Who are all these Indian DSD athletes that come up every year in the Junior ranks that got booted out by the Indian federation (going against the IAAF rules)? Can you give me 5 or 6 names?
In the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics last summer, Indian discus thrower Seema Antil filed a formal request with Indian sports officials that another Indian discus thrower undergo testing for an XY DSD:
On a day she qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, discus thrower Seema Antil asked the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) [by letter] to conduct a hyperandrogenism (testosterone and other androgens) test on one of her Indian competitors.
Seema has named the athlete in her letter but The Indian Express isn’t identifying her to protect her privacy.
Antil alleged that there is more than what meets the eye in the rapid improvement in her rival’s performance over a relatively short period.
“In my career spanning more than two decades, I have not come across such improvement in any athlete. Over the last four years, this 25-year-old has improved her performance by 12-14 metres, which is unusual. Hence, I request you to conduct a hyperandrogenism test on the athlete in the interest of a level playing field, sporting spirit and meaningful competition.”
Seema said if ... athletes with unusually high testosterone levels are allowed to compete unchecked, it would demoralise other women athletes and their coaches in the absence of a level playing field.
“There’s a lot of anger and dissatisfaction among women athletes over competition with such athletes. Even though their voices are muted at the moment, the feelings are bubbling inside.
Athletes with DSD are eligible to compete in DT. And WA will not change the rule because of this young Indian athlete who is still several meters behind Allman and Perkovic.
So what's the point of airing this grievance publicly? Why didn't she just communicate her concern with the federation privately? Did she want to "out" the athlete because she was so frustrated? This young athlete has idolized Seema (according to the Wikipedia article). She doesn't deserve this kind of treatment.
In the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics last summer, Indian discus thrower Seema Antil filed a formal request with Indian sports officials that another Indian discus thrower undergo testing for an XY DSD:
On a day she qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, discus thrower Seema Antil asked the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) [by letter] to conduct a hyperandrogenism (testosterone and other androgens) test on one of her Indian competitors.
Seema has named the athlete in her letter but The Indian Express isn’t identifying her to protect her privacy.
Antil alleged that there is more than what meets the eye in the rapid improvement in her rival’s performance over a relatively short period.
“In my career spanning more than two decades, I have not come across such improvement in any athlete. Over the last four years, this 25-year-old has improved her performance by 12-14 metres, which is unusual. Hence, I request you to conduct a hyperandrogenism test on the athlete in the interest of a level playing field, sporting spirit and meaningful competition.”
Seema said if ... athletes with unusually high testosterone levels are allowed to compete unchecked, it would demoralise other women athletes and their coaches in the absence of a level playing field.
“There’s a lot of anger and dissatisfaction among women athletes over competition with such athletes. Even though their voices are muted at the moment, the feelings are bubbling inside.
Athletes with DSD are eligible to compete in DT. And WA will not change the rule because of this young Indian athlete who is still several meters behind Allman and Perkovic.
So what's the point of airing this grievance publicly? Why didn't she just communicate her concern with the federation privately? Did she want to "out" the athlete because she was so frustrated? This young athlete has idolized Seema (according to the Wikipedia article). She doesn't deserve this kind of treatment.
We are going on a tangent here.
This was brought up because someone mentioned that certain countries were actually banning their DSD athletes from competing (India, Europe…) and that certain countries (only in Africa coincidently) were encouraging these DSD athletes.
That is obviously false.
This article is simply a DT thrower who feels that it is unfair to compete against DSD athletes (even though they are allowed to compete presently). Irrelevant to the discussion.
Current reality is that:
DSD athletes are allowed to compete in all events (other than 400,800,1500)
Prevalence of DSD is high in sub Saharan Africa
Substantially all athletes implicated are black Africans.
Nobody here were able to name a single European in track and field in the last 50 years who had DSD
Banning the DSDs from 800 and 1500 opened the door to white Europeans to win medals at the last Olympics
It can therefore be perceived to be targeted
Caster is the poster child, but she is not alone and probably will be the least competitive of them at the WC (but somehow people care more about her than the other ones)
What is actually racist is the idea - which has a long history behind it - that African women are more masculine than white women. When people argue that the testosterone standards are racist and are about “European standards of femininity” what they are saying is that while white women are actually women, black women are men. It goes without saying that black WOMEN do not have different chromosomes, hormone levels etc than women of any other races. One of the most racist narratives against black women is that black women are not feminine and are naturally manly: a narrative used in slavery to justify forced labour (black women unlike white women are just like men and therefore can work in the fields) and justifying the removal and sale of children (black women don’t have the same soft maternal feelings as white women so taking their children from them is no different from taking them from an animal.) This still persists today, for example, the way Serena Williams or Michelle Obama are called masculine by racists. It is the most common dehumanizing attack on black women to say that black women are angry, manly, unfeminine, bad mothers, emasculating, etc.
