Lord Coe wants to protect women's sport

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Hope he is successful in his attempt to become President of the IOC.

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/ioc-paris-imane-khelif-world-athletics-athens-b2646643.html

Double Olympic champion Coe, who is the president of World Athletics, admits he was “uncomfortable” watching the boxing tournament in Paris, where two athletes disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships for allegedly failing gender eligibility criteria – Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting – won gold medals. “It has to be a clear-cut policy and international federations must have some flexibility,” he said. “But it is incumbent on the IOC to create that landscape. It’s a very clear proposition to me – if you do not protect (the female) category, or you are in any way ambivalent about it for whatever reason, then it will not end well for women’s sport. “I come from a sport where that is absolutely sacrosanct.” Asked if the Olympic boxing tournament had made him wince, he replied: “I was uncomfortable.”

I disagree but we have to engage with the detail of different DSDs to tease that apart.

And that is what World Athletics rules do attempt to do - there is a specific set of DSDs that are barred. CAIS is not on the list. Effectively it's like a list of banned substances.

What's not clear to me though is how they distinguish between "male without DSD" and "male claiming to have a DSD no-one's heard of" and hence claiming they can get in through the DSD rules, slipping past that list of barred stuff like 5-ARD, PAIS etc.

I think they do set out the principle that what they're excluding is individuals who both produce and can use testosterone, so an exotic DSD claim would have to demonstrate some doubt there.

I know Tucker, Hilton, Lundberg et al have put through a concrete proposal which tried to improve on WA a bit, but I've not looked into it properly.

I'm not an expert though so I don't know how much of a spectrum there is between CAIS and PAIS.

Yes - I've always had my doubts about that - CAIS sounds clear as a concept, but is it a distinct condition from PAIS? Or is "complete" just some arbitrary threshold on a continuum?

In my opinion, I think that until the advantages can be studied, the male athletes who don’t have the ability to process testosterone may need to be included with that decision to be reviewed in line with studies being done.

I agree though that this all started with the mess created in the late 90s by the campaign group who successfully convinced the IOC that sex testing was a violation of those male people’s human rights. By allowing those male people into the Olympics as female event competitors, this allowed the other males without any DSDs into the Olympics in the female category. Because it is the same argument that was used.

Either way, there is a group of male people who don’t process testosterone at all that have XY chromosomes that would be excluded in a blanket XX only policy.

Not seeing the problem with this? They're male. Why should they be in the female category?

If sport can set rules for drug use and for paralympic classification, it can't be beyond them to set rules for the female class.

“I've always had my doubts about that - CAIS sounds clear as a concept, but is it a distinct condition from PAIS? Or is "complete" just some arbitrary threshold on a continuum?”

I agree with you here too.

Any policy exceptions would have to have very clear definition that can be measured. How this happens needs further work perhaps.

I cannot imagine that a body with even an ability to process a small portion of any hormone that develops male advantage should be allowed. And as more medical knowledge in regards to these athletes develops, is it known how many can use external hormones to enhance their virilisation?

I agree. The onus should be on CAIS individuals to prove there’s no advantage first. We know from a host of medical research that there are subtle differences in the way men and women’s bodies work, from the way drugs are metabolised to the composition of rods and cones in the eye. There may be subtle differences which confer an advantage on CAIS males which are not contingent on androgenisation/male puberty. An XX bar is a clear boundary and easy to police.

Because they are chromosomally male but have bodies that could be considered phenotypically female. They haven’t developed as ‘male’.

There does seem to be a slight height advantage but at the moment the experts such as Drs Tucker, Hilton and Lundberg and others haven’t been able to find these athletes have advantage. They are the ones advocating for this group’s inclusion until advantage is shown. I tend to agree with them. But I also understand the wish to make a very clear category boundary just as much.

Apparently one thing that is tonnes Coe’s advantage is that it is a secret ballot. Which means that people can vote for him whilst pretending not to.

Because they are chromosomally male but have bodies that could be considered phenotypically female. They haven’t developed as ‘male’.

Do we allow any other males with medical conditions into female sport? Why are these ones considered a special case?

Thanks for explaining, PermanentTemporary.
I see it Gargoyles' way.

The female category exists to exclude male advantage.
A male with CAIS is male. Therefore is excluded from the female category on that ground.
Regarding advantage, the mere fact that CAIS athletes are are so overrepresented in elite female competition compared to their incidence of males with their condition in the general population shows that there must be some advantage. We don't know what it is. But it must derive from being male, because that is the only difference between them and female athletes. It may simply come down to not having periods, periods may be an even bigger issue for training female athletes than we think.

It's the wrong approach to say that they should be included in female sport unless/until we have done more research. We should start from the point that they should be excluded from female sport because they are male. We should entertain the possibility that they have performance advantages which are not due to the action of testosterone and other androgens, but are due to being male, albeit in a way that we don't yet understand.
Or that androgens do affect them, but in a way that we can't yet detect.

Everybody deserves fair competition. Women in the women's category deserve fair competition.
We are not obliged to make it possible for CAIS athletes to *win, so participation in Open categories is fair. Alternatively, a disability category. This second option would be outing, so it's entirely up to the CAIS athletes whether that choice is something they want to campaign for. But we must not disadvantage female athletes in their own category to save male athletes from distress or embarrassment.

I understand your reasoning.

