The definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport.
I think you will find that the majority of the worlds's women - and men, midwives, biologists, medical specialists, farmers etc - disagree that there are no consistent, distinctive biological characteristics which define the terms woman and female.
I think you will also find that a great many women consider this statement and your view to be insultingly misogynistic.
If you go by what "the majority of women and men" think, then I bet they think the biological characteristic that separates men and women is the external genitalia. That would make all people with DSD discussed here women. What percentage of global adults know about XX and XY chromosomes? I would think less than 50%.
In both Chand v. IAAF and Semenya v. IAAF, CAS explicitly states the following.
Human sex is not binary.
There is no single physical marker that separates men and women.
Who is or is not a woman under any jurisdiction is irrelevant in the case.
IMHO, insisting on the strict binary of human sex makes this issue harder than it should be. You either have to make an argument that anyone who is ineligible to compete in the women's division is a man by defnitition, or an alternative argument that some women are ineligible to compete in the women's division. CAS took the latter position in both cases, because they considered it to be an easier argument to make. IAAF explicitly took the latter approach in the Chand case, while they never mentioned Semenya's sex or gender in the second case.
As mentioned on another thread previously, some legally disabled persons are ineligible in any para category. There are some naturalized athletes who are ineligible to represent their adopted countries in international competitions. So it is not impossible to argue that some women are not eligible to compete in the women's division.
However, I think it makes the argument easier if we simply accept that human sex is NOT binary. Instead of having M and F as only legal categories, we should have M, F and X. Then we can make an argument that people in X either compete in their own division or they compete with people in M, while people in F only compete among themselves.
If you go by what "the majority of women and men" think, then I bet they think the biological characteristic that separates men and women is the external genitalia.
Maybe you're right. But my impression is that especially after we reach the age when we begin ovulating and menstruating and have to worry about pregnancy, most women and girls place as much or even more emphasis on our internal reproductive organs than on our external genitalia.
Women familiar with our own biology tend to think that what separates us from men is our ovaries, Fallopian tubes, uteri, cervixes and vaginas - not just our vulvas, clits and female urethras. In fact, many women think the internal female organs are the biological characteristics that are by far of greatest consequence when it comes to setting us apart from men. In my experience, men are the ones who tend to focus exclusively on the external genitals and to think they matter most of all in determining whether a person is male or female. Women not so much.
In fact, I think much of the confusion over the sex of XY DSD athletes like Caster Semenya is due to the fact that the people in the decision-making position in sports, medicine, science and society traditionally have been men and today continue to be mostly men. In my observation, a lot of men automatically assume that anyone born with undescended testes and without a penis - or with a penis that is very small and/or has malformations - must be female. Because many men see human males as the norm and ideal and they see human females as just inferior, defective versions of human males. Many men regard women as basically smaller, weaker versions of themselves - as males minus dicks and balls, with some tubes and boobs added - and with lower T.
The definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport.
I think you will find that the majority of the worlds's women - and men, midwives, biologists, medical specialists, farmers etc - disagree that there are no consistent, distinctive biological characteristics which define the terms woman and female.
I think you will also find that a great many women consider this statement and your view to be insultingly misogynistic.
If you go by what "the majority of women and men" think, then I bet they think the biological characteristic that separates men and women is the external genitalia. That would make all people with DSD discussed here women. What percentage of global adults know about XX and XY chromosomes? I would think less than 50%.
In both Chand v. IAAF and Semenya v. IAAF, CAS explicitly states the following.
Human sex is not binary.
There is no single physical marker that separates men and women.
Who is or is not a woman under any jurisdiction is irrelevant in the case.
IMHO, insisting on the strict binary of human sex makes this issue harder than it should be. You either have to make an argument that anyone who is ineligible to compete in the women's division is a man by defnitition, or an alternative argument that some women are ineligible to compete in the women's division. CAS took the latter position in both cases, because they considered it to be an easier argument to make. IAAF explicitly took the latter approach in the Chand case, while they never mentioned Semenya's sex or gender in the second case.
As mentioned on another thread previously, some legally disabled persons are ineligible in any para category. There are some naturalized athletes who are ineligible to represent their adopted countries in international competitions. So it is not impossible to argue that some women are not eligible to compete in the women's division.
However, I think it makes the argument easier if we simply accept that human sex is NOT binary. Instead of having M and F as only legal categories, we should have M, F and X. Then we can make an argument that people in X either compete in their own division or they compete with people in M, while people in F only compete among themselves.
Human sex is not binary. There is no single physical marker that separates men and women. ...simply accept that human sex is NOT binary.
Binary means "relating to, composed of, or involving two things" (Oxford).
If human sex is not binary, pray tell what are the names of the additional sexes found in humans beyond male and female?
If human sex is not binary, please name the other kinds of human gametes involved in human reproduction other than sperm and egg. Please also name the kinds of gonads or gonadal tissue that all the additional kinds of human gametes come from.
If human sex is not binary, what are the additional human sex chromosomes beyond X and Y? What are the options for human sex beyond being either SRY-gene positive or SRY-gene negative?