Pretending that XY athletes are regular black women and that black African women are the same as men unlike delicate feminine European women is the height of sexism and racism. This is not a progressive narrative. Ironically, the “Hottentot Venus” (Saartje Baartman), a South African woman, was kidnapped and exhibited in Paris because of her large bottom and now we’re being told that it’s natural for African women to have male bodies.
Totally uncalled for. Run Ragged is the best-informed poster on this board. Shame on you.
Thanks for the support. What was the diss/accusation this time? I've been called all sorts of insulting names on various threads. A number of posters have not only told me where to go, they've issued orders telling me how and what I am permitted and not permitted to post as well. Same old, same old.
You were called a f_cking c_nt. At least you were not called a moran...
Appreciating these high-quality posts, RunRagged, but I am skeptical of claims that some nations are deliberately misrepresenting birth registration information and raising children with DSDs to become athletes that can be used to "game the system". Perhaps so, and I will keep an open mind, but it will take a fair amount of evidence to persuade me.
The answer to all of these cases, whether DSD athletes or trans athletes, is to allow their category to be determined on a case-by-case basis by local, regional, and national stakeholders and authorities, as the definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport. And the determination of whether it is fair for such an athlete to compete at the highest international level can be based on whether the winning performances by this athlete left a trail of disappointed but accepting losing athletes in their wake at the local, regional, and national levels. That is to say, if a country's women athletes have sacrificed themselves to allow a DSD or trans athlete to compete at a higher level amongst themselves, they have earned the country's right to put her forward as one of them into international competition. If, on the other hand, the athlete was not allowed to compete against other women athletes, and did not work their way up in local, regional, and national competition, then they will not have earned that privilege.
What is always forgotten by pundits is that it is almost never the individual athlete's prerogative to join and compete in a sport. At all levels, an athlete must be accepted by a coach and a team and a league in order to compete. In some local areas, and depending on the sport, some DSD and trans athletes will not be welcomed by their local teammates, communities, and leagues. Coaches at the local level are always talking with each other and local officials, and it's not like a trans athlete can simply demand to race as a youth without local and regional support.
It is an important and necessary process for athletes like Lia Thomas to "test the system" and push norms to see whether she will be accepted by teammates and league officials, and it is ultimately up to them at the grassroots level to determine whether athletes like her can compete with them, and in what sports and/or events. The jury is still out, but my impression is the answer in her case, and others like her, will be no, at least at the collegiate level and given her high level of ability.
Appreciating these high-quality posts, RunRagged, but I am skeptical of claims that some nations are deliberately misrepresenting birth registration information and raising children with DSDs to become athletes that can be used to "game the system". Perhaps so, and I will keep an open mind, but it will take a fair amount of evidence to persuade me.
The answer to all of these cases, whether DSD athletes or trans athletes, is to allow their category to be determined on a case-by-case basis by local, regional, and national stakeholders and authorities, as the definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport. And the determination of whether it is fair for such an athlete to compete at the highest international level can be based on whether the winning performances by this athlete left a trail of disappointed but accepting losing athletes in their wake at the local, regional, and national levels. That is to say, if a country's women athletes have sacrificed themselves to allow a DSD or trans athlete to compete at a higher level amongst themselves, they have earned the country's right to put her forward as one of them into international competition. If, on the other hand, the athlete was not allowed to compete against other women athletes, and did not work their way up in local, regional, and national competition, then they will not have earned that privilege.
What is always forgotten by pundits is that it is almost never the individual athlete's prerogative to join and compete in a sport. At all levels, an athlete must be accepted by a coach and a team and a league in order to compete. In some local areas, and depending on the sport, some DSD and trans athletes will not be welcomed by their local teammates, communities, and leagues. Coaches at the local level are always talking with each other and local officials, and it's not like a trans athlete can simply demand to race as a youth without local and regional support.
It is an important and necessary process for athletes like Lia Thomas to "test the system" and push norms to see whether she will be accepted by teammates and league officials, and it is ultimately up to them at the grassroots level to determine whether athletes like her can compete with them, and in what sports and/or events. The jury is still out, but my impression is the answer in her case, and others like her, will be no, at least at the collegiate level and given her high level of ability.
