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

They aren't women. They are men whose genitals didn't develop properly. They have never had periods and they went through male puberty.

It's not about these runners as individuals. It's about women's competition only being open to women. If you open it to men, even ones whose penises didn't develop, there is no longer women's sports.

Take a look at the CNN coverage:

edition.cnn.com/2021/07/03/sport/christine-mboma-beatrice-masilingi-ruled-ineligible-testosterone-spt-intl/index.html

"Naturally high testosterone levels...."

And the reason for that would be?????

If you watch that interview that interview that Andy posted.

Negesa said that they had an operation to remove the internal testes and was not able to compete again at elite level

And wambui said there should be a 3rd category for athletes with dsd

Here is another interesting article about this topic.

"And as confirmed by World Athletics above, the DSD Regulations only apply to 46 XY athletes. As such, their application has outed Caster Semenya, Christine Mboma, Beatrice Masilingi, Francine Niyonsaba, and Margaret Wambui as 46 XY DSD, or ‘biologically male’. Through the application of its Regulations, World Athletics is literally labelling young athletes who consider themselves female as male."

www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/dsd-regulations-call-out-athletes-as-biologically-male/

@bellinisurge

The BBC and trans extremist activists want to pretend that DSD conditions, previously called intersex, are the same as being trans. Even with DSD conditions the person is either male or female but with different sex organ development. It is not magic pixie dust that means a trans person has DSD, it is a biological medical condition that needs proper care . People should compete in the sport appropriate to their sex.

Yes. Intersex but difficult to tell at birth and so assigned one way or the other - the chromosomes actually show what sex they are. So if assigned female at birth but clearly have male chromosomes then you are a biological male.

littlbrowndog

It would seem as though Negesa wasn't the only athlete to be forced into having an operation. This is utterly barbaric.

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

the chromosomes actually show what sex they are. So if assigned female at birth but clearly have male chromosomes then you are a biological male.

Not quite. Chromosomes are the sex determination mechanism, but sex is your reproductive class. "Male chromosomes" would be ones that make you reproduce as male, but you decide they're "male chromosomes" using the reproductive class as a reference.

XY chromosomes are called male because males have them. Not the other way around. We knew what males were before XY chromosomes.

And on top of that, sex doesn't literally care what sex someone is. Sex is your baby-making role. Sport isn't making babies.

What sport cares about is what body type classification you have. Which physique? Is it the male physique, like 50% of the population, or the female physique, like the other 50%? If males and females didn't have different physiques, we wouldn't have bothered to separate. It's the physique difference associated with the sex that is the reason for the separation. Not the sex itself.

So in edge cases where you do have XY chromosomes, but didn't end up with a male body, like CAIS, then it makes sense for them to be classified as female for sports. As long as they're not overly advantaged enough to merit a third category.

But again, that's not these 5-ARD atheletes like Semenya and Mboma - they do have standard male bodies, aside from genital issues. They don't even need a third category, as far as I know. They seem to be physical equals with normal males.

It would seem as though Negesa wasn't the only athlete to be forced into having an operation. This is utterly barbaric.

Agree. Telling athletes to medicate, or have surgery, in order to compete is totally unethical. Or not even just telling - leaving that option open. The DSD rules should have not left that testosterone-lowering option open - they should have simply said that they have to compete in male events if at all.

We ban and monitor doping strictly to avoid the same ethical concern - people being incentivised to harm themselves to gain a competitive advantage. Messes like what happened to the East German female athletes.

And on top of that, sex doesn't literally care what sex someone is

FFS. "Sport doesn't literally care what sex someone is", I mean.

@Faceicle

This is an interesting topic. I had not been aware that women with cais had been overrepresented in elite sports. I completely agree that we need the data. I use the term women with cais deliberately, these women had their sex at birth observed as female as there is no discernable difference from other baby girls. Women with cats are raised as girls and treated by everyone that they ever encounter as female. I will never believe a male person to be a woman and I am equally certain that women with cais do not deserve to get drawn into any situation wherein they are labelled as male.

This is where I was a few years ago. And I might still be there if it wasn't for the (seeming deliberate) over-selection of athletes with DSD's and the sheer numbers of them appearing in female events.

When there are no women (as in athletes with XX chromosomes) on the podium for a women's Olympic event, as happened in the 800 m in Rio, then it is no longer a matter of being kind to the occasional person who was misdiagnosed at birth, but of protecting the many, many athletes who are being negatively affected.

Oh baubles I completely agree with you. I distinguish between women with cais and individuals with other dsds because I can see a multitude of potential issues arising around including the latter in women's sport.

A third category would seem to be the only way forward. Mixing up XY and XX women is like putting welterweight boxers in the ring with featherweights.

I realise that this might make the athletes involved feel uncomfortably exposed, but they have been publicly identified as 'DSD rules' competitors anyway.

I do have sympathy for them, but their inclusion and feelings cannot come at the expense of bio females' aspirations and opportunities.

I don’t agree these DSD athletes who went through male puberty are being “called out” or put on the spot by the public nature of the DSD regulations. People can tell the difference between males and females with our eyes. The purpose of the massive onslaught of propaganda that insists these biologically male athletes are female is to gaslight us into thinking we can’t.

