SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the just-testosterone-for-now...-but-in-100-years...? dept.
What exactly makes a woman? Track and field's world governing body thinks the answer has to do with levels of serum testosterone, at least when it comes to female runners competing in middle-distance races.
The International Association of Athletics Federation announced a new set of rules Thursday that will ban women who naturally produce higher-than-normal levels of testosterone from participating in races ranging from 400 meters to the mile, unless they agree to take medication. Athletes with the condition, called hyperandrogenism, would be eligible to compete at the international level only if they reduced blood testosterone levels through the use of hormonal contraceptives, including birth control pills. The rule will go into effect on Nov. 1.
"Our evidence and data show that testosterone, either naturally produced or artificially inserted into the body, provides significant performance advantages in female athletes," said IAAF President Sebastian Coe in a statement. "The revised rules are not about cheating, no athlete with a [difference of sexual development] has cheated, they are about levelling the playing field to ensure fair and meaningful competition in the sport of athletics where success is determined by talent, dedication and hard work rather than other contributing factors," he added.
The new stipulations are stricter than those established by the IAAF in 2011, which limited women's testosterone levels to 10 nanomoles per liter of blood. The new requirements reduce the limit by half to 5 nanomoles per liter. That is still far above levels in most women, including elite female athletes, whose levels range from 0.12 to 1.79 nanomoles per liter, states a 22-page IAAF document [auto-download PDF] defending the organization's decision. Meanwhile, the normal male range after puberty is much higher, from 7.7 to 29.4 nanomoles.
Previously, the Court of Arbitration for Sport struck down the IAAF's hyperandrogenism regulations in response to a challenge by sprinter Dutee Chand.
Related: The Caster Semenya Debate
The Olympics, Science and Intersex
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:24PM (10 children)
It's time to end sexism in sports. Don't have separate events for men and women, just have events.
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:26PM (2 children)
Then you can forget about women participating in the vast majority of disciplines, and about men participating in gymnastics.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:49PM
Yup. Be careful of what you ask for when using the words "fair" or "equal".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Monday April 30 2018, @10:42AM
Why will men have an issue in Gymnastics? The Male events are geared more towards strength exercises, the Female are geared more towards balance and performance. I understand women might have issues on the rings, but would men underperform on the balance beam?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:37PM (6 children)
There wouldn't be much of a competition then. Most of "the best" women would be put down by more or less random teenage males, I don't have any links to provide in English but the female national soccer team has been beaten by fairly mediocre teenage male teams on so many occasions that they stopped playing vs them. Comparing pro male athletes to pro female athletes wouldn't be much better. If whatever they are competing in requires on strength and stamina it would be a horribly one sided affair. If one went into specifics I'm not sure I would want to even see a heavy weight boxing fight between a man and a women, one would demolish the other. So you probably have to have the gender divide in a lot of sports otherwise it would just be male sports since there would be no point on women competing. There would probably be a sport or two that would be dominated by females to and there would be no point for men to bother -- things that benefit from having small and slender bodies.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Saturday April 28 2018, @06:59PM (1 child)
I don't know about boxing, but you have to consider that the best soccer player in the world, Lionel Messi [wikipedia.org] is slender and not too tall (5'7") and you can watch [youtube.com] him drive a formidable Jerome Boateng into the ground.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday April 28 2018, @07:23PM
There are probably a lot of sports where being big, tall and strong might not matter as much. It might even be hindrance (compare say Soccer players to American Football players, the defensive line would never player pro-Soccer). Soccer might be an example, there are benefits to being tall but they might not be all that. Soccer is probably filled with short men, or below average height. Messi is one, Diego Maradona is another and the list can just go on. That said one can probably assume that even short for males if one took a comparable height female the males would still be physically better as in stronger, faster and have more endurance. It's not really sexism, it's just biological fact. There are probably sports where such things doesn't matter, or matters as much, but for most sports it will matter -- since that is really what it's almost all about, a physical contest. But there is still a wide difference between sports. But men for the most parts are just going to be superior by nature.
One could look at the extreme end of it all -- Olympic world records (1). When one compares the male to females, these are then both "the best" in the world of their gender, there is really no competition. When females finish men have already crossed the finish line quite some time before. The only place it looks like women are better or close to men it turns out that they are not really doing the same thing even if it's called the same thing. Shot put and Discus being such things, turns out the female shot and discus only weighs about half as much. Marathon running, when she crosses the line he has already been there for about 17 minutes.
