IAAF - Gonadectomy surgery on 4 athletes in 2015

[andyoldlabour]

I came across this today and it thoroughly shocked me. I doubt many people are actually aware of it. The four athletes (not Semenya, Niyonsaba or Wambui) were all competing in the women's category and all had the 46 XY DSD shared by the three athletes above.

"The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) used decreases in the performance of athletes medically harmed because of its Regulations on gender to support its DSD Regulations. Four young athletes, who were 18, 20, 20 and 21, were told that they needed to lower their testosterone levels in order to compete at the London 2012 Olympics, and a gonadectomy (removal of internal testicles) would help them do that."

www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/iaaf-used-medically-damaged-athletes-to-prop-up-dsd-regulations/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annet_Negesa

I have no words

Oh those poor young people. Shameful abuse of power. Where was the safeguarding?!

And that's before even considering any implications.

The IAAF then responded on 11th October 2019 with this:

www.worldathletics.org/news/press-release/iaaf-response-to-false-claims-made-by-athlete

A pity that this article only references "naturally high testosterone levels" and doesn't mention anything about a DSD.

www.sportschau.de/hintergrund/annet-negesa-110.html

In this article from 2019, it states that Caster Semenya was pressured to have surgery in 2009, aged 18. Who would trust the IAAF not to lie or cover things up?

apnews.com/article/f844add98d02453ea926706f687c2fc7

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen the comment that no one would go through any of the transition-relevant medical treatments in order to compete in women's sporting competitions.

Horrible.

That's horrific.

The film mended in the link says it's women's sport which is interesting, given what we know about at least one of the athletes chromosomes featured in the video.

I not surprised that a young person who had been so brutally mitigated would commit suicide, what an unbelievable thing to do. This would be an international scandal. The fact it isn't probably tells us about who has control here.

It sounds like lowering testosterone levels to the extent the IAAF is advocating for trans athletes is actually dangerous as well as being ineffective at levelling the playing field. This is not a solution to anything.

Busydoingnowt

It was far worse than simply lowering T levels, it was surgery to remove internal testes. Interesting to know that none of the Rio medal winners in the women's 800m ever had this surgery carried out.

Wouldn't they be medically advised to have undescended testicles removed anyway to reduce their risk of cancer? An undescended testicle in a male child would be surgically removed due to significantly increased risk of testicular cancer. I genuinely don't know if that is the same in a person with DSD & internal testicles?

It is morally bankrupt that anyone should be advising the removal of testes in order to justify the shoehorning of a person with testes into the class of people with ovaries.

Instead, we should be advising those people with testes to keep their bodies intact, and finding ways for them to compete against other people with testes.

The same principle applies to testosterone levels. Artificially lowering testosterone levels which are produced naturally from a person's testes should not be encouraged as an admission criteria to shoehorn people with testes into the class of people with ovaries.

If you have testes, or have ever had testes, you belong to a different class from people who have ovaries, or have ever had ovaries.

Nothing changes this. I'm appalled that sports are still attempting to shoehorn people into the wrong class, sometimes at the detriment of their own health, sometimes not, but always at the detriment to fairness.

Well said Barracker.

Barracker that's a compassionate and sensible position, frankly that should be the stated position of whoever is in charge of sorting this out.