they were too soft... I gotta be honest" (then proceeds to tells the interviewer to her face that she too is soft)
South African Olympian Caster Semenya joins Lerato Kganyago in studio to chat about her childhood and how she got into running as well as upping her game on ...
Do you really think that being "raised as a girl" usually means spending childhood playing sports with boys, not wanting to have anything do do with girls, and thinking girls are too "boring and soft" to be worth your time?
Do you think people who were "raised and brought up as girls and women all their lives" and truly see themselves as women would rudely diss a woman conducting a press interview to her face this way?
You think that when we deal with the press and female journalists in particular, those of us who were "raised and brought up as girls and women" not only customarily make such misogynistic comments, but we laugh at the women interviewing us as we do so?
CAS did not make judgement on this point in Semenya case, and simply said it was irrelevant. Whether Semenya had the same advantage as other XY athletes or not, her advantage is still large enough to cause competitive unfairness.
Have there been any public updates on her appeal with the European Court against the Swiss supreme court’s finding?
The science isn't there. The big problem has been that when you start testing all the women athletes, you start finding athletes who on the surface appear to be cis gender, "all female" biologically but actually have chromosomal abnormalities or outlier levels of testosterone. ///
There are no normal women with elevated testosteron. They either have a DSD or a medical condition. No normal woman has T in the male range.
I happen to be eating lunch with two physicians and one is an endocrinologist. She is saying that this is true that there is a "normal" range of testosterone for women and we could implement a policy that says all women competing must be within that range. She indicated that the problem is that approximately 5% of women do not naturally fall within that range and the vast majority of those women are not experiencing a medical condition. Extrapolating that math, there were 465 women that qualified for the US Marathon Oly Trials in 2020. Over 20 of these women on average would fall outside the normal range. What do we do in their case? Tell them that they can't run? Raise the cutoff of normal female testosterone levels? Make them take hormones to reduce their natural testosterone levels in order to compete? She also said that some men without medical issues have naturally low testosterone, but don't have medical conditions. What if a fraction of these men fall in the women's range? Can they compete with the women? Unfortunately there is no simple scientific test yet that doesn't leave some poor group of people left out. Of course, testing for chromosomes is even less effective.
From my understanding of Ross Tucker's analysis of the Semenya case, Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is the most likely scenario for her. My guess is this is the type of scenario for many of the DSD women athletes under current scrutiny, if they are in fact DSD athletes.
No. Semenya does not have PAIS. She has 5-ARD. Both are covered by the current DSD regulations, but they are different conditions.
In Chand v. IAAF, expert witnesses representing Chand made an argument that she did not have the same advantage as other XY athletes because of her PAIS. Both CAS and IAAF accepted that argument.
In Semenya v. IAAF, Semenya's expert witness tried to make the same argument, and IAAF completely disagreed. Semenya's DSD affected her genitalia, but not her athletic ability. She is not as fast as Rudisha simply because she isn't as exceptional as Rudisha. There are many men with 1:54 800m PB. They are serious athletes, they just aren't as talented as Rudisha.
CAS did not make judgement on this point in Semenya case, and simply said it was irrelevant. Whether Semenya had the same advantage as other XY athletes or not, her advantage is still large enough to cause competitive unfairness.
The conversation about Semenya's athletic ability and testosterone is kind of a moot point as Semenya is not a woman. He had underdeveloped male external sex characteristics, so he was raised to think he was a woman, but he was not biologically a woman and therefor shouldn't compete as one. 5-ARD is a developmental disorder that occurs in males. It's tragic that he found out about his condition this way, but this is not as complicated as everybody thinks it is; administrators within these athletic organizations are just unwilling to make decisions that may be seen as unpopular.
You are the one conflating, The Stache isn’t. Typical RunRagged post that will jump on some deliberate misinterpretation of the writer’s words and wax eloquent condescendingly for several paragraphs on basic facts that any adult — especially someone speaking in a nuanced manner in complete sentences on the topic — would obviously know, and furthermore, the point itself being belabored would be unsubstantive to the issue either way. And it will be peppered seemingly with self-proclaimed expertise on the topic on account of being a menstruating woman and mother.
Argue against the points I've made, mate. Focusing on the personality and posting style of the person you disagree with is puerile and a waste of time. Also, harrumphing like that comes off as "tone policing."
More to the point: my expertise on the topics at hand here comes from a lot more than just my experience of having been a menstruating girl and woman and a mother for many decades.
But even if my expertise were solely due to me being a person of the female sex who has done sports in a female body, has taught different sports activities, has spent decades menstruating, and has also been through pregnancy, labor and childbirth and done a fair bit of childrearing - it seems to me that this would still make me FAR more qualified to speak about topics pertaining to women's sports and female biology than most posters on LRC.
Also, what happened to the importance of giving credence to the "lived experience" of people from marginalized, discriminated-against groups? Seems like more of the same-old, same-old double standards that come up on these threads: guys like you think it's your god-given right to tell women who post what we are allowed to say to and how we're allowed to say it. If women disagree, you tell us our posting style is all wrong. Might as well call me "shrill" and "hysterical" while you're at it.
There are no normal women with elevated testosteron. They either have a DSD or a medical condition. No normal woman has T in the male range.
I happen to be eating lunch with two physicians and one is an endocrinologist. She is saying that this is true that there is a "normal" range of testosterone for women and we could implement a policy that says all women competing must be within that range. She indicated that the problem is that approximately 5% of women do not naturally fall within that range and the vast majority of those women are not experiencing a medical condition. Extrapolating that math, there were 465 women that qualified for the US Marathon Oly Trials in 2020. Over 20 of these women on average would fall outside the normal range. What do we do in their case? Tell them that they can't run? Raise the cutoff of normal female testosterone levels? Make them take hormones to reduce their natural testosterone levels in order to compete? She also said that some men without medical issues have naturally low testosterone, but don't have medical conditions. What if a fraction of these men fall in the women's range? Can they compete with the women? Unfortunately there is no simple scientific test yet that doesn't leave some poor group of people left out. Of course, testing for chromosomes is even less effective.
The World Athletics rules on testosterone apply only to DSD athletes, not to biological females. None of the expected 20 women with out-of-range T levels would be impacted by hormone rules.
I'm guessing Coe's motivation for the statement was watching Semenya in the 5K and Getachew in the steeplechase, where everyone noticed that they did not fit in with the other competitors. Yes it is okay to tighten the standards so they don't compete with women, but they also don't belong competing against men. They need a separate category but still need to be allowed to compete somewhere.
I'm all for limiting women's competition to biological women, because the category was created to allow women a chance
That's not true, women's sport exists because they were deliberately excluded. It's not the case the nice sports authorities decided to include a women's category to "give them a chance". Women's sport arose out of the opposite - out of exclusion and banning.
