Views on androgen insensitivity and women’s sport participation

Girls have the advantage at some stages of childhood and are equal in the rest pre puberty.

Mixed sport is good in childhood because it increases opportunities for everyone.

The shame of this is that we are still actually teaching girls culturally that boys are both better and stronger than they are, hence your own post!

Girls are not equal prepuberty:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11971925/

Girls should not be expected to give up medals or chances of winning pre puberty or during puberty. Girls are not there to make boys feel better, even if the boy wants pretend he is a girl,

The article isn't loading for me but limb strength is not the full picture and there are times when girls have the advantage over boys.

I think the benefits of there being greater access to sport, particularly competitive sport, if they are mixed at a young age outweighs minor differences.

I've always thought the real actual solution to this is to have mixed sports teams. I don't know how else this problem can be solved without excluding people. If we go by strict restrictions on testosterone alone, some cis women will even be excluded.
I think we have to make men and women ACTUALLY equal by having both on the same sports team.

Only problem is that the women with more testosterone would be favored because our entire world favors testosterone when it comes to sports or literally anything. Don't know how this would help with boxing either. But i don't pay much attention to sports.

Are you joking?

You want every sport played with equal numbers of men and women and each team? Have you noticed that most team sports play with uneven number team sizes?

What is wrong with making male sport for males and female sport for females?

It isn't fair to trans males and DSD people who want to do competitive sport? No, it isn't fair to people born with one leg shorter than the other either.

Male and female testosterone levels do not overlap so how would some women be excluded?

How would this work for individual sports?

Perhaps have a Google of the rules for sports where there are already mixed teams and ask yourself why they have criteria on how many men are allowed.

Nobody is excluded from sport based on their sex.

If we go by strict restrictions on testosterone alone, some cis women will even be excluded.

Which women do you think would be excluded? Women, even those with PCOS, do not have testosterone levels in the male range

You mean like rowing which allowed men who identified as trans to row on women’s teams but not take women’s places in mixed teams because that would be unfair.,,

Just imagine how many women would be injured if half of rugby teams were made up of men?

I don’t think you understand anything about sport. Nor anything about sex.

Why isn’t it fair for men who identify as trans to have to compete with other men? Or men with DSDs to compete with other men?

I think ultimately, it comes down to the fact that women and girls (or females - "shut up Martin") have nowhere to "punch down".

If you get through the primary school (and early secondary) years of 'standing out' in a sport like I did - in terms of sprinting and extended sprinting - that's great.
I was what's known as a "pocket rocket" small and very fast.
Unfortunately for me, as puberty took hold of my cohort, some of the other girls (my competitors) started outclassing me. They were taller and had A MUCH greater stride than me.

I ended up being quite small at full height.
And before I get any protestations that lots of female sprinters are small - I know that.
I hoped I would be one of them.

It just happens that the the girls I was competing against at that time, when scouts were around, were taller AND as powerful as me.
So I didn't make the cut anymore.
LSS I wasn't good enough anymore and I bowed out. 💁‍♀️

Where was I to go from here?
There's nowhere to go if I want to compete and won.
If I couldn't compete with my sexed class, where could I go to compete and succeed? Fairly?
Surely not compete in another category where my obvious advantages would disadvantage another group? Para athletics?
No. That would be very wrong.

Any female athletes that aren't good enough to compete/catch up with other females have to accept it. It's tough, but that's life.
By the time I was 14 I was mediocre in comparison to my cohort.

That was all due to things I had zero control of. Oh well 💁‍♀️❤️‍🩹

By allowing men into women's sports, we give them a fundamentally unfair advantage.
Punching down.
Women don't get to do that.
It's fucking hard enough.

That's not what I meant. It isn't fair in life that all sorts of people can't compete and have any chance of success in sports they're like to complete in.

Life is not fair.

I'm not sure how it would make men and women equal by putting women at increased risk of injury.

Male bodies and female bodies are different. They have different bone density, different muscle structure, women's skulls are thinner and there are many other differences that mean a woman of the same height and strength as a man is at greater risk of physical damage if their bodies clash. It is dangerous for women to play contact sports against men.

Even if there wasn't a physical risk woman (as a class) are smaller, slower and weaker than men (as a class) if there was a mixed competitive football match it would be played out largely between the men on the teams as they could out sprint, out jump and out muscle the women, rather than being equals the women would become on field spectators.

Female hormones play a massive role in injury in women's sport. ACL injury in particular has increasingly strong evidence base. It has a huge impact on participation and retention, so anyone who doesn't have this has a massive advantage.

Menstrual Cycle Hormone Relaxin and ACL Injuries in Female Athletes: A Systematic Review - PMC share.google/4LrXK89YZmYUrAXhc

And even if people for some reason did think this was a suitable solution despite the potential for injuries etc, how on earth would it work practically?

Either you have unlimited numbers of men and women on the team, in which case, competitive teams are going to end up choosing the men, to be faster/stronger etc., so women still lose out.

Or you have quotas for how many men/women on the teams, and then you're back to exactly the same issue, of how you define 'women'. You're still going to get transwomen or people with DSDs or whatever wanting to take the women's spots, and teams/organisations kind of encouraging that if it makes the team more competitive in a backhanded way. And women again lose out.

Have I missed Imane Kelif’s diagnosis? I thought it was 5 ARD. is it known to be PAIS?

It’s 5ARD. The other boxer, Ting, is claimed to have CAIS, but no one believes it.

Can you give examples of these times girls have an advantage over boys in sports? Because surely if so, TIF would be winning medals in male sports the way TIM do in female sports?

Some interesting discussions on this thread.

For me, what is constantly being missed is this idea of what would be considered an advantageous variance, i.e. Michael Phelps huge wingspan vs a medical disorder that prevents fair competition.

It seems very clear to me that 5-ARD and CAIS are genetic variants that lead to a diagnosable medical condition. Without those medical conditions, Caster Semenya, etc., would be competing in the men's category.

In my opinion, this therefore puts them more into the disability sports range, along with other disabled athletes, as their medical condition makes it impossible to compete fairly with other males. It makes no sense to put them in a female category as they are not female.

Whether they are female or male can be determined by an SRY cheek swab.

I don't know, but as they are male, they cannot compete in a category for females.