Seb Coe: "Biology trumps gender.... I’m really over having any more of these discussions with second-rate sociologists"

rojo wrote:

Link:www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/at...

I'm not sure when Coe made these comments - might have been yesterday - but he deserves A LOT of praise for standing firm on this. Some of these quotes are amazing.

“We have two categories in our sport: one is age and one is gender. Age because we think it’s better that Olympic champions don’t run against 14-year-olds in community sports. And gender because if you don’t have a gender separation, no woman would ever win another sporting event.

“We’ve always been guided by the science, and the science is pretty clear: we know that testosterone is the key determinant in performance. I’m really over having any more of these discussions with second-rate sociologists who sit there trying to tell me or the science community that there may be some issue. There isn’t. Testosterone is the key determinant in performance.”

rojo wrote:

Link:www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/at...

I'm not sure when Coe made these comments - might have been yesterday - but he deserves A LOT of praise for standing firm on this. Some of these quotes are amazing.

“We have two categories in our sport: one is age and one is gender. Age because we think it’s better that Olympic champions don’t run against 14-year-olds in community sports. And gender because if you don’t have a gender separation, no woman would ever win another sporting event.

“We’ve always been guided by the science, and the science is pretty clear: we know that testosterone is the key determinant in performance. I’m really over having any more of these discussions with second-rate sociologists who sit there trying to tell me or the science community that there may be some issue. There isn’t. Testosterone is the key determinant in performance.”

Precious Roy wrote:

The science isn't there. The big problem has been that when you start testing all the women athletes, you start finding athletes who on the surface appear to be cis gender, "all female" biologically but actually have chromosomal abnormalities or outlier levels of testosterone. The idea that you can have a test that will just weed out the Caster Semenyas who are competitively superior to other female athletes is pretty naive at this point.

Even worse is that some states in the US have enacted gender testing requirements that include very invasive examinations of female genitalia (including taking measurements of a certain part of the body men are notorious for not being able to find) and allow any competitor to call into question whether an athlete is female.

In the end, you are just going to end up with a "I know one when I see one" standard with objective standards only being used when someone is successful competitively.

Precious Roy wrote:

The science isn't there. The big problem has been that when you start testing all the women athletes, you start finding athletes who on the surface appear to be cis gender, "all female" biologically but actually have chromosomal abnormalities or outlier levels of testosterone. The idea that you can have a test that will just weed out the Caster Semenyas who are competitively superior to other female athletes is pretty naive at this point.

Even worse is that some states in the US have enacted gender testing requirements that include very invasive examinations of female genitalia (including taking measurements of a certain part of the body men are notorious for not being able to find) and allow any competitor to call into question whether an athlete is female.

In the end, you are just going to end up with a "I know one when I see one" standard with objective standards only being used when someone is successful competitively.