I don't think this "bottom up" process is a good idea. The eligibility standard at the global level should be determined by the global governing body (such as WA or FINA). Each national federation should be free to set their own standards, but that should only apply to the domestic competitions. Likewise, any rules determined locally should only apply to local competitions.
That means an athlete eligible at one level may not be eligible at the next level. But that is necessary to assure level playing field.
The definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport.
I think you will find that the majority of the worlds's women - and men, midwives, biologists, medical specialists, farmers etc - disagree that there are no consistent, distinctive biological characteristics which define the terms woman and female.
I think you will also find that a great many women consider this statement and your view to be insultingly misogynistic.
If you go by what "the majority of women and men" think, then I bet they think the biological characteristic that separates men and women is the external genitalia. That would make all people with DSD discussed here women. What percentage of global adults know about XX and XY chromosomes? I would think less than 50%.
In both Chand v. IAAF and Semenya v. IAAF, CAS explicitly states the following.
Human sex is not binary.
There is no single physical marker that separates men and women.
Who is or is not a woman under any jurisdiction is irrelevant in the case.
IMHO, insisting on the strict binary of human sex makes this issue harder than it should be. You either have to make an argument that anyone who is ineligible to compete in the women's division is a man by defnitition, or an alternative argument that some women are ineligible to compete in the women's division. CAS took the latter position in both cases, because they considered it to be an easier argument to make. IAAF explicitly took the latter approach in the Chand case, while they never mentioned Semenya's sex or gender in the second case.
As mentioned on another thread previously, some legally disabled persons are ineligible in any para category. There are some naturalized athletes who are ineligible to represent their adopted countries in international competitions. So it is not impossible to argue that some women are not eligible to compete in the women's division.
However, I think it makes the argument easier if we simply accept that human sex is NOT binary. Instead of having M and F as only legal categories, we should have M, F and X. Then we can make an argument that people in X either compete in their own division or they compete with people in M, while people in F only compete among themselves.
The last two Europeans known to be XY with DSDs to compete in elite level international women's sports were women's World Cup alpine ski champion Erika (now Erik) Schinegger of Austria and Maria Jose Martinez Patino.
Schinegger, who has a DSD similar to Semenya's, was booted out of skiing shortly before the 1968 Winter Olympics by Austrian sports officials, and decided to bow out gracefully. He had surgery to "fix" his genital anomalies and went on to marry a woman with whom he fathered a daughter with no medical assistance. There's a good documentary about him on YouTube. He's a very decent, likable guy.
Martinez Patino, who has AIS (sounds like pretty extensive AIS, but it might not be CAIS - the records are unclear) sued the IAAF and won the right to compete in women's sports. The loophole Martinez Patino's lawsuit created allowing athletes with one kind of XY DSD to compete in women's events has been opened up wider and wider to allow in athletes with a host of other, very different kinds of XY DSDs.
Martinez Patino - who has served as a consultant to the IAAF and IOC on eligibility in women's competition - is an interesting case. On the one hand, MP says a main reason MP belongs in women's sports is because MP posses "femininity" and "a sure sense of womanliness" and MP's "womanhood" has been tested. On the other hand, MP doesn't think that other athletes with other XY DSDs are so womanly. MP testified against Chand in Chand's lawsuit against the IAAF and Indians sports authorities. Just goes to show there is no solidarity and unanimity in "the DSD community." No real community to speak of either. Not surprising since DSDs comprise 40 or so very different conditions.
The last time that the IOC did mandatory genetic testing on athletes seeking eligibility in women's events was at the 1996 summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. 8 athletes were found to be XY, DSD - but all were given clearance to compete. Six of them had already had their testes removed - which means their DSDs had already been diagnosed and "treated." (I say "treated" because in DSDs, as in most conditions, it's really not a good idea to remove healthy organs - and gonads are really vital organs. Most people with DSDs who keep their gonads do better over the course of their lives in terms of physical health, mental health and intimate relationships than those who undergo gonad removal.)
I imagine there are a lot of XY athletes with CAIS in women's elite sports. Because they can't use the T their testes produce, it gets converted to estrogen and they develop an outwardly female phenotype. They have some advantages over XX female athletes - XY CAIS persons are usually taller and narrower in the hips, plus no cycles, hormone fluctuations, periods, PMS, PMDD, pregnancies, gynecological problems. But if CAIS athletes were the only XY DSD athletes allowed into women's sports, a lot of people would be okay with that. It's all the athletes with other XY DSDs like 5-ARD - most of whom can father children - that are the bone of contention in women's sports, not athletes with CAIS.