Every once in a while but very rarely, human beings are born with anomalies of the external urogenital anatomy that make it difficult for others to tell their sex based solely on the outward appearance of their "privates." So more thorough exams and investigations are needed.
But just because some individuals can't easily and instantly be slotted into the correct sex category with 100% accuracy solely by taking a glance at their groins doesn't mean there aren't two human sex categories.
It seems to me that you are interpreting the fact that some rare individual human beings aren't easy to place within the human sex binary solely by taking a quick look at the outward appearance of their bodies - particularly at the time of birth - to mean that sex in Homo sapiens cannot be not binary. As though no member of the human race is distinctly male or distinctly female. As though instead of making, or having the potential to make, sperm or eggs, many humans make some other kinds of reproductive germ cells such as speggs, spergs, spovum. As though many of us are a hodgepodge of arbitrary sex organs, primary and secondary characteristics, gonadal tissue of varying types all blended and blurred together - so much so it's impossible to divide the human race into two distinct biological sexes who've evolved to play two totally different and non-overlapping roles in human reproduction.
Your contention is that because some rare persons have atypical urogenital anatomy for their sex, then there are no physical characteristics in humans that can be said to be distinctly or definitively male or female and which distinguish the two human sexes from one another. Thus, there's no reliable way whatsoever to tell the difference between human males and females, and no way on earth to figure out the sex of individuals like Caster Semenya.
I think your contention that human sex is not binary and there's no physical marker or markers that distinguish human males from human females is far less supported by science and logic than my position is. In fact, I think it's pretty much rubbish.
I think it makes the argument easier if we simply accept that human sex is NOT binary. Instead of having M and F as only legal categories, we should have M, F and X. Then we can make an argument that people in X either compete in their own division or they compete with people in M, while people in F only compete among themselves.
But people with DSDs are still either male or female. Most DSDs are sex-specific, occurring only in males or in females, in fact.
Turner syndrome, MRKH and classic salt-wasting CAH are disorders of female sex development that only occur in human females. The handful of conditions subject to WA's current DSD regulations in women's athletics are disorders of male sex development that only occur in human males.
Most people with DSDs see themselves as male or female and do not want to be othered the way you and another poster on this thread suggest. People with DSDs and many others think that classifying people with DSDs as X rather than as M or F would be a violation to of their human rights and an affront to their dignity. A way of stigmatizing and ostracizing them, similar to making them wear a scarlet A, a pink triangle or yellow Star of David.
Similarly, many think that making a separate sports category for athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma, Chand would be akin to putting them in a sports ghetto.
Also, what would be the justification for creating a special sports ghetto them? Athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba and Mboma have disorders of male sex development which cause affected individuals to be born with missing, minuscule or malformed penises - and with their testes in atypical locations. Other than that, though, they are healthy fit males no different to other males. Their testes are fully formed and function normally in terms of producing the massive amounts of natural T typical of healthy males, which their bodies can make use of as males customarily do because they have working male androgen receptors.
These athletes all have been through male puberty of infancy and adolescence and acquired the physical features from male puberty that give males such advantages in sports. Some of them have testes that can make viable sperm too. Most XY persons with Semenya's DSD can father children. None of these athletes are physically handicapped in any way.
As I see it, the nub of the problem regarding athletes like Semenya and Niyonsaba isn't that persons with their sorts of XY DSDs can't be categorized as either sex and thus belong in some no-wo/man's land off to the side all by themselves. The nub of the problem is that when it comes to sports, these athletes insist, and others agree, that they should be categorized as members of the female sex.
The lie that athletes like Semenya, Chand, Niyonsaba, et al are " hyperandrogenic females" and "women with naturally high testosterone" gives the impression that XY DSD athletes demonstrate the physical diversity of humans of the female sex. When in reality, they illustrate the physical diversity of humans of the male sex.
In the spirit of genuine diversity and inclusion, I think it would be best if XY DSD athletes like Semenya et al were recognized as members of the male sex and welcomed into male sports competition. Not shoved to the side in their own category as though they were pariahs or have cooties.
But that's not for me to decide. All I and many other women are asking for is an end to the insistence that XY DSD athletes like Semenya et al must somehow be shoehorned into the female category of sports under the pretense that they are "women with naturally high testosterone." It's discriminatory against females to demand that XY athletes with disorders of male sex development be allowed to compete in women's sports. Women's sports are not compensation prizes for males who had the misfortune to be born with genital anomalies.
I think it makes the argument easier if we simply accept that human sex is NOT binary. Instead of having M and F as only legal categories, we should have M, F and X. Then we can make an argument that people in X either compete in their own division or they compete with people in M, while people in F only compete among themselves.
Another problem with making a special sports category for XY athletes with certain disorders of male sex development is that it would amount to sex discrimination because it would be showing favoritism to DSD males exclusively. If athletes with disorders of male sex development get their own sports category, then why not a special category for athletes with disorders of female sex development too?
