Fair or Foul: Non binary runner Cal Calamia reported to USADA for testosterone use.

When you say "there is a difference between a fundamental unassailable gender advantage and a physical advantage", are you saying that there is some great innate unknowable difference between xx and xy-chromosomed individuals that is not a physical advantage? Or, are you saying that when a person identifies as a particular gender, there is then an unassailable advantage that is conferred to them that is not a physical advantage?

In the next paragraph, you wrote that "no matter the sport or activity", so you believe in any endeavor undertaken, xy-chromosomed are just better... at everything? I disagree with that belief. But, just for arguments sake, if we assume that xy chromosomed people are often able to acquire natural abilities in the aggregate that exceed xx-chromosomed people's abilities, so what? Everyone would be allowed to give it whirl and see what happens. Chances are that you and I and 99% on the board did not reach an "elite level" (which is another term that needs to be defined because many people would think the top xx marks, like 2:11:53 is "elite"). If we were unable to reach the elite level, were we screwed over, or did it ruin sport for those of us who did not reach an "elite level"?

Then, with the basketball and boxing examples you provided, it seemed like you were arguing my point. Height and weight are big factors toward success in these sports. How much of a factor is having xx chromosomes instead of xy chromosomes? In itself, I would say no difference whatsoever, but yes genes can and do largely affect OTHER traits that do make a difference. Every single person has their own unique genetic code.

Why is splitting people up based on some characteristic "fair" to you? Is it fair just because this is what we've done for a long time? Perhaps we need to define "fair". In a fair system, the fact that people may not be easily able to identify gender would be wholly irrelevant. People would win or place in their respective league based on performance alone.

If you compete against Jakob in any race, he won’t win a great majority of the time, he’ll win all of the time.

It's a hypothetical, but I don't really disagree.

Hypothetically speaking, Jakob could have both legs broken and in casts but still figure he could beat me. In that situation, I think I could possibly win.

Not OP, but some simple clarifications.

Males and females have ~10% difference in athletic performance across most sports. There are exceptions, and you could make the argument that sports are created/defined to advantage males. There are sports that can be arranged to be sex-neutral, but they are largely skill based. As soon as strength or endurance enters it becomes male-advantaged. It's not social or equitable, it's just the way the biology is.

When speaking of strength and endurance having xy chromosomes (male) is an advantage. It's a stretch to say those genes aren't an advantage but the traits from them are. That's akin to saying doping isn't an advantage, but the results of doping are. It's a bit pedantic.

Looking at a bell curve, it's a slight advantage to males across most of the distribution. It's slight enough that any random female stands a reasonable chance of beating any random male. But over 100/1,000/10,000 contests you would expect the males to win the majority of the time.

This is an issue at the tail of the bell curve. A 10% advantage has very slightly unequal populations through the meat of the curve. But at the tails those populations are incredibly unequal, orders of magnitude more of the males. This is evident when looking at world leading times in running races. Females usually rank in the top 1,000-10,000 best times.

To answer the question about fairness it's better to frame it less as 'what's fair' and instead as 'what's more fair?'. There's always going to be unfairness in population level rules. It should be obvious that the more fair solution is to protect women's sport (50% of the population) as opposed to protecting trans sport (<1% of the population) at the expense of women's sport.

As this is a running site to put into a running context..

There would not be one female competing at the Olympics in athletics if we didn't split by gender ... But there would be athletes with various heights and weights..

So to be fair and give females a chance it's a pretty common sense place to create a category so they can also compete.. Especially considering it's around 50 percent of the population

The women's marathon world record holder would very likely could make the US team.

It's actually not true that "Males and females have ~10% difference in athletic performance across most sports." The difference is that low only in a few sports.

In running, rowing and swimming, adolescent and adult males outdo their female peers by 10-13%.

But in other sports the male-over-female performance gap is considerably higher. This link will bring up a chart showing that levels of male advantage across a number of different sports goes from a low of 10-13% to a high of more than 50%, with most sports in the middle:

link.springer.com

Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage - Sports Medicine

Males enjoy physical performance advantages over females within competitive sport. The sex-based segregation into male and female sporting categories does not account for transgender persons who experience incongruence betwee...