So if I understand correctly, they basically banned black DSD athletes from the 800m and 1500m which allowed white Europeans such as Muir and Hodgkinson to win medals to the detriment of black 200m and 5000m runners (where white European women do not stand a chance for a medal). Got it.
There's no need to deliberately misrepresent birth registration information, though.
The XY DSD athletes from sub-Saharan Africa who've been such a significant and thorny presence in elite women's sports in the present century most likely all went through their childhoods and most formative years without their births being registered and without anyone obtaining birth certificates for them.
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have historically had very, very low rates of birth registration during childhood through even the teen years. This is particularly true in the case of black children born at home or in other non-medical settings, especially in rural areas.
When Semenya was born in a small, remote village in the rural province of Limpopo in 1991, hardly any black people South Africa registered the birth of their children. Traditionally, the vast majority of black people in small villages in rural SA provinces like Limpopo saw no reason to, whilst black people in more urban areas like the infamous townships purposely avoided letting the racist apartheid government know of their children's births.
Semenya didn't get a birth certificate from the SA government until April 2007 when Semenya was 16. By then, SA authorities had already set their sights on Semenya representing the country on the world stage as South Africa's "golden girl."
Semenya not getting a BC until age 16 wasn't unusual. Traditionally, a majority of the black population in countries like SA only obtained official ID documents once they "came of age" and had a pressing reason to do so - or they were forced to do so. One of the aims of Nelson Mandela's presidency was to convince the black people of SA to trust the government enough to start registering their children's births and obtaining BCs for them. Mandela largely succeeded. Birth registration in SA is now nearly 95%. But the opposite was the case years ago when 31-year-old Semenya grew up.
Francine Niyonsaba''s situation is similar, only with some added twists. When Niyonsaba was born in 1993 and for at least the next 13+ years, very few people in Burundi would have been able to register births and obtain BCs for their kids because for all that time the country was engulfed in the brutal conflict of the Burundian civil war - the same sort of conflicts that led to the Rwandan genocide in next door. During Niyonsaba's childhood and early adolescence, there was no or little functioning government administration in Burundi to do things like record births and issue BCs. Plus, militias on all sides were taking the little boys in Burundi away from their homes and forcing them to become boy soldiers. This provided families with good incentive to try to pass off even boys who don't have DSDs as girls.
For decades, governments and international NGOs like UNICEF and World Bank and WHO have been campaigning throughout sub-Saharan Africa for to convince people of the merits of registering their children's births and obtaining BCs for them when they are still young children. Despite the success of these campaigns in some countries like South Africa, in other countries birth registration of children is still very unpopular and relatively uncommon especially for poor people and people who live in rural areas.
In 2019, World Bank reported that "in many Sub-Saharan African countries rural birth registration for children under 5 is less than 50 percent."
The low rates of birth registrations in many African countries in the past when athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma and Maslingi were born and growing up - and the low rates continuing to this day - provide a lot of cover. There are usually no birth records for the athletes dating to childhood to check - or if there are records, it's easy to pretend otherwise. Given the levels of corruption and bribery in many of the countries under discussion, it's also relatively easy to make any records that do exist disappear. All it takes is some cold hard cash to grease the right palms.
There is a lot of food for thought here and great leads to follow up on. I know a little about Semenya but not very much of the others and the officials that surround them.
I'm not quite sure why you emphasize the birth certificate issue so much. The implication seems to be that some of these women would have been assigned as males at birth, and that this is somehow being deliberately obscured by officials and their parents. I am perhaps a bit old-school, but find the presence of female genitalia a very convincing argument for someone claiming to be female. I could see the deliberate misrepresentation of sex by unscrupulous doctors and officials as a possible danger going forward, but don't feel like that's an issue in the current crop of DSD athletes.
I agree that sport governing bodies should be prudent, though, as such a program (or far worse) would not be without precedent. One might recall the Catholic Church's barring of women from singing in church and, as a result, the much worse practice of castrating boys to reproduce their vocal sound and range as adult singers. It was ostensibly illegal, but at its height, approximately 4000 boys were snipped each year, with many of them (perhaps 20%) not surviving the operation. The successful ones were absolute rock stars in their public and personal lives, but it was obviously a horrendous practice that should not be echoed in any way by nations wishing to improve their women's sporting success.