Also, since the male DSDs at issue here do not cause the affected athletes to be physically handicapped or to be disadvantaged in sports performance, how can creating a special category of sports competition for them be justified without creating a special category for all the female athletes whose sports performance and potential is impaired due to the range of female-specific biological characteristics and conditions that lots of girls and women have to deal with? After all, many female athletes are physically disadvantaged relative to other female athletes because of conditions that definitely impair health and sports performance such as endometriosis, heavy menstrual bleeding leading to anemia, disabling menstrual cramps, miscarriage, and pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.
If males get a special sports category for being born with genital anomalies that don't impair their health, how can it be justified not to have a special category for female athletes who have suffered childbirth injuries, or who find that their sports performance has gone downhill after pregnancy and childbirth as in the case of Serena Williams? Why should male athletes get a special category for being born with unusual-looking genitals when female athletes don't get any special treatment for having to cope with a range of gynecological problems, for nearly dying in childbirth, or because they are breastfeeding?
Why should special accommodations be made to make sure Caster Semenya gets a chance to shine in elite sports when no similar steps are taken in favor of Semenya's wife, Violet Raseboya? After all, Raseboya is the one who conceived, carried and gave birth to both of the couple's two children in the past couple of years. Semenya has been able to become the parent of two daughters without it affecting Semenya's health or sports training routines or regimens in any way. Semenya probably went through both of Raseboya's pregnancies and postpartum periods without ever missing a workout or practice run - without skipping a beat in terms of Semenya's sports activities and ambitions at all. Why should sports policy-makers go out of their way to insure that Semenya gets a leg up in sports without making any corresponding moves to help out athletes who not only share the sex of Semenya's so-called "better half," but who have had to shoulder all the physical burdens of childbearing like Raseboya has done too?
The definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport.
I think you will find that the majority of the worlds's women - and men, midwives, biologists, medical specialists, farmers etc - disagree that there are no consistent, distinctive biological characteristics which define the terms woman and female.
If you go by what "the majority of women and men" think, then I bet they think the biological characteristic that separates men and women is the external genitalia. That would make all people with DSD discussed here women. What percentage of global adults know about XX and XY chromosomes? I would think less than 50%.
But why on earth should the criteria be what percentage of global adults know about XX and XY chromosomes?
It's preposterous to suggest that because they probably don't know about sex chromosomes, a majority of the world's adults are clueless about the fundamental biological differences between men and women that go beyond the appearance of the external genitalia.
I am confident that close to 100% of adults globally have heard of menstrual periods and that most know that women and girls have organs colloquially referred to as wombs inside the abdomen too.
If most of the world hadn't heard of menstruation, how do you explain all the taboos and shaming rituals around menstruation in various cultures that go back thousands of years? Such as the menstrual huts where girls and women in Nepal are banished and confined to when they have their periods; the view of orthodox Judaism that menstruating girls and women are unclean; and the social customs in South Asia which prohibit girls and women from preparing and serving food, and sometimes even entering kitchens, when they have their periods?
I also bet nearly all adult humans around the world - and the vast majority of children and adolescents too - are fully aware that only members of one of the two human sexes can get pregnant, give birth, breastfeed and die in childbirth.
The idea that the only humans who can possibly understand human sex differences are those educated and privileged enough to know about sex chromosomes and other aspects of modern science is offensively condescending. Our prehistoric ancestors never would have survived as gatherer-hunter-fisher-trappers - and they never would have invented agriculture, developed animal husbandry and learned how to keep and breed animals - without first obtaining a pretty good idea of how the natural world works. Our species never would have survived to the era of the Enlightenment and the dawn of modern science if early humans long ago had not used their powers of observation to learn a great deal about plant, animal and human reproduction - and about the different roles of males and females in reproduction of various species including the human species too.
The ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Incas, Aztecs and Mayans didn't know about XX and XY sex chromosomes, but they sure seemed to know a bit about sex differences in humans and other animals.
The scribes who wrote the Old Testament didn't know about XX and XY sex chromosomes, yet they still knew enough about human sex differences to come up with the story of Adam and Eve and the tale of Noah and the Ark. If the authors of the OT were so in the dark about physical sex differences, and they had no idea of the importance of those differences to reproduction and perpetuation of most animal species, they wouldn't have written that Noah loaded thousands of land animals of every different species onto the ark "two by two, male and female, as God had commanded him."
Similarly, if the early Christians two thousand years ago hadn't had an awareness of the fundamental physical sex differences between human males and human females and the significance and purpose of those differences, then they wouldn't have come up with the story of the Virgin Birth to explain how Jesus came to be - and they wouldn't have referred to Jesus as "the fruit of the womb" of Mary. In fact, if the early Christians hadn't known about the basic biological differences between men and women and their relationship to reproduction, then they just as easily could have decided to say that it was Joseph who have gave birth to Jesus - not Mary.
When Semenya was added to the 5000m entry list, she did not replace another runner from South Africa. She replaced the runner next on the world rankings. (The next highest South African is outside of top 100.) So South African runners have less incentive to object, because they have less to lose from including Semenya. The runner next on the rankings has more to lose, and her opinion is more important than those of other South African runners who couldn't have competed at the World Championships anyway.
