Female Namibian runners change events due to too high testosterone

[KevinBaconsJeans]

Just spotted this on my newsfeed and very confused. I've seen on another post that there is no maximum limit for women's natural testosterone. So does that mean that this BBC article is lying by omission about the sex of the runners to create a story that isn't true?

It talks about two Namibian runners who have had to switch to different events because they have high T...

www.bbc.com/sport/africa/58029941

Extract:
Her initial excitement at an Olympic qualification however was crushed when she was informed by World Athletics that she would not be able to compete in the 400m event at the Games due to high levels of testosterone.

"In the beginning I was very down, you can't come and tell me now I am not a woman. That is really frustrating and gets me on my nerves but there's nothing we can do about it at the moment," she told BBC Sport Africa...

"It is really unfair because you cannot expect everyone to be the same, everyone to have the same abilities, we are born with different abilities, we can't be the same it doesn't make sense."

Masilingi was only informed in July by World Athletics that her testosterone levels were beyond the allowed limit for female athletes wanting to run in distances from 400m to one mile, unless they medically lower their testosterone for a period of at least six months

As the IAAF rules make clear, we are talking here about people who are legally female or who are legally intersex. Very few countries have a legally intersex category so I will ignore that for now. I will also ignore the possibility that they may have changed legal sex (because I think there are different rules for that).

So, legally female from birth means that at birth, whoever was responsible for recording the child put down female.

I don't think it is 'ridiculously racist' to suppose that happens more often in the developing world than in the developed world. Certainly the nationality of the athletes would bear that out.

What other explanation is there? I am certain that it did not happen because the person recording the sex thought 'If I record this sex as female this child will have a huge advantage in athletics by racing against XX competitors.'

The scouting side of things comes after the recording of the sex at birth, so while it may be immoral, and whilst clearly the condition is known about for a while before high level sport is reached, the 'root cause' is the recording in the first place.

@Tibtom

Absolutely! Are we all supposed to go along with the ridiculously racist belief that these athletes were born in some Disney-esqu African village where there are no medical people, just some village Elder who decides a baby’s sex when they’re born? Some DSD conditions are inherited via a dominant gene, as is the case of CS, and many relatives in their family also have the same DSD. Sport at elite level is big business and open to exploitation. Coaches target certain areas where there is a high prevalence of this condition - ie XY androgen sensitivity.

A lot of children in africa are born in situations with no medically qualified people. It is not 'disney-eque'; it is the unfortunate reality of many many women. If a child from a family with a known high level of this DSD was born in a well equipped hospital then it is likely further checks would be carried out before sex ia registered.

A condition that renders you infertile cannot be passed on through a dominant gene.

I would accept that these athletes could have been born away without modern medical intervention. I don't accept that no one noticed they went through male puberty before they were tested at the Olympics.

@TurquoiseBaubles I know that 400, 800 and 1500 are now competed for by women .

I don't think that is true. I think as long as someone with XY chromosomes, and androgenised by producing normal male levels of testosterones (these are males whose testes are internal rather than external like males without this condition) can still compete in those events. They just have to reduce the level of testesterone slightly. I don't know if it is for a few months or a year before the competition.

Still way above normal female levels, and they still have androgenised male bodies so don't know who made the decision that they are fine for women to have to compete against. Sure, aren't the women lucky to be there at all!

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

CAIS athletes clearly match the female category for sports much more than they do the male and shouldn't be pushed out of it for what seems like an ideological position.

There would need to be good faith research in distinguishing CAIS and PAIS and it would probably result in a different problematic threshold.

It's unfortunate that some will choose to see this as an ideological position but these are the edge cases that are being used to erode boundaries.

I think the point that the court of arbitration reached was that they didn't match the female category and that damaged the concept of fairness in sport

And whilst elite competition is a spectacle to behold and an opportunity for national pride and individual excellence it is also something to inspire and promote sport generally.

If sport decides to disconnect from its grass roots or is seen to be intrinsically unfair it ceases to have value or worth and disengages with lower levels of the sport.

Women already are faced with unachievable levels of beauty in various ways in the media and thats having detrimental consequences to mental health. If sport becomes disconnected as something for women with an unusual genetic condition to aspire to and you get distortion of reality the danger is you stop having women in high level sport. Women who face the child care obstacle that biology also produces and that has ramifications for women's physical health too.

The sense of injustice also has political consequences as it destroys trust in various organisations and the concept that women are valued and their concerns listened to.

This is more than an ideology disagreement for that reason. Its an extensional threat to the sport in the long run and has various real world unintended consequences.

