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

This is worth repeating actually.

All of the athletes who underwent sex testing from 2000 onwards were tested as a result of concerns raised about appearance. This was most likely from officials at the event. Or it could have been from competitors.

So as soon as these athlete turn up to somewhere new and remotely elite enough, people go “hang on, isn’t that a male?” Based on their first few meetings or viewings of these athletes. That’s all it took.

So people who have never met them up until that point, don’t know them personally, haven’t spent days, weeks, months even years with them, are able to instantly pick them as male and prompt testing.

But we are led to believe, by the athletes themselves, their coaches, their supporting officials and posters on this thread that it’s perfectly possible that all of these people who knew the athlete properly for years, hadn’t once thought what those brand new sets of eyes viewing the athletes for the first time thought at those competitions? Not one single person thought that? Because “harmful myths had been normalised”?

Really?

I think they probably get used to their highly unusual circumstances slowly, from a young age, with nobody stopping them or discouraging them - largely because they're children and amateurs - and then by the time they're grown up and already well into sports and athletics, they just take their advantage as a given and don't think any more about it.

Maybe a slightly odd analogy, but possibly a bit like the whole MP expenses scandal: they got into the culture that it was just something that everybody in their position was allowed to do, unstopped, so it became their normal way of thinking that they were just 'special' and it was just what they did.

I can see how they may be very resentful if, growing up among their female peers, they noticed that sport was a real strength of theirs compared to the others, so they focused on it and worked hard on making it into their planned career (maybe at the expense of alternative pursuits in which they're much weaker) - just like a child with a real flair for science or art may do the same in heading towards a related career. I wonder if, with all of those sunk costs, the point at which they realise unmistakeably that they are a man competing in women's sports is actively suppressed and denied, because of all they feel that they have to lose.

Of course, like with all of the deceitful 'Transwomen banned from the Olympics' headlines, absolutely nobody is banning them from continuing with their chosen career in their own sex category; but after so many years in excelling and being lauded in the female category, suddenly moving to the male category as a mediocre, unremarkable also-ran who doesn't even qualify, they know that they have far, far more to lose than if they just keep quiet about it and do all they can to avoid being rumbled.

And once again you are making this all about menstruation when it isn't. And once again, there are other obvious signs of not being female and of undergoing male puberty.

I don't believe that anyone in this day and age is participating in elite sport without realising that they are DSD with active male hormones.

You don't need to explain that to me, that's exactly what I said, that those studies actually have nothing to add about whether someone with active male hormones could go through puberty and be an elite athlete without realising it.

I don't believe that there is any elite athlete in the world who does not have access to a gynaecologist. These people fly round the world competing, it is simply ridiculous to suggest that they cannot access gynaecologist.

I don’t care about conspiracies. I care that we are back to eligibility tests and creating fair and safe sports for women.

People don't just rock up at the Limpics and run a race randomly and win.

I wonder if, with all of those sunk costs, the point at which they realise unmistakeably that they are a man competing in women's sports is actively suppressed and denied, because of all they feel that they have to lose.

As notbad points out, it’s not possible that with athletes like Santhi, no one knew until 24. There’s no chance that every single person in Santhi’s training team (and life) from 18+ didn’t look at the increasing masculinisation, note the primary amenorrhoea and suspect.

There have been doctors for high level athletes in India, in spite of a op’s insistence that there were no medical staff in the 2000s 🙄.

With these XY DSD athletes, I think the whole team felt they have too much to lose, including the athlete. I’m sure the athletes themselves, like Semenya - “my testicles (sic) don’t make me less of a woman” - feel entitled to compete against other women.

The sob stories, when they come out, are so strikingly similar it’s like they all have the same PR team. Scans and physical exams are presented as a personal violation, glossing over the indignities a urine drug test requires.

There’s also an inevitable journalistic sleight of hand, where the poverty and rural environment is correctly cited as explaining the lack of awareness of the DSD, but it’s deliberately not stated that in elite training pathways, there are doctors and other people who DO know about DSDs.