Two Namibian sprinters with 200m PB in 24s won silver medals at World U-20 as members of their 4x1 team. They would have had no chance to qualify for World U-20, let along winning medals if not for Mboma and Masilingi. So I bet they are quite happy that they had the two sprinters with DSD as their teammates. But the athletes from Poland who finished 4th in that relay might have different feelings. Which opinions should matter more? The two Namibians who piggybacked on Mboma and Masilingi, or the four Poles who didn't get their medals?
The opinions that should matter the most in each case is the ones held by those who have the most to lose by the inclusion. And usually that's not the domestic competitors. The opinions of domestic competitors are important when it comes to deciding whether to include DSD athletes in the domestic competitions. But their voices are not the most important in the international competitions.
Semenya in the 5000 at the World Championships is a great example, as she has been competing in South Africa as a woman (2000, 3000, 5000 in 15:31), yet did not meet the qualifying standard (15:10). Even so, the rules allow and encourage countries to submit entries below the standard because it's the "World" championships, and they want to have athletes from as many countries compete as possible. It would be boring and hardly international, otherwise. Fortunately, enough runners withdrew from the 5000 (including the one S.African that met the standard but decided to race the 10000) that there was space for her to enter, and South Africa will have someone to cheer for. Otherwise, they'd have nobody. But these same rules are, in a sense, tremendously unfair to the American women who met the qualifying standard but are not allowed to compete. There were 14 who met the standard last year but only 3 will get to run. What about them... Well, they're taking one for the team, for their country. The fair choice doesn't come down to individual fairness every time.
I don't claim to know all the details, but would suggest that because Namibia is not hung up on preventing DSD athletes from competing, perhaps winning that particular relay was their reward. The feelings of the athletes in these situations is almost immaterial. It's up to the race organizers to decide the rules and who can compete.
Wait, you say that Semenya, Niyonsaba and Mboma have "bodies can make use of as males customarily do because they have working male androgen receptors."
My understanding was that, despite high levels of testosterone, DSD individuals cannot typically make full use of the androgen because their bodies are insensitive to it, a critical fact that is often left out of the discussion over DSD athletes. Thus, the terms "AIS" or "CAIS" (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), for example. Are you suggesting the androgen receptors of the women above are fully sensitive to testosterone, or maybe just somewhat sensitive? Genuinely curious.
But just because some individuals can't easily and instantly be slotted into the correct sex category with 100% accuracy solely by taking a glance at their groins doesn't mean there aren't two human sex categories.
Part of the difficulty lies in framing the categories used in athletic competition as male and female. In English, I have only heard these events described as "The Men's [event]", or "The Women's [event]", never as "The Male 5000 Meters" or "The Female Marathon". Perhaps in other languages, the nuance is different, but I suspect not, and that these categories are universally understood as gender categories, not sex categories.
I suspect RunRagged would prefer to rely on a chromosomal distinction (and testing, if necessary) to determine proper categories for athletes, where anyone with a Y chromosome is considered to be in a male category. In that case, might as well call them the 'X' and 'Y' categories and do away with the old men & women labels altogether. This strategy was attempted before, of course, although there were problems.
I think your contention that human sex is not binary and there's no physical marker or markers that distinguish human males from human females is far less supported by science and logic than my position is. In fact, I think it's pretty much rubbish.
I did now write there was no physical marker that separated men and women. I wrote there was no SINGLE physical marker that separated men and women.
If there is a SINGLE physical marker that separates men and women, that means every person on this eartch can be classified into two groups with no exception.
You raised TWO markers. Do they completely match with each other.
First, how do you define a "woman" with gonads? "A person who has an ovary" or "a person who does not have testes"? Which sex do people with ovotesticular syndrome belong to? Are they women because they have ovaries? Or are they men because they have testes?
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What about people with 46XX/46XY syndrome? Are they men because they have Y chromosome? What if they had ovaries? Are they still men, or are they women?
So the classificaiton based on gonads and the classificaiton based on chromosome do not seem to match completely. So which one is the SINGLE physical market that separates every single person on earth into two completely distinct, mutually exclusive groups?
Besides, why should a woman be defined as a person who does NOT possess something?
Most people with DSDs see themselves as male or female and do not want to be othered the way you and another poster on this thread suggest. People with DSDs and many others think that classifying people with DSDs as X rather than as M or F would be a violation to of their human rights and an affront to their dignity. A way of stigmatizing and ostracizing them, similar to making them wear a scarlet A, a pink triangle or yellow Star of David.
But there are many people with 46XY chromosome and internal testes who see themselves as women. So does it not violate their human rights and their dignity if you call them "men" because you believe human sex is based on chromosome and gonads?
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I am confident that close to 100% of adults globally have heard of menstrual periods and that most know that women and girls have organs colloquially referred to as wombs inside the abdomen too.
If most of the world hadn't heard of menstruation, how do you explain all the taboos and shaming rituals around menstruation in various cultures that go back thousands of years? Such as the menstrual huts where girls and women in Nepal are banished and confined to when they have their periods; the view of orthodox Judaism that menstruating girls and women are unclean; and the social customs in South Asia which prohibit girls and women from preparing and serving food, and sometimes even entering kitchens, when they have their periods?
