XY males should not enter an XX specific category in ANY sport

That's interesting Terfing - I wonder if it is the commonality in the Dominican Republic that leads to the social recognition of being male at puberty?

Clearly there are some XY athletes identified as female who may be unaware of their condition until testing during competition, but we shouldn't assert that they are completely clueless of their condition.

Wambui at 185cm/70kg has the physique of a male 800m champion.

There is a massive, massive incentive, like millions of dollars, for coaches in Africa to identify and train teenagers with 5α-reductase deficiency who were assigned female at birth and maintain their gender identity as female, even if they may be 'expressing as male'. It doesn't matter. If you have a promising athlete of 13 or 14 years old who it is clear from their developing androgenised physique has 5α-reductase deficiency, then you would be INSANE to allow them to correct their sex to male. Why would you? Much better to win millions of dollars.

This is the third placed athlete to Caster Semenya in the 800m

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Wambui
www.sde.co.ke/thenairobian/article/2001275880/800m-sprinter-margaret-nyairera-is-snatching-my-girlfriend-distraught-man

"In a series of screenshots shared with The Nairobian, the man pleads with Wambui not to interfere with their relationship. The back and forth has Wambui stating that she has a sweeter dick than Chemogos."

"I am not completely resolved about how XY females like Caster compete."

I am not completely resolved as to how we decide that someone is an XY female rather than an XY male.

Some of these 'female' athletes are fertile males with obviously male bodies and obviously 'living as a man' in terms of their daily life.

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5%CE%B1-Reductase_deficiency

In one community 1 in 90 boys are born without penises

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981

Their community is completely unequivocal that they are male, even though they are initially identified as female.

In most other places this condition is very rare and the 'reassignment' at puberty may be less automatic. It's clear all the same that these people male

I am not completely resolved about how XY females like Caster compete.

But, my issue with males in women's sports is about them pushing out women from competition until we are left with two categories for sport: Mens (elite males) and Women's (mediocre males).

The natural rarity of XY females is that even if they are included and win, we will never be in a situation where we have two categories for sport: Men & XY females.

I really am torn about Caster. She has known herself as female all her life, found that she had and extraordinary talent but didn't know why, dedicated herself to developing that talent without the benefit of male privilege.

I am certain that it is unethical to ask her to take harmful drugs into her healthy body in order to be able to compete.

So the intersex question is still not resolved - yet it is a side issue and not one that has the power to ruin sport for women.

However born XY males should never be in women's sports. Ever. No matter what they identify as or what they do to their bodies. This is the focus and there should be a blanket ban now. NOW! Not tomorrow (- in fact, even yesterday - we should be reviewing all trans wins and giving the titles to the women who were robbed).

The nuances of the fairness of people with intersex conditions competing require more thought to really thrash it out and it is best to take all the time the decision needs, instead of being hasty.

But these are not relevant to the trans issue.

No XY men in women's sport NOW!

As with the bathroooms/changing rooms bit of the debate:

We have had for years a tiny number of intersex athletes, managed with a case by case approach, with frequent debate around them on the issues of fairness, but so small a number and so individualised that it's not mattered that much.

Now we're looking at potentially much larger numbers in the context of a discussion that goes it's a grey area and uses intersex people as a means of making the waters as muddy as possible, but the bottom line is that using this grey area men born and developed as men are now identifying and competing against women. Basically the piss has been taken and it's become a major disadvantage to women, women's rights and women's freedoms.

The answer then has to be a third competing space. Anyone simply and straight forwardly biologically female or male (the massive, overwhelming majority) compete in the female and male classes. Those for whom body chemistry and sex is more complex compete in a separate category where probably systems would need to be used for fairness must as disabled categories work.

Slight side track but seems to fit here...

Ive long thought that at the elite level, one of the few sports where men and women compete together and separately is doubles tennis - there’s both mixed doubles and men’s/women’s doubles, and people often seem to compete in both mixed and single sex competitions.

It would be really interesting to hear what the differences are in the different games, the differences in technique and strategy and ??? when training and competing.

As an article it doesn’t need to mention anything trans at all. But it could produce some really interesting insights that could then be used to inform this debate.

on a case by case basis
There are always going to be people who disagree with every decision.

