Dutee Chand

[OrchidInTheSun]

After my recent suspension, I'm reluctant to talk about male genitals as it seems they are rather a bone of contention so I shall endeavour to avoid discussion of them in this thread.

I was prompted by an article that came up on facebook celebrating Chand as being openly gay. Chand has hyperandrogen, similar to Semenya as far as I understand.

Will that mean Chand will also be forced to reduce testosterone to compete in international competitions? I can't find any coverage about it at all.

not costs

three athletes with testes, one known to have 5-ard2 and the other two presumably having 5-ard2 came 123 in 800m in 2016 and 124 2017

after new rules they didn't show up in 2019

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_World_Athletics_Championships_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_800_metres

see attached

look at fT

free testosterone female range is 3-30 pmol/L
male range 175-775
so

400m, 400m hurdles: doping? testes? PCOS?
800m: testes
marathon: testes
shot put: testes
triple jump: testes

But the only sport where it was obvious was the 800m.

What the IAAF did was quite spurious but they proved that testosterone benefited athletes in the distances 800m and around, but not 100m

In other words there was no correlation between time and T level for 100m runners.

But you wouldn't necessarily expect that, because when Caster Semenya has 15x more T than the highest woman in the 100m, it doesn't at all follow that the lowest 100m woman , who had less than half of the highest 100m sprinter is at a disadvantage compared to her, because both levels are compared to Caster Semenya nothing at all.

So anyway the IAAF 'proved' that testosterone is correlated with performance for women for middle distance events but not sprints etc

but if some of those 'women' are for all reasonable purposes 'men', then it doesn't make sense to include them in the analysis.

anyway that's what they did so no, it has nothing at all to do with cost, but rather that three athletes who are in sporting terms barely distinguishable from males were winning one event.

how they did this is almost besides the point, but the issue was that Semenya &co were winning and making a mockery of the sport.

They succeeded in this argument in court where they had failed with Dutee Chand, largely I think because they could prove that Semenya likely gets the full benefit of testicular testosterone whereas Dutee Chand does not

Clearly Semenya winning makes a big difference to all of this, but materially Semenya has a very different condition

Chand is 4'11" and whatever is going on with her doesn't seem to have the same imperative as with Semenya

Thanks ShootsFruitandLeaves. That is a really clear explanation. A few months ago I found a video an Australian athlete had put on her instagram. I should have made a note of who she was. She made what seemed to be a very convincing argument that testosterone affected stamina, meaning that women athletes with higher levels of testosterone for whatever reason were better finishers in the 800m giving them a better chance of winning a medal.

"You can be XX and have testicles, so any argument that is based on chromosomes is misguided IMO."

People with the 46XX and visibly observed testes do not go through a male puberty, and they are 1 in 20,000, they are usually shorter than males, need hormones to suppress breast growth, and require testosterone treatment to help with outward bodily signs such as the growth of facial hair and voice depth.

These people will never be able to compete at female sports in any way, and they have a male appearance.
The fact that they require constant testosterone medication would rule then out of all sports.
They also have the SRY gene which is male, so if they competed in sports then it would have to be the male category.

that's not correct

46,XX,sry- cases have normal male pubertal testosterone and normal male puberty

testosterone is only imparied in adulthood

you are misinformed about testosterone medication - an athlete with symptoms of low testosterone would get a TUE to take steroids

Similar argument to how transmen take steroids and still compete

in fact although it's true that sry+ is male, genetic testing for sry was discontinued some Olympics ago, so they'd be in the same position as MTF trans

Semenya’s own girlfriend has said they are in a hetereosexual relationship; so at some point she must have gone through a male puberty. Chand is different - she has always been female and is probably truly intersex

One of the many reasons that I love Mumsnet is because of threads like this.
Incredibly helpful information - thank you.

ShootsFruitAndLeaves

They must have changed the TUE allowance for testosterone fairly recently, because that was the reason for Chris Boardman retiring early, He suffered from a form of osteopenia, which caused him to have extremely low testosterone levels. The UCI refused him a TUE to bring his T up to healthy levels.

Yes thank you so much @ShootsFruitAndLeaves - your posts on this thread have been brilliant

Duttee Chand’s best times are well below the leading women sprinters.

Quite. Short, slight Indian men aren't exactly beating the daylights out of the Jamaicans in the men's 100m finals. If Duttee Chand was Jamaican she'd be beating the daylights out of the rest of the women...until a Jamaican with the same DSD as Caster Semenya came along.

sorry I should have said 46,XX,sry+ in my last post.

As far as Indian sprinters height go, 4'11" is in no way a nornal male height, even in India.

Their male sprinters are around 5'10" and Chand is the shortest female, up to around 5'6"

Andyoldlabour, TUEs are set by the individual sport. Generally transmen would have a TUE because it's said to be essential for their gender dysphoria. As far as Boardman goes low T isn't itself a ground for a TUE typically, you would have to be suffering medically from the low T. I don't think it's straightforward necessarily except for transmen, but it definitely exists

the problem with Chand is that we don't know what her condition is. Semenya has a condition that should, without any question, be assigned male at birth.

CAIS should, without question, be assigned female at birth.

And PAIS could be anywhere between 'mildly undervirilised male' and barely short of CAIS.

So it is not straightforward to say that Dutee Chand competing in female sport is a category error, whereas it is for Caster Seneya.

Clearly if we knew more about Dutee Chand's biology it might be easier, but even then maybe not.

