Yes, that is what I was wondering. If they have nothing which puts "them at a competitive disadvantage relative to other males in the sport" as Runragged wrote, then indeed there is no need for a separate category and they can compete on regular terms with men.
However, if they have advantages over female athletes, but also have DSD disorders that mean they are also disadvantaged against regular male athletes, then the case is somewhat more nuanced. In that situation, I imagine an argument could be made for a separate category or special categorization as per the Para suggestion.
I agree that they should not be competing with biological women at all. However, the "let them race the men" approach might not be completely fair either...
It’s absurd to argue that a person with CAIS, or even PAIS, is not at a marked disadvantage compared to other males. In fact, in CAIS, you’d be hard pressed to come up with biologically plausible reasons that a 46 XY CAIS person would have an any advantage over XX females.
Again, the scenario I referenced is a real one. This is an adolescent girl who has lived every second of her life as a girl. Her birth certificate says female. She does not complete normal female puberty and ultimately is found to be a person who is 46 XY CAIS at age 14. She’s tall and coordinated and has been a star of her youth girls basketball teams. She’s now a HS freshman and looking forward to playing freshman or JV girls basketball. There are only girls and boys teams at the HS of course. She has no chance to make the boys team, and why would she try? She’s a girl. None of her classmates or teachers or coaches know that she’s XY. Nobody would suspect it. She and her parents didn’t suspect it until the doctors told them. They were shocked, saddened upon learning this news.
Are there people on this thread who would tell this young woman she cannot play girls HS basketball if they became aware of her biological back story? In practical terms, her medical records are private and there is no hormone testing or karyotyping required to play HS basketball. Would people want to put a system in place to “catch” athletes like this young woman. Ok, say she doesn’t have CAIS, but PAIS. Does this matter? What would you do? How would you distinguish the two? Insist she release the results of her AR genetic test?
Please stop bringing people with XY CAIS into the convo. As you well know, they are not subject to the WA XY DSD regulations so they are not at issue in threads about WA's current or proposed rules for XY DSD athletes subject to restrictions in female athletics.
As you also know, CAIS and PAIS are very dissimilar in terms of their etiology and how they manifest. The basic underlying mechanism is the same - male androgen receptors that don't work properly in total or in part. But many other aspects of these conditions are quite different. While there is uniformity amongst the visible external body morphology and presentation of AIS in those with XY CAIS, in persons with XY PAIS there is not. Persons with XY PAIS are hugely varied in how their PAIS affects them, so each case of XY PAIS needs to be assessed and handled individually.
Moreover, many persons with XY CAIS or AIS that's close to complete don't see themselves and their situation in sport as at all analogous to persons who have XY AIS that is clearly only partial or mild aka PAIS and MAIS.
In fact, the most prominent living figure in international track & field known to have XY AIS - former elite hurdler Maria Jose Martinez Patino of Spain, who is believed to have either CAIS or a form of PAIS that's very close to CAIS, though it's never been made exactly clear - testified for the IAAF/WA against Dutee Chand in the court proceedings in which Chand officially challenged the IAAF/WA's earlier so-called "hyeprandrogenism regulations" that required athletes like Chand and Semenya to take medication to reduce their testosterone to be eligible for women's competition.
Though it was the lawsuit launched by Martinez Patino in the 1980s that convinced the IOC and IAAF to drop mandatory DNA testing for athletes in female international competition and got those governing bodies to agree to open up the women's category to XY athletes with a wide range of disorders or differences of male sex development, in recent years Martinez Patino apparently has come to believe that the significant numbers of athletes in women's elite sports from India and sub-Saharan Africa with XY DSDs the ones Chand, Semenya and soccer player Barbara Banda have mean the door to the female category has been opened far too wide.
It’s absurd to argue that a person with CAIS, or even PAIS, is not at a marked disadvantage compared to other males. In fact, in CAIS, you’d be hard pressed to come up with biologically plausible reasons that a 46 XY CAIS person would have an any advantage over XX females.
Please stop bringing people with XY CAIS into the convo. As you well know, they are not subject to the WA XY DSD regulations so they are not at issue in threads about WA's current or proposed rules for XY DSD athletes subject to restrictions in female athletics.
what does that mean? Are XY CAIS treated differently in the WA rules?
Please stop bringing people with XY CAIS into the convo. As you well know, they are not subject to the WA XY DSD regulations so they are not at issue in threads about WA's current or proposed rules for XY DSD athletes subject to restrictions in female athletics.
what does that mean? Are XY CAIS treated differently in the WA rules?
