Max testosterone level for trans athletes to be halved

[EmpressOfJurisfiction]

Open access link: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-athletes-face-tougher-entry-rules-in-female-events-wrrmm7vcz?shareToken=49299dde905a975d619c3b6b581b4b38

It was clear to me that it was a general point. But I may not have paid much attention to who was replying to who, to be fair.

I think, by now, you'd know if I was talking directly to you cos I'd say so! Sympathies on the nursery fees.

Look, I'm not without sympathy for trans people on hormone regimes that mean it's difficult for them to access competitive sport. I'm also sorry for diabetics and asthmatics and all sorts of other people who are likewise set back with regards to sport due to medication regimes.

But being sympathetic doesn't mean that I think sports should stop being sex-segregated to the detriment of women. I don't.

Simples. To me, anyway!

So, to clarify, it's ok for some trans women to beat women as long as there aren't too many of them?

Isn't that yet another woolly definition? After all, how many is too many? Take Olympic weight lifting. I presume it's ok for one weight division to be won by a trans athlete. There are eight divisions. Is it ok for 2 to be won by women, or four? Suppose there is a winning transwoman in each division, which one will be allowed to win?

It's bonkers. Dividing on SEX was straightforward.

I would agree with your long post if you were saying "unless and until it is proven without doubt that there is NO advantage at all to being male-bodied and NO danger to other competitors, then ... and go on to include the waiting until adulthood and the bit about sporting bodies watching out.

Dammit, that should say "is it ok for two to be won by transwomen " obviously [sigh]

I also agree on the "shame on any woman supporting this" by the way. I think any woman who would be supportive of a male person being allowed to compete in a women's event should be ashamed. Unless they themselves are the only other competitor.

Women can say "I don't mind competing against male-bodied people" if they like, just as they can say "I don't mind sharing changing rooms with males" or "I don't mind getting a smear test from a male" but what they should be ashamed of is saying "Because I don't mind I won't let other women object". That's the very basis of consent - I might not mind, but I that others might.

Noone need consent to participating in organised sport Maryz, so I'm not imposing it on anyone. Noone need compete in a particular league, under a particular association or in a particular tournament. And if there were enough demand undoubtedly there could be trans-free sporting competitions, although certainly that would result an invitation to prove the "proportionate means to a legitimate aim" nature of their exclusion in court. But before you pounce on me for that, paraphrasing it as me telling women to "do one" if they don't like it (which I'm NOT saying, I'm just saying it isn't an issue of consent)....

... I'm not the boss of organised sports! I just happen to support them in their current stance. And if they turned around tomorrow and said "science has shown to our satisfaction that you cannot integrate transwomen into women's sport in any safe and meaningful way", well I'd support that too. But that's not what they're saying.

And I think they know best.

No shame whatsoever on me in believing that; I've heard it's called humility.

I'm not talking about Saturday afternoon soccer. Or the local 5K race. I'm talking about professional sport. Are you suggesting that professional competitive athletes who make a living out of their sport must agree to compete against men who "identify" as women? You seem to by saying that if they are beaten they should just accept this, because you think it's fair that some transwomen should be allowed to win women's events.

Why should women be humble? Why should they effectively be forced to say "oh, this poor person, they've had a tough life, I agree to being beaten at my sport (that I've spent a lifetime training for) by them because it will make them feel better".

That makes no sense to me - why should they? Why can't they just compete against women in the category that is specifically set up for women?

I don't think they know best, by the way. The fact that they are changing their policy frequently, that they are taking advice from transpeople with an agenda, that they haven't (seemingly - has anyone see any evidence?) asked women, and they don't appear to have any set idea where they are going with this doesn't inspire me to trust any of the sporting bodies at the moment.

I don't think they know best, by the way. The fact that they are changing their policy frequently, that they are taking advice from transpeople with an agenda, that they haven't (seemingly - has anyone see any evidence?) asked women, and they don't appear to have any set idea where they are going with this doesn't inspire me to trust any of the sporting bodies at the moment.

