I must say that, as a lurker, I’ve enjoyed this [and related] threads, found them very informative, even to a layperson like myself who was never any good at science. Grateful for any comments on my understanding of the current situation:
I suppose I go with the majority view [on here]:
(a) For the foreseeable future, it is right that mainstream events retain two athletic classes which broadly correspond to the traditional ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ classes.
(b) For these categories, self-assessment is every bit as much a non-starter as it is for [say] weight categories in combat sports, or false starts in a sprint, or wind readings in [etc etc]. Competitive sport is just that, competitive, and it’s unthinkable that many borderline and not-so-borderline cases wouldn’t ‘mark themselves down’ in a way that was favourable to them.
(c) [this is where my knowledge and understanding get more than a little hazy] The current IAAF decision rule is actually quite generous to borderline cases – [contrary to the lines fed to the media by pro-DSD athlete activists] you need only satisfy *one* of three categories to qualify for the ‘women’s’ class – (i) you’re XX; (ii) your T is below the normal male range [it doesn’t particularly need to be anywhere near the normal female range]; (iii) [this is where my understanding gets really awful]you have AIS.
If all of the above is true, then, honestly, **for sporting purposes** [only], whilst the open/male class may not be a perfect fit for a Semenya or an Mboma, I really, really struggle to see that the female class is a better fit, for someone who’s XY, has high T, and who derives a benefit from this.
For me it’s a matter of time before Mboma types are banned from the female sprints and long distance events. It was IMO a huge mistake to have ever gone down the route of trying to scrape together robust empirical evidence on precise quantified advantages, event by event.
I suppose a lot of this boils down to what analogy you draw. People advocating on behalf of the DSD athletes will argue that freedom to compete in your preferred M/F class [strangely, the F class seems to be a lot more popular for borderline cases] is analogous to classic freedoms in other walks of life, the labour market etc. I prefer the analogy that most sports fans seem to run with, namely that this is more analogous to a weight classes in a combat sports, or to age groups in vets’/kids’ sports – your biological sex is just something factual about you.
Of course I’m hugely sympathetic to the athletes involved, intersex conditions are a delicate matter in any culture worldwide, and the livelihoods of Semenya/Mboma types are squarely on the line here. Decisions taking for sporting purposes should have no bearing at all on the wider gender debate.
Part of the problem seems to be one of transparency. We don’t hear nearly often enough just how male an Mboma or a Semenya really is. Of course it’s I’m by no means advocating a very public boxing-style weigh in, at which a baying crowd waits with baited breath for the results of Semenya’s T test, with Ms Semenya triumphantly adopting a flexed biceps pose following a positive result [or, presumably, crumpling into a heap after a fail], but, still, the truth needs to be out there...