Found it. I guess you are right CAIS are not affected by current policy:
2.2 For these purposes: 2.2.1 A "Relevant Athlete" is an athlete who meets each of the following three criteria:
a. she has one of the following DSDs: i. 5α-reductase type 2 deficiency; ii. partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS); iii. 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 3 (17β- HSD3) deficiency; iv. ovotesticular DSD; or v. any other genetic disorder involving disordered gonadal steroidogenesis; and
b. as a result, she has circulating testosterone levels in blood of five (5) nmol/L or above; and
c. she has sufficient androgen sensitivity for those levels of testosterone to have a material androgenising effect.
Please stop bringing people with XY CAIS into the convo. As you well know, they are not subject to the WA XY DSD regulations so they are not at issue in threads about WA's current or proposed rules for XY DSD athletes subject to restrictions in female athletics.
As you also know, CAIS and PAIS are very dissimilar in terms of their etiology and how they manifest. The basic underlying mechanism is the same - male androgen receptors that don't work properly in total or in part. But many other aspects of these conditions are quite different. While there is uniformity amongst the visible external body morphology and presentation of AIS in those with XY CAIS, in persons with XY PAIS there is not. Persons with XY PAIS are hugely varied in how their PAIS affects them, so each case of XY PAIS needs to be assessed and handled individually.
Moreover, many persons with XY CAIS or AIS that's close to complete don't see themselves and their situation in sport as at all analogous to persons who have XY AIS that is clearly only partial or mild aka PAIS and MAIS.
In fact, the most prominent living figure in international track & field known to have XY AIS - former elite hurdler Maria Jose Martinez Patino of Spain, who is believed to have either CAIS or a form of PAIS that's very close to CAIS, though it's never been made exactly clear - testified for the IAAF/WA against Dutee Chand in the court proceedings in which Chand officially challenged the IAAF/WA's earlier so-called "hyeprandrogenism regulations" that required athletes like Chand and Semenya to take medication to reduce their testosterone to be eligible for women's competition.
Though it was the lawsuit launched by Martinez Patino in the 1980s that convinced the IOC and IAAF to drop mandatory DNA testing for athletes in female international competition and got those governing bodies to agree to open up the women's category to XY athletes with a wide range of disorders or differences of male sex development, in recent years Martinez Patino apparently has come to believe that the significant numbers of athletes in women's elite sports from India and sub-Saharan Africa with XY DSDs the ones Chand, Semenya and soccer player Barbara Banda have mean the door to the female category has been opened far too wide.
Ok, so you are ok with athletes that are 46 XY CAIS or near complete PAIS competing with the women at all levels of sport, including the Olympics and world championships? I think it’s a breakthrough that you are acknowledging that there are people in the world with a Y chromosome that should be allowed to compete as women. Now it’s just a matter of where to draw the line. How do you distinguish CAIS and PAIS? AR gene testing, some particular phenotypic marker? Subtle androgen effects are subtle. What’s your ideal rule for WA?
This post was edited 3 minutes after it was posted.
Please stop bringing people with XY CAIS into the convo. As you well know, they are not subject to the WA XY DSD regulations so they are not at issue in threads about WA's current or proposed rules for XY DSD athletes subject to restrictions in female athletics.
People with CAIS are constantly brought up because there are comments like the following all over this board.
With a Y chromosome they are biologcally male. Plenty of males are not going to be competitive in the male category. The solution is not to put them in the category for biological females (xx). It could be a third category. Or Para sport type solution. Or having male be open category. But setting female records and displacing female athletes is not the solution.
Many people, including many on this board are clueless about DSD, and some of them are probably willfully ignorant. (I don't know if the poster I quoted above is willfully ignorant.)
I have posted this personal account by Dr. Martinez Patino more than once on this board. But I will continue to do so until people stop writing "no one with Y chromosome should be allowed to compete in women's sports."
And speaking of Dr. Martinez Patino, I wonder if we could get her write a guest column on the new WA policy. LRC published a guest column by Joanna Harper years ago. But since the central issue in track & field is DSD athletes, and not trans athletes, I think Dr. Martinez Patino has more relevant experience.
Saying that "persons with those conditions need to figure out what's best and campaign and lobby for it, that's what women had to do", is a false equivalence. A group representing a fraction of one percent hardly has the lobbying power and campaign potential of a group representing over fifty percent of the population, does it?
You seem to be carrying a grievance on behalf of women in general, rather than being minded to focus on the specific aspects of this case when it comes to overall fairness. I largely agree with you. However, your "So what? Tough luck! Suck it up!" attitude towards DSD athletes who have no control over their situation undermines your case.