You've got people like Sarah Gronert xy AIS who is legally female and following investigation by the International tennis federation was declared "legally and biologically female". But got insults from some because she won a number of tournaments - yet she never once even ranked inside the top 100 women tennis players in the world. www.queerty.com/the-effort-to-sideline-rising-tennis-star-sarah-gronert-because-she-was-born-with-both-boy-and-girl-parts-20090323

Then you've got a different female athlete who has another type of intersex condition (which we won't say as it's supposed to be confidential but has been reported by many news sources) that has a serum testosterone level 3 times higher than most women and there has been discussion about such contestants having to lower their levels because they have been found to have an advantage. Such person would have had a higher t level all her adult life, impacting on muscle development, and would potentially have more of an advantage than a trans woman who transitioned early!

So how do you fairly work all that out? Who has the right to play sex police?

It is an absolute joke. My DS(11) runs, tends to come 3rd or 4th at athletics meetings. He actually said to me jokingly, "I should identify as a girl mum then I'd win". (He's obviously overheard me ranting to DH).

Now, obviously my kid wouldn't really do that. But loads of kids (and parents) are massively competitive. Looking at the young girls working their hardest, enjoying their sport, well it just makes me angry really.

By "here" I mean Mumsnet in general, obvioisly not this thread there had only been a couple of posts and I was agreeing with the OP!

Unfortunately the perpetrators rarely see where they're doing wrong. There's plenty of balanced discussion on the topic across the various chat boards here but I have also seen numerous posts which take it too far. Thankfully, when reported, such comments are usually deleted.

Swyer

@ILikeMyChickenFried I'd be very interested to know about what you find transphobic here, and by 'here' do you mean on this thread or this board? I seldom see anything that I would understand as transphobic, even giving that a broad meaning, and calling science that is a dangerous path I don't want to tread.

I agree with blood. Dwyer syndrome is a male condition not a female condition.

@TerfinUSA 'There is literally such a thing as an XY female'

But ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/swyer-syndrome states 'A child born with AIS is genetically male'. Our resident geneticist Bowlofbablefish says this too. AIS individuals may appear female from their genitalia but clearly actually aren't on a genetic level.

@terfinUSA @Ophelia

There is not such thing as an XY female.

The whole reason sawyer syndrome IS an intersex condition is because is causes those who are male to appear as if they were female. If they WERE female is wouldn't be an intersex condition, it would be normal development. This is also true of Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

Because these conditions all exist on a scale (there is partial and mild androgen insensitivity too) if you allow any to participate as women there is no clear line where you can disallow others. If men with sawyer syndrome and CAIS are allowed, shouldn't men with partial androgen insensitivity be allowed? They wouldn't be able to compete on the mens teams, either. And if you allow partial androgen insensitivity, why not mild? And then why not transwomen who have less androgens than they do? And then we're right back where we started.

I agree, this is one of those intersex cases that gets really, really close to the line but they do have a y chromosome, do not have ovaries, do not produce ovum, and do not menstruate. They are male.

A legless lizard isn't a snake even if it looks a whole lot like one.

For most intents and purposes they can and should be considered as if they were female. and on a case-by-case basis intersex people should be included in women's amateur sports where appropriate, but I would still object to any male person (intersex or not) on a high-level women's sports team. The severe intersex conditions are not common enough to prove that there isn't an advantage conferred by their sex.

And again this could alllll be solved by having more co-ed teams (in those amateur sports where sex is less important) and adding trans/intersex divisions to high level sports the same way they added women's divisions and the Special and Paralympics. We never needed to change the definition of men or take places from men on high level sports teams in order to add places for other people who could not compete on those teams, and we don't need to take places away from women now to allow intersex and trans males.

How is it 'transphobic' to object to men competing in women's sports? If they have become legally 'female' according to the legislation of their country, or have met e.g. IOC requirements, then they are 'legitimately' able to compete. But that doesn't make it fair. Male bodied people - especially if they 'transition' late - will have advantages over women in many sports. This will soon put girls off going into sport when we are just succeeding in inspiring people to be more active

Yes, and the current rules are a disgrace.

Agree, OP.

XY males should not be competing in women's sports.

That Alice Dreger piece is illustrative of the manipulative and disingenuous arguments that are being forwarded in favour of males in women's sports.