It should also remind us that birth records should be kept strictly private, lest a government decide to make a database of such individuals to develop them as athletes or for other nefarious purposes. At the same time, it would be very helpful to these children and their parents if their sex wasn't recorded solely in simple binary terms, but allowed flexibility to describe their precise makeup. Of course, none of this can be enforced internationally or in areas where babies are born outside of the system.
The two statements I've bolded really take the biscuit.
The definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport.
I think you will find that the majority of the worlds's women - and men, midwives, biologists, medical specialists, farmers etc - disagree that there are no consistent, distinctive biological characteristics which define the terms woman and female.
I think you will also find that a great many women consider this statement and your view to be insultingly misogynistic.
If a country's women athletes have sacrificed themselves to allow a DSD or trans athlete to compete at a higher level amongst themselves, they have earned the country's right to put her forward as one of them into international competition. If, on the other hand, the athlete was not allowed to compete against other women athletes, and did not work their way up in local, regional, and national competition, then they will not have earned that privilege.
It's hard to get what you are really saying here, but it sounds like you are saying that female athletes should only be allowed to represent their countries in international competition if they first "have sacrificed themselves to allow" a Caster Semenya or Lia Thomas "to compete at a higher level amongst themselves" - and that if they fail to do this "in local, regional and national competition, then they will not have earned that privilege."
So in other words, female athletes have no inherent human right to sports participation or to fairness in sports. On the contrary, for female people, sports is a "privilege" that we/they must "earn" - and the only way we can earn this privilege is by allowing XY athletes with testes and male sports advantage like Caster Semenya and Lia Thomas to compete in the women's category; accepting that those XY athletes will naturally "compete at a higher level" than us when competing amongst us; and being willing to "sacrifice ourselves" so that the Caster Semenyas and Lia Thomases of the world get their way - and so athletes with testes and male sports advantage have free rein to garner as much gold and glory in women's competition as they can grab.
If this really is your view, I repeat: this really takes the biscuit.
Well, the first biscuit I'll eat, because it is plainly obvious the great majority of people have only a simplistic understanding of gender and sex. 98% of the time (or so), the common heuristics work, but nature's reality is that the associated characteristics are rarely but occasionally ambiguous, not just in humans, but in other species as well. How we precisely view such characteristics as chromosomal makeup, genitalia, and hormones, etc., depends in part on one's cultural background and beliefs. It would be a hopeless overreach for a sporting authority to impose one definition of male and female on the entire world.
The other biscuit you can have because what I actually meant was that if a country allows an ambiguous athlete to compete successfully as a woman inside their country, and thus prevents other star athletes from achieving various national medals and records in the process, they will have paid the price necessary to allow her to compete fairly in international competition. However, if the country (including its spectators, women participants, coaches, officials, etc.) believes it is unfair for this ambiguous athlete to compete against other women in their own country, they shouldn't then be allowed to put her in international competition as a member of their national team, which would obviously be hypocrisy.
The other biscuit you can have because what I actually meant was that if a country allows an ambiguous athlete to compete successfully as a woman inside their country, and thus prevents other star athletes from achieving various national medals and records in the process, they will have paid the price necessary to allow her to compete fairly in international competition. However, if the country (including its spectators, women participants, coaches, officials, etc.) believes it is unfair for this ambiguous athlete to compete against other women in their own country, they shouldn't then be allowed to put her in international competition as a member of their national team, which would obviously be hypocrisy.
When Semenya was added to the 5000m entry list, she did not replace another runner from South Africa. She replaced the runner next on the world rankings. (The next highest South African is outside of top 100.) So South African runners have less incentive to object, because they have less to lose from including Semenya. The runner next on the rankings has more to lose, and her opinion is more important than those of other South African runners who couldn't have competed at the World Championships anyway.
Two Namibian sprinters with 200m PB in 24s won silver medals at World U-20 as members of their 4x1 team. They would have had no chance to qualify for World U-20, let along winning medals if not for Mboma and Masilingi. So I bet they are quite happy that they had the two sprinters with DSD as their teammates. But the athletes from Poland who finished 4th in that relay might have different feelings. Which opinions should matter more? The two Namibians who piggybacked on Mboma and Masilingi, or the four Poles who didn't get their medals?
The opinions that should matter the most in each case is the ones held by those who have the most to lose by the inclusion. And usually that's not the domestic competitors. The opinions of domestic competitors are important when it comes to deciding whether to include DSD athletes in the domestic competitions. But their voices are not the most important in the international competitions.