If you care about women's sports and the Caster Semenya situation, you MUST read this article

I think you make some empathetic and meaningful points, which I also agree with. However, I am not sure about the plausibility of attempts to establish clear boundaries between our normative sex and gender categories.

Going through the history of medical research in regards to sex difference during the 20th century has revealed a paradox, which is this: The more "we" (i.e. we as a society, placing pressure on scientific processes) attempt to clearly establish a dividing line or determining factor that tells us definitively if one is male or female, the less clear it becomes. Brains? Not definitive. Chromosomes? Not everyone is XX or XY - and even if they are, there are always the epigenetic and environmental factors that have a tremendous influence on human development, including *hormones*.

By establishing limits explaining that "x amount of testosterone is too much for a normative female body" is really based not on science or any kind of altruistic or ethical conclusion (medical or otherwise) in the interest of the health of individuals, or the greater good of the competitors. It is based on the fundamental cultural influences of our broader societies and, in this case, the sport governing bodies. These institutions are our political and cultural preferences/values in a concentrated form, filled with people who are interested in keeping things going in a way that is most optimal for the tradition of the sports. They don't want to have to deal with any of this conceptually abstract gender/sex "stuff". They would rather keep their ways of thinking and insist that there be only two classifications for athletics competition: men and women. This is, in my opinion, a reflection of broader cultural values that are heavily skewed towards believing (yes, believing) that there are/have only been two sexes throughout history, two genders, and the way to tell the difference between them is easier and easier - with science!

My main point is that humans are more like the following:

http://tinyurl.com/jjc6kk3

and less like this:

http://tinyurl.com/gopo8q8

Attempting to make the former into the latter is a messy business, and adds another layer of complexity to an issue already fraught by the influences of the broader "liberal vs. conservative" culture wars. We need to take a step back and really question these fundamental categories (and our assumptions about them being binary and clearly cut apart from each other). In my opinion, that's a first step for us to get to some more realistic and workable solutions to the dilemmas we see with this whole "over-representation of intersex individuals" (or simply women who are on the more masculine end of the bell-curve) in the upper echelon of women's athletics.

Flame away.

I think this confirms that what we need is competition categories delimited not by gender, but by testosterone levels. If testosterone is so strongly correlated with sex, and if it is the main driver of variation in athletic ability between men and women, it should be possible to determine a level that includes, say, 99.9% of females, but excludes females such as Caster Semenya who appear to have an unfair advantage. She could then compete in the high-testosterone category, without having people deny that she is a woman.

For athletes who are part of the biological passport program, the Steroidal Module already includes testosterone (among others), so at the elite level, there would be no extra complications. In amateur sports, for practical purposes, one would have to go with the assumption that females are automatically eligible to compete in the low testosterone category, just as one currently has to assume that amateur athletes are not doping.

If you want to compare most traits, I would agree with your point. However, you've already begged the question by breaking them up into males and females (maybe by chromosomes?).

My strongest disagreement would be that, as the interview details, for athletic prime age adults (post puberty-mid 40s') there is a more strongly bimodal distribution of testosterone production and uptake ability than your chart shows. Yes, there is a continuum, but the proportion of people in that middle part are super small. It makes the idea of two distinct categories much more tempting and functionally easier.

I tend to agree with Harper, but with an understanding that

a) We really need to continue to build our understanding of the biological basis of sex and adjust/remove the category as we learn more.

b) The privacy and dignity of athletes must be honored. Here I call out rojo for his idiotic claim:

"I've been told that you don't want to "out people" but I don't get that argument. We as a society need to move beyond that. Semenya did nothing wrong. She has internal testicles. So what? If you were about to marry a Jelimo, and you were her husband, wouldn't you want to know if she had internal testicles or not?"

Do you seriously think that medical details like this need to be broadcast by a sporting association? It would be Jelimo's business to tell her potential husband that she has internal testicles. I personally think that your wife should know about your permanent rectal prolapse.

You are trying to make things too complicated. It's not about resolving a theoretical discussion about whether sexes should be looked at a binary and taking into account all of the possible gradations between the sexes. It's about establishing rules for a sport. Rules for a sport have to clear and enforceable. There's no divine revelation that says that high hurdles are 42" for men and 33" for women. It's an arbitrary rule. We don't ponder exactly how high the hurdles should be given how tall a hurdler is. You have to have uniform rules that officials can enforce.

With men and women, the best of the female population cannot compete athletically with the best of the male population. Looking at the WR in each event proves this. If women had to compete against men, there would be virtually no athletic opportunities for women at the top level of athletics. Because the world has decided that it is valuable to give women athletic opportunities, athletics is segregated by sex.

Once you have decided to segregate by sex, you have to have a clear and enforceable rule that divides the women's category from the men's category. If there really is no dividing line, then you might as well get rid of sex-segregated sports and eliminate athletic opportunities for women at a top level.