It:

1. Spends a lot of time guilt-tripping readers with gender studies guff about 'identity' and what makes a 'real woman', which is irrelevant to sports, and falsely implies that those who say it isn't fair for intersex males to compete against females are denying the dignity and worth of intersex males and/or their right to be recognised socially as women, and even driving them to suicide.

2.) Claims that the existence of intersex conditions means that male and female don't exist as coherent categories, and athletic officials cannot reasonably distinguish between them.

3. Spuriously equates differences in body size and shape between members of the same sex to the physiological differences between the sexes, and implies that it therefore follows that dividing sporting competitions by sex makes no more sense than dividing them by height or arm span.

I would add a point 4) for the ludicrous 'It's all hormones, innit?' bit where she says that because female athletes are allowed to use the pill they have no grounds to object to competing against a male with internal testes pumping out testosterone, but I'm losing the will to engage further with that piece. It's just so pomo and fundamentally dishonest.

The one thing I DO agree with Dreger on is that sporting bodies need to drop their singular focus on testosterone as the only marker of 'advantage'. Even with lower testosterone levels, male athletes have different skeletal structures, more muscle fibres and larger hearts and lungs. That should be enough to exclude them from women's sport.

BTW physiologist Ross Tucker deftly shoots down the absurd and disingenuous argument made in point 3 here:

We have a separate category for women because without it, no women would even make the Olympic Games (with the exception of equestrian). Most of the women’s world records, even doped, lie outside the top 5000 times run by men. Radcliffe’s marathon WR, for instance, is beaten by between 250 and 300 men per year. Without a women’s category, elite sport would be exclusively male.

That premise hopefully agreed, we then see that the presence of the Y-chromosome is THE single greatest genetic “advantage” a person can have. That doesn’t mean that all men outperform all women, but it means that for elite sport discussion, that Y-chromosome, and specifically the SRY gene on it, which directs the formation of testes and the production of Testosterone, is a key criteria on which to separate people into categories...

The advantage enjoyed by a Semenya is not the same as the one enjoyed by say, Usain Bolt, or LeBron James, or Michael Phelps, because we don’t compete in categories of fast-twitch fiber, or height, or foot size (pick your over simplification for performance here). So Semenya has a genetic advantage, by virtue of A) having a Y-chromosome and testes, and B) being unable to use that T and/or one of its derivatives enough to have developed fully male.

I thought the OP was referring to intersex males like Caster Semenya as well as trans-identified males, that's why she specified XY.

And I agree with her. Possession of a Y chromosome should exclude anyone from competing in women's sport. This isn't about wanting to restrict opportunities for trans-identified or intersex male athletes, but rather fairness for female athletes. They deserve female-only competitions.

I find the language behind this whole debate very manipulative. It's always framed as 'trans inclusion' or 'intersex inclusion' when in fact it is only ever about male inclusion in women's sport.

No one cares about the lack of 'trans inclusion' in men's sport. You don't see trans-identified females taking medals or places off male athletes, nor are we ever likely to, and no one gives a shit.

As for intersex athletes, that goes only one way too. It's always males with certain intersex conditions dominating women's sport - there are no cases of women with a single X chromosome doing what Caster Semenya does. In every case, it's about a person with a Y chromosome leaving athletes with XX chromosomes in the dust - in a competition that was set up specifically for people with XX chromosomes.

Again, this is about fairness to female athletes, not a pronouncement on the personhood of trans-identified or intersex males. As people they are of course entitled to full human rights and to be treated with respect. But as males they do not belong in women's sports. There's no human right to take part in women's sporting competitions - it is a restricted category for a reason.

Alice Dreger's article published last week in the New York Times:
www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/caster-semenya-intersex-athletes.html

Women and intersex females (on a case by case basis) only in women's sport

This^ it's the only fair, logical way to do it.

The problem is defining 'XY female' is not entirely straightforward IME, there are some more-or-less ambiguous cases, but there are a lot of TRAs who will try and claims some sort of intersex condition - there was one who did a hunger strike against Mary Beard on behalf of 'intersexual statuary', who had originally claimed to be intersex but after testing was ~~quite~~ very disappointed to find out he wasn't....

I think @Ophelia sums it up quite nicely here. Women and intersex females (on a case by case basis) only in women's sport.