In the current social climate in which World Athletics has to operate, an approach like yours is hardly an option. They have to be seen as, at least, trying to find an equitable solution. A "just ban them all or let them compete with men" policy is simply never going to happen.
Huh? XY DSD athletes might be a teeny-tiny portion of the population, but since the 1980s they have proven to have huge lobbying power and campaigning ability.
Few athletes in history have gotten the kind of backing and sympathetic treatment from the mainstream media, governments, all major institutions and the general public that XY DSD athletes like Caster Semenya, Dutee Chand and Maria Jose Martinez Patino have been given. None of these athletes have had to spend a dime on their extremely costly legal challenges to sport governing bodies because the world's most prominent law firms, PR firms, foundations and NGOs have donated their services and massive clout to them for free.
Since the 1990s, sports governing bodies like the IAAF/WA, IOC and FIFA have taken the position that fairness for female athletes in sports must be forfeited so that XY athletes with disorders or difference of male sex development like Dutee Chand, Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and soccer players like Barbara Banda can be included in the women's and girls' category.
Moreover, XY DSD athletes from sub-Saharan countries with the capacity to bring home big gold and glory in international women's sports like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma, Masilingi and Banda not only have received the full-throated support of the governments of their home countries, but those governments have used massive amounts of money, power and influence sway sports governing bodies, international institutions like the UN, the courts, and the worldwide court of public opinion to support the notion that XY DSD athletes have a "human right" to compete in female sports.
In 2021, Namibia and other sub-Sharan nations went to the UN to lodged a complaint alleging that Mboma and Masilngi being subjected the XY DSD regulations in women's events prior to/for the Tokyo Olympics constituted a gross violation of their fundamental human rights. In 2022, at least 11 first-string players on national teams from sub-Saharan African countries in the Women's African Cup of Nations soccer championship were identified as XY with DMSDs. One country had 4 such athletes on its women's squad. The noticeable numbers of XY DSD athletes showing up in elite women's sports from certain countries and only those countries aren't happening by chance.
In more recent years, sports governing bodies like the IOC, IAAF/WA, FIFA, NCAA, USA Cycling, the Ivy League Conference, Big Sky Conference, CIAC in Connecticut and many more have enacted new policies which say that girls and women must be forced to accept even more blatantly obvious unfairness in their own category of sports competition - and put up with discomfort, embarrassment and the risk of male voyeurism, flashing, sexual harassment and assault in female locker rooms - so that female scholastic, elite and community sports can be made "inclusive" of males who say they "identify as" girls/women.
In the era in which female athletes have been forced to step aside and take a back seat to a XY athletes such as Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba, Margaret Wambui, Christine Mboma, Dutee Chand, Barbara Banda, Hannah Mouncey, Laurel Hubbard, Stephanie Barrett, Chelsea Wolfe, CeCe Telfer, Andraya Yearwood, Terry Miller, June Eastwood, Lia Thomas and scores more, the people being told, "So what? Tough luck! Suck it up!" are girls and women (the female kind).
In fact, many of the people who have been telling female athletes, "So what? Tough luck! Suck it up!" in public in the most arrogant manner and uncaring tones of voicehave been the many XY DSD and trans-identified athletes who have been allowed to enter and clean up in girls and women's competition in recent years. Many of these athletes are on public record sneering that female athletes who object to having to compete against males in female sports are bigots, spoilsports and sore losers who should stop complaining like a bunch of crybabies and just "train and try harder."
Some XY athletes who have cleaned up in women's sports have openly gloated about the biological advantages they have due to having testes that produce massive amounts amount of testosterone:
The double Olympic champion Caster Semenya's battle with the athletics authorities rolls on as she continues to fight an IAAF regulation that would make her ...
Huh? XY DSD athletes might be a teeny-tiny portion of the population, but since the 1980s they have proven to have huge lobbying power and campaigning ability.
Few athletes in history have gotten the kind of backing and sympathetic treatment from the mainstream media, governments, all major institutions and the general public that XY DSD athletes like Caster Semenya, Dutee Chand and Maria Jose Martinez Patino have been given. None of these athletes have had to spend a dime on their extremely costly legal challenges to sport governing bodies because the world's most prominent law firms, PR firms, foundations and NGOs have donated their services and massive clout to them for free.
Since the 1990s, sports governing bodies like the IAAF/WA, IOC and FIFA have taken the position that fairness for female athletes in sports must be forfeited so that XY athletes with disorders or difference of male sex development like Dutee Chand, Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and soccer players like Barbara Banda can be included in the women's and girls' category.