Testosterone levels may not be a perfect dividing line, any more than 42"/33" hurdles are the "perfect" height - they plainly disadvantage shorter athletes. But if you have a sport, you have to have clear rules, even if they are arbitrary, and you have to accept that those rules will favor some and disfavor others.

Women's sports are incompatible with the Civil Rights Act. They discriminate based on sex. Now what?

dingle wrote:

Here I call out rojo for his idiotic claim:

"I've been told that you don't want to "out people" but I don't get that argument. We as a society need to move beyond that. Semenya did nothing wrong. She has internal testicles. So what? If you were about to marry a Jelimo, and you were her husband, wouldn't you want to know if she had internal testicles or not?"

Do you seriously think that medical details like this need to be broadcast by a sporting association? It would be Jelimo's business to tell her potential husband that she has internal testicles. I personally think that your wife should know about your permanent rectal prolapse.

+1. Thanks for calling that out.

kang6789 wrote:

dingle wrote:

Here I call out rojo for his idiotic claim:

"I've been told that you don't want to "out people" but I don't get that argument. We as a society need to move beyond that. Semenya did nothing wrong. She has internal testicles. So what? If you were about to marry a Jelimo, and you were her husband, wouldn't you want to know if she had internal testicles or not?"

Do you seriously think that medical details like this need to be broadcast by a sporting association? It would be Jelimo's business to tell her potential husband that she has internal testicles. I personally think that your wife should know about your permanent rectal prolapse.

+1. Thanks for calling that out.

+ 2. You have no say over what Jelimo does or says to anyone in her personal life. That would be like me showing Rojo's significant other all the mindless, incompetent, very low, and so on postings that you've had on letsrun. Sure, she/he deserves to know how awful you are, but it's not my place.

RunningTheNumbers wrote:

rojo wrote:

Are you aware of the fact that Semenya has a Y chromosone? Looking at her chromosones, she is XY - which is what we normally associate with men - not XX.

I didn't realize her test result had been released. Is there anything official somewhere that confirms she's XY?

I am almost certain chromosomally Caster is a woman, if she was chromosomally a man, that would make the IOC/IAAF's job easy. That's the main crux of the problem. Caster is technically a women and since there are no other categories except male and female, legally and by the guidelines, she has to compete in the female category. There really is no human gender called Intersex, that is a term created to describe someone having the characteristics of both male and female. The issue really is her t-levels, which are in the range of a male, which obviously gives her a significant advantage. But, keep in mind, Caster’s elevated t-levels are not the result of doping or any wrong doing on her part. With that said, Caster is a female, he birth certificate, her passport, IAAF membership says she is a female and she has passed a ‘visual’ inspection for being anatomically female. Caster has rights and on a basic human rights level, she should be allowed to compete in the gender she technically belongs in. One of the worst things we can do is make Caster out to be villain. Try to imagine the indignity of someone telling you as a male that you have to compete as female, when you have lived your whole life as a male. In terms of her t-levels, to the best of my knowledge, there nothing in the IOC or IAAF rule book that says a female can’t have naturally occurring high t-levels. When a female has elevated t-levels, the antidoping agencies look for PEDs, but they are never busted for hormone levels in and of themselves. Caster and all of the intersex females are following the established IOC and IAAF rules and legally have a right to compete as females. Unless there is a special IOC and IAAF meeting held soon and new guidelines established, Caster and perhaps other intersex females ‘we don’t even know about’ will be competing in Rio. The reason I say ‘we don’t even know about’ is, intersex occurs in about 1 in 2000 births, that means there are potentially millions of intersex women capable of becoming world class athletes. An intersex female could have the t-levels of a male, can compete against females, but to become a world class athlete, they only need to achieve the standards of a high school age boy. Btw, intersex women have powerful allies mainly in the form human rights organizations and more specifically the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the LBGT community. And, South Africa has strong antidiscrimination laws and is one of the few countries that specifically has laws dealing with discrimination against intersex and transgender individuals. SA wants to see Caster compete, therefore, don’t expect any help from them. – It is a mess!

I think the logically cleanest way to solve this, as many have already said, is to dissociate athletic categories from societal gender norms. Let societal divisions fall where they may (and for the record I'm heavily in favor of supporting the tiny minority of people who are uncomfortable with their biological identity in recasting themselves however they want), but have able bodied athletics divided into "open" and "restricted" categories with eligibility for the restricted category limited to athletes who biologically conform to a handful of standards TBD.

The two main issues I see with that are:

- Women's sport was never set up, as the Paralympics have been, to be for the benefit of athletes with limitations. Standards are lower than in men's sport in almost every respect so you may feel the writing's on the wall but, nevertheless, women's sport has never recognized it's athletes as being "less than." Whatever tactful name you give the "restricted" category, that idea, that mean's and women's sport are separate but of equal value is going to be weakened and if I were a woman that would not sit well.