I also bet nearly all adult humans around the world - and the vast majority of children and adolescents too - are fully aware that only members of one of the two human sexes can get pregnant, give birth, breastfeed and die in childbirth.
People know only women menstrate. That's fine. But what do they think when they find some "women" do not menstrate? Do they understand why those people do not menstrate? Do they conclude that those people must be secretly men?
The same thing with pregnancy. What do people think of 'women" who never get pregnant? Do they know why those people never get pregnant? Do they think those people must be secretly men?
Or do they think those people are still women, but for some unknown reasons they never had menstration and never got pregant? Which one is more likely if they had no knowledge about DSD?
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Wait, you say that Semenya, Niyonsaba and Mboma have "bodies can make use of as males customarily do because they have working male androgen receptors."
My understanding was that, despite high levels of testosterone, DSD individuals cannot typically make full use of the androgen because their bodies are insensitive to it, a critical fact that is often left out of the discussion over DSD athletes. Thus, the terms "AIS" or "CAIS" (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), for example. Are you suggesting the androgen receptors of the women above are fully sensitive to testosterone, or maybe just somewhat sensitive? Genuinely curious.
The WA/IAAF DSD regulations only apply to athletes whose bodies respond to the testosterone their testes make in male-typical ways at least fully or partially. So yes, the athletes named above have to be fully or somewhat sensitive to the large amounts of testosterone that their testes produce. If they weren't, they wouldn't be subject to the WA rules regarding participation of XY DSD athletes with testes and male levels of T competing in women's events.
Most DSDs, whether they be the kinds of DSDs that occur in people with testes or ovaries, do not impair or affect individuals' ability to physically respond to and utilize androgens.
People with Semenya's DSD, XY 5-ARD, for example, have normal healthy male-typical response to the male amounts of T that their testes pump out. Their only issue is that they can't convert T into its more potent form, DHT. During gestation in utero, DHT is needed for the penis and prostate to develop properly. As a result, babies with XY 5-ARD are usually born with small and underdeveloped prostates, and with penises that are minuscule and slightly malformed (hypospadias) or penises that are missing entirely. But because they respond to T in the way other males do, persons with XY 5-ARD go through and benefit from the testosterone-fueled male mini puberty of infancy and male puberty of adolescence just as other males do. In the process, they obtain all the physical features and advantages that allow males to vastly outperform females in nearly all sports.
The only XY DSDs that impair individuals' response to androgens are the ones you named - Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), both of which are DSDs that only occur in individuals with male gonads, testes, male sex chromosomes, male genetics and male ARs.
In XY people with CAIS the male androgen receptors don't work at all. So persons with CAIS can't use the the natural testosterone that their testes make in massive amounts in the ways males customarily do. Instead, the testosterone their testes make gets converted into estradiol through the process known as aromatization. All males normally aromatize some of the testosterone the testes make into estradiol, but genetic males with CAIS aromatize all the testosterone their testes make.
In XY people with PAIS - partial androgen insensitivity - the male androgen response is only partly reduced. So whilst XY athletes with PAIS like Dutee Chand don't benefit from the testosterone that their testes make to the same extent that athletes like Semenya benefit from the testosterone that their testes pump out, they still benefit from it enough to have considerable unfair advantages over female athletes in sports.
PAIS athletes like Chand might not have gone through male puberty of infancy and adolescence in exactly the same way as athletes like Semenya did, but they went through male puberty all the same. In the process, they acquired most of the physical features typical of males rather than of females even though the appearance of their external genitals might look ambiguous or more like female genitals than male ones - at least at first and far-off glance. Apart from the configuration of their urogenital anatomy, their overall physiology, anatomy, genetics and androgen response are male - thus they differ from females in thousands of ways.
Females can and often do have the same mutations and other anomalies that cause AIS in males - in fact, the inherited mutations that have been identified as causes of AIS are on the X chromosome. So when AIS is caused by inherited mutations (as opposed to de novo mutations), it's always passed down from mothers. But because female development in utero and during infancy, childhood and puberty of adolescence is not dependent on androgens, when XX females have impaired or absent androgen sensitivity, it doesn't result in a DSD.
Most XX females with diminished androgen response that in XY males cause DSDs - CAIS or PAIS - only learn about their condition after their XY children or siblings are diagnosed with AIS.
But just because some individuals can't easily and instantly be slotted into the correct sex category with 100% accuracy solely by taking a glance at their groins doesn't mean there aren't two human sex categories.
Part of the difficulty lies in framing the categories used in athletic competition as male and female. In English, I have only heard these events described as "The Men's [event]", or "The Women's [event]", never as "The Male 5000 Meters" or "The Female Marathon". Perhaps in other languages, the nuance is different, but I suspect not, and that these categories are universally understood as gender categories, not sex categories.
I suspect RunRagged would prefer to rely on a chromosomal distinction (and testing, if necessary) to determine proper categories for athletes, where anyone with a Y chromosome is considered to be in a male category. In that case, might as well call them the 'X' and 'Y' categories and do away with the old men & women labels altogether. This strategy was attempted before, of course, although there were problems.
