Official Lausanne DL Discussion Thread - 2-4 pm ET - Instant Reaction show at 4:05 pm ET

How do you know Niyonsaba's sex "was incorrectly recorded as female at birth"?

I don't believe there are any medical records, government records or any other records such as baptismal records or school registration forms and enrollment records dating to the time of Niyonsaba's birth, infancy, childhood or adolescence stating Niyonsaba's sex either way.

This is not unusual. The remarkable numbers of XY DSD athletes competing in elite women's sports such as track & field and football/soccer in the 21st century all appear to have been born at home or in other non-medical settings without monitoring by health care professionals who would have made medical records.

Niyonsaba and all the other XY DSD athletes competing in women's elite sports in the recent-current era were also born in geographic locales, socioeconomic and cultural settings, and political environments where it was customary for parents not to register their children's births with government or parish authorities, nor to obtain birth or baptismal certificates for them.

Similarly, all the XY DSD athletes competing in women's elite sports like track & field and soccer/football today and in recent years come from places and situations where it was the norm for children of their era not to get any medical checkups growing up.

In the poor parts of the sub-Saharan African countries where track athletes like Niyonsaba, Semenya, Seyni, Mboma, Masilingi and soccer star Barbra Banda all come from - and the parts of India where Dutee Chand and other XY DSD athletes in women's track from that country hail from - the only children who might have been taken to doctors or nurses for thorough examinations growing up would have been kids born with major "birth defects" that impair function and imperil health, or who caught or developed illnesses during childhood that caused them to became desperately ill.

Niyonsaba's situation is complicated further by the fact that Niyonsaba was born just months before Burundi descended into the chaos and horror of the 12-year-long Burundian civil war. The Burundian civil war, which officially lasted from 1993-2005, was as bloody and brutal as the related strife that led to the mass slaughter known as the Rwandan genocide in the country next door. (Both Burundi and Rwanda suffered horribly under colonization by Germany in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and under colonial rule by Belgium after Germany was forced cede its colonies to other European powers in the wake of WW I. )

During the Burundian civil war and for a number of years after, there was zero or very little functioning government bureaucracy in Burundi handling civilian administrative matters like registering children's births and issuing birth certificates. On top of that, for the first 12 years or so of Niyonsaba's life, parents in Burundi had enormous incentive to try to pass off their young male children - with and without DSDs - as girls in order to avoid the boys being taken from their homes and forced into becoming child soldiers by the various militias and government military outfits waging the Burundian civil war.

Well, Occam's razor. Niyonsaba reportedly grew up as a 'girl' and according to her dsd has genitals that could have been mistaken for a vulva. The fact that world athletics allowed Niyonsaba to compete as female suggests that their testing confirmed that the genitals were at least 'inconclusive'. To be clear- I still don't believe Niyonsaba should be competing with biological females but I think you're being needlessly obtuse to suggest that Niyonsaba didn't believe she was female (if that's what you're suggesting).

Really? That would be crazy!! Jakob must be pissed that they basically screwed him over. What sort of monkeys run the show @ Lausanne?

He realized pretty early, and adjusted. But pacemaker also opened .5s too slow at 800. He was going for a pb or low 3.28 run... not sure if he had it in him, but it would have been a better race if everything was working as intended with lights and pacer.

I don't doubt that Niyonsaba might have been mis-sexed in infancy and early childhood and that Niyonsaba might well have spent many years as a youngster misguided and confused about Niyonsaba's sex. That's through no fault of Niyonsaba's.

But what Niyonsaba thought as child is irrelevant when the issue is whether Niyonsaba should be competing in women's sports as an adult - and now that Niyonsaba is pushing 30.

Also, the issue I raised wasn't about what Niyonsaba thought as a kid. I asked specifically how the other poster could know that Niyonsaba's sex "was incorrectly recorded as female at birth."

Although we are constantly told that athletes like Niyonsaba and Semenya were "recorded as female at birth" and everyone in their lives always thought they be girls without question, there's really no way to know for sure. What sex athletes like Niyonsaba were thought to be, and were told they were, when they were babies and young children remains a matter of conjecture because there are no medical records, government birth registry records, birth certificates or any other reliable records dating to their childhoods that can be checked.

But we do know that Niyonsaba - and Semenya and all the other XY DSD athletes competing in women's elite track - have a handful of male-only DSDs which cause the bodies of affected males to masculinize during puberty of adolescence as boys' bodies customarily do. We also know that none of these athletes went through any of the telltale changes that female youngsters go through during puberty and adolescence - such as developing breasts; putting on an extra layer of adipose tissue; getting wider hips and thus a different Q angle; experiencing the enormous ups and downs in female sex hormones that occur over the 28-day ovulation-menstruation cycle; and routinely having periods one week out of every four in which an uncontrollable flow of blood, uterine tissue and blood clots gushes out the genitals, usually for about 4 to 7 days each time.