If we are seeing this number of DSD competitors at this level given the prevelance of the condition, then we really should be looking at DSD specific classes to be inclusive. Not damaging women's interests and asking them to accommodate a male medical condition.

Was there not some story about a former East German coach , then working in South Africa, scouting specifically for athletes with DSD? Can anyone remember if this is true or just something I've imagined?

Yes, @Cailleach1 is correct, if they are legally female, 46XY DSD competitors who have gone through male puberty can compete in all competitions and events.

In the 400m, 800m and 1500m only, they have to reduce their testosterone levels to 3 times the upper level of the normal female range and outside of the level of females with hyperandrogegism which does not confer athletic advantage but instead is due to disease rather than natural and healthy levels of testosterone.

In all other events, legally female 46XY DSD athletes can compete without restriction.

This is the single best article I've seen on the impact of DSDs in elite sport:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6391653/

IMO it should be obvious that people with 5-ARD and PAIS are not eligible to compete due to androgenic advantage; the jury on CAIS is out. Based on what we know the vast majority of the advantage is created by androgens (which people with CAIS cannot benefit from) but the impact of other factors related to the possession of a Y chromosome is not fully understood:

"other aspects of physiology exhibit sex differences and may therefore enhance the impact of the male advantage in sports performance of the dominant determinants (muscle and hemoglobin). Examples include sex differences in exercise-induced cardiac (147, 148) and lung (149) function and mitochondrial biogenesis and energetics (95). However, the limited knowledge of the magnitude and hormonal mechanisms involved, specifically the degree of androgen dependence of these mechanisms, means that it is difficult to estimate their contribution, if any, toward the sex difference in athletic performance. "

Given that margins to win are so small in elite sport (less than 1%) i think we need better evidence before concluding there is no benefit to CAIS people (which this article does in passing despite the point above).

However it may be that any advantage gets lost in the sea of other genetic diversity; PCOS is also overrepresented at elite female level.

If we are seeing this number of DSD competitors at this level given the prevelance of the condition, then we really should be looking at DSD specific classes to be inclusive. Not damaging women's interests and asking them to accommodate a male medical condition.

I keep seeing the argument, largely from people who are critical of males in female sport and therefore mean well, framed as we must find a solution for XY people with DSD's to have a fair way of competing.

But the question is should we?

I can appreciate it's a distressing medical condition but a lot of male people have medical conditions that means they cannot compete on a professional or even amateur level in men's sporting competitions.

Doesn't mean they should be given a shot a women's sport or even accommodated at all. About 95% of the global population will never be elite athletes for one reason or another.

Why are DSD's treated differently to any other male medical condition which means you wouldn't be fast/strong enough to qualify?

@OvaHere i think the difficulty with the real edge cases (CAIS specifically) is that people with CAIS are not treated as male and don't experience life as male; phenotypically they appear extremely female, their life experience is probably no different to someone with MRKH growing up and failing to begin menstruation etc. They don't really experience any of the 'upsides' of being male despite having male chromosomes. There may be a benefit in sport given their overrepresentation although data isn't great.

PAIS and 5-ARD etc are often brought up as male and phenotypically much more ambiguous.

I think there's merit in the idea of DSD classifications but to make it fair as between the DSDs you'd need to distinguish DSDs which are androgen responsive and those which are not. It would be interesting to see how the best CAIS athletes fared relative to XX athletes with no DSD.

@ViceLikeBlip
It makes me uncomfortable that predominantly white people seem to be making the rules for a condition that is seemingly more common in (and probably better understood by) black athletes. I can't help but feel the decision might swing the other way if we were talking about a blonde haired, blue eyed, cheerleader type

Have you checked the demographic of the World Athletics council?
At least 15/25 are non white. In other words, white people making these decisions are very much in the minority.
www.worldathletics.org/about-iaaf/structure/council

The race angle very much the case put forward by Semenya.

The problem with this argument is that the beneficiaries of this rule are the black female athletes who would otherwise be excluded.

See also Hubbard.

The race angle is a deliberate obscuring of the facts to make people back away from the discussion.

@Kendodd

I actually feel really bad for these runners and think people should have a bit more respect and sensitivity. Imagine you had lived your whole life thinking you were a perfectly normal female only to discover you aren't and all the problems and consequences that flow from that. These women are NOT Laura Hubert, they're not trans, they have a real, measurable condition, they're body isn't right. Just imagine trying to come to terms with that.

All of the above isn't to say they should just be competing against women btw. Their situation is very complicated, but they're also teenagers with the world looking at their bodies and criticising them.