It is so racist - this poor black/brown athlete grew up with no medical access and so no one knew about puberty, periods or gender DSDs. People have been very ready to believe that these athletes - now competing internationally - are too simple to understand how puberty works.

I think it is very important that how this situation until last week was allowed to happen is openly discussed. Because we don’t want a repeat of this again in decades to come.

I suspect that there will be pressure on the IOC in the future trying again to leverage in male people into female single sex sport. There was a reason that the changes that used male athletes with DSDs came in and then changes for post surgical males with transgender identities happened very soon after. Around 5 years.

I cannot imagine that there will not attempts to overturn this change. I hope though that people generally, and journos, academics etc will keep clear in their minds the tactics and inroads these campaigns groups used previously. There are some journos at least admitting just how misinformed they were in the past due to the mantras and soundbites used such as ‘female with naturally high testosterone’. How they believed the experts (including the country IOC executives) repeating the sound bites. I think some very much feared the repercussions of doubting those experts.

After this past 6 years, I am very suspicious of anyone accusing people of hateful things when they are asking valid questions about the eligibility of someone to compete in a protected category.

Jon Pike has pointed this out.

“This, from the actual IOC policy document is somewhat pointed:

"Human rights experts, including UN Special Rapporteurs, disagree on the legitimacy of sex-based eligibility rules in competitive sports. Some hold that they violate the rights of XY individuals who identify as women. Others also consider the rights of XX individuals."*

https://x.com/runthinkwrite/status/2038390009409962210?s=46

Someone in the comments under this tweet pointed out a good description of perhaps how some of us feel- rationalist fatigue.

I think it comes from constantly having to defend the campaign and now policy for so fucking long. And for having to analyse so much to find the truth and to cut through the constant emotional manipulation and emotional reasoning, part of which created this issue in the first place.

Can we clarify something that's been bothering me in this thread?

My understanding is that CAIS people are also genetically men.

But because they lack the ability to use their male hormones, they develop into the default foetus development of female and have a physiology largely the same as a woman.

For that reason, they have been given dispensation, as males, to compete as females.

Now if this is correct, I sit back and await the first of a raft of cases challenging the opinions of the athlete's doctors as to whether and to what extent they are genuinely androgen insensitive. Maybe starting with Lin Yu-ting.

I also await the further challenges that because CAIS people are generally taller with longer arms and longer legs than an "average" genetic woman, they should also be excluded from female sport, as those advantages have come from them being male.

My view is that participation in female sport should be strictly limited to the absence of a Y chromosome and have done with all the messing around.

I think you have covered it imdunfer.

I think it will be a two stage process. Currently those with CAIS and other DSDs that do not process or do not produce testosterone are included. I, personally, suspect there will be research undertaken now to investigate what advantage those with CAIS have and whether the current policy including them in the category will hold or will mean further policy changes in the future. Because there are valid arguments to support their exclusion to be investigated.

Testing for CAIS and PAIS boundaries on testosterone processing ability need to be clarified and there needs to be transparency there.

@Imdunfer Ross Tucker (Scienceofsport on X) has raised the issue of PAIS / CAIS - how do you diagnose CAIS and not PAIS?

This was a series of Tweets from him on 28/3/26:

This is the burning question. Well, one of them. In Semenya CAS case, there was a discussion on this, and the experts were split. David Handelsman is a world leader on this and he was saying there is no advantage, that the condition is not over-represented in sport, and that conditions that have been seen more often in elite sport are 5-ARD and PAIS, but CAIS is not seen in sport, and that when you have skeletal differences, that's not CAIS, but rather PAIS. I've heard others argue that factors other than testosterone are responsible, so then CAIS would produce some male advantages. I must confess that i will need to investigate this in more detail to understand this split. But it feels to me that true CAIS will be very, very rare in sport, and the bigger challenge is going to be diagnosis, and not letting it become an explanation that people jump on too fast, as a kind of bypass of policies. Then you'll get PAIS being classified as CAIS and the policy will not be working as it should be. I think this is more of a problem than CAIS offering small advantages (which should be dealt with too!