Why would they ask "women"? What does that even mean?? They're making their decisions based on the principle of inclusivity balanced against the evidenced impact on safety and competitiveness. The principle needs no consultation, and the second would be better to seek from scientists and experts, no? Not just "women".

And hey, if they have indeed asked "trans people with an agenda" (have they? I'd be surprised, or at least I'd be surprised if it had been in the context of setting entry criteria), wouldn't women also have an agenda? It's sport - it doesn't take much to imagine what those participating might have to gain by having less competition.

And lastly I cannot get my head around why you think regularly revisiting their policies is anything other than a good thing. They're guided by the best evidence available to them. That changes, they change the rules. If you truly believe transwomen cannot be included safely and competitively (which you're quite entitled to think) then surely you're reassured to see that sports bodies have a history of updating their rules? And will surely do so when science presumably shows that to be the case?

So you don't think they should ask women how they feel about having to now compete against men? You don't feel that women, who fought very hard to have a sex-based category, are entitled to object to having it removed?

I find it extraordinary that anyone thinks that's ok - to just tell women they can no longer compete among themselves.

Can I ask you a question - why is there sex segregation in sport? Why not just let every sport have it's own criteria for division. So high jump might be over and under six feet. Rowing might be over and under 70 kg, etc etc. Is that where we are going? Would you say that was fair? Because after all, a 5'11 man might want to be able to compete at high jump; in the interests of "inclusivity" should he not have a category he can be competitive in?

There is no need to regularly revisit a policy that has worked (cheating and the very occasional intersex athlete apart) for over a hundred years. It's very simple. Women only compete in women's events. Why change?

You have clearly stated that you are happy to take away hard-fought women's rights in favour of men who have decided they are women.

There's a word for that.

I'm not sure if you're not understanding my position Maryz or just not reading it. Because I think all that's been covered already in this thread, and several times already in others.

@TerfinUSA

I think i can add some clarity on this issue:

"...And they have specifically said 'androgen-sensitive'. So you could have XY intersex women with complete androgen insensitivity with normal male testosterone levels competing with no issue.

Clearly there is a question of 'what is a woman' in terms of intersex - is someone with a vagina, raised female, but with internal testes and androgens a woman or not? It's not something the IOC have chosen to answer, but it's obviously that some intersex people, especially in developing countries, may be male in terms of sporting prowess, build, etc., but assigned female at birth

The logical position is that if you have a Y chromosome then you should be excluded from female sport UNLESS you are androgen-insensitive and always have been."

I have been trying to find out for a while if this particular athlete is a male with androgen insensitivity or a female with adrenal hyperplasia. From what you're saying it is the first. I have done a bunch of research and thinking about how these severe intersex conditions fit within the gender critical framework during my conversion from full trans inclusive to full gender critical.

Men with severe androgen insensitivity are sometimes mistakenly thought to be female at birth, even up until their teenage years when lack of menstruation triggers an investigation. However, they are men in reality. A legless lizard isn't a snake even though people think it is.

How do we define that? Luckily we already have definitions for male and female, men and women. If you are of the sex which produces ovum you are female, if you are of the sex which produces sperm you are male. Men with complete androgen insensitivity have undescended testes, they can sometimes produce sperm, they are men. They are occasionally men with testes and a uterus, but still men. The fact that they have an intersex condition is proof that they are male, if a female develops with androgen insensitivity it is not considered to be an intersex condition because they develop 'normally' for their sex. And of course, adult males are men.

The important thing to note about androgen insensitivity is that it is a scale. There is complete androgen insensitivity (where the person appears externally 100% female and even has a uterus) all the way down to very mild cases where the person has less hair and muscle mass than the average man but otherwise appears entirely as expected. There is no line where you could justify drawing a clear exception for men with androgen insensitivity without leading right back down the rabbit hole of hormone levels.