Moreover, XY DSD athletes from sub-Saharan countries with the capacity to bring home big gold and glory in international women's sports like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma, Masilingi and Banda not only have received the full-throated support of the governments of their home countries, but those governments have used massive amounts of money, power and influence sway sports governing bodies, international institutions like the UN, the courts, and the worldwide court of public opinion to support the notion that XY DSD athletes have a "human right" to compete in female sports.
In 2021, Namibia and other sub-Sharan nations went to the UN to lodged a complaint alleging that Mboma and Masilngi being subjected the XY DSD regulations in women's events prior to/for the Tokyo Olympics constituted a gross violation of their fundamental human rights. In 2022, at least 11 first-string players on national teams from sub-Saharan African countries in the Women's African Cup of Nations soccer championship were identified as XY with DMSDs. One country had 4 such athletes on its women's squad. The noticeable numbers of XY DSD athletes showing up in elite women's sports from certain countries and only those countries aren't happening by chance.
In more recent years, sports governing bodies like the IOC, IAAF/WA, FIFA, NCAA, USA Cycling, the Ivy League Conference, Big Sky Conference, CIAC in Connecticut and many more have enacted new policies which say that girls and women must be forced to accept even more blatantly obvious unfairness in their own category of sports competition - and put up with discomfort, embarrassment and the risk of male voyeurism, flashing, sexual harassment and assault in female locker rooms - so that female scholastic, elite and community sports can be made "inclusive" of males who say they "identify as" girls/women.
In the era in which female athletes have been forced to step aside and take a back seat to a XY athletes such as Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba, Margaret Wambui, Christine Mboma, Dutee Chand, Barbara Banda, Hannah Mouncey, Laurel Hubbard, Stephanie Barrett, Chelsea Wolfe, CeCe Telfer, Andraya Yearwood, Terry Miller, June Eastwood, Lia Thomas and scores more, the people being told, "So what? Tough luck! Suck it up!" are girls and women (the female kind).
In fact, many of the people who have been telling female athletes, "So what? Tough luck! Suck it up!" in public in the most arrogant manner and uncaring tones of voicehave been the many XY DSD and trans-identified athletes who have been allowed to enter and clean up in girls and women's competition in recent years. Many of these athletes are on public record sneering that female athletes who object to having to compete against males in female sports are bigots, spoilsports and sore losers who should stop complaining like a bunch of crybabies and just "train and try harder."
Some XY athletes who have cleaned up in women's sports have openly gloated about the biological advantages they have due to having testes that produce massive amounts amount of testosterone:
One interesting observation that cuts both ways is that the DSD athletes listed would be at best mediocre to good competitors is male HS athletics. Semenya could not even make the 4x800 team of my old HS. We were NY state champions… Niyonsaba might be able to run varsity xc for Pomona in D3. These are the best of the best, so it’s clear that DSD XY people are NOT the same as able bodied men. Don’t you think we’d see some XY DSD person at least break 14 min in the 5000 or 1:50 in the 800? It’s clear that the best XY DSD athletes are not remotely as able bodied as the best men. Rather, the very best have best performances that put them at the top of the XX performance charts. Most are far below this. I mean Niyonsaba is the XY DSD world record holder in the 5000. She’s still 20 seconds off the XX world record. An ethicist could easily argue that based on the empirical evidence of performance, these athletes are best grouped with XX athletes and not XY non DSD ones. Why exactly is it “fairer” to throw them in with non DSD men? Simply because they have an Y chromosome, or because of their T level?
Yes, "simply" because they are biologically men (y chromosome and usually male gonads, T levels etc.). As there will probably not enough xy DSD people for decent stats we may never know how or if any will run closer to elite males w/o DSD. But that's IMO completely irrelevant.
How many subdivisions would you want? Best BMI >25 runner? Best one over 300 pounds? Best one with short legs or one leg shorter than the other? There are two classes (except age groups), male/open and female. (And maybe para-classes.) W
Huh? XY DSD athletes might be a teeny-tiny portion of the population, but since the 1980s they have proven to have huge lobbying power and campaigning ability.
Few athletes in history have gotten the kind of backing and sympathetic treatment from the mainstream media, governments, all major institutions and the general public that XY DSD athletes like Caster Semenya, Dutee Chand and Maria Jose Martinez Patino have been given. None of these athletes have had to spend a dime on their extremely costly legal challenges to sport governing bodies because the world's most prominent law firms, PR firms, foundations and NGOs have donated their services and massive clout to them for free.