I hate the idea of excluding CAIS women from female sport. It’s totally unlike the other XY DSDs that involve male puberty -CAIS women will always be treated like women by everyone around them and they don’t have any reason whatsoever to think of themselves as male.

I can see that drawing a strict “no one with a Y chromosome” line might be necessary to protect female sports, especially since it seems like the borderline between CAIS and PAIS is not clear cut and we know that bad actors will leverage that to try to erase boundaries altogether. But it would be really crappy to have to do that.

Allmy you raise a good point - how to get ahead of the exploiters? I have changed my mind about many things based on what the worst scenario is, I'm a live and let live adherent generally.

@allmywhat

I hate the idea of excluding CAIS women from female sport. It’s totally unlike the other XY DSDs that involve male puberty -CAIS women will always be treated like women by everyone around them and they don’t have any reason whatsoever to think of themselves as male.

I can see that drawing a strict “no one with a Y chromosome” line might be necessary to protect female sports, especially since it seems like the borderline between CAIS and PAIS is not clear cut and we know that bad actors will leverage that to try to erase boundaries altogether. But it would be really crappy to have to do that.

I would agree with you, except that in elite sports the medical history of every athlete is examined in the minutest detail. I think the fact that a young athlete presenting as a woman has never had a menstrual period and has possibly external physical characteristics that indicate something more unusual should lead to further investigation so the condition can be picked up relatively quickly.

Unfortunately it is often the case that young promising athletes can’t continue their athletic careers for numerous reasons such as injury, illness, lack of funding, or simply not being good enough. For the very small number of DSD athletes this potentially affects I think it is right to rule that having any DSD should be enough to say they can no longer continue to compete as a woman because we need to protect the integrity of women’s sport against those who seek to use DSD athletes as back door cheating.

But has there been any proper investigation into athletes with CAIS? I can't find the data relating to the 1996 findings that people with CAIS are over-represented in athletes, but iff that is the case, then there may be an athletic advantage, in which case they too should be excluded from women's sport.

I no longer believe the "there is no evidence so we must include them" argument - I'm at the stage that if anyone at all who has XY chromosomes wants to be included in women's sport, it should be up to them to prove, definitively, that there is no advantage at all. None, zero, nil.

And I don't see why there can't be a significant advantage - as suggested earlier not having periods, therefore less likely to be anaemic. No necessity for birth control. Body shape, hip alignment etc etc - are they male-shape or female shape, because there is significant evidence that it can affect speed in both running and cycling?

I'm beyond being kind to anyone but actual women at this stage. ffs, it's only recently we are even allowed to compete on a level playing field, why should we go along with anything that even slightly weighs against women and girls.

The guardian realising that they cannot really defend the inclusion of Hubbard have switched to the poor teenage girls denied the right to run route

www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/02/masilingi-and-mboma-racing-against-olympic-elite-and-complex-cruelty

@TurquoiseBaubles this is exactly where I am. We need to draw a firm line, and hold it.

There are plenty of people and orgs prioritising males. We don't need to do it, too.

That Guardian article! It's so embarrassingly bad it's almost hilarious.

The Guardian article is very, very bad.

It doesn’t explain the issue at all. It’s on a par with Trump trying to talk about Covid.

My rules would be automatically out of female competition with a Y chromosome unless you can prove completely androgen insensitivity. Everyone has a cheek swab, saliva test.

There’d be no more of this “female with naturally high testosterone being forced to lower it because ... racism, non-conformity to usual feminine stereotypes bullshit narrative from the press. Those XY DSD athletes would be out.

There’d also be no more of this “I didn’t realise I wasn’t biologically female till this completion even though I have gone through a male puberty, my times spiked massively (like a teenage boys) in late teens and I have no female secondary sexual characteristics” bullshit.

I’d let CAIS athletes in - no other athletes would have to know as their inclusion argument (no androgen sensitivity) could be submitted in advance.

'And I don't see why there can't be a significant advantage - as suggested earlier not having periods, therefore less likely to be anaemic. No necessity for birth control. Body shape, hip alignment etc etc - are they male-shape or female shape, because there is significant evidence that it can affect speed in both running and cycling?'

Well yes - XY athletes develop along male lines, they have male skeletons and pelvises. Isn't a man's heart always bigger and don't they have a higher concentration of haemoglobin? And no breasts or very small ones- well, that's a bloody big advantage in running!

Just thought.

Woman athlete T too high to compete.

Could be-

Transwoman
DSD
Doping

Um... Those 3 things are all on the table but they're not the same at all are they.

The DSD topic is v tricky.

I think the IOC are planning s way out of the whole headache though.

'Budgett accepted that the 2015 guidelines were no longer backed by science. “I absolutely accept that, things move on,” he said. “At the time the 10 nanomoles per litre was set because we thought that was the lower level for men. We know now that they go down to seven and women can be higher as well. Agreeing on another number is almost impossible and possibly irrelevant. You can debate that endlessly.”'

No definition of women - could mean anything.
They could decide there's overlap.

Note T level could be irrelevant.

I think they're going to make changes that makes the DSD headache go away. I'm not sure what else but I bet will be bad for women.