I would base eligibility for female sports competition on more specific criteria than having XX chromosomes. I'd base it on not having the SRY gene. The SRY gene is what determines whether a human will develop as male or female.
The SRY gene is normally on the Y chromosome in males, most of whom are are XY but some of whom are XXY, XYY and so on.
However, every once in a while the SRY gene goes missing from the Y, so you end up with XY people who are female. And every once in a while the SRY gene somehow ends up on an X chromosome, so you end up with XX individuals who are male.
I wouldn't confine eligibility for women's competition solely to athletes with two X sex chromosomes because that would be unfair to people with female DSDs such as Turner syndrome, who are 45,X0, and with X trisomy, who are 47,XXX.
I also wouldn't confine women's competition solely to athletes with X sex chromosomes alone coz that would make millions of women who have given birth to or been pregnant with male offspring ineligible too.
During pregnancy, fetal cells cross the placenta into women's bloodstreams, then travel to various parts of women's bodies where they remain for decades - often for life. As a result, women who are mothers of sons like me, or who have been pregnant with male fetuses, typically have XY cells containing the DNA of our male offspring scattered around our bodies. So when we get our sex chromosomes tested, we sometimes test as being XX/XY.
This happened with me when a tumor I had removed from my inside one of my eye orbits was biopsied. Somehow cells with my son's DNA ended up in a part of my body very far from my uterus - and these cells were found more than 20 years after he was born.
But just because some individuals can't easily and instantly be slotted into the correct sex category with 100% accuracy solely by taking a glance at their groins doesn't mean there aren't two human sex categories.
Part of the difficulty lies in framing the categories used in athletic competition as male and female. In English, I have only heard these events described as "The Men's [event]", or "The Women's [event]", never as "The Male 5000 Meters" or "The Female Marathon". Perhaps in other languages, the nuance is different, but I suspect not, and that these categories are universally understood as gender categories, not sex categories.
I suspect RunRagged would prefer to rely on a chromosomal distinction (and testing, if necessary) to determine proper categories for athletes, where anyone with a Y chromosome is considered to be in a male category. In that case, might as well call them the 'X' and 'Y' categories and do away with the old men & women labels altogether. This strategy was attempted before, of course, although there were problems.
As for the problems that genetic testing for women's sports eligibility caused in the past which foes of female-only sports like Roger Pielke like to bang on about:
1) Genetic testing has come a long, long way since its use in sports was challenged legally in the 1980s and early 90s. Genetic testing for the SRY gene and other genes can be done today cheaply with 100% accuracy and reliability. Moreover, gathering the DNA needed for such testing with a cheek swab is easy, painless, non-invasive - and it doesn't rob anyone of privacy or dignity, out them, or put them on the spot.
A cheek swab to obtain skin cells and saliva for genetic testing is less onerous than a Covid test, and far less invasive and involved than the kind of testing all elite athletes go through to comply with WADA regs.
2)The only athletes who had problems with, and raised legal challenges to, the genetic testing done to determine eligibility for women's competition in the past were those whom the testing determined were XY with male DSDs born with male gonads, testes, not with female gonads, ovaries.
Athletes who were found to have only X sex chromosomes and to be negative for the SRY gene did not have problems with the testing. The last time elite athletes seeking to compete in women's events were subjected to mandatory genetic testing for the SRY gene was at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta. When they were polled about the testing they underwent, more than 90% of athletes who responded said they didn't have an issue with it and 82% said they thought it should continue.
But the IOC decided to follow in the footsteps of the IAAF and discontinue the genetic testing anyway - which is how we ended up where we are today.
As the officials at FINA explained when they announced their new rules aimed at eliminating XY athletes who'd been through male puberty of adolescence from women's and girls' aquatics, discontinuing the former practice of using genetic and sex chromosome testing to determine eligibility for the female category created a gateway into women's and girls' sports competition that should never have been created in the first place.
The gateway was created out of compassion and in the spirit of fair play to allow athletes with one specific XY DSD, CAIS, to compete in women's events. But in the years since it was first created, that gateway into women's sports has been exploited to allow in a great many other XY athletes who have no business in women's sports but who demand inclusion anyway. Some of those athletes have XY DSDs that are dramatically different to CAIS, like XY 5-ARD, the DSD that Caster Semenya supposedly has. Others are XY athletes who developed totally normally for their sex who for one reason or another now say they "identify as" women.
In the hopes of restoring a measure of fairness in women's sports, and of insuring safety for female athletes too, FINA, World Rugby, British Triathlon, UCI and other sports governing orgs have decided to put in place rules and eligibility criteria that will allow only a teeny-tiny portion of XY athletes into the female category. I have a hunch that WA will be heading in a similar direction in the fall. If you can suggest a better way of restoring fairness and insuring female safety than these other orgs have come up with so far, please share it.
If you go by what "the majority of women and men" think, then I bet they think the biological characteristic that separates men and women is the external genitalia. That would make all people with DSD discussed here women. What percentage of global adults know about XX and XY chromosomes? I would think less than 50%.