Since the 1990s, sports governing bodies like the IAAF/WA, IOC and FIFA have taken the position that fairness for female athletes in sports must be forfeited so that XY athletes with disorders or difference of male sex development like Dutee Chand, Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and soccer players like Barbara Banda can be included in the women's and girls' category.
Moreover, XY DSD athletes from sub-Saharan countries with the capacity to bring home big gold and glory in international women's sports like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma, Masilingi and Banda not only have received the full-throated support of the governments of their home countries, but those governments have used massive amounts of money, power and influence sway sports governing bodies, international institutions like the UN, the courts, and the worldwide court of public opinion to support the notion that XY DSD athletes have a "human right" to compete in female sports.
In 2021, Namibia and other sub-Sharan nations went to the UN to lodged a complaint alleging that Mboma and Masilngi being subjected the XY DSD regulations in women's events prior to/for the Tokyo Olympics constituted a gross violation of their fundamental human rights. In 2022, at least 11 first-string players on national teams from sub-Saharan African countries in the Women's African Cup of Nations soccer championship were identified as XY with DMSDs. One country had 4 such athletes on its women's squad. The noticeable numbers of XY DSD athletes showing up in elite women's sports from certain countries and only those countries aren't happening by chance.
In more recent years, sports governing bodies like the IOC, IAAF/WA, FIFA, NCAA, USA Cycling, the Ivy League Conference, Big Sky Conference, CIAC in Connecticut and many more have enacted new policies which say that girls and women must be forced to accept even more blatantly obvious unfairness in their own category of sports competition - and put up with discomfort, embarrassment and the risk of male voyeurism, flashing, sexual harassment and assault in female locker rooms - so that female scholastic, elite and community sports can be made "inclusive" of males who say they "identify as" girls/women.
In the era in which female athletes have been forced to step aside and take a back seat to a XY athletes such as Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba, Margaret Wambui, Christine Mboma, Dutee Chand, Barbara Banda, Hannah Mouncey, Laurel Hubbard, Stephanie Barrett, Chelsea Wolfe, CeCe Telfer, Andraya Yearwood, Terry Miller, June Eastwood, Lia Thomas and scores more, the people being told, "So what? Tough luck! Suck it up!" are girls and women (the female kind).
In fact, many of the people who have been telling female athletes, "So what? Tough luck! Suck it up!" in public in the most arrogant manner and uncaring tones of voicehave been the many XY DSD and trans-identified athletes who have been allowed to enter and clean up in girls and women's competition in recent years. Many of these athletes are on public record sneering that female athletes who object to having to compete against males in female sports are bigots, spoilsports and sore losers who should stop complaining like a bunch of crybabies and just "train and try harder."
Some XY athletes who have cleaned up in women's sports have openly gloated about the biological advantages they have due to having testes that produce massive amounts amount of testosterone:
One interesting observation that cuts both ways is that the DSD athletes listed would be at best mediocre to good competitors is male HS athletics. Semenya could not even make the 4x800 team of my old HS. We were NY state champions… Niyonsaba might be able to run varsity xc for Pomona in D3. These are the best of the best, so it’s clear that DSD XY people are NOT the same as able bodied men. Don’t you think we’d see some XY DSD person at least break 14 min in the 5000 or 1:50 in the 800? It’s clear that the best XY DSD athletes are not remotely as able bodied as the best men. Rather, the very best have best performances that put them at the top of the XX performance charts. Most are far below this. I mean Niyonsaba is the XY DSD world record holder in the 5000. She’s still 20 seconds off the XX world record. An ethicist could easily argue that based on the empirical evidence of performance, these athletes are best grouped with XX athletes and not XY non DSD ones. Why exactly is it “fairer” to throw them in with non DSD men? Simply because they have an Y chromosome, or because of their T level?
One of the expert witnesses at Semenya v. IAAF made an argument that she did not have any biological disadvantage compared to men without DSD. (As I noted above, this was not without dispute.) According to this argument, Semenya is not as fast as elite level men, because Semenya is not as exceptional as the elite level men. 1:54 is still a very fast time in the big scheme of things, and most men cannot possibly reach that level no matter what.
Semenya is just not as big an outlier as Rudisha because she represents a much smaller parent population.
Yes, "simply" because they are biologically men (y chromosome and usually male gonads, T levels etc.). As there will probably not enough xy DSD people for decent stats we may never know how or if any will run closer to elite males w/o DSD. But that's IMO completely irrelevant.
