AIBU to think it was never that complicated to define a woman.

[Abisequer]

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has ruled that eligibility for the women’s category of Olympic events will now be limited to biological females, starting from the LA 2028 Games.

AIBU to think the category ‘women’ was never complicated and the obfuscation by certain governing bodies has compromised fairness in sport for women.

Examples of obfuscation include claims that genital checking would be needed or that biological men with lowered testosterone would be on an even playing field with biological women.

AIBU to think it was never complicated to define a woman and a cheek swab is all it takes.

Article

• that my limited concern was how somecomments in this thread seem to make the false equivalence as between transgender and intersex, when it comes to smears of "cheating" and alike.

I do see the prominent XY, androgen-sensitive DSD athletes as cheats. Semenya - “my testicles (sic) don’t stop me being a woman” - may have been falsely identified as female as birth, but absolutely knew about the androgenising DSD for many years whilst competing.

And the victory pic of Khelif, as a Muslim, being carried, bare legs astride on the shoulders of his trainer makes it glaringly obvious that no one sees him as female now. He’s only been classified as female in order to punch women in the face,

Missed DSD diagnoses in developed countries will become increasingly rare, with NIPT tests and ever-improving antenatal scans. However, as someone posted upthread, people in less developed countries still know about periods and puberty.

Male DSD athletes from less developed countries have been exploited by coaches but it’s infantilising to suggest that they are also not complicit.

My original comment was:

I think the decision ultimately seems to be the right one but I nonetheless do retain sympathy for those athletes who always thought, with good reason, that they were girls/women. I feel deeply uncomfortable with labeling some of those people as "cheats".

That is not a blanket that covers each and every DSD and each and every person's experience of it.

Santhi Soundarajan is a good example of someone I feel a lot of sympathy towards - even though I also agree with the new rules that would exclude them from participating in women's sport.

In short - raised in extreme poverty in rural India, suffering from malnutrition at times, but went on to compete successfully as a mid distance runner. They failed a sex determination test after winning a silver medal at the Asia Games, had the medal stripped and, after the public humiliation, consumed poison in a failed suicide attempt.

Yes, people around the world are obviously aware of the existence of periods and puberty, but many may lack access to sex education or may feel culturally restrained from asking questions about their genitals or reproductive health. It's also not as if DSDs are the only or even most common cause of primary amenorrhea . Even ignoring congenital medical conditions, there's malnutrition and - in the case of athletes - athletic amenorrhea.

My level of sympathy will vary by case, is counter-weighted by my sympathy towards the women wrongly deprived of medals, and doesn't change my ultimate view (that they ought not be permitted to compete - save that I think the inclusion of males with CAIS is reasonable, fair and safe).

I remain disinclined to readily apply the "cheat" label, especially in a blanket manner.

And I do think it worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of athletes with DSD come from developing countries - so the "nobody in a developed country will fail to discover they have a DSD" line of argument is of only limited value.

Im not sure. Even malnourished, impoverished women get periods, you’d have to be very ignorant to not question why it had NEVER happened. Poor women in villages still know about puberty and periods.

Being publicly humiliated is terrible, and I’m so pleased this ruling means that won’t happen again, but I find it very hard to believe an adult woman (and her family) aren’t asking questions after a period has NEVER occurred. Especially if there’s androgenisation at puberty.

It's pretty plain that your concern is not about "respectful terminology", but instead are conflating intersex people with the transgender issue.

Most community-led studies have shown a strong preference for "intersex" over "DSD" - although preferences do vary.

Most clinical studies have shown the same strong preference - though the most recent (from the US in 2025) showed only a marginal preference for intersex over DSD.

That DSD is the generally preferred term - outside of clinicians themselves - is just a lie you keep repeating.

“Intersex” is nonsense. It makes people think sex is a spectrum when it clearly isn’t.

In Santhi's case, they:

• were thought to be female at birth, as was recorded on the birth certificate.
• were mistaken as being female by educational institutions.
• understood that it was not uncommon for female runners not to menstruate (which indicates Santhi likely did ask someone).
• learned of their condition via the news, as did their parents.

I find it hard to see the moral failing.

I suppose it depends whether or not you believe no one knew, and it was a terrible shock or yes, people knew and there was exploitation 🤷‍♀️.

Semenya’s personal story a similar tale of woe, yet I now believe at least some is fabricated.

Which is only a concern if you insist on viewing it through the lens of gender politics - despite the often made (and fair) assertion that they should not be conflated.

But it’s not just viewed through the lens of “gender politics” is it? It’s used to allow men into women’s sport through sporting policies.

Just the same tropes that were trotted out for Semenya.

Perhaps the "tropes" exist because they often accurately describe the experience of the people impacted.

That doesn't mean that they should've been allowed to compete, but I view that as, first and foremost, a (now corrected) IOC policy error.

I can understand why someone who has always thought themselves female - based on their physical anatomy - might not readily accept that they are not.

Some sports tried this. Swimming I think was one. No one signed up.
They don't want their own categories or spaces. They want womens.

Yet it’s demonstrably false that Semenya thought of himself as a girl growing up, as per the photo on this thread. So why should we believe any of them that finding out they are male is some kind of “shock”?

I find it inherently racist to assume that poor, dark skinned athletes (and their families) don’t really understand how puberty and periods work.