Open link

Same goes for specific sports-related activities like jumping; kicking; the ability to launch oneself forward from a stationery position at a starting line or off blocks; tackling and body-checking; throwing a punch; throwing and aiming a ball, discus, javelin, frisbee; serving a tennis ball, volleyball or water polo ball; spiking a volleyball or water polo ball; wielding a device like a bat, club, stick, cue, polo mallet, fencing sword and using it either to move an object or to hit an opponent; being able to take a punch or withstand a tackle; being able to withstand the sorts of impacts and forces to the head, neck and upper torso that athletes have to endure in automobile racing and men's ultra-high diving...

The advantage that males have over females in sports is not just due to differences in height and weight like the poster with the handle Fairness in Opportunity, not outcome alleges. There have been some top-tier female elite swimmers who once they got past pubery matched some top-tier elite male swimmers in terms of height, weight, wing span and even in feet and hand size. But no matter how tall, heavy, well-muscled, large-handed or big-footed an adult or late-teenage female swimmer might be, she still will have lungs that are 10-12% smaller and less powerful, a throat that's 40% smaller, a heart that's 25-38% smaller and less powerful, lower hemoglobin in her blood, and different breathing mechanics than her same-age male peers.

I take no issue at all with the facts you (mathematics) provided. Thank you - the bell curve stuff was presented well. I also agree generally with Erock's contention that no women (I am dropping the xx and xy vernacular for now unless any one takes offense) would make the olympics (though Kvothe provided a humorous counter).

We differ on the conclusions drawn. Both of you seem to express that since females make up about 50% of the population, this would require a separate category as though there are necessary quotas for awards. I prefer to avoid segregation based on sex, race, orientation, etc etc.

I think participation in sports is great for all, and I highly encourage it. But, to me (as my username would suggest) fairness would stem from allowing all the opportunity to participate in sport and not from guaranteeing specific outcomes to different groups prior to any competition taking place. The lack of contrived achievements would, imo, not detract from sport in any way, but the separation of people does.

Perhaps a person could disagree with me by taking the stance that awards or first place finishes defines a person's value. So, if fewer athletic awards are earned by women, then women have lesser significance. But, this is not at all how I see any person's value (and I would feel sorry for someone who does believe this way). The transpeople's issue very much exposes this unproductive way of thinking. The answer is not to add additional segmentation of competition, it is to consolidate competition, be authentic about abilities, appreciate everyone, and fairly provide everyone with inclusion and opportunity.

That is not what I allege. I'll stipulate to all of the percentages you've stated, and so what? As was suggested earlier, I may be of similar height and weight to Jakob, but he likely will win every competition (by a lot) due to genetic and acquired-through-training advantages. Well, shoot... them's the breaks.

If Cal is going to refer to herself with the singular 1st Person Subject Pronoun 'I', and use singular 1st-Person Object Pronouns ('me') and singular 1st-Person Possessive Adjectives ('my'), then I'll be good-and-god-damned if I refer to her as "they", "y'all", "them", or "their".

Firstly, thank you for the civil and well reasoned response. I generally disagree, but it's nice to have a genuine response that doesn't devolve into flame wars.

Where I disagree specifically is that we should 'avoid segregation based on sex'. Race, orientation, I'm on board (at least in the de jure sense, if people want to segregate themselves in a de facto sense then more power to them). A lack of sex segregation in sports is perfectly reasonable at the participation level. At the professional (read: money earning) level having no segregation is a win for men. These wins determine the persons value directly by paying them for the win. It doesn't make the loser less of a person, but it does make the loser poorer.

Can you imagine if there was a government subsidy for anybody who could squat 300lbs? Men would outnumber women 1000:1. That's essentially what you're proposing by eliminating sex segregation in sports. Wouldn't it be more fair to give the subsidy to the top 10% of men and top 10% of women?