How many subdivisions would you want? Best BMI >25 runner? Best one over 300 pounds? Best one with short legs or one leg shorter than the other? There are two classes (except age groups), male/open and female. (And maybe para-classes.) W
Well, there’s something different, major difference, between a DSD XY athlete and a non DSD XY athlete. I just think it’s curious that the BEST DSD runners of all time are only just on par with the best XX athletes, but nowhere close to the best non DSD men. This suggests this group is a distinct one more similar in performance to our XX binary than our XY binary. You probably think this is just a probability game, and one day we will have a Bolt DSD athlete, but I suspect it’s more than that. I just don’t know. Talking about shaking things up, if the women’s WR was faster than the men’s WR in an event because of a DSD competitor….
One of the expert witnesses at Semenya v. IAAF made an argument that she did not have any biological disadvantage compared to men without DSD. (As I noted above, this was not without dispute.) According to this argument, Semenya is not as fast as elite level men, because Semenya is not as exceptional as the elite level men. 1:54 is still a very fast time in the big scheme of things, and most men cannot possibly reach that level no matter what.
Semenya is just not as big an outlier as Rudisha because she represents a much smaller parent population.
Yes, it may all be probabilities. Maybe given the number of DSD individuals, the best we can expect based on averages is 1:54, and maybe someday we will have a “Semenya” running 1:44, but over all the decades you’d think there would be faster XY DSD runners unless there’s some biological break that results in performances much closer to this of XX women than expected just based on T levels and puberty changes.
Yes, it may all be probabilities. Maybe given the number of DSD individuals, the best we can expect based on averages is 1:54, and maybe someday we will have a “Semenya” running 1:44, but over all the decades you’d think there would be faster XY DSD runners unless there’s some biological break that results in performances much closer to this of XX women than expected just based on T levels and puberty changes.
Lia Thomas is much slower than Katie Ledecky. That does not change the fact that she should not be competing against cis women.
Has anyone done any research on why DSD athletes all seem to come from a concentrated part of the world? I don't know of any European DSD T&F athletes competing at the elite level or anyone from the Americas.
I'm not going to pretend to know every DSD athlete but the only ones I've heard of are from sub-Saharan Africa or the Indian sub-continent. Are certain ethnicity more prone to the mutation that causes DSD or are other regions self-selecting our of elite sport?
I'm genuinely curious.
*out of elite sport?
I've done research on this.
DSDs occur in all populations, though some to varying degrees. All the known XY DSD athletes in women's elite international competition in the 20th century such as Mary/Mark Weston of England, Stella Walsh of Poland and the USA, Erika/Erik Schinegger of Austria, and Maria Jose Martinez Patino of Spain came/come from European countries.
But as you have observed, in the 21st century, all the known XY DSD athletes in women's elite competition have come from either India or countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, in the current century, India and African countries like South Africa, Burundi, Namibia, Niger, Kenya, Niger, Zambia and Zimbabwe have tended to take very different positions on the inclusion of XY DSD athletes in the female category of sports.
To varying degrees, the African nations I've named have supported and defended entering XY DSD athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba and Banda in elite women's sports. Some of these nations appear to actually have made concerted efforts to scour their respective lands far and wide scouting for XY DSD youths for the express purpose of training them as candidates for elite female sports in hopes these athletes will follow in the footsteps of Semenya and bring home gold and glory the way SA's so-called "golden girl" runner did for post-Mandela SA.
But in India, sports officials, the government, the press and prominent figures in Indian sports do not have any similar history of wanting to have XY DSD athletes representing India in international elite women's sports. On the contrary, many in Indian sports - such as P.T Usha, the former champion athlete known as "the queen of Indian track & field" who is now the president of Indian Olympic Association too - are vehemently against this and openly say so. Which is why Dutee Chand's lawsuit wasn't just against the IAAF/WA, it was against Indian sports authorities too. Athletics Federation of India was actually the first-named defendant in Chand's suit.
Continuing from my previous post responding to 0a9sjf09sfs:
There are bunch of different reasons why the known XY DSD athletes in women's sports in the 21st century have all been from sub-Saharan Africa and India - and why certain sub-Saharan African countries have championed the cause of XY DSD athletes in women's sports, whilst India has not.