Mate, you're the one who brought people with DSDs into it like it's 2019 and insist on using a term they have roundly rejected and which totally misrepresents them. You also made up a ridiculous reason about why people had mentioned the relevance of developing countries because you don't know what you're talking about (we should not have assumed that level of knowledge from you, to be fair), so even if I didn't know what was in my own head, I'd know your latest made up assertion about it would be just as laughable.

And now you're hanging on it like a security blanket because deflection is all you've got. Women's sports are for women, men with DSDs are rightly excluded because they are men.

Let me simplify this for you because you seem to not understand sports categories.

We have two categories.
Men and Women for abled bodied persons.

Michael Phelps swims in the male category because he’s male.

Hope that clears things up for you.

🙄

No he didn’t believe he was a girl at 15. Look at that picture!

Except that "intersex" is not correct. People with DSD aren't stuck between sexes, they are either male or female but their body programming to build their physical self went wrong in utero.

There are some very rare people where specific body parts can be a different sex from the rest of the person, a result of two embryos fusing. That doesn't make them "intersex", it makes them both male and female at the same time.

There are two sexes. Male and female.

I have noticed sometimes when people discuss the male athletes with DSDs that RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports) comes up as a reason for dismissing lack of periods. I find there is something inconsistent with that .

For instance, puberty is not completely stopped it might mean delayed menstruation but there are still signs of female puberty. It also seems contradictory that an adolescent performing at a level to feed eventually into the Olympics has the physical development that happens in puberty without any puberty. In other words, puberty delivers growth and development that means the adolescent remains competitive to other athletes they are competing against. You don’t see prepubescent athletes in running events in the Olympics.

Therefore this discussion around RED-S seems to be not supported in the case of male athletes with DSDs. The argument follows that these male athletes were performing at such a high level that no female puberty occurred. Yet, those male athletes still had growth spurts and other physical development associated with puberty. There is a lot of inconsistency in that argument.

Of course, female athletes may experience menstrual disruption and puberty delays, but not to the extent people try to leverage for why these male athletes’ lack of menstruation was dismissed. And runners don’t tend to start that excessive training that would cause RED-S until well after first signs of female puberty should have been noticed. Gymnasts and dancers, perhaps will have delays of first signs of puberty because they have been training from a very young ages. i don’t believe they don’t have any sign of menstruation at all by early teens though. No spotting at all? No breast development at all? This is highly unlikely. Slowed is not the same as completely absent.

I would like to see the evidence that these child runners are going through the same intense training process as gymnasts before they are showing signs of puberty.

Perhaps there is a case of these athletes being lied to by their athletic support teams if they asked them about lack of periods and breast development. That would make those teams complicit in misleading and deceiving the athlete.

However, the use of never having periods on training and nutrition as a reason for these male people to not know they were male seems to have large holes in my opinion. If a runner had not experienced the start of puberty they would be very small in body size and I doubt they would be nationally competitive.

If they had not shown any signs of female puberty by their mid teens, I doubt they would not have noticed and discussed it with parents or guardians. Or coaches.

The whole argument relies on absence of menstruation being seen as the same as disrupted menstruation.

And of course everyone who knew him then must have been shocked, SHOCKED I tell ya, to discover he was genetically male. They all just assumed that 15 year old, happy to be photographed bare chested among school friends, was lacking periods because she was running and training SO extra harder than all the other girls who were running and still having periods. Clearly they weren’t running hard enough, otherwise their menstruation would have been switched off too. So lazy.

🙄

I mean, people actually believe this 👆sort of description.

They do seem to.

As with the malnutrition angle. A malnutritioned mid to late teenager isn’t going to be competitive enough to be fed into the competitive system for running athletics to end up in Olympic selection. They might have endured malnutrition as a child, but to feed through the competitive system to Olympic selection, they are not malnutritioned.

Female puberty would have started at some time before that. Likely it would have show signs at the same time as all other peers and may have been slowed or unreliable.

The arguments really don’t hold up to scrutiny.

I can see your point. A high-performing mid-late teen in athletics needs puberty to be competitive and puberty for girls = periods.

The teen athletes who have later puberty and no periods due to RED-S aren’t going to be competing into feeder events for elite athletics. They won’t be powerful enough.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9658102/

a study of amenorrhoea in athletes found that none of the the studied female athletes who were involved in track and field events (ie athletics) had primary amenorrhoea - I.e. had never had a period. Rhythmic gymnasts were over-represented in this group.

So it’s not actually common for girls and women who are runners to have NEVER had a period at all.

Yes. This was what I was getting at.

I know gymnasts who have competed at national level who had severely interrupted puberty. They had puberty when they stopped competing as mid teens. I have a friend who was serious about ballet who had slow start to puberty and delayed periods but still had some sign of periods.

Yes. This was what I was getting at.

I know gymnasts who have competed at national level who had severely interrupted puberty. They had puberty when they stopped competing as mid teens. I have a friend who was serious about ballet who had slow start to puberty and delayed periods but still had some sign of periods.

The competitive runners, swimmers, hockey player teens I knew (some at national and international level) did not have this degree of slow puberty or no periods. Those female teens needed growth and development to stay competitive. Hence, it never made sense to me when the argument was used.