Testosterone, intersex and women's sport

[KentVillan]

Elite sport, almost by definition, selects for people who have extreme genetic / biological advantages.

Whether that’s a basketball player who is nearly 7’ tall (Shaq), or a fast bowler in cricket who has hyperextending elbows (Shoaib Akhtar), or a rugby player who is built like a tank (Jonah Lomu). Or a marathon runner with really long skinny legs and a tiny torso.

Women’s sport in particular is always going to be dominated by women who do not look classically feminine, because our classic ideal of femininity is fragile and unathletic.

The transgender debate is a separate thing relating to people who start as male and then have treatment to redefine as female. There are plenty of good arguments as to why they shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sport.

But attacking any woman who is an outlier in terms of body shape, testosterone levels etc? Getting on to pretty shaky ground there. Point is elite sport is always going to have more outliers. The other boxers aren’t ordinary stay-at-home mums who do a bit of yoga once a week.

It’s weird how the J K Rowling types have jumped on this. It contradicts a lot of the other things they have said about feminism and safe spaces for women IMO.

[Keyblade]

3 hours ago, fruitvilla said:

Depending on whether you were born with the evolutionary equipment (functioning or not) to produce large or small gametes. The XY XX divide is the wrong marker to choose.

So not the gametes themselves, but the equipment? Isn't the difficulty with many these athletes that they possess both sets of equipment? 

Also, while I get the logic here, I don't see how it's helpful for the realm of competitive sport. Testosterone level caps, while ultimately arbitrary, at least I can understand the logic there. Elevated levels do provide an advantage in many cases. If this Algerian athlete is found to produce ovum and not sperm, we are still at the same impasse imo.

[fruitvilla]

1 minute ago, Keyblade said:

So not the gametes themselves, but the equipment? Isn't the difficulty with many these athletes that they possess both sets of equipment? 

Not for producing both sets of gametes they don't. One in twenty thousand or fewer.

[Demitri_C]

6 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Well the Algerian woman (as well as every other competitor) was cleared by the IOC as eligible to compete, so what is the issue?

It's not even like she's particularly dominant anyway. It's like asking for Adama Traore to be banned, meanwhile Messi and Ronaldo are out there scoring 80 goals/season.

For me it all depends on the safety of the women competitors. When it comes to fighting its **** dangerous so as long as the woman are safe thats the main thing

[StefanAVFC]

And the Algerian woman? Is she now safe? From a country where it’s illegal to be trans, she has the whole world calling her a man. 

[StefanAVFC]

this is where this leads 

[TreeVillan]

8 hours ago, bickster said:

As you can imagine, I really couldn’t give a toss about the hurt feelings of an imaginary deity

But as he's supposedly omnipresent and everything ever is at his will, then I guess he both knows and doesn’t give a shit because he created everyone and everything. If he’s angry, it'll be with himself

I can't believe you of all people just assumed God's gender so nonchalantly.

[one_ian_taylor]

8 hours ago, GarethRDR said:

Drugs that uncrease genes?

Are they made by Corby?

[Panto_Villan]

8 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Well dominance is relevant because it is at least some measure of a potential unfair advantage. It's like saying Calum Chambers has an unfair advantage over everyone else, and yet he's...well, Calum Chambers. If he has one, it's not very evident.

You are often alluding to drugs and artificially enhancing, but this person is completely natural. For the bolded, that is exactly my point. Essentially she can't compete with women because of her testosterone levels, but also not with men because well, she's not a man. 

I’m not alluding to drugs. I’m just drawing a distinction between the two ways she can have completely natural elevated testosterone. She can either have it due to intersex characteristics like Semenya, or she could potentially have elevated testosterone due to other reasons.

I’m not even sure if the latter can happen medically, but if it can then I don’t think she should be barred from competition even if she would dominate - a man in the same position isn’t subject to arbitrary limits on their natural testosterone production, so why should she?

However if it’s the former, she shouldn’t be allowed to compete even if she would not dominate. That’s the conclusion they came to Semenya (correctly in my view). Women’s competitions are set up specifically to exclude men (even if most men wouldn’t actually dominate against the very best women), and if she’s intersex then she’s got a bit of both.

You can’t factor in domination as a mitigating factor otherwise your policy ends up being “you can compete, but if you win then we’ll ban you”, which is ridiculous. 

You also have to consider fairness beyond the very top of a sport. It wouldn’t be fair for me to turn up to a random chess tournament with a computer even though Magnus Carlson would still beat me. But by your logic I should be allowed to, as it wouldn’t lead to me dominating the sport, even though it makes me a better player than I would be without it.

 

Edited August 2 by Panto_Villan

[foreveryoung]

8 hours ago, Panto_Villan said:

Is there a line for men?

Obviously a drug that artificially increases it is banned, but I've not heard of any men being banned for naturally producing too much testosterone?

I don't really feel like the level of dominance is relevant. Using that logic, we should be allowed to juice up Calum Chambers with all the performance enhancing drugs we like because he still won't be as good as Ronaldo or Messi are.

I'm not necessarily saying the Algerian woman should be banned, but if she's getting an unfair advantage due to being intersex then that shouldn't be permitted regardless of her level of skill.

She was banned from the boxing world championships, it's only the IOC who have not banned her.

It's not a level playing field. If the men take drugs to increase testosterone they would be banned, because it's dangerous. It's irrelevant if he wins or not.

Just because she's a crap boxer, shouldn't mean it should be allowed.

[Panto_Villan]

17 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

She was banned from the boxing world championships, it's only the IOC who have not banned her.

It's not a level playing field. If the men take drugs to increase testosterone they would be banned, because it's dangerous. It's irrelevant if he wins or not.