And:

The thing I think sport hasn't done too well (those who have policies), is describe in detail how a CAIS decision is made. If you look at anti-doping, there are these crazy technical documents, with huge detail, on how tests are done. The same is needed for CAIS. I hope that is still coming, or at the very least, the default to the highest accepted standard in clinical settings. But they seem to have left a loophole large enough for doubt, and possibly large enough for exploitation. And a diagnosis based on visual inspection is not ideal. We are in a molecular age where the specific mutations in genes for those androgen receptors can be described, and compared to a library of known mutations, and then assays to test the effect of the mutation. I think that is needed, to give strength to the policy's exception.

Thanks Sabrina

I think this has articulated what I have felt now for a few years.

Those with CAIS face the same safety and fairness issues as women when competing against those who have been through male puberty. Do those who want them excluded from the female category think that they should not be eligible to compete in either category / at all?

Well they are male. So they can compete with the men, or realise that competitive sport is not for them. In the same way that i will never beat Femke Bol. Because I am not good enough. We all have limitations, and theirs don't mean they should compete in the women's races. C'est la vie.

They can compete as male if they are good enough. Like any other male, the vast majority won't be good enough.

A weak male boxer choosing to get battered by stronger male boxers is not the same as a knowingly male person battering the best female in the world female to win a gold medal.

Should have been :

They can compete as male if they are good enough. Like any other male, most won't be good enough.

A weak male boxer choosing to get battered by stronger male boxers is not the same as a knowingly male person battering the best female in the world female to win a gold medal.

But if they are in the future found to have advantage over female people, why would you want them included in female categories ‘because they face similar safety and fairness issue’? That is not the only aspect of having a female category. It is not just for people of both sexes to not face safety issues and fairness issues when competing against elite male athletes.

If they are found to have fairness needs and have a competitive edge over female athletes, why wouldn’t they have a category of their own?

If there is unfair advantage, beyond the advantage that fits within the skewed distribution of characteristic you see in a given sport (e.g the leg length of female high jumpers compared to the leg length of the general female population), I wouldn’t want to entertain inclusion in the female category. If it aligns with the characteristics of the females who succeed, I wouldn’t have a problem. I struggle to get my head around the argument that the presence of a Y chromosome places someone with CAIS as being the same as males who have gone through male puberty.

I wouldn’t want to see an adult who had not gone through male puberty in a boxing match or rugby match against an adult male who had, so I think those with complete androgen insensitivity should not be able to compete in the male category.

There isn’t a third category for them to compete in and it’s not as if there will be enough people with CAIS who also have the talent and commitment to become elite athletes to for a category of their own that will be on par with the female category.

It wouldn’t be like the mediocre males outperforming elite women.

I also don’t think it’s a reasonable to draw parallels between not being able to compete at an elite level because you aren’t sporty or don’t have the right physique and someone who has both of these characteristics plus talent.

This seems to be an unpopular view of this board and that has surprised me.

But they are not female. So no entry to the female category for them. Tough.

The entire debacle has been Orwellian think speak utter madness.

CAIS athletes are over represented in elite sport cf the general population.

So - they either do have an advantage, or they have PAIS.

Ross Tucker, quoted up thread, said 80% of the XY DSD athletes have 5 alpha-reductive deficiency, with the rest PAIS/CAIS. Until the PAIS/CAIS boundaries can be reproducibility clarified a potential loophole remains open.

In my ideal Olympics, I would say no one with the SRY gene at all, although I appreciate it’d be a hard sell.

According to a tweet I read just now - estimated CAIS in the population is between 1/20000 and 1/99000 yet at the 1996 Olympic Games (with check swabs) 1/1127 had CAIS.