RunRagged wrote:
JAHJ, another reason I’m surprised to see you endorsing and praising the FINA/WA policy is that it characterizes all 46,XY DSD athletes born with normally-developed and functioning testes - including those with CAIS - as male athletes with a DSD. Not as female athletes with a DSD, nor as “intersex” athletes with a DSD.
The FINA/WA policy acknowledges that some XY DSD athletes might see themselves as female, have legal documents that say they are female, be perceived as women by others, and be treated as women socially. But the policy is very clear that biologically, they are male.
Moreover, the FINA/WA policy is much stricter than the current World Athletics’ policy when it comes to excluding XY DSD athletes from women’s competition. The only XY DSD athletes born with fully-developed, functioning testes now allowed to seek eligibility for women’s competition in aquatics under FINA/WA rules are those with CAIS.
athletes with 46 XY DSD whose legal gender and/or gender identity is female are
eligible to compete in the women’s category… if they can establish to World Aquatics’ comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later. Specifically, the athlete must produce evidence establishing that:i. They have complete androgen insensitivity and therefore could not
experience male pubertyOtherwise, everyone who qualifies according to the applicable eligibility
conditions has a place in World Aquatics’ competition categories based on
their sex.So under the current FINA/WA rules, there’s no chance whatsoever of XY DSD athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma and Chand getting a chance to compete in aquatics in the women’s category at all - not even if they take drugs to reduce their T or they get their testes removed.
Similarly, there's no chance that XY DSD athletes like the ones who are such big stars in elite women's football (soccer) today - such as Barba Banda and Racheal Kundananji - could make a splash in elite women's aquatics.
In the past, when I’ve taken the same position on XY DSD athletes with CAIS as FINA/WA does - and I’ve used the same kind of language to describe them - you’ve railed that this is ignorant, hateful, bigoted and morally reprehensible of me. You’ve also claimed that characterizing XY persons with CAIS as males with a DSD dehumanizes them and amounts to "denying/erasing their existence."
So what gives?
Stop jumping up and down so much in excitement at having found an interpretation of someone’s words that you think lets you claim gotcha.
FINA’s is poor policy. Any policy that bans a woman for the rest of their life from participating in the female category is poor and unsustainable in the long run, unless there are a few more than two categories perhaps.
