Female athletes and testosterone

Bearing in mind that women with severe PCOS are not well, they aren’t elite athletes

Females with a DSD or any other condition which causes higher-than-normal testosterone are NOT excluded from women's sports. Women's testosterone can be any level, so long as no doping/performance-enhancing medication is taken.

The only people the 5 nmol limit applies to is people who are male. That is, who have/were born with testes, and have an androgen response. These people are not female.

If anyone has been excluded from a woman's event due to the testosterone rules, that must mean they are a person of the male sex, and have an androgen sensitivity (ie not 46XY CAIS DSD).

I read this quote….

“Women’s sport was created to celebrate the achievements of extraordinary females. Not the efforts of mediocre males”

These athletes were welcome to participate IF their testosterone levels were lower than 5.

If they cannot win without their high testosterone… and women cannot take testosterone to get that same benefit… not sure how people can defend the advantage tbh and say they care about sports for women.

So we have

a) people not knowing or hushing up the fact that a too high testosterone level is due to the presence of testicles

b) the cut off level for testosterone higher than the doping levels of Eastern European athletes during the worst scandal

c) newspapers refusing to print any of these and constantly referring to these athletes (and rapists with penises) as women and using she/her pronouns.

d) people here scolding us for wanting to see pictures of the people we are discussing.I wonder why we are keen on that…?

In my reading of Dr Hilton’s explanations. Females with medical conditions don’t have testosterone levels that would ‘fail’ the testosterone DSD tests of 5 mg. Females are well below that threshold.

Those ‘failing’ the tests are people with male types of DSDs. Therefore, yes, with internal or external testes.

I am happy to be corrected.

I thought that the “natural” high testosterone levels usually was due to the presence of testicles, internal or external, which took the person in question through male puberty?

This is true, which is why it’s unhelpful when news articles fail to mention this as it leads to the misunderstanding that the athletes in question are biological females.
And then it opens people up to accusations of “misogynoir”.

I thought that the “natural” high testosterone levels usually was due to the presence of testicles, internal or external, which took the person in question through male puberty?

Due to the climate where everyone needs to be accepted for what they say they are, this is not always clear.

Due to newspaper reporting horrific crimes purportedly committed by women (and often with a picture of someone with a balding head and a beard) women on this board often like to look at pictures.

I think it may be a learned suspicion….

The first step surely should be to say that given the current evidence, female sports must be female only and trans athletes must be accommodated in another way. If they want more evidence then great, if at some point in the future that evidence shows there is a way to include transwomen in women's categories that IS fair, then they can do that. Insisting on pursuing a policy that good quality evidence shows is unfair just shows them up as misogynists who would rather prioritise male feelings then give any consideration to the feelings, hard work and safety of female athletes.

It will be interesting Gonad to see what the OIC will decide in their ‘review’ due after the Olympics.

It has been suggested that they will simply push the decision down onto the sporting bodies. It will become a mess when what it needed was the OIC to properly commission studies (from their deep pockets) and resolve this.

Maybe they will yet. But I doubt it.

What is interesting (or should I say 'surprising'?) is that the IOC changed their policy to allow transwomen to compete in female categories based on the appalling data presented by Harper in the 2015 paper. This was a methodologically poor study of only 8 transwomen runners, with no proper controls, no accounting for many of the confounders and also removing the results of one runner whose performance improved after transition. The IOC and other governing bodies have now seen several much better quality papers, including one by Harper, which show that the performance advantages conferred by going through male puberty cannot be removed by lowering testosterone afterwards, even to near zero levels. There is evidence that with appropriate training, transwomen athletes could see only a minimal drop in performance despite lowered testosterone levels. At the same time, studies suggest that transmen on testosterone are highly unlikely to achieve such an increase in performance that they could be competitive in men's categories. The result is that a relatively mediocre male athlete could be competitive at the highest level in female sports, despite complying fully with the IOC rules, while an elite level male athlete could be expected to completely wipe out the women's category. If lowering testosterone genuinely brought performance down to the level of a comparable female, a mediocre male would remain mediocre in the female category, but that isn't what we see in reality and the evidence shows why.

Joanna Harper doesn't like it, going by the interviews I've seen and read, but has accepted that doing the science properly shows that the male advantage cannot be removed by reducing testosterone. I think it's interesting that Harper seems to get nowhere near the vitriol directed at other researchers whose work shows the same thing such as Emma Hilton.

So why haven't the IOC and other governing bodies taken on board the new evidence, some supplied by a transwoman researcher, showing that female sports need to be female only? The new evidence is far superior to what they acted on before. World Rugby have looked at the evidence in a fully transparent way and based their policy on that evidence. The longer the other sports bodies ignore the evidence, the more misogynist they look.

Bhooks
I actually agree it's not helpful or kind to comment on the appearance of female athletes. Some women do have a very masculine appearance.

If Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi are women who have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone then they certainly should be allowed to compete in the female category.

However, I don't think this supports the point you're trying to make. Surely if they are 'born female' then that fact supports the GC argument that the testosterone rules are ridiculous and unworkable.

The only criteria for inclusion in the female category should be that you are of the female sex. If that were the guiding principle then a woman with higher testosterone would, indeed, simply enjoy a natural advantage, similar to Michael Phelps' and his ginormous feet.

People who bring up “misogynoir”, athletics and Phelps clearly have no understanding of biology, sex, sport, swimming, or likely anything.

If you want to talk about misogyny then look no further than the biological males that are knowingly using their physical advantages to take women’s (biological females) competition places, scholarships, medals, records etc.

I think with modern techniques, it is unlikely that people have unknown DSDs these days. So, these athletes know exactly what their advantages are.

It is just another way to use a loop hole to win.

Born girls. Now young women

But if subject to the test for differences in sex development, they are likely to be male. And if they have ‘failed’ the testosterone test, they have had the advantages conveyed by that elevated hormone.

Male.

Thought to have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone.

That are much higher than the female levels of hormones, even those females with health conditions where they have elevated testosterone don’t have as high as the levels these athletes are ‘failing’ at.

Oh, yeah. The ‘Phelps’ move.

It is not ‘just like’ Phelp’s advantage. At all. Repeating trope that has been said by misinformed people on the internet does not mean you are presenting a great ‘gotcha’. It shows you have a very superficial understanding of the situation.

Not dissimilar to Phelps' "genetic advantages" (lactic acid, etc), for example.

Nope, it’s nothing like Phelps.

If a female swimmer had the same physical dimensions as Phelps, then Phelps would still be much faster due to all the advantages of being male (greater VO2 max, larger lung capacity, larger heart, lower body fat, higher muscle mass, more fast twitch muscle, broader shoulder girdle etc).

Even with his morphological advantages, Phelps had some pretty narrow victories, winning the 100m fly by between 0.01 and 0.23 seconds at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Some wins were down to just being better at starts, turns and finishes than his competitors (Cavic actually touched first in the 2008 final, but didn’t hit the timing pad hard enough).

If you want to talk about misogyny then look no further than the biological males that are knowingly using their physical advantages to take women’s (biological females) competition places, scholarships, medals, records etc.

Oh give over! They have been subject to the same rules as Caster Semenya so it’s fair to extrapolate they have similar DSDs to Semanya as those rules only apply to athletes with that medical condition.

[quote Ekofisk]And also in the news:

Namibia's Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi have been withdrawn from the 400m race at the Olympics by World Athletics, as testosterone levels are too high.

It’s unclear if they are 46XY or are female with PCOS or similar.

www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/athletics-namibia-contenders-withdrawn-olympic-400m-race-2021-07-02/[/quote]
Women.
Born girls. Now young women.
Thought to have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone.

Not dissimilar to Phelps' "genetic advantages" (lactic acid, etc), for example.

The misogynoir implicit in some of the comments on here, such as images of the women being "interesting" is not okay.

Google

Normal ranges

Males 50 years 5-31 nmol/L
Females < 1.8 nmol/L

The weightlifter is in their 40s I think?

Essentially men with testosterone levels in the normal range would not need to do anything to meet the Olympic rules to compete against the women.

Not read the whole thread yet.

The lower limit of 10 is just within the normal range for men.

Men with low testosterone are not women. That idea is very insulting to both men and women, and especially men with naturally low testosterone, or who have low testosterone for another reason.

It's shit all round.

Ekofisk

"Yup. Still able to compete in the 100m / 200m."

Sadly, in other women's sports as well.
As a bloke, I think this is abolutely obscene.

that is called doping

That is what is so weird Ekofish, don’t you think??

Even if women are doping themselves which had those awful effects on the Eastern European women in the quotes articles…. they still have lower current testosterone levels than transwomen . And that is disregarding male puberty .

I am still shocked at realising this!

It does seem that women’s sport is under threat by male borns who were mediocre in the male category but regardless of testosterone levels can beat females due to male puberty.

Yes it is.

If it wasn’t so dangerous for women, increasing their testosterone levels to exactly the same as those people would probably hold off the threat, but at what cost.

That’s called doping.

I am just hoping that cyclingmum has a look at my summary and ask any questions.

I am trying to understand this better as well and I do think that there seems to be som many interesting studies out there, both about the advantages of current testosterone levels and of male puberty.

It does seem that women’s sport is under threat by male borns who were mediocre in the male category but regardless of testosterone levels can beat females due to male puberty.

If it wasn’t so dangerous for women, increasing their testosterone levels to exactly the same as those people would probably hold off the threat, but at what cost .

Luckily it seems that no male born who is at the top of their game would identify as a woman and compete in the female sex class. Not even the theoretical possibility of doping would help then .