Should there be a DSD category at the Paralympics?

Agreed. Women are supposed to park their ambition, dreams, fears, wishes, preferences, choices, for anyone who wants our spot.

Cry? I could tear a mountain down with my bare teeth in fury at the unfairness of it all.

Why can't they just train harder and compete with the men?

That's what women get told.

More seriously, in theory it's effectively a disability. These are men with a developmental disorder. They are not women and competing with women destroys fairness.

So if they were going to create a separate category then it would be more applicable to do this as part of the Paralympics rather than Olympics.

I'm not sure how that would go down - it would be seen as being derogatory by those it affected. Which in itself is prejudiced to Paralympians.

The argument then comes about merging the Olympics and Paralympics. I don't think this will happen any time soon, if for no other reason other than keeping the events separate is better for sponsorship.

I think there are questions here about sexism and prejudice to the disabled by the DSD community...

’I have been with a girl with CAIS just this afternoon & the views here make me very scared for her future’

Why? Are you honestly saying that if someone can’t compete (and win) in an elite sport at international,level, it is going to blight their future?

Because that’s the outlook for 99.999% of everyone, male, female, or ‘would prefer not to say’.

I was thinking about this overnight and this attitude really highlighted the issue at hand for me.

The emotional response only ever goes one way with positions such as this post highlights. Not once was there any consideration given to the female athlete who missed out knowing (then or finding out in the future) that they missed out because the competitor had an unfair advantage but that they, the athlete who lost out, was considered acceptable collateral to maintain someone else’s happiness.

And I am only talking about if advantage was found in the future. Because more about these differences in sex development are discovered every year. Including, I would hope, methods to treat the negative health impacts of these medical conditions to enable these people to be able to live healthy lives.

We have learned so much about inclusion in sport over the past two decades since sex testing was dropped because campaign groups used this same emotional reasoning, just as we saw on this thread, to allow the wider group of males with specific DSDs to compete with female people. I remember reading the reports and the articles those campaign groups used and it was always emotional response supporting the male athlete.

I now consider such reasoning as misogynistic. Because the emotional needs of the female athlete who has been told by those who support inclusion, even if there is a proven advantage, that they are acceptable collateral has been disregarded.

The female athlete has been considered not important by all those who use the argument based on emotions rather than science and material reality.

note: I quoted the wrong quote but cannot change that. It kind of works anyway though.

When I watch women's elite sports I want to watch the best XX women.

I don't want to watch who has the best pharmacist or who found a loophole to climb through.

If someone has XY chromosomes they should compete with men. If they aren't good enough then they can join me on the sofa, watching.

Women's elite sports should be for women (XX chromasomes). It should not be a 'cant/won't cut it with the men' category.

And how wonderful that you can express your view without being regarded as hateful, and being horrible and punitive. Even though your own opinion has already been proven to harm women such as in Rio 2016 when three male people with Differences of sex development took all three podium places.

But excoriate away. It doesn’t change the facts that at the moment there is only one DSD that has not yet been shown to have an advantage compared to the general female athlete population and this needs careful consideration and study over time. The others involve male athletes having some degree of male puberty that is acknowledged to have advantages. So, emotional pleas and shaming attempts aside, the facts should be able to be discussed without accusations of such discussions being considered hateful.

Ah yes, a "tiny" group of people who despite being so "tiny" took the three top spots in a women's race. (800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics). Potential harm? Let's think of the actual harm to the actual women who were denied medals. Using "emotional reasoning" to decide sporting categories is absurd.

5 ARD isn't going to run into this anyway, those kids will become aware at puberty that there is an issue. Most young people with CAIS will too. They will not have to be involved in testing for sports. Why would they be going for sex testing? If you are suggesting they don't look into their health issues that is terrible medical advice.

Yes, isn’t it strange that no one, including Semenya himself, wondered why he had never had a period and investigated the reason why prior to him becoming a top level women’s athlete? What could possibly have led to such a medical oversight I wonder?🤨

XY women

There is no such thing. The attitude is negative towards men who shouldn’t be in the women’s sport category.

@DSDaisy I agree with you. The attitude here to women with DSD is horrible, punitive, hateful; there is no other medical condition where people are so excoriated and blamed and accused of being bad faith actors (other threads) No wonder people with DSDs find acceptance in the alphabet soup community. I would make an exception for contact sports where XY women could hurt other competitors in women's category, but in other categories people with DSDs born and raised as girls are welcome in my view.

It only matters when it actually matters. I'd say competitive sport is one of those times.

It should also be noted that there is a completely different discussion to be had about whether a person with CAIS should be treated differently in any other situation. This thread’s discussion is only about sport.

And just a note about paralympic categories. No one makes them up and then rounds up a bunch of people to compete in them.

they come to exist because there are athletes who would not otherwise be able to compete who want to.

If a bunch of people with CAIS were wanting to compete but couldn't, they could do the work to get such sports categories created. (It can be a lot of work, and you'd need enough interested athletes.)

If none of the young people would be interested, then there really is no issue, it will never happen.

This makes no sense, nor do your other claims about people refusing testing.

If someone really has no idea they have a DSD, they need to find out, it's a serious health issue. Yes, it might be hard but that is life. It really doesn't have anything directly to do with sports.

5 ARD isn't going to run into this anyway, those kids will become aware at puberty that there is an issue. Most young people with CAIS will too. They will not have to be involved in testing for sports. Why would they be going for sex testing? If you are suggesting they don't look into their health issues that is terrible medical advice.

If someone doesn't want to submit to the extensive testing involved with elite sports, mainly for drugs really, they certainly don't have to. Just like if they don't want to do the other things required for that kind of performance.

People who find out something unexpected medically through sports testing are under no obligation to tell anyone what it is. They have an undisclosed medical issue, end of. It could be anything.

There are many people in the world who cannot compete due to a medical condition. One that may be hidden. One that may mean also that they have to stop because their medication is deemed as performance enhancing.

This group of people, if found to have advantage over the people in a protected category, should have options to compete like everyone else does, but they should not be allowed to compete in that protected category (that the group, how ever small and tiny, have been found to have advantage over).

People who are XY with androgen insensitivity or disorders of androgen production shouldn't be in the female category but will be disadvantaged against men with normal sex hormone functioning - so they don't really have somewhere to compete just now. Whether that justifies another category is challenging - is the paralympics just for people with disability? Is a DSD automatically a disability? Most men with Klinefelter's never get diagnosed as they don't have any problems due to it (although many are infertile).

And my point was that once 1 group are allowed in then the argument that others should be banned is diminished.

I doubt that very much in most countries.

In any case, it doesn't affect their eligibility for women's sports categories.

You keep referring to children. The majority of the people competing at the olympics are adults.

And around we go.

At what point is the responsibility of an athlete that chooses to compete in a sports category that they are excluded from based on a proven advantage absolved?

If it is decided, with evidence, in the future to exclude CAIS athletes and there are other options for them to compete, why is that something that you, personally, believe that female athletes should just accept? Is it genuinely because of the emotional reasons?

Because even if they have a 'F' on their birth certificate, what makes those athletes different from any other athlete excluded from a protected category that they have been excluded from on the basis of evidence of advantage? I do not doubt it is upsetting for some people. However, the regulations are there to ensure that one protected category has safety and fairness from athletes falling outside that protected category.

Actually I think there would be an argument for women with Turner's syndrome (X0) having a paralympic category, ditto men with Klinefelter's (XXY +) - I would expect either syndrome to cause significant disadvantage in elite sport (not all sports though) and both are fairly common.

You're cherry picking. Hide the thread.