As far as CAIS goes, I don't think it can be fair to say that they should be excluded, given that they gain less benefit from testosterone than normal 46,XX women. While CAIS women might be taller than the average woman, they cannot possibly have an overwhelming biological advantage in the way that Caster Dementia doed

sorry for the various auto correct errors in my last post, they were not intentional!

ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/5-alpha-reductase-deficiency

With 5-alpha reductase deficiency though some infants’ genitalia look typically female, some more like boys and most ambiguous.

Semenya has a condition that should, without any question, be assigned male at birth.
There may have been no reason to think that Semenya was not female. Although it would have been obvious at puberty.

rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/5680/5-alpha-reductase-deficiency

This link might work better! Although it says that “most” appear female at birth.

Thank you all the science people for your help with this. Very complicated area.

With regards to CAIS, most babies wouldn’t need to be “assigned” female, they would just be presumed to be and recorded as female. The only situation I can think of where a question of “assigning” would come up would be if a NIPT at 12 weeks showed 46XY but no penis developed. That would lead to postnatal investigations and a decision about “assigning”. To be honest, this surely must have happened somewhere: CAIS occurs at a rate of 1 in 20,000, and there’s easily been more than 20,000 NIPTs done in the world. This conundrum must have arisen somewhere.

As pp have said, CAIS is over represented at elite level, one estimate of 1 in 400 compared to the incidence of 1 in 20,000 so clearly CAIS offers athletic advantages outside of testosterone. Even PAIS have advantages. Only fair solution - and by fair I mean fair to the 46XX competitors - is to exclude all 46XY from women’s competition with some leeway to make a legal case on CAIS depending on the sport.

not sure your figures are correct there.

one statement I read is that out of however many AIS athletes a particular doctor had come across, all had been PAIS and none CAIS

I am not sure that chromosome purity is a particular imperative - none of us has tested our own chromosomes, and that isn't the basis by which we have determined woman from man for thousands of years.

People with CAIS are clearly women even if they do not have normal female biology, and they are not about to win everything.

Policing intersex people out of women's sport should only be done when there is a clear fairness imperative - 'overrepresented' isn't really good enough.

In the case of intersex athletes with testicles and male testosterone levels and a material androgenising effect then that seems fair enough.

Beyond that I don't think 'you have the wrong genotype' is necessarily fair.

"Policing intersex people out of women's sport should only be done when there is a clear fairness imperative - 'overrepresented' isn't really good enough."

That would include all the 46XY DSD people then. There is no logical reason why the IOC/IAAF have restricted them to certain running events. In my opinion, Semenya and the rest of the athletes with the same condition, should have to compete in the men's category.
All three athletes on the women's 800m podium in Rio - Semenya, Wambui and Niyonsaba, had the same 46XY DSD.

not sure your figures are correct there

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5643412/#!po=1.06383

Mutation of this gene is found in fewer than 1 in 20,000 in the general population but is relatively common in elite female athletes [noted as 1/421 (17) and 1/423 at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games (2)].

17: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25160863/

2: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11252710/

These figures suggest that having a Y chromosome confers advantages other than testosterone. To this end if an athlete is trying to compete in the women’s - 46XX category - and found to have 46XY, they should have to prove they have CAIS and there should be a discussion as to whether this confers advantage. Given the links I’ve provided only offer a (strong) suggestion of such, I don’t doubt they would be legally able to argue they don’t gain an advantage. I would like to see research into CAIS and elite sport to clarify but I doubt we will as those with this condition aren’t likely to volunteer for research that may be to their detriment.

the 1/423 refers to all athletes with AIS. Not specifically CAIS.

Most will be PAIS.

And again, to the extent that a person with a certain condition should be assigned female at birth and is assigned female at birth, then showing that they are 'overrepresented' is not a sufficient argument to exclude them from sport.

These are the distinguishable from Semenya (who has a condition that there is consensus should be assigned male at birth), and transwomen in general (born with normal male biology)

"
That would include all the 46XY DSD people then"

the regulation's don't refer to chromosomes not do they apply to 46 xy dsds specifically.

the conditions referred to are:

ovotesticular disorder, 60% of the cases of which are 46,xx
all conditions affecting the steroid converting enzymes in the gonads (i.e. not adrenal conditions), including 46,xx with aromatase deficiency for example
pais, which is 46, xy. but not cais

46,XY sry- 46,XY cais are not restricted by the regulations at all

Agree with Shoots.

In my view, anyone who benefits, or ever previously benefited, (even slightly) from being male & having testosterone needs to be excluded from the women's category. So 5ARD, PAIS (and separately, transwomen).

I don't think it's enough to say that the Y chromosomes in itself is an unfair advantage, eg in the case of CAIS. So they are taller than the average woman, so are most athletes. I think they should compete in the women's category.

the 1/423 refers to all athletes with AIS. Not specifically CAIS. Most will be PAIS

www.academia.edu/23777032/Gender_verification_of_female_athletes

Actually, of the 8 athletes found to be positive for SRY (of 3,387), four had incomplete AIS, three has CAIS, one had 5-ARD.

So CAIS is represented at a rate of 1 in 1129 at elite level, compared to its incidence of 1 in 20,000. Still twenty times more common.

The possibility that the Y chromosome offers advantages other than testosterone is something that needs to be considered.

"The possibility that the Y chromosome offers advantages other than testosterone is something that needs to be considered."

Exactly. All of the other advantages which come from having the Y chromosome - bone density, larger heart and lungs, more red blood cells, less fat, more muscle mass etc.
However, it is the anabolic effects of testosterone which cause all of the above. Testosterone starts to have an effect early in the gestation period, then for the first few months after birth, then again for a much longer period at puberty.