Views on androgen insensitivity and women’s sport participation

I’m irritated by those who argue that differences (height, pelvic structure, period type and so on) existing within the female population means that differences between men and women don’t matter.
The same people then often segue into these borderline or exceptional areas where, instead of acknowledging that exceptions prove (or test) the rule, they try to make the exceptions nullify the rule.
I would once have said, make an exception for CAIS. Now, I don’t, because it will be used to relentlessly push and push - as we see in this thread.
TRAs should consider where overreach has got them so far.

I agree.
Once you open the door a crack to a few men the rest will feel they have the right to barge it open because they can’t bear to be told ‘no’.

The person in the OP's instagram post looks male to me. Not very overtly - but there is still something in the facial bone structure and in the timbre of the voice. Even with androgen insensitivity they still have a male ( XY) blue-print/hard-drive - regardless of whether or not it has been further activated/accelerated by androgens at puberty

Indeed

AI: While an android pelvis in a woman features masculine traits like a heart-shaped or wedge-shaped opening, it remains fundamentally a female pelvis.
Key Differences

• Overall Skeleton: A woman with an android pelvis still has other female skeletal characteristics, such as a lighter bone structure and a wider subpubic angle compared to a typical male pelvis.
• Anatomical Variation: Human pelvic shapes naturally vary across individuals and populations regardless of biological sex, meaning an android shape in a woman is just one variation of female pelvic architecture

CAIS and other edge cases do need careful consideration but if the evidence come down to women will be missing out then that should be the deciding factor. If the choice is women will be disadvantaged in a thing meant for women or a tiny percentage of males will be disadvantaged because they they don't have male advantage then sorry the women need their rights protected.

The impact of periods on female sporting performance is complex such as the changes in hormones throughout the cycle affect soft tissue meaning women are more prone to ligament damage at certain points so it's not just oh my periods are light so it doesn't bother me.
Male athletes don't need to factor parenthood into their career plans, women either have to opt not to have children, delay motherhood, which isn't without its challenges, or impact their careers by putting them on hold in their prime to have a baby. Males don't have to face the same dilemma at all. Numerous male sports star have become fathers while at the peak of the careers and the only impact it has on them is missing a day or two of training/competition to be at the birth.

Swyer syndrome is the exception, but CAIS does still seem to be subjective and I don't support that in women's sport any more, not since the boxer who everyone read as male (too much of a coincidence that he was spotted as male if there's no difference). I can't see why the women's category became the default for some men with medical conditions rather than there being a Paralympic category.

Remember the threshold of proof and hoops Oscar Pistorius had to jump through to compete against able bodied men in the Olympics, that even the tiniest hint his blades might give an advantage was debated and they made him use shorter ones? I would like women's sport to be given that level of respect, that's all. Not having to prove an advantage over every single women before being allowed to say no, not drawn into stupid side quests about periods and hysterectomies, just an absolute hint of an advantage due to sex moved into a different category.

There is nothing shameful about having a medical condition and competing in the Paralympics, the commonwealth game did an excellent job of running them together. There will be enough people with hormonal disorders to have a category.

It's not an 'open and shut' case in quite the same way as the 5-ARD athletes but I'm very much against CAIS males being eligible for female sports categories. CAIS is a condition that stunts male physical development, it's not a conditional that makes males female.

Wouldn't it be amazing if people cared as much about being scrupulously fair to the roughly 50% of humanity that is plainly and uncomplicatedly female, as they do when it comes to making sure we are scrupulously fair to the less than a tenth of 1% of humanity whose biology is complicated by a DSD?

Oh, but silly me. Women of the everyday variety are far too boring and common to care that much about. Being the majority is advantage enough. We should just suck up being disadvantaged from time to time in things like sport to support more deserving cases, amirite?

I really must find that "Susan and the supplies cupboard" quote, it comes to mind so often sometimes on these threads.

By way of an analogy, the over-45 age group 100 metre sprint world record in men's masters athletics is 10.72 seconds, which is slower than the all-ages women's 100 metre sprint world record of 10.49 seconds. Both times are much slower than the men's all- ages record of 9.58 seconds.

So if men over the age of 45 (only) were allowed into (all-ages) women's sprinting, would they obviously sweep the board, obviously dominate? Not really. Could men over the age of 45 be genuinely competitive in all-ages elite men's sprinting? Again, no. So would it really be that unfair to let them into women's events? It absolutely would be, because they are men. The purpose of the women's event is to see how fast it's possible for someone who's been down the female reproductive pathway to run. Men over the age of 45 have to accept that the best they can do is compete at a low/recreational level or else find dedicated age group/ masters' events.

I think you could reasonably take the position that people with CAIS are "male" only on a genetic technicality, and maybe they shouldn't be considered male for general purposes. But crucially they then shouldn't be considered female either, because being a woman means more than just not being a man.

This is the view that there a few overlapping criteria for sex and very, very occasionally they don't line up. As opposed to the view that sex is defined entirely by genetics. Understandably though people have been cautious around definitions that allow any degree of fuzziness because of TRAs using these to argue "we can't be sure what a woman is therefore it's up to individuals to self-identity".

In my mind there is no question that people with CAIS should be accepted as socially female but that they should be excluded from female sports when they test positive for the SRY gene. The former is kind to the individual with CAIS the latter is kind to XX females.

I agree, I meet women who look and sound a lot more male than that person every day.

I can. It is the subtle contours of facial structure and the natural timbre of the voice. Also over-compensated by waving his manicured hands around in a manner associated with young american women. The consciously modulated intonation of the voice too.

don't think trans women should compete with women in the majority of single sex sports events past a childhood grassroots level. Where it really doesn't matter,

Why don’t you think fairness in girls’ sport matter? Why shouldn’t girls also have a fair chance of winning and not have their medals stolen by boys?

That could be because he is also performing a version of an 'american personality'; one that is associated with American young women, I guess.

Maybe, but I still don't think that someone who is male and has XY chromosomes should be included in the female category. It's tough for those few individuals but doesn't mean that the female category should have to accept exceptions such as this.

because being a woman means more than just not being a man.

This is the crux of it. Women’s sports is not for men, even men with hormone insensitivity.

It’s the potential for having periods, not the actual periods themselves. A male with CAIS has never had the potential for having periods. A female who doesn’t have periods almost always has the potential to have them. If they do not have them, that’s because something has happened to cause that cessation. A big clue is that it’s not because they’re male.

The person in question was raised as a girl by their parents, and was diagnosed at 4 years old. To be even tested for a DSD there must have been something anatomically unusual - most likely a micro penis and no visible vaginal opening. The parents were most likely advised that Jackie was actually male but to continue to raise them as female, and surgery eventually ensued. That was a very common pathway for boys born with CAIS. He claims to have grown breasts, and that anyone with CAIS does. That’s not strictly true. He may have started to develop breasts as the testosterone produced by his testes would have caused aromatisation and breast development. But as he had his testes removed at 15 these would have not developed further - in order to keep his breasts he has to take female hormones.
Jackie has been socialised as a female. That doesn’t actually make him female.

People with CAIS are absolutely male, because only males can have CAIS.

I've already stated above that imo no CAIS person should be in women's sport because it's a judgement call whether they are C or P, not a scientific categorisation.