Intersex people, especially men with CAIS, experience significant challenges and of course we should be as inclusive and accepting as possible, however there are times when actual sex does matter more than appearances, and fairness in high level sport is one of those times, i think. There's no way to know if men with CAIS are or are not advantaged due to their sex (it's so rare you couldn't statistically prove anything even if you did study it).

On the other hand, women with intersex conditions (those who possess ovaries and lack a Y chromosome) should be allowed to participate in womens sports without limit, in my opinion. We don't kick out swimmers because they're unfairly advantaged by their big feet, or kick out high level weightlifters for being freakishly huge. The nature of extreme competition is that it allows people with natural variations that would otherwise be abnormal to use them to their advantage.

So there are women who have naturally higher levels of testosterone who should be allowed to compete on the women's team and men (male people, with a Y chromosome) with lower levels who shouldn't, IMHO. This is ok. There are 6ft tall 13 year olds playing on the junior netball team, that doesn't mean we should let 5'8" adults play too.

Bloodmagic I have made a separate thread here, I think it covers some of these issues.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3232946-IAAF-releases-new-guidelines-for-intersex-athletes

In terms of this famous athlete, I don't know where you're getting that this person is androgen-insensitive. In the past that athlete has been subject to androgen reduction and has been left uncompetitive, so the evidence is that they are in fact fully sensitive to androgens.

There are conditions whereby a person may have internal male gonads but genitals that appear female. (See the other thread, particularly

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5%CE%B1-Reductase_deficiency
also www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981
)

Some such conditions result in fertile male gametes. Although assigned female at birth, the XY chromosomes and fully-functional internal male gonads tell us they are in fact male. It is not really the responsibility of athletics federations to pick up the pieces for inadequate medical assessment of individuals with sex disorders.

In terms of athletes with CAIS, as you say they are obviously XY, but the complete lack of androgens working on their body means they develop female sexual characteristics including breasts, and a sexual attraction towards males (although they are infertile).

I don't see any reason why a CAIS athlete should be excluded from female competition, although clearly it's a simple solution to exclude all Y chromosome individuals, there seems to be a significant difference between XY individuals who, due to their biology, develop female gender identity, and the XY 'female' athletes who have conditions known to result in male gender identity.

There is an obvious issue with AIS in that it can vary between 'basically normal male' and 'XY female'. According to reports Spanish 1980s sprinter Maria Patino had CAIS and thus could not use the testosterone.

Now did she have an advantage from her XY chromosomes? Who knows.

But clearly there are different classes here:

1. intersex XY individuals with conditions that normally result in male identity (due to working of androgens), assigned female at birth, as I believe in the famous athlete case
2. intersex XY individuals with partial insensitivity to androgens
3. intersex XY individuals with total insensitivity to androgens

You can go down a bit of a transgender rabbit hole, in trying to distinguish between individuals who develop male identity at puberty due to an intersex condition, and those transgender individuals who perhaps have taken puberty blockers and hormones to transition.

However, I think that it's possible to distinguish CAIS in that my understanding of the development of the foetus is that it develops into a male foetus with a penis because of androgens and androgen sensitivity.

So an XY individual who is totally insensitive to androgens who develops into a phenotypical female has NEVER been subject to the effects of androgens, whereas a transgender child clearly has, as they have a penis.

So testosterone is clearly rather important! It's rather uncomfortable defining femininity as an absence of functioning testosterone, but OTOH a XY person who has female sexual characteristics because of that fact is not male in any way that is meaningful to us as human beings.

@RatRolyPoly

I want to respond to you directly because i completely understand what you're saying.

I play roller derby. I advocated for total trans inclusion not long ago. I get the arguments you're making, but I'm seeing the other side too, and I'm hoping I can bridge the gap of understanding.

Firstly, I want to bring up the women's AFL league we have here in Australia. AFL is our national sport, and up until this year it was 100% men only. I grew up with women who were great athletes and loved to play that sport but they all stopped playing in their teens because there was nowhere for them to go. Even if they were good enough to play against the men, they weren't allowed. So this year we FINALLY, after over 100 years and my entire life span, we got a place for women to play AFL.