- If you define the "restricted" category by Low-T and some other simple metrics there's going to be immediate and strong pressure to allow women to dope up to those thresholds.

I am almost certain chromosomally Caster is a man. Otherwise she wouldn't have internal testicles that produce the extra testosterone.

dingle wrote:

s like this need to be broadcast by a sporting association? It would be Jelimo's business to tell her potential husband that she has internal testicles. I personally think that your wife should know about your permanent rectal prolapse.

It should a private matter and the governing body should either declare the athlete eligible or ineligible to compete. If the athlete chooses to disclose the reason for the ineligibility, then that is their right.

TrackCoach wrote:

That's the main crux of the problem. Caster is technically a women and since there are no other categories except male and female, legally and by the guidelines, she has to compete in the female category.

Legally, she doesn't have to compete as a woman. She can choose to compete as a man and no one will get in her way.

What she is, currently, is eligible to compete as a woman.

errrhhh wrote:

I am almost certain chromosomally Caster is a man. Otherwise she wouldn't have internal testicles that produce the extra testosterone.

Probably. Seems to me that the most likely cause is XY genotype with testicular feminizing syndrome (lack of functional androgen receptors causing failure of genital to differentiate as male).

I believe this could also result from an XX genotype with a translocation of a portion of the short arm of the Y chromosome onto one of the X chroms. This would create a situation where ~half of the body's cells essentially act like XY cells even though they are XX (one X is suppressed as a Barr body in each cell, so half would have suppression of the X with the translocation while the other half had suppression of the normal X and expression of the one with the Y translocation).

Question - would not the genetic "trouble" from the suppression of the X allowing for the testicles create significant additional health issues? Health issues that would likely prevent running at a solid high school boys level even with the testosterone.

Average Male who beat champXX wrote:

Question - would not the genetic "trouble" from the suppression of the X allowing for the testicles create significant additional health issues? Health issues that would likely prevent running at a solid high school boys level even with the testosterone.

I don't think so. Suppression of an X chromosome is just a normal part of biology. Females have two X chromosomes, so one gets inactivated in each cell in order to ensure that they don't essentially have an extra chromosome acting within the cell. This doesn't create problems because you still have a functional X within each cell. It just means that the translocation is only going to affect half of the cells because the X chromosome that contains the male genes is going to be active in half of the cells and suppressed in the other half. If Barr body suppression didn't exist, the translocation would actually cause the individual to develop as male because the genes necessary for male differentiation would be present and active in every cell.

I am all for minority rights, human rights and equality for everyone. (I believe in that.) I also recognize and accept that some groups are born with genetic, cultural and even financial advantages. Some people start life's race forward of starting line and some behind it, but with talent, hard work and determination, the playing field over time can be evened out. The majority has rights as well; females have a right to know that their competitors are not hormonally a male and that they are not competing against someone in which no amount of talent, hard work and determination will allow you to beat them.

My heart goes out to Caster, I for one say she has every right to compete, we can't discriminate against her for the way she was born. Also, I am not sure if asking her to chemically reduce her God-given t-levels is fair. We would basically be asking her to take performance reducing drug. That's almost like asking Steph Curry to shoot his all of his 3-pointers 10 feet beyond the 3-point line because he was born with 5/5 eyesight. As stupid as it might sound, the only fair and quit resolution appears to be creating an intersex category for athletics, that way, the intersex athletes get to compete fairly against other intersex athletes and no one gets discriminated against. I know it sounds crazy, but right now it appears the IAAF would only have to do that for one race, the 800m in Rio and perhaps come with a another solution at a later date.

The answer is simple. No testicles allowed in the women's events.

Why limit lowering T-levels to intersex athletes? Reduce it for all athletes, male or female, to a set floor and let them compete in one division.

One important thing that Ross says is that divisions must be defended:

"Point is, if you create a division to ensure performance equality based on a known performance advantage, then you absolutely must defend that division, however ‘arbitrary’ the line appears to be. The division between men and women is clear. It is obviously significantly influenced by testosterone, and few physiological variables are as clearly (if imperfectly) separate like testosterone is. If that division is to be respected, as it should, then hyperandrogenic women should have some regulation in place."

Are there other divisions? Yes, there are weight divisions for a number of sports (martial arts and weightlifting in particular). There are community basketball leagues for 6' and under. There are even some sport leagues which eliminate the sex/gender division (AYSO soccer, dressage, motorcycle racing in some cases). One person in particular who has two genetic abnormalities which may aid in her chosen sport is Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, the Canadian hurdler. I don't think there is any reason to ban her from sport precisely because she does not challenge a division of sport.