You’re being very naive here. Most of these athletes that fall under the same category as CS come from families where their DSD is common, as it is an inherited condition, so they would have other people in their close family, possibly even their father, with the same condition. It’s very well documented. So if they were born with ambiguous genitalia, they would most likely be tested whilst young, as it’s not that rare. The other side to this is that when a scout is looking at possible athletes to train up, they check all sorts of things before committing themselves. The athletes don’t just rock up at an elite training camp a couple of months before Olympic selections take place!

This just popped up in my news feed

amp.marca.com/en/olympic-games/2021/08/03/6109169fe2704ecd7f8b45b4.html?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=discover&utm_campaign&utm_content

*...former Polish sprinter Marcin Urbas [said]

"I would like to request a thorough test on Mboma to find out if she definitely is a woman," commented Urbas.

"The testosterone advantage of Mboma over other participants is seen with the naked eye.

"In construction, movement, technique, at the same time as speed and endurance.

"She has the parameters of an 18-year-old boy, at that age my PB was 22.01 and she has done it in 21.97 in Tokyo...

With progression and improvement in her technique, she will soon drop to 21.00 seconds in 200m and 47.00 seconds in the 400m," Urbas added.

"We will continue to think that she is fair and equal, and it is a clear and insolent injustice against women who are definitely women."*

More distortion and misrepresentation from the Guardian:
Coe claims Mboma’s Tokyo 200m silver shows testosterone rules are working

aaaaah yes, M'Lord Coe, who had no idea Diack Pere and Fils were grafting billions out of the IAAF under his nose.

@NotBadConsidering

5 alpha reductase deficiency is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern, not dominant.

Sorry, yes it’s the recessive gene from the mother. rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome-partial/

@Tibtom

Apologies - I got myself muddled up!
rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome-partial/

@MoltenLasagne

Is anyone else getting the rage for the amount of misinformation and downright lying that continues to go on about this?

The facts are there in the IOC ruling that these restrictions only apply to virilised XY athletes with dsd. Why do the BBC and all other media organisations refuse to call it out explicitly as it is? I genuinely cannot comprehend whats in it for them...

I have wondered if this is the kind of thing that could be sent to something like an ombudsman or media watch oversight group - it's basic factual error, as is the way they describe women with naturally high testosterone.

There must be something like this in the UK?

I don't think it would work as a one-off, it would just look like clumsy writing - but a clear pattern of articles being misleading in their language and reporting is the sort of thing these oversight bodies are meant to be watching. I've had a good response in the past with the national media ombudsman where I live on separate issues with misleading language.

"The testosterone advantage of Mboma over other participants is seen with the naked eye.

"In construction, movement, technique, at the same time as speed and endurance.“

Mboma has an impressive set of shoulders.

@MoltenLasagne... I was in such a rage 2 days ago, I chopped the end of my thumb off (slight exaggeration as it is still attached and didn't need medical attention, just some firm bandaging) with a knife while ranting about the fucking mealy mouth bastards. Not my finest moment, I am not permitted to wield a knife while watching the coverage of XX events with XY participants, or discussing or reading about genetics, testosterone or gender.

@Jaysmith71

aaaaah yes, M'Lord Coe, who had no idea Diack Pere and Fils were grafting billions out of the IAAF under his nose.

I'm not a fan of Coe (for that reason and others) but what he's quoted as saying doesn't support the Guardian's headline at all. And like him or not, his views are important for sorting this out.

The Telegraph, for instance, has more sensible (but still not perfect) coverage: www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2021/08/04/seb-coe-defends-athletics-testosterone-rules-never-going-satisfy/

334bu

With regard to Ex East German coaches, the closest I could find was this, which relates to doping in South Africa.

www.insidethegames.biz/articles/10522/south-african-athletics-hit-by-doping-scandal-involving-east-german-coach

www.stateofswimming.com/a-waking-nightmare-for-womens-sport/

I have never witnessed any performance progressions such as we are witnessing here from any athlete in my entire life.

TWO years ago, both Christine Mboma and Beatrice Massilingi were competing in the school's games in Manzini, Eswatini.
They were 16 at the time.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Mboma

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Masilingi

How many Olympic medals have been won by 46 XY DSD athletes across all competitions and events?

Caster Semenya : 2 golds at 800M
Francine Niyonsaba : 1 Silver at 800M
Margaret Nyairera Wambui: 1 Bronze at 800m
Christine Mboma: 1 Silver 200m

any more...