Right away, a transwoman demanded that he be allowed to play on that team. It appears that he will be on a team next year.

I think you can understand why I'm pissed off about that, right? There is JUST NOW a set number of spots for women to play sport at the highest level and immediately those spots are being given to men. I do understand and sympathize with the difficulties transwomen face, but nothing has kept this person form playing in the mens league. Nothing kept him (before or after transition) from working up to playing at the top level. It is not OK for womens places to be given to men. For every transwoman who plays on a high-level womens team, there is a woman being left out. That is outrageous. it is an outrage that women should be asked to continue to sit on the sidelines and watch men play yet again, this time in the name of inclusion.

In the context of roller derby, it is the only contact sport I know of where women dominate. They are not sideshows or the lesser competition that takes place before the men get on with the 'real' competition. It was developed by women, for women, and is owned by the players. Most leagues and teams are female only, some are co-ed, and a few are male only. I play in a co-ed league. This is all good and fine. It serves an important social aspect too, in my experience many of the women who join are young mothers who are trying to find an identity for themselves again, or women who are not good at traditional sports and don't consider themselves 'athletic', or women who never really associate with groups of women, and the all-female nature of the teams often does serve an important social support purpose that you can't find anywhere else and which is changed by adding men to it.

I know a transwoman roller derby player and I consider her a friend. She helped to train me and my team (I am using 'her' here out of respect and because I only ever knew her post-transition, though I acknowledge that she is a male and therefore is a man). In my experience she was very aware of the fact that many players were uncomfortable playing against/with her and while she argued her case she didn't try to force women to play against her or assume that they would be comfortable with it. I remember a time when she was coaching us and we were each taking turns to perform this maneuver through the pack (the rest of the group) while she stood on the side coaching. It was at the end of the session when a person called out that she should have a go through as well, and she hesitated until everyone joined in with 'go on, have a go, come on!'

Generally, as roller derby is grass-roots and DIY each league/team makes their own rules with absolute autonomy, some leagues do not accept transwomen, some do, some do with conditions. Again, this is fine. At the grass roots level there isn't a limit on the number of players so transwomen do not take sports away from women and in some cases may actually help (remote leagues often struggle to find enough players to field a team). I advocated for trans inclusion on the basis that I was not prepared to do any sort of actual genetic testing or checking, nor was i prepared to gamble with accusing people of being male based on their level of 'butchness', and honestly our door was not being beaten down by transwomen (or women, for that matter) wanting to join anyway. I still wanted to keep the focus on women but if a few males who identify as trans slipped in I really couldn't see a harm in that.

However this all comes to a head during tournaments where teams compete against each other. It came up at a tournament I attended but didn't play in. As I understand it, this trans person was put forward to possibly play on one of the womens teams which allow transwomen players (the high level tournament is only for women's teams as there are not enough mens or co-ed teams for a big competition), however a few of the other teams said that they would forfeit is the trans person was allowed to play. From their point of view, they had survivors of domestic violence on their teams. Women who had fought long and hard to regain their sense of autonomy and right to their boundaries and roller derby helped them to do that. Those survivors were not willing to be physically hit by a male, even in the context of a sport, and I think we can all agree that their team excluding them and playing on without them would be a terrible thing to do. But at the same time, why should the team have to forfeit at all? They joined a women's team, in a women's sport, that women built, and are playing in a tournament for women. Why should they be made to face the choices of either:

1. denying all their players the chance to compete (which they trained for years for),
2. forcing survivors of domestic abuse into physical encounters against males, or
3. excluding those survivors from the competition and continuing without them. All are pretty crappy options.

What would you suggest in this scenario?