It is not pedantic. Y chromosome does not give you an advantage if your body does not respond to androgen. Likewise, it does not give you an advantage if your continuously suppress your testosterone level starting with puberty and take supplemental estrogen.

That's why WA's rule is written the way it is. It is the phenotype and hormonal level usually associated with Y chromosome that give advantage to an athlete, not the chromosome itself.

When you say a y chromosome doesn't always give you an advantage, you can actively take medication to counteract it, then yes, that is a bit pedantic.

Pedantic is an insulting word used to describe someone
who annoys others by correcting small errors, caring too much about
minor details, or emphasizing their own expertise especially in some
narrow or boring subject matter

And yes I realize the irony that I am now also being pedantic.

I hope you will never become a minority who gets constantly erased by other people.

You don't want to be called "pedantic" every time you announce that you exist.

Keep the ban on testosterone, but split the non-binary category into two sub-categories competing separately: male non-binary and female non-binary.

But a main reason a separate sports division was created for female people was to give us the chance to participate in the first place. The aim was to give us a chance to participate recreationally - for fun, fitness, personal fulfillment, skill-building, health, social benefits, etc - as much as to participate in sports competitively.

Historically, girls and women were either excluded from participating in sports entirely - or we were allowed to participate, but only to a very limited extent compared to boys and men. When girls and women did get a chance to participate, we were restricted only to some sports in some narrow settings and under limited conditions.

A principal aim of creating a separate division of sports for girls and women was to make it possible for the 51% of the human population who happen to be female to get a chance to participate - finally. It wasn't simply about "guaranteeing specific outcomes to different groups prior to any competition" the way your disingenuous, historically uninformed framing suggests.

The longterm aim of female sports is to create and insure an equal playing field for girls and women. But before we could set our sights on that goal, girls and women had to fight tooth and nail over many generations just to get a chance to access the playing field to begin with.

One of the many reasons girls and women's sports still aren't on an equal footing with boys's and men's sports even in 2023 is because for generations, girls and women weren't allowed to get our foot in the door.

It's also disingenuous to to speak about segregation based on sex, race, orientation, etc etc in one breath as though the different characteristics you lumped together are analgous - and as though race/ethnicity and sexual orientation are at issue here.

In sports, it's long been widely-agreed that the appropriate dividing lines for separating particpants and competitors into different categories are sex, age, skill level, physical disability/disability - and in some cases like wrestling and boxing, weight.

AFAIK, no one on this thread - or anywhere else - is seriously advocating that sports be segregated by race/ethnicity/skin color, sexual orientation, religion, poltical views, etc. Though some people are advocating that sports be segregated by gender identity; that new categories be added for some novel gender identities (non-binary, and trans); and that male athletes who claim opposite-sex gender identities be allowed to compete in the female category.

If you want to make the case that there's no legitimate reason to have separate sports divisions based on athletes' sex, then have at it. But if you're serious about persuading others to come around to your view that mixing both sexes together is the fairest, safest and wisest approach, you're going to have to provide some evidence-backed arguments to support your position. Using disingenuous framing and throwing around a bunch of stock phrases, buzzwords and slogans that give lip service to "fairness for all" while actually promoting unfairness for female people won't do the trick.

In theory you are correct. But USATF does not do random drug testing on non-elite athletes. I know of multiple people who have reported the same suspected PED user to the Play Clean Tip center and USATF has done except announce to the world that that they will be testing at an upcoming sanctioned race. So user finds out testing will happen, stops doping a few weeks before the race, and user goes home innocent.

So, i would really like to know how this information came to light.

So someone like Cal cannot compete in any category? Or can they still compete in the men's division?

Nothing, Verbosa? I take it no one can find anything in WA’s eligibility guidelines to refute any of my four bullets above related to transwomen even though it contradicts what like 95% of posters here seem to believe or post and it would be pretty simple to quote contradictory authoritative information.

Let me add a fifth bullet:

5) WA doesn’t think “biological sex” is strictly binary as is clear from its carefully crafted language used to spell out eligibility guidelines for DSD individuals.