Mixed "gender" events in Tokyo Olympics

[msrisotto]

Well here we have it ladies and gents. Progression.

Some events are already mixed sex, like equestrian events. Thats because men have no innate advantage over women and we can compete together on level ground.

But this is just taking the piss.

I thought the proposed "mixed gender" (by which they mean "mixed sex") events were team evens - so, e.g., a 4X100m relay where teams must field 2 women and 2 men, not men vs. women over 100m. So, gimmicky and pointless, but not unfair.

The article is vague about the mixed swimming event. I'm concerned about the use of the word gender here. I how the organisation aren't disappearing under the quagmire of gender, rather than the rather more defined and rational fact of sex.

Hope not how. Wish mn had an edit post option

It seems to be referring to relay events & mixed doubles in table tennis which you already get in tennis & badminton. I don't see the problem. I watched an athletics competition a while ago which had mixed relays & thought it was quite good.

Gender is a silly choice of word though.

IIRC, the use of the term gender has been around for ages in athletics as the governing bodies policies were designed to include intersex athletes. There have been a number of high profile cases, including people who look entirely female, have been brought up as female, whose amenhorrhea is ascribed to training regimes, but who following complaint/investigation have been found hand to have intersex chromosome patterns.

This is also the origins of the rules that limit testosterone levels in all who present as women (indeed may have had no reason to suspect they are not women).

My personal hunch is that athletics, and sport in general, has been early to accommodate non-binary for the genuinely biological underpinnings, which may well be more apparent as women later shown to be intersex are good at sport precisely because of their non-binary biology.

i cannot see any objection whatsoever to having mixed relay teams any more than there is to mixed doubles in racquet sports

Yes, it's too early to comment really, until we know the full picture. Although, it is suspiciously vague at the moment!

There was an announcement yesterday from Team GB

The new events are:

athletics: 4x400 mixed relay (track) (already in the IAAF programme, btw)
swimming 4x100 medley mixed relay, women's 1500 and men's 800 freestyle
triathlon: mixed relay
table tennis: mixed doubles

Other additions (not related to sex/intersex/gender)
cycling: BMX freestyle and the Madison
basketball: three on three
baseball/softball
karate
skateboarding
climbing
surfing

Isn't mixed relay triathlon already in the Paralympics? Paralympic rowing also has a mixed class.

I don't have a problem with mixed team events, as long as the teams fielded have equal numbers of male and female athletes. In the biological sense of the word.

The Madison? Didn't they get rid of that a while ago in favour of the omnium?

This is going to be errr...interesting.
I want to see further detail on the rules.

Most people don't give a shit about this stuff.
Only when MtT are fully allowed into women's events will people wake up and see what this really means and that lowering testosterone levels won't magically even the playing field between women and MtT.

As I understand it, Elephant, the historical origins of the rules on testosterone are more complicated than that. The levels were based on a survey of (IIRC) 2000 female Olympians, and were set to make sure women with PCOS who have slightly raised testosterone levels could continue to compete. Women without PCOS typically have levels of about 1 to 1.5 nmol/litre, women with PCOS more like 2 to 2.5. They then added 5 standard deviations to the distribution (the level CERN use to establish the existence of a new subatomic particle) to make sure outliers weren't excluded, bringing the limit up to 10nmol/litre. Men have levels between 10 and 30 nmol/litre (with the majority of men falling between 20 and 30 nmol/litre). Caveat - quoting these figures from memory - I know the 10 nmol /litre cut off is correct though.

This ruling meant that intersex women had to take androgen blockers to bring their levels down to the Olympic standards. (It's widely suspected - though without confirmation, because her medical records are, quite correctly, confidential - that this explains why Castor Semenya's initially brilliant performances fell off to near-average for a world-class runner while this rule was enforced, then suddenly went up again this summer when the rules were relaxed).

Now we come to the complicating factor. Intersex women can suffer from partial androgen insensitivity (PAS), where their bodies produce lots of androgens and some androgen receptors, and they are partially able to use these to build up musculature in excess of XX chromosomed women, albeit not to the same level as men with the same levels of androgens. Or they may suffer from complete androgen insensitivity (CAS) where they have male levels of androgens but no androgen receptors, so retain XX patterns of musculature. It is thought that Duttee Chand suffers from CAS - she successfully brought an appeal against the IOC on their enforcement of the use of androgen blockers, leading to the upper level of 10nmol/litre being relaxed. The result appears to have (note, appears - the medical records are not in the public domain) led directly to the top three medal spots in the Rio women's 800m final going to intersex women.

Note that this shouldn't have anything to do with the issue of trans sportspeople, but (as always) intersex issues have been hijacked by the extreme transactivists to argue that in effect individuals with biologically male physiology should be allowed to compete in women's events.

But, as I said upthread, other than the stupid wording of "mixed gender", what's being proposed has nothing to do with this - it's mixed sex team events, which are not intrinsically unfair, and can in fact be fantastic sports (e.g. korfball, ultimate frisby).

Sorry - forgot to say that the setting of testosterone levels initially had nothing to do with intersex athletes. They were driven by concerns about doping, and in particular athletes like middle distance runner Kratochvilova, who appeared to have very male-looking bodies (in fact a lot of people at the time speculated that Kratochvilova might be male - she is neither male nor intersex, as evidenced by the fact that she gave birth to a child after retiring from athletics). But testosterone doping in women was always going to be a tricky one to police given that women naturally have testosterone in their systems - hence the need to establish what was "normal" in a statistical sense and set limits accordingly. (And hence, also, the IOC upper limit of 30nmol/litre for men - testosterone is an anabolic steroid, so there's also a motivation for men to cheat by taking extra!)

M0stly

So did the IOC guidelines have absolutely nothing to do with the trans issue? Just to do with the possibility of cheating but also to include intersex?

Because if that's the case, surely there is a precedent to review these guidelines on the basis that they now allow men to compete?

Pretty much, Datun as they predate the 'noise' about trans issues.

They were simply rolled over to cover all people whose chromosomes might not match their gender. Intersex is one part of that.

If someone - maybe one of the major governing bodies of the larger sports - made a new proposal, there's every changpce it would gain traction. I've heard lot of dissastisfaction about aspects of policies, but not so much about new proposals that cover everything that people believe should be covered.