I do think that those who don’t process testosterone at all need careful consideration and specific attention for a provision made for them in sport. I also have my own suspicions that if they are over represented in elite female sports then it is highly likely there is an advantage. So I suspect that it is likely in the future that they will have their own events.

However, I also recognise that there is resistance to this right now without studies.

Not seeing the problem with this? They're male. Why should they be in the female category?

The point is that sport doesn't directly care about reproduction, or chromosomal make-up. It cares about the body type. The category wasn't created because of sex - it's not like we're sorting farm animals for breeding - but because of the physical consequences of the sex. Primarily the results of testosterone.

If there were 15 sexes, it wouldn't necessarily make sense to have 15 events. You might decide that for practical purposes you could group the sexes into "testosterone" and "non-testosterone".

Just like you only have a limited number of weight classifications. Or even none, in most sports.

The boundary positioning or existence is a choice, with practicality being a factor. Not some fundamental principle about weight. Or sex.

DSDs effectively produce a distinct body type from the standard two. Whether you treat them as a third type, an impaired version of the higher type, or a valid variation of the lower type is something that has to be debated, like any rule.
Having the "female" category really mean "no testosterone" makes just as much sense, and probably more, than having it literally be about actual sex.

The harder-line you are on limiting "female" event eligibility, the bigger population of "male athletes with DSD impairment" you create. Which maybe is actually a good thing, in terms of creating a larger more viable Paralympic category?

And this is why we have the likes of Imane Khelif and caster Semenya in female sport. I'm afraid that it's become clear that we need to draw a hard line of XX only because it is a slippery slope.

The female category is a carved out, protected space. Because the advantage only goes one way.
Are there females with DSDs who have an athletic performance advantage over males? My guess is no.
Are there females with DSDs who have an advantage over other females? No idea, but if they do, that's fine. It's comparable to women who are exceptionally tall, or strong.

Making it about testosterone makes no sense.

PAIS vs CAIS
Incidentally, women also can have CAIS - which is a particular genetic condition.
PAIS results from various different causes.

All of this. Female, woman, girl =XX

Anyone else can compete in the open/men’s category.

Female sport exists to find out what woman can achieve.

If we just wanted to find out who can jump the highest or furthest, sport would just involve men in their twenties.

Is a woman really just "no testosterone"? It appears to be a large factor in performance and easiest to measure, but is that only what makes a woman a woman and our bodies different to men?

I hope he's elected. He's been talking about this issue for a while now. I think it will be an incredibly beneficial appointment.

Exactly.
It's pretty similar to saying woman = no penis.

World athletics' rules, which SC is in effect proposing would apply across the board, are very comprehensive and in effect quite generous to athletes who aren't 'conventionally' female.

Under the WA DSD rules you're eligible for the female category if you satisfy any one of the following three conditions:

(a) you have female organs and/or chromosomes;
(b) your testosterone levels are close to the female range, either naturally or as a result of medication you've taken; or
(c) your body doesn't react to male testosterone levels in the standard male way.

So any kind of XY individual qualifies under (a), regardless of T levels.

Any DSD athlete who takes medication to get their T levels outside the male range qualifies under (b).

A CAIS athlete qualifies under (c).

It's a policy that, as I said, is really exceptionally generous. There's no sensible way to argue that the female sex class is the best fit for an athlete who doesn't tick even one of those boxes.

The anger about males competing in the female category is not going to go away. The issue has had a lot more sunlight than ten years ago, and the general public does not support it. I would imagine the IOC would be keen to avoid the media frenzy that surrounded the boxing at future competitions, so perhaps Seb Coe being prepared to take assertive action will work in his favour. I'd imagine there are a lot of people, some who haven't felt able to speak out, who want to draw a line under this once and for all. That's my hope anyway.

Thanks for laying that out, puffyisgood

The WA policy is already unfair to females.

Apart from everything else, women's sport is undervalued and under-resourced. It's adding insult to injury to ask women and girls to share their tiny pot with males who pass as women, males who claim to be women, or males who have achieved a low level of testosterone. Without, I reiterate, any movement in the opposite direction - without women competing in male categories with an athletic performance advantage.
It's yet another layer of unfairness.

I've heard him interviewed about this before, and he's made the distinction that he only wants to protect elite sports. Anything up to this should be 'inclusive'. So how he expects girls to become elite sportswomen when they're not competing fairly a school level is a bit of a mystery.

Well, exactly.

There are lots of non elite male sports but they dont allow they players to take performance improving drugs, because its still about fairness not inclusion.

Yes, I don't like a distinction between elite and non elite because it indicates the issue is access to professional sport opportunities or international medals, rather than the integrity and existence of female sport in all forms. Women's rights in fact.

I have zero issue with scratch/whoever turns up sport, done a fair bit of that myself, but if it is labelled female, it should be female.

I'm also completely amazed that the idea that measuring testosterone on the day of competition is still offered as a way to define someone being eligible for the female category. They've seen what this looks like when athletes take them at their word. They know it is indefensible. Bears me why they are still banging that drum even faintly.

I think in practice drug testing does peter out quite quickly, the further you get from an elite level. e.g. in football there'll certainly never be the resources for it to take place at recreational/Sunday league level. This article from a few years ago seems to suggest that there isn't any even at 'National League' level, that's the fifth tier, with average paying attendance measured in the thousands, and most if not all of the players full-time professionals. Who would pay for the testing, I suppose?

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38744912