Just because she's a crap boxer, shouldn't mean it should be allowed.

Women are banned if they take drugs to raise testosterone, just like men. However men aren’t banned for naturally having unusually high levels of testosterone.

[foreveryoung]

17 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Women are banned if they take drugs to raise testosterone, just like men. However men aren’t banned for naturally having unusually high levels of testosterone.

Unusual levels of testosterone in men is generally down to drugs.

In the end she has a unfair advantage, which is not only unfair, it's  dangerous in boxing.

 

[Panto_Villan]

3 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Unusual levels of testosterone in men is generally down to drugs.

In the end she has a unfair advantage, which is not only unfair, it's  dangerous in boxing.

So if we discovered Tyson Fury had always been producing 50% more testoterone as other famous boxers, wholly naturally, we should disqualify him from boxing?

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, foreveryoung said:

She was banned from the boxing world championships, it's only the IOC who have not banned her.

It's not a level playing field. If the men take drugs to increase testosterone they would be banned, because it's dangerous. It's irrelevant if he wins or not.

Just because she's a crap boxer, shouldn't mean it should be allowed.

Isn’t there a bit of a question around the IBA ban though? They never released any test results and it was apparently just a personal decision by a senior member to ban her. 

It would be good to understand definitively what the actual condition is that she has before judging how best to handle the situation.

At the moment it seems like a lot of hearsay. 

[KentVillan]

40 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Unusual levels of testosterone in men is generally down to drugs.

In the end she has a unfair advantage, which is not only unfair, it's  dangerous in boxing.

 

Unusual levels of testosterone compared with the general population are present across elite sport. It’s not just doping. Sport selects for outliers.

And the idea that it’s dangerous for her to compete seems illogical if she is getting beaten by other women (apparently 9 other women have beaten her in her career). What makes her more dangerous than those other 9 women?

I find the behaviour from the Italian boxer strange and premeditated, designed to play into the controversy. Boxing is a dangerous and painful sport. It’s not credible that she takes one decent punch from the Algerian and that is a completely unprecedented experience for her as a boxer. She’s being disingenuous.

[StefanAVFC]

24 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Isn’t there a bit of a question around the IBA ban though? They never released any test results and it was apparently just a personal decision by a senior member to ban her. 

It would be good to understand definitively what the actual condition is that she has before judging how best to handle the situation.

At the moment it seems like a lot of hearsay. 

Hearsay thats led to a huge witch hunt of an innocent woman 

[Keyblade]

2 hours ago, Panto_Villan said:

I’m not alluding to drugs. I’m just drawing a distinction between the two ways she can have completely natural elevated testosterone. She can either have it due to intersex characteristics like Semenya, or she could potentially have elevated testosterone due to other reasons.

I’m not even sure if the latter can happen medically, but if it can then I don’t think she should be barred from competition even if she would dominate - a man in the same position isn’t subject to arbitrary limits on their natural testosterone production, so why should she?

However if it’s the former, she shouldn’t be allowed to compete even if she would not dominate. That’s the conclusion they came to Semenya (correctly in my view). Women’s competitions are set up specifically to exclude men (even if most men wouldn’t actually dominate against the very best women), and if she’s intersex then she’s got a bit of both.

You can’t factor in domination as a mitigating factor otherwise your policy ends up being “you can compete, but if you win then we’ll ban you”, which is ridiculous. 

You also have to consider fairness beyond the very top of a sport. It wouldn’t be fair for me to turn up to a random chess tournament with a computer even though Magnus Carlson would still beat me. But by your logic I should be allowed to, as it wouldn’t lead to me dominating the sport, even though it makes me a better player than I would be without it.

 

I'm not saying because she doesn't dominate then that means she should continue to compete, just that it can be used to gauge any sort of advantage she may or may not have, in the absence of other such evidence.

I agree with the bolded, which was exactly what I was getting at. The only thing I'd contend is why would it matter if it's due to being intersex or not? You either have elevated testosterone levels or not, and you're either a woman or not. Delineating by underlying cause seems more arbitrary than doing so by testosterone level.

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

I'm not saying because she doesn't dominate then that means she should continue to compete, just that it can be used to gauge any sort of advantage she may or may not have, in the absence of other such evidence.

I agree with the bolded, which was exactly what I was getting at. The only thing I'd contend is why would it matter if it's due to being intersex or not? You either have elevated testosterone levels or not, and you're either a woman or not. Delineating by underlying cause seems more arbitrary than doing so by testosterone level.

I think this is part of the problem. There are many commentators that have decided she’s not like them, but then insisting the world is simple and binary, so she’s a he by default.

The evidence before people’s eyes isn’t convincing these people there is, in a vanishingly small number of people, nuance beyond their bloke or bird simple lives.

I guess the only thing to do is gather up the pitchforks and torches and drive the outlier out of the (Olympic) village.

[foreveryoung]

47 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Hearsay thats led to a huge witch hunt of an innocent woman 

Ohh my goodness, the lengths some people will blag for defence.

You'd be a amazing defence lawyer. You wouldn't win f*** all mind 

[Panto_Villan]

2 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

I'm not saying because she doesn't dominate then that means she should continue to compete, just that it can be used to gauge any sort of advantage she may or may not have, in the absence of other such evidence.

I agree with the bolded, which was exactly what I was getting at. The only thing I'd contend is why would it matter if it's due to being intersex or not? You either have elevated testosterone levels or not, and you're either a woman or not. Delineating by underlying cause seems more arbitrary than doing so by testosterone level.

This isn't true though. It's not true with regards to gender (non-binary people say hello), and the existence of intersex people means it's not true biologically either. 

If she did happen to be intersex then she could identify as female but still not actually be biologically female - I mean, that's exactly what being intersex means, isn't it?