The reasons XY DSDs appear to occur in these places with at unusually high rates are biological, cultural, social and economic. But the reasons why some African nations are making a point of putting XY DSD athletes into women's elite competition whilst India has not are IMO largely political, economic and venal. These reasons have to do with international race relations; global geopolitics; the different histories of India and Africa under European colonialism; the different length of time that the Indian subcontinent and the nations of Africa were under white rule and whites were allowed to get away with horrors like apartheid in South Africa and Namibia; the different responses to and interpretation of the history and legacy of European colonialism in India and Africa; and the specific nature of sub-Saharan African politics and culture in the post-colonial, post-apartheid and post-Mandela periods that unfortunately have resulted in widespread corruption in that part of the world.
I don't have the time to go into these biological, social, economic and political matters here, but I will try to do so later. Or I might hold off until my book about the history of XY athletes in women's sports comes out - if I can find a publisher that is. As you might imagine, in the current political and cultural climate, publishers don't want to have anything to do with books and articles that not only challenge gender identity ideology, but which poke holes in the carefully-crafted narrative which says that athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba and Banda are "women with high testosterone" and "female athletes with hyperandrogenism" who were all "assigned female at birth," "raised as girls" and today see themselves as women and "live as women" off the track.
As the pushback I've gotten on this and other threads show, anyone who tells the truth about these athletes' distinctly male and male-only DSDs; states that their sex is incontrovertibly male; questions the back stories carefully crafted for them by their national federations and PR teams; and challenges their supposed "human right" to compete in women's sports, gets accused by some of being a heartless bigot who isn't showing sufficient sympathy for the plight of XY persons with the misfortune to be born with differences or disorders of male sex development that caused them to have missing, malformed or minuscule penises. Just as I and others constantly get accused of being hateful transphobes and old-fashioned, pearl-clutching fuddy-duddies with outdated ideas for opposing males being allowed to use gender identity claims to horn in on female sports.
Indeed, women from the US or Europe who dare to puncture the myths that have been built up around athletes like the supposedly saintly Semenya, noble Niyonsaba and martyred Mboma and Maslingi will be accused of having it in for and viciously attacking "strong black women from the Global South" out of envy, spite, a white European colonialist mindset, and the special combination of misogynistic and anti-black animus known as misogynoir.
Yes, "simply" because they are biologically men (y chromosome and usually male gonads, T levels etc.). As there will probably not enough xy DSD people for decent stats we may never know how or if any will run closer to elite males w/o DSD. But that's IMO completely irrelevant.
Where do XX ovotesticular DSDs with normal male T levels fit in your “simply”simplistic binary worldview?
I have sympathy for the xy athletes. I’m not sure if allowing them to compete is fair, but they’re different.
However, there should be a blanket ban on transgenders (i.e. Lia Thomas, not Caster Semenya) competing in women’s sports
Also, life is plenty rough for a great many female humans too. But no one is arguing that women who've been disadvantaged and mistreated because of our sex should be able to enter kids' sports to make up for the hardships we've faced.
Cry me a river RunRagged. Always the victim aren’t you?
I see that you still haven’t acquired the ability to write in fewer than eight paragraphs. I prefer not to engage with airhead scatterbrains blathering all over the place.
You’ve been previously provided references but have never demonstrated the ability to absorb scientific papers or get past your outdated ideology. It’s as if when there’s just air in there, things go right through eyes and ears and come out the other way. When you learn to speak science and to write concisely and to recognize differences in a debate, I’ll know and might then consider giving you attention.
I politely asked you to:
1) Please provide links to the science showing that human males who reduce their testosterone for a time following puberty of adolescence lose the wide range of physical characteristics that give male humans as a group such enormous advantages over female humans in nearly all sports.
2) Please share why you think some males have a "human right" to female sports.
Instead of sharing what you know for the benefit of me and others reading this thread, you slag me off as an airhead scatterbrain blathering all over the place who has
never demonstrated the ability to absorb scientific papers or get past your outdated ideology.
And you further say that due to having nothing but air in my scatterbrained empty head that things go right through [your] eyes and ears and come out the other way.
As your parting shot, you harrumph, When you learn to speak science and to write concisely and to recognize differences in a debate, I’ll know and might then consider giving you attention.
Gee, mate, why not just say "Nyah, nyah, nyah" and be done with it? Or why not just ignore me and not respond at all?
By choosing instead to slag me off with a bunch of puerile insults and alleging that it's due to "outdated ideology" that I believe the physical sex differences evolution has endowed humans with that matter in sports are real, numerous, significant and mostly irreducible, all you've done is make it crystal clear that
1) you've got nothing to back up your claim that WA's proposed policy changes are "dictated by science... while being sensitive to human rights"
2) you believe males who claim to be women deserve more "human rights" than females who actually are women.