In both Chand v. IAAF and Semenya v. IAAF, CAS explicitly states the following.
Human sex is not binary.
There is no single physical marker that separates men and women.
Who is or is not a woman under any jurisdiction is irrelevant in the case.
IMHO, insisting on the strict binary of human sex makes this issue harder than it should be. You either have to make an argument that anyone who is ineligible to compete in the women's division is a man by defnitition, or an alternative argument that some women are ineligible to compete in the women's division. CAS took the latter position in both cases, because they considered it to be an easier argument to make. IAAF explicitly took the latter approach in the Chand case, while they never mentioned Semenya's sex or gender in the second case.
As mentioned on another thread previously, some legally disabled persons are ineligible in any para category. There are some naturalized athletes who are ineligible to represent their adopted countries in international competitions. So it is not impossible to argue that some women are not eligible to compete in the women's division.
However, I think it makes the argument easier if we simply accept that human sex is NOT binary. Instead of having M and F as only legal categories, we should have M, F and X. Then we can make an argument that people in X either compete in their own division or they compete with people in M, while people in F only compete among themselves.
Human sex is not binary. There is no single physical marker that separates men and women. ...simply accept that human sex is NOT binary.
Binary means "relating to, composed of, or involving two things" (Oxford).
If human sex is not binary, pray tell what are the names of the additional sexes found in humans beyond male and female?
If human sex is not binary, please name the other kinds of human gametes involved in human reproduction other than sperm and egg. Please also name the kinds of gonads or gonadal tissue that all the additional kinds of human gametes come from.
If human sex is not binary, what are the additional human sex chromosomes beyond X and Y? What are the options for human sex beyond being either SRY-gene positive or SRY-gene negative?
Every once in a while but very rarely, human beings are born with anomalies of the external urogenital anatomy that make it difficult for others to tell their sex based solely on the outward appearance of their "privates." So more thorough exams and investigations are needed.
But just because some individuals can't easily and instantly be slotted into the correct sex category with 100% accuracy solely by taking a glance at their groins doesn't mean there aren't two human sex categories.
It seems to me that you are interpreting the fact that some rare individual human beings aren't easy to place within the human sex binary solely by taking a quick look at the outward appearance of their bodies - particularly at the time of birth - to mean that sex in Homo sapiens cannot be not binary. As though no member of the human race is distinctly male or distinctly female. As though instead of making, or having the potential to make, sperm or eggs, many humans make some other kinds of reproductive germ cells such as speggs, spergs, spovum. As though many of us are a hodgepodge of arbitrary sex organs, primary and secondary characteristics, gonadal tissue of varying types all blended and blurred together - so much so it's impossible to divide the human race into two distinct biological sexes who've evolved to play two totally different and non-overlapping roles in human reproduction.
Your contention is that because some rare persons have atypical urogenital anatomy for their sex, then there are no physical characteristics in humans that can be said to be distinctly or definitively male or female and which distinguish the two human sexes from one another. Thus, there's no reliable way whatsoever to tell the difference between human males and females, and no way on earth to figure out the sex of individuals like Caster Semenya.
I think your contention that human sex is not binary and there's no physical marker or markers that distinguish human males from human females is far less supported by science and logic than my position is. In fact, I think it's pretty much rubbish.
Great post. You've managed to address all the idiocy of the "non-binary" ideology that has captured the minds of so many at the moment. The whole "non-binary" belief system is really an extension of the Queer Theory ideology, which states that the differences between men and women are all "socially constructed" and a product of social conditioning. It's all a rejection of biology in favor of a feminist-utopian vision which states that men and women can all serve the same functions within society. Really crazy stuff.
The WA/IAAF DSD regulations only apply to athletes whose bodies respond to the testosterone their testes make in male-typical ways at least fully or partially. So yes, the athletes named above have to be fully or somewhat sensitive to the large amounts of testosterone that their testes produce. If they weren't, they wouldn't be subject to the WA rules regarding participation of XY DSD athletes with testes and male levels of T competing in women's events.
Most DSDs, whether they be the kinds of DSDs that occur in people with testes or ovaries, do not impair or affect individuals' ability to physically respond to and utilize androgens.
People with Semenya's DSD, XY 5-ARD, for example, have normal healthy male-typical response to the male amounts of T that their testes pump out. Their only issue is that they can't convert T into its more potent form, DHT. During gestation in utero, DHT is needed for the penis and prostate to develop properly. As a result, babies with XY 5-ARD are usually born with small and underdeveloped prostates, and with penises that are minuscule and slightly malformed (hypospadias) or penises that are missing entirely. But because they respond to T in the way other males do, persons with XY 5-ARD go through and benefit from the testosterone-fueled male mini puberty of infancy and male puberty of adolescence just as other males do. In the process, they obtain all the physical features and advantages that allow males to vastly outperform females in nearly all sports.
The only XY DSDs that impair individuals' response to androgens are the ones you named - Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), both of which are DSDs that only occur in individuals with male gonads, testes, male sex chromosomes, male genetics and male ARs.
