But isn’t this an attempt to find unnatural issues, like them trying to take drug or hormones or something. If someone is born with high levels, how is that hugely different than someone being unusually taller than average or just has extra lung capacity.
This just feels like a hammer for a pinhole problem.
Well… the levels are a multiple of what is considered ‘normal’ so being above them without taking something is… unlikely. Not impossible, perhaps, but also why there is baseline tests for individuals and an appeal process.
It’s not as rare as you think. It’s actually quite common. It’s right up there with the number of people who have more than XX and XY chromosomes which is just a basic explanation you get in HS biology.
For example, a number of women take birth control pills to actually control hormones not just reproduction reasons.
I know all about using birth control for hormonal reasons. My sister, both sisters in law, and several friends do so.
What I was referring to was for male athletes, specifically in baseball as I know more about that. The levels they set are unlikely to be exceeded by natural means. Now I do not know enough about the threshold for womens sports, but my point was (perhaps not entirely clear before) that this type of mathematical basis has been used, and fairly well, in professional sports before. And if baseball can use a testosterone level as a threshold for extra testing and scrutiny, it seems a reasonable measure here.
However I also generally feel male to female transgender athletes should be prohibited from competing in womens sports, in part because of testosterone.
Sorry I guess I kind co-mingled the two groups.
I don’t know. What is the difference between “good” genes and “abnormal” genes other than society says this group gave you an advantage and maybe this other one didn’t and is causing problems. Now we’re giving “good” genes a double edge sword if it’s too good for athletics.
This seems like a huge limitation to handle a small number of transgender athletes. There has to be a better way.
You may be right, and as soon as some comes up with that better choice, I hope the IAAF considers it. Until then, the current rule seems to me to be the best option.
I still don’t see why they don’t just compete with the men. Is there some reason why that’s not acceptable?
Because they aren’t men?
The athletes in question don’t want that, for the most part. Lot harder to win that way.
For the sake of competition, they essentially are.
Men and women are not separated into different competitive groups due to sociological gender roles.
They are separated due to physical differences which exist regardless of what gender you feel you are.
Maybe it’s time to stop splitting by gender and instead divide competitors by other attributes, like brackets of testosterone level.
Very much so. There is a reason they made men’s and women’s sports: because otherwise there wouldn’t be women in sports (barring extreme outliers like Courtney Dauwalter in very niche events).
Trans women are physiologically men when it comes to muscle mass and the rest of it and if you allow them to compete against cis-women, you’re basically saying you no longer want to have cis-women sports.
There was a discussion on the new IAAF rules on this week’s Only a Game (during the Three Stories You Should Know segment), and they brought up a point that I didn’t catch from the stories I’d read on the new rules. The change to the testosterone level limit only applies to middle distance running, which happen to be where Caster Semenya is dominating. It doesn’t cover other events where you’d think high testosterone levels would be a major advantage, such as hammer throw or shot put. That sounds an awful lot like the powers behind the IAAF rules deciding that they need to put that uppity South African in her place. I do support the idea of having a line to separate mens and womens events, but it needs to be applied evenly, not targeted at individuals.
The IAAF is corrupt? This is my surprised face:
Well, its not like they picked the sports at random, there is science here. For whatever reason it appears middle distance running is the sweet spot of strength and stamina where you gain the most benefit of high testosterone levels. Or to put it another way, it gets you within the realm of men’s performance. And that is the problem with applying the ban across all events. If you didn’t want to take drugs to control testosterone levels then you would be left with competing with men but not being anywhere near their performance levels.
As has been noted, its not a great solution regardless but I don’t see much evidence of bias at this point.
Here’s the details that were mentioned on the podcast that I listened to. The stats from the IAAF study cited here would seem to indicate that the regulations were targeted to Semenya’s events while ignoring other events where an advantage was found.
What counts as “transgender” for this purpose?
I’m being serious. I’ve never understood all the sexuality/gender stuff that’s going on today. I’m not saying that to be disparaging, but it means exactly what it says. I don’t get it. There seem to be so many categories (including so many acronyms involving CIS and other things) that I’m not sure what actually is “transgender”.
How much, if any, surgery has to be done? What exactly has to be removed, what hormones/other chemicals have to be added?
I ask this, in part, because it is my understanding that there are many people who define as “non-binary” or similar things, where they identity as the opposite sex/gender even though they have undertaken absolutely no physical steps (other than perhaps dress) to change anything.
So, for example, if a man identifies as a woman and dresses like a woman, does that mean he can run with women?
Some would say yes, she is a woman as much as one that was born a woman.
Which as far as most things go, I’d probably agree with. But when it comes to physical activities, even a transitioned one that’s had surgery and takes medication… yeah, not really. Male and female humans are pretty different physically, as are most animals really.
I would agree.
Gender is mostly a social construct, so when it comes to roles and appearances then there can be a blurred line.
When it comes to athletics though we shift to the physical, and then you have a huge range of complications because we’re not all physically the same. You could say that not ever woman who was born a woman has the same testosterone levels, and that’s the true. The very idea of an average means there are those below it and above it, but then you get into the more granular stuff like chromosomes or sex organs and when you’re born with an extra one or one not at all… what are we saying then? And height has advantages and disadvantages for some sports but we dont’ outright ban people do to that, they’re just not likely to do well. I’ve been told the curve of your feet has some affect but does that bean someone with more extreme curve should be… banned? What about large lung capacity, or a slightly larger but not too large hearts…
This doesn’t seem like the way to go about it.