What happened was that the transwoman was asked not to play in the main tournament but was allowed to play in the side games. These we're very casual games that were thrown together of players who didn't know eachother very well and were totally optional. There were games of men vs women (women won), old women vs young women (oldies won, i believe), northern states vs southern states, tall women vs short women (short women won), lesbians vs newlywed straight women (lesbians kicked ass). One game was played in the wrong direction. One game was played with different rules. Some games were co-ed. The transwoman was allowed to enter the female teams in this section of the game. It was all pretty fine and more or less seemed to be working except that there was one person who ended up on the opposite team to the transwoman and they had a history. This women had opposed changing their local leagues rules to allow the transperson to play, and the transperson felt personally hurt by that. Whether that is justified or not, I can't say.
What I do know if that after the final whistle to end the game went, the transperson lined up the women and hit her into the spectator seating.

Now, at the time, i thought this wasn't THAT big of a deal. Yes, they should't have done that, but there was no injury and being knocked into the crowd is pretty common in the game, and it was a legally delivered hit except for the fact that it happened after the end of the game.

I now see that this was an example of male violence. In 10 years playing the sport I've never known another women to do that. I've seen dislocated jaws, black eyes, any number of broken legs and wrists, but I've never seen a single woman deliberately try to hit another women after the game ended.

I recognize now that in truth what happened was that this male saw a chance to hurt a woman who had hurt them, a chance they might never get again, and they took it. And even if this transperson wasn't consciously aware of this, it was a threat to other women; "I can do this to you in front of everyone."

The transwoman was banned from competing in the event after that but i don't know that it had a significant impact on gender rules in general.

The thing that gets me is that a few people took the attitude that the teams wanting to keep the transwoman out were making a big deal out of nothing, or should make the choice for themselves and just leave the tournament instead of trying to exclude transwomen, but they turned out to be completely right. So for this as well as a few other reasons i will no longer advocate for trans inclusion in sport. I advocate for co-ed teams in addition to womens teams, so that transwomen can play against people like myself who don't mind playing against male people.

(I don't in any way defend or condone what the transwoman did. It was assault. And you might be wondering why I will still call her a friend or 'she'. To my knowledge this was an isolated incident and a deeply regretted one. It is however a fantastic example of the need for continued sex segregation even when males have 'fully' transitioned.)

No rat, I genuinely don't understand what you are getting at.

You've said that transwomen should be allowed to compete in women's events.

You've said you don't see why women would want to be asked whether they think this is ok.

I'm just checking that's your stance?

@Bloodmagic really interesting an insightful post, thank you! I love hearing how people came to their standpoints on a subject, I think it really helps to further empathy between the two sides - and that's so important!

I completely understand where you're coming from and how you got there. Believe it or not I basically did your journey in reverse! When I first read these threads on MN it was the trans sports threads that I was drawn to, and originally agreed with the exclusionary view on the basis of "women missing out". I'd love to explain how I came full circle - and to address some of the interesting things you raise in your post - but I'm up against the clock for a very rare evening out without the DC!

Time and hangover allowing I will be back tomorrow, because in particular I've been mulling over the potential for a solution to the "women missing out" unfairness; because to me there is an unfairness there, but to me it's more that men are not "displaced" in the same way as women, rather than that women are "displaced" at all. That means "natal" women have to work harder than natal men for the same recognition and success - and to me that's not fair. So I'm as keen as anyone to work out what to do about it!

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks before I get stuck into going out preparations, and say how appreciated your writing your story our was :)

I'm also a bit cynical about the fact that you keep telling me that your position is obvious, but refusing to explain it or answer any questions.

For clarity:

1. Do you think that women, who fought very hard to have a sex-based category, are entitled to object to having it removed?
2. Do you think that men who self-identify as women should be allowed to compete in women's events, as long as they fit that particular sport's individual requirements to be "women" (testosterone level for example)?
3. Should every sporting body be able to define their own criteria?
4. If so, why can't men who don't identify as women, but fit those criteria, compete in the women's events?
5. What is a woman?
6. Should sport be segregated by sex at all?

It would be nice to have answers to those questions rather than your inevitable "I've told you before, you are deliberately misreading me" posts . A quick Y/N to each shouldn't take too much time.

I know I've asked them many times before; I can find no evidence of a yes/no answer to any of them from you.