In XY people with CAIS the male androgen receptors don't work at all. So persons with CAIS can't use the the natural testosterone that their testes make in massive amounts in the ways males customarily do. Instead, the testosterone their testes make gets converted into estradiol through the process known as aromatization. All males normally aromatize some of the testosterone the testes make into estradiol, but genetic males with CAIS aromatize all the testosterone their testes make.
In XY people with PAIS - partial androgen insensitivity - the male androgen response is only partly reduced. So whilst XY athletes with PAIS like Dutee Chand don't benefit from the testosterone that their testes make to the same extent that athletes like Semenya benefit from the testosterone that their testes pump out, they still benefit from it enough to have considerable unfair advantages over female athletes in sports.
PAIS athletes like Chand might not have gone through male puberty of infancy and adolescence in exactly the same way as athletes like Semenya did, but they went through male puberty all the same. In the process, they acquired most of the physical features typical of males rather than of females even though the appearance of their external genitals might look ambiguous or more like female genitals than male ones - at least at first and far-off glance. Apart from the configuration of their urogenital anatomy, their overall physiology, anatomy, genetics and androgen response are male - thus they differ from females in thousands of ways.
Females can and often do have the same mutations and other anomalies that cause AIS in males - in fact, the inherited mutations that have been identified as causes of AIS are on the X chromosome. So when AIS is caused by inherited mutations (as opposed to de novo mutations), it's always passed down from mothers. But because female development in utero and during infancy, childhood and puberty of adolescence is not dependent on androgens, when XX females have impaired or absent androgen sensitivity, it doesn't result in a DSD.
Most XX females with diminished androgen response that in XY males cause DSDs - CAIS or PAIS - only learn about their condition after their XY children or siblings are diagnosed with AIS.
Thank you for explaining. I was able to locate the WA rules & footnotes that refer to the testing requirement for androgen receptors, which would be an additional test for some DSD athletes, using the "SHBG androgen sensitivity test" or similar. Given the range and overlap of testosterone levels, the issue of receptors, and lack of a direct connection between testosterone and performance, the criterion of testosterone level really does not seem like an ideal way to identify these categories. If WA insists on using a strict biological classification, your SRY gene method seems preferable. But in the big picture, the really zoomed-out picture, other approaches would be preferable in my opinion, which I will try to talk about below.
I would base eligibility for female sports competition on more specific criteria than having XX chromosomes. I'd base it on not having the SRY gene. The SRY gene is what determines whether a human will develop as male or female.
The SRY gene is normally on the Y chromosome in males, most of whom are are XY but some of whom are XXY, XYY and so on.
However, every once in a while the SRY gene goes missing from the Y, so you end up with XY people who are female. And every once in a while the SRY gene somehow ends up on an X chromosome, so you end up with XX individuals who are male.
I wouldn't confine eligibility for women's competition solely to athletes with two X sex chromosomes because that would be unfair to people with female DSDs such as Turner syndrome, who are 45,X0, and with X trisomy, who are 47,XXX.
I also wouldn't confine women's competition solely to athletes with X sex chromosomes alone coz that would make millions of women who have given birth to or been pregnant with male offspring ineligible too.
During pregnancy, fetal cells cross the placenta into women's bloodstreams, then travel to various parts of women's bodies where they remain for decades - often for life. As a result, women who are mothers of sons like me, or who have been pregnant with male fetuses, typically have XY cells containing the DNA of our male offspring scattered around our bodies. So when we get our sex chromosomes tested, we sometimes test as being XX/XY.
This happened with me when a tumor I had removed from my inside one of my eye orbits was biopsied. Somehow cells with my son's DNA ended up in a part of my body very far from my uterus - and these cells were found more than 20 years after he was born.
The story of how you ended up testing positive for some XY DNA is amazing. It just goes to show that it's not a simple matter of testing for XX and XY, but that there are a number of twists and turns that would need to be navigated, even if using the more precise method of zeroing in on the SRY gene. Not impossible with today's tech, but not entirely easy, either.
I understand and respond to these genetic arguments, but imagine someone living off the grid somewhere who has not had access to such a perspective, or lacks formal education. In addition, these understandings may be heavily influenced by men, who as you humorously pointed out, often have a superficial understanding of women's anatomy (but they, too, are fans). These people may know nothing of DNA and be absolutely sure of their definition of what makes a female a female. What gives us the right to define for them what a woman or female is? Is it because World Athletics is headquartered in Western countries and is composed of officials who share a genetic understanding of sex? Or that they are largely paying for the regulatory apparatus? If countries are to be sovereign, then we must respect that there are different definitions of these categories.
One of the main problems is this whole idea that World Athletics should have a monopoly over international Athletics and other sports. Imagine instead if each country or region had its own rules for competition. Would it really bother anyone in the West if the African Championships permitted DSD athletes like Semenya to compete there in the 800, as long as the championships held in their own countries restricted them? It seems doubtful. The crux of the issue is that true international competition between sovereign countries has to be multicultural, and as a result, will always be somewhat unfair. But the rules of competition do not have to be the same everywhere, if we could stop allowing WA to be the only game in town.