What LR guideline did my previous post #49 violate? The crybaby principle? The comment was entirely about the poster’s post and the poster clearly is an adult. I am hurt and sobbing like this emoji 😢 at my opinions being callously stifled by the overwhelming verbosity assault of a transphobic bully.
”I not so politely asked you to desist but you still respond with eight paragraphs like an unhelpably deflating blather balloon? Try again harder by responding to my original positive, short single-para comment in no more than two paragraphs and following the basic principles of 1) writing organization: a paragraph makes one concise point; 2) reading comprehension: don’t ascribe to me anything I didn’t claim.”
Also, life is plenty rough for a great many female humans too. But no one is arguing that women who've been disadvantaged and mistreated because of our sex should be able to enter kids' sports to make up for the hardships we've faced.
Cry me a river RunRagged. Always the victim aren’t you?
In the countries where Semenya, Niyonsaba, Wambui, Chand, Mboma, Masilingi come from, males with DSDs typically have a far better chance in life than bog-standard females do.
Semenya has 3 sisters, but Caster was the only one of the supposed daughters in the Semenya family who was given the free time and permission to do sports growing up. Of the 4 supposed girls born to Caster's parents, only Caster got the chance to be a world-famous and wealthy sports star.
When Caster was out playing boys' soccer/football and running during childhood and adolescence, Caster's sisters were at home doing domestic chores like cooking, cleaning, child care, clothes washing, sewing, mending, ironing, working in the garden or fields tending to the family's food crops, milking and herding the goats, cleaning out the chicken coop, taking care of the other animals.
Francine Niyonsaba is the biggest name in Burundian women's sports in history and is hailed there as a hero deserving of parades and the country's highest honors. Hardly any females in Burundi get a chance to do sports of any kind. Most women in Burundi have several children by the time they reach Niyonsaba's age.
Can you name someone female in women's sports from Burundi who has been given the opportunities and support and has the high profile that Niyonsaba has?
In Namibia, Mboma and Masilingi are national heroes showered with awards and money. No female athlete has ever gotten the kind of approval and enthusiastic backing and support from Namibian authorities and the Namibian press that Mboma and Masilingi have enjoyed.
Many same-age female peers of these XY DSD athletes have died during or been disabled by complications of pregnancy and childbirth. In sub-Saharan Aftica, pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of death and permanent disability amongst teenage girls and young women in their 20s.
Pointing out that female people the world over and through history have dealt with disadvantages that males don't have to contend with and female people routinely been subjected to mistreatment and discrimination that males do not face is hardly playing the victim. It's stating some simple truths.
But blokes like you can't see that. Because you never wonder about what life is like for girls and women who also grew up in extreme poverty in the same families, villages and countries that Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma and Masilingi come from.
One interesting observation that cuts both ways is that the DSD athletes listed would be at best mediocre to good competitors is male HS athletics. Semenya could not even make the 4x800 team of my old HS. We were NY state champions… Niyonsaba might be able to run varsity xc for Pomona in D3. These are the best of the best, so it’s clear that DSD XY people are NOT the same as able bodied men. Don’t you think we’d see some XY DSD person at least break 14 min in the 5000 or 1:50 in the 800? It’s clear that the best XY DSD athletes are not remotely as able bodied as the best men. Rather, the very best have best performances that put them at the top of the XX performance charts. Most are far below this. I mean Niyonsaba is the XY DSD world record holder in the 5000. She’s still 20 seconds off the XX world record. An ethicist could easily argue that based on the empirical evidence of performance, these athletes are best grouped with XX athletes and not XY non DSD ones. Why exactly is it “fairer” to throw them in with non DSD men? Simply because they have an Y chromosome, or because of their T level?
Wow. I am appalled by your assertions that just because "the DSD athletes listed would be at best mediocre to good competitors is male HS athletics" this means "DSD XY people are NOT the same as abled bodied men" and "It’s clear that the best XY DSD athletes are not remotely as able bodied as the best men."
You really see XY DSD persons like Semenya and Niyonsaba as lessers who are inferior to all other men like yourself, don't you? All because when they were in utero, their penises didn't form properly and their testes didn't complete the full journey from inside the abdomen down and out the inguinal canal into the scrotum.
Would you really insultingly tell Erik Schinegger and other men with XY DSDs who are cognizant of their sex, happy to be men, and proud of the children they have fathered, that because they happened to have been born with atypical outer genitals, and their testes in a place that isn't customary, they are"NOT the same as able bodied men" and can't really cut it or be classified as genuine male adult humans because in your view they are "not remotely as able bodied" as men like Usain Bolt?
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