You really think these XY DSD athletes, their families, their coaches, communities, national sports federations and team doctors are all so unobservant, dense and clueless about the basics of human biology and "the birds and the bees" that none of them ever noticed and thought it odd that as these athletes went through their teenage years, none of them ever had a menstrual period - not even once?

Most girls start their periods between age 9 and 14. Niyonsaba is now 29; Semenya is 31. At what age do you think it's reasonable for them to have begun wondering where their periods were?

the fact that world athletics allowed Niyonsaba to compete as female suggests that their testing confirmed that the genitals were at least 'inconclusive'

Huh? The IAAF/WA has known that these athletes are XY, SRY gene positive with male-only DSDs all along. The testing done on these athletes to determine their sex goes far beyond looking at the appearance and configuration of their external genitals. Conclusions about which biological sex category they belong in are not based on entirely or even primarily on their urogenital anatomy, especially not the outer parts.

The reason these athletes have been allowed to compete in women's events is because of the politics and legal issues involved, not because medical science can't conclusively determine what their biological sex is.

Also: it's true that some individuals with a small number of particular DSDs - such as CAH in females and 5-ARD and AIS in males - are sometimes born with external genitals that appear ambiguous or like the outer genitals of the opposite sex, especially to the casual observer only using the eyes. However, trained medical personnel with the wide variety of modern diagnostic tools available and in use for decades certainly can tell the difference, just as they have been able to accurately diagnose XY DSDs such as 5-ARD and AIS since the 1960s.

Moreover, once persons with the particular XY DSD conditions that athletes like Niyonsaba and Semenya have go through puberty of adolescence, no doctor, nurse or other medical professional versed in basic gynecology and female reproductive anatomy would mistake these persons' genitals for female ones or find them to be "inconclusive."

Unfortunately RunRagged has a habit of writing 50 sentences when just a few sentences would be sufficient.

RunRagged's point is that in the 1990s many countries in Africa didn't record births for all their residents. So there is no guarantee that Niyonsaba's birth was recorded or that there was a birth certificate issued when Niyonsaba was born. So Niyonsaba's sex at birth might not have been recorded as either male or female.

I think this is a case of missing the forest for the tree. "Recorded female at birth" may not be an accurate descrption because Niyonsaba's birth might not have been recorded. But I think the point "kiltedrunner" is making is that her parents thought Niyonsaba was a girl at birth (that's why they gave her a females name), they raised her as a girl, and she thought she was a girl at least up to certain point. She or her parents might not have realized anything was different with her body until she was midteen. She may still identify as female as about half of people in her situation do.

This has nothing to with whether she should be able to compete in the women's elite sports or not. For the record, I think the DSD rule should be extended to all events, possibly with lower testosterone limit, and longer duration of that limit. But we don't have to constantly call Niyonsaba a "dude" or "he" in order to get there.

Your first point is 100% accurate. I am guilty as charged.

As for your second point: the low rates of recording births in official registries in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue to this day. This isn't just something that happened in the 1990s.

blogs.worldbank.org

Birth registration is less than 50% in many African countries

@worldbankdata

Birth registration refers to the permanent and official recording of a child's existence by a country’s administration or government. In many economies in Sub Saharan Africa, as well as some countries in South Asia, birth reg...

Link:blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/birth-reg...

Moreover, it's usually not that the governments of these countries in Africa have a policy or custom of not recording births. Rather, because of matters like civil strife, armed conflicts, coups, poverty, corruption, crappy infrastructure, oppressive heat and local cultural mores, many of these countries don't have high-functioning government administrative offices and bureaucracies that efficiently attend to matters like recording births, processing birth certificate applications and issuing birth certificates. Often, registering a child's birth and obtaining a BC is a huge hassle and headache for mums/parents. It's particularly burdensome for impoverished mums/parents who live in remote rural areas far from the nearest registry office, lack literacy skills, and have their hands full caring for their kids and making a living.

In addition, in many countries that do have decent administrative apparatus, many parents don't register their children's births and apply for birth certificates for them because they see no good reason to - or they actively distrust their governments.

As a result, in many countries in sub-Saharan even today, it's still fairly common for people not to have their births recorded until they are nearly or fully grown up and they come to find they need a birth certificate in order to get a bank account, passport, driver's license, or job; apply to university, join the military, or sign up for a government program.

This means that the first time many people in these countries get their sex recorded on an official document is when they are teenagers or adults. Semenya is a case in point: the first official document recording Semenya's sex as "Female" appears to be Semenya's South African birth certificate, which wasn't issued until April 2007 when Semenya was already 16. By that time, unscrupulous officials at Athletics South Africa had already scouted Semenya and hatched the plan to put Semenya on the world stage in women's athletics as South Africa's unusually talented "golden girl" runner.