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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:57PM (3 children)
If only the Olympics could do drug testing ...
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:22PM (2 children)
Drug testing doesn't help. Consider: a male grows up, his body develops as a male, he trains to be (say) a runner. Then, at the age of 18 or 20, he claims to be transgender, starts taking drugs to suppress his testosterone, and for the next 3, 4, 5 years competes in women's events. How does drug testing help? (S)he is doing exactly what the committee demanded, shows the proper levels of testosterone. But (s)he still benefited from a body developed under the influence of testosterone, and this is still an unfair advantage.
Actually, the very same thing applies to genetic females with excessive testosterone. Look at Caster Semenya [duckduckgo.com]. She may be "XX" genetically, but she has developed a male physique under the influence of her unnaturally high testosterone levels. She should not be allowed to compete in women's competitions, not even with testosterone suppression. I'm sorry if it hurts her feelings, but it is simply unfair to everyone else in those competitions.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @07:59PM
Should end the God gave me a gift speeches so many athletes use.
Sure will make balancing the special Olympics much harder.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @01:19AM
So we should go with an "every snowflake deserves a prize" approach? Somebody who has superior potential through a lucky dice-roll of genetics should be disqualified but somebody with a more normal dice-roll tries really hard, so the latter deserves to be recognized and the former shunned?
Competitions that focus on physical capability are carried out to identify extremes: the strongest, the fastest, the most flexible, etc., not the-ones-who-tried-hard-so-really-deserve-acknowledgement. If anything, it's surprising that we don't see more genetic mutants coming out on top.
If people are serious about wanting to remove competitors who are genetically gifted from consideration, they need to re-evaluate how things are defined. Someone needs to set up definitions of normal, super-normal and sub-normal (it's only fair, after all; everybody is special in their own way) and apply it to all contenders, not just lump them based on whether they have a willy or not. More likely a more refined scale should be defined. Measure a potential competitor's characteristics against the scale and let them compete in that class, regardless of sex, height, weight, eye color, hair color, testosterone levels, etc. Look at the weight classes in formalized pummeling (boxing), for example. If you meet characteristics x, y and z, you compete against others who meet the same characteristics.
But that's not what people want to see. They want to see the extremes: the fastest, the strongest, etc. They want to find the genetic mutants, because that's so cool, they just don't want to acknowledge that. Instead, when confronted with the facts, they claim that they're only interested in the extreme normals because then there's a chance that, if they were to train hard, they could do that, too. They know they won't, but gosh darn it, if they really wanted, that could be them in the limelight.