OH WOW... Nick Symmonds taking on Hyperandrogenism

I admire Nick's willingness to share his opinion on this, but I have to disagree with him.

the system is in no way broken.

If anything, we should have:

1. Men's race (aka the actual Olympic/world/DL champ)

2. Women/other race

Usain Bolt is the fastest human being on the planet. That is a quantifiable fact. The amount of bickering we do to try and figure out how the 2500th fastest person has an advantage over the 2501st fastest person is absurd.

I agree with the point thats he's trying to make. But he still says the painfully wrong things. "XXY is still and unfair advantage"

Uh, someone with XXY(Klinefelter Syndrome) lokes like this

http://images.slideplayer.com/21/6262712/slides/slide_33.jpg

So I don't think they will be doing sports against males or females.

What about a genetic XY individual with complete androgen insensitivity (e.g. Jamie Lee Curtis).

Phenotypically completely female with no real advantage over men.

Caster likely has partial androgen insensitivity?

LetsRun.com wrote:

Nix n nick wrote:

Please summarize. Don't want to watch his video.

We loved Nick's video. It takes guts to go out in public on this matter but what he says is common sense. If you are looking for a cliff notes version, go to the front page as we've made it the QOD. It's cued to play at the 3:03 mark. He does a nice summary in 60 seconds.

But basically he says in this day and age, people identify all sorts of different ways so let's get rid of the antiquated terms like men and women and have sport for xx and xy.

https://twitter.com/letsrundotcom/status/885672033400573953

Ummm, antiquated terms like "men" and "women" - whoa! What next? Will you be advocating for riddance of anachronistic biological functions like urination, defecation and menstruation?

It's time for Chesterton's fence:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Generally I'm in disagreement with letsrun (rojo) but have to agree 100% with symmonds and the collective letsrun on this subject. It's a tough issue and symmonds makes sense with his starting point.

what are you talking about? intersex athletes shouldn't compete against women. that would be fair to other women. where do we draw the line though? how is this "strange" to you? as we constantly learn more about biology we learn more about what it is to be human. turns out (unsurprisingly) not everything is so straightforward so we have to figure out new ways of thinking. isn't that the fair way?

Jeff Albertson wrote:

I admire Nick's willingness to share his opinion on this, but I have to disagree with him.

the system is in no way broken.

If anything, we should have:

1. Men's race (aka the actual Olympic/world/DL champ)

2. Women/other race

Usain Bolt is the fastest human being on the planet. That is a quantifiable fact. The amount of bickering we do to try and figure out how the 2500th fastest person has an advantage over the 2501st fastest person is absurd.

I agree, but the 2500th fastest person who is the fastest woman gets a lot of money.

NickRantsWOW wrote:

has anyone seen this yet?? He makes some pretty good points..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH8DnoVOCkA

Good on Nick for showing some courage to comment on an issue that is ruining the sport.

Nick is saying, everyone can have the freedom to be classified as whatever. But when your freedom displaces the opportunity of others, you lose that right.

But to add on, I think it would be a failure to rename track events as a XX or XY 800m Olympic final, because we'd just be pretending it wasn't a men's or protected women's final. So you don't change the names of races, you just add an additional clause. You must be a woman and XX, or you must be a man, and XY.

This is significant because it should trickle down all sports in all age groups. When a high schooler born XY identifys as XX. You say yes we can call you a girl, but to compete in women's athletics you need to also only have XX chromosome.

Just another guy wrote:

Joseph Kenny wrote:

What about XXY, XXYY, XXXY, and XO individuals, among others?

You will find that most XY individuals with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome look phenotypically female. They will not want to compete as men. I would apply the Ted Haydon rule to this situation; does Nick Symmonds' proposal cause MORE people to compete or FEWER people to compete? I think it would cut competition opportunities a lot a marginalize people more. I think that this whole controversy is driven by fearful antipathy toward Caster Semenya.

Oh brother, the XX vs XY takes care of 99.99% of all issues, and should be the main basis for the rule. But you could add the below to make things even simpler and remove all outliers:

XX = must be strictly XX AND have no testes

XY = everybody else (XY, XXY, XXYY, XXXY, and XO)

Correct. No Y nor chimeric male organs. That is what women's sports is about, removing the advantage of male characteristics.

If you are androgen-insensitive XY, that's unfortunate, but you're not a woman and it's no more unfair to you that you aren't competitive in men's sports as it would be if you had muscular dystrophy. There is already a competition with many categories for the differently abled.

Just another guy wrote:

XX = must be strictly XX AND have no testes

This is important, Caster for example is XX but does have testes, so under Symond's rules she could compete in the XX category.

So is he saying if someone is xxy then basically they can't compete (as they are neither xx or xy)?

His solution unfairly descriminates against those that live as a man, have balls, male levels of testosterone but want to compete against women for glory, like Semenya.

elmore345 wrote:

So is he saying if someone is xxy then basically they can't compete (as they are neither xx or xy)?

Can still compete in the paralympics.

Really, it's pure arrogance from him to think that this solution hasn't been considered.

But Nick, what if I am XY but I identify as XX? Don't clip my wings!

Ahhh, but this is a political correctness issue not one of biology. And any advantage people can take legally they will take. But Nick is right and I wish the Semenyas of the world would compete fairly. She is a mockery of sport when she races other women.

Joseph Kenny wrote:

What about XXY, XXYY, XXXY, and XO individuals, among others?

You will find that most XY individuals with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome look phenotypically female. They will not want to compete as men. I would apply the Ted Haydon rule to this situation; does Nick Symmonds' proposal cause MORE people to compete or FEWER people to compete? I think it would cut competition opportunities a lot a marginalize people more. I think that this whole controversy is driven by fearful antipathy toward Caster Semenya.

Exactly this.

Nick Symonds sounds like he has read one Wikipedia article on chromosomes and now believes he is an expert with all the answers that the best scientists failed to come up with. I wonder if he is an anonymous letsrun poster...

He should stick to his day job; which is what like chewing gum salesman?

Wasn't Symmonds a biochemistry major?