It's not to put women down, I just don't think it would be a very good or interesting competition. Which might also explain why watching women sports on Telly (or live) doesn't draw as big a crowd or viewer numbers. It's after all watching the inferior athletes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_athletics [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday April 28 2018, @09:14PM (3 children)
Would you provide the links anyway? This sentence really stood out as informative.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday April 28 2018, @10:53PM (2 children)
It might have been a bit of an overstatement or hyperbole on my part, I don't really know if they have stopped playing vs them. But there have been no news articles about the attempts that are newer then three years old. Also they are not complete random male muppets but they are boys teams vs the female national team. They probably play them cause they can't find teams of equivalent level female players. But still with that in mind it is probably fair to infer that a game vs the national male team would not be overly pretty or great. The news might be somewhat skewed tho since they probably don't report on how they win vs boys teams since victory over children is probably not something to brag about.
This is from 2015, the female national team fielding the team they play with vs other nations get beaten 1-0 by a team of boys aged 16 belonging to the tier 2 male soccer club GAIS.
https://www.dn.se/sport/gais-pojklag-gav-landslaget-en-bra-match/ [www.dn.se]
https://www.svt.se/sport/fotboll/nyttig-match-mot-gais-p16/ [www.svt.se]
This is from 2013, female national team play lost 3-0 to a boys 17 team belonging to the tier 1 male soccer club AIK.
https://www.fotbollskanalen.se/dam/tv-damlandslaget-forlorade-mot-aiks-pojklag/ [fotbollskanalen.se]
http://8sidor.se/sport/2013/01/sveriges-fotbollsdamer-forlorade-mot-pojklag/ [8sidor.se]
A quick further search on the topic seem to indicate that this is a somewhat common training method for female teams all over the globe and the outcomes seem to be about the same. Australian, American (US) etc doing the same and the result being about the same.
2016 Australian national team loses 7-0 against boys team.
https://www.thedailystar.net/sports/australia-womens-natl-team-loses-u-16-boys-1230229 [thedailystar.net]
https://www.dailywire.com/news/6072/australias-national-womens-soccer-team-lose-7-0-amanda-prestigiacomo [dailywire.com]
This is just the few examples that some minor googling will provide. They apparently do this in preparation for international events. According to the female coach for the Swedish national team, that previously used to coach the US national team (Pia Sundhagen), they do this to work on techniques when playing vs superior teams and opponents. She acknowledges that they are the physically superior team but that there are good lessons involved with losing and playing vs a superior opponent. Sure one can say that it was training games or whatnot but they are fielding the same team they use to play vs other nations. Plus as noted these are teams of 16-17 year old boys. So while I said mediocre they are not complete muppets or anything but they are not professionals or men either.
It wouldn't really surprise me if you can find this in other sports as well. You could probably even find it in boys vs men plays to where boys just bring peak physical condition to the table while the older men play on technique and it eventually might grind the "older" men down.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @11:25AM
Same thing with Esmee Visser, the current Olympic champion on the 5km speed skating event. She was still training with the regional male juniors in the season she participated in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @11:42AM
Same for tennis too. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/sports/tennis/28serena.html [nytimes.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/allenstjohn/2015/08/31/john-mcenroe-cant-beat-serena-williams-but-some-journeyman-pro-at-the-u-s-open-could/#5f75d832650a [forbes.com]
FWIW women seem pretty good at ten pin bowling.
As for women with high testosterone, if too many women think it's so unfair then perhaps they should have a separate league for high testosterone women as suggested by someone else here. BUT if you look at the different body types of World/Olympics class people, we are selecting for "freaks" anyway - different height etc, so why not different testosterone? See: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/howard-schatz-photos-women-professional-athletes_n_4297902.html [huffingtonpost.com]
https://www.boredpanda.com/athlete-body-types-comparison-howard-schatz/ [boredpanda.com]
https://ninamatsumoto.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/athletes16.jpg [wordpress.com]
By the way, a relative of mine proposed that there be a different league for shorter players for basketball. Doubt that'll ever happen though.