Cheek swabs for World Athletics

[murasaki]

The Guardian has just released this.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/mar/25/world-athletics-mandates-cheek-swabs-to-doggedly-protect-female-category

Good news, although I still expect challenges. I do wonder if the timing is in response to Kirsty Coventry's win over Coe...

Bril. Sean Ingle has been great about reporting, I’m amazed he wasn’t sacked by the Guardian

Is there a tonne of backlash? Oh no men can’t take women’s prizes

@Helleofabore

Regarding this bit in the article:
However the new rules will also bar athletes with a difference of sex development (DSD) – who are reported female at birth but undergo the physiological benefits of male puberty – from the female category.

This worries me a bit - doesn't exclude CAIS individuals, perhaps? If they have seen the evidence that male advantage exists before puberty, why make the dividing line experience of male puberty or not?

The rhetoric is much better and it's great that WA have set a relatively fast timetable for bringing in the new system, but why this little loophole? Female only means just that. I hope I'm wrong about that and the article is misrepresenting the changes.

Yeah. I wait to see more on this.

My take is that potentially they might claim that without the sensitivity to the testosterone produced by that person's body or the lack of testosterone production capability at all , that certain groups remain exempt. It may be said that those DSDs don't show advantage that male children typically do.

If I remember correctly I think there is some testosterone produced and used even in children at certain points. It is at puberty that there is the surge that creates the most differences. I will go and see what I have in my archive.

But until it can be shown that any height advantages and any other advantages that it has been said that CAIS athletes have are considered to be unfair, those athletes may still be included until it is studied to show greater reliability.

“The process is very straightforward frankly,” Coe said

I love this.

And it's what everyone has been saying on here for years. It's a piece of piss, once in a lifetime thing, and there's absolutely no reason not to do it, other than to advantage some men.

I'm going to hazard a guess that Coe is a tad pissed off, and he means to hold people's feet to the fire in no uncertain terms.

Bring it on. Apart from anything else, if anyone objects, it blows their agenda wide open. Let's have it.

meanwhile

https://x.com/WomensRightsNet/status/1904504278838124709

To Aberdeen where the Aberdeen uni Philosophy Department is hosting ‘The Female Category in Sport’ a discussion of the ‘complex issues surrounding the female category in sport’. ‘Complex issues’… the warning klaxon is going off here at WRN Towers On the list of speakers:

Blair Hamilton … the male footballer who has wormed his way into numerous women’s teams on the pretext that he is female. Works in sports ‘science’ bending results to fit his narrative that males on oestrogen have no sporting advantage over fit female athletes. Recently reported Telegraph to the press complaints watchdog for describing him as a ‘biological male’. Complaint thrown out.

Madeleine Pape … the female Olympic athlete turned ‘gender scientist’ who wrote the IOC media Olympic Framework that stated there should be ‘no presumption of advantage’ based on sex, knowing full well that she’d never have been an elite sportswoman if she’d had to compete against the lads.

Hugh Torrance … from LEAP Sports Scotland an organisation that is committed to ‘breaking down the structural, social and personal barriers which prevent lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people across the country from accessing, participating and excelling in Scottish sports’.

Sone (Sonja) Erikainen … They / them sociologist at Aberdeen University specialising in ‘gender and sports science; medicalisation of sex, gender, and sexuality; and gender and sexual diversity’.

The event is hosted by philosophy lecturer Federico Luzzi, whose published research ‘raises and discusses some challenges to the principle of Counter-Closure, according to which knowledge-yielding deduction must proceed from known premises. I am also interested in the epistemology of testimony, epistemic injustice and issues related to social justice.’

That sounds like a fun evening.

No one from the sex-realist side then? Although what modern philosophy department would want to host an actual debate with voices from both sides of the argument nowadays?

Thanks for responding, sorry to tag you, I only meant to mention your name!

I think that may well be the path they choose to take, but I think it's wrong and I cannot understand why they would want to do so.
They're male. That should be the end of the discussion. We shouldn't have to try and prove why they should be excluded from female sport, because being male is sufficient reason. Making an exception in this case props open the door for puberty-blocked males, etc.

Also, since CAIS athletes are on average significantly taller and stronger than females and vastly over-represented in elite female sport, all we can say is that being male gives them advantages which, while not derived from pubertal testosterone, are derived from being male. For example, how is it that individuals who are are completely insensitive to androgens are nevertheless able to develop internal testes which produce testosterone? Clearly there are other androgenic hormones and enzymes at work.

😂
So this will be a session of misinformation, anti facts and science along with a dose of Stonewall fake law.
All in order to wedge men into women's sport and changing rooms. 🙄

I have not seen the evidence that they are stronger as such. I have seen evidence that they are taller and why. Do you have a link to where it has been shown that they are stronger? Or is it skeletal proportions.

"For example, how is it that individuals who are are completely insensitive to androgens are nevertheless able to develop internal testes which produce testosterone? Clearly there are other androgenic hormones and enzymes at work."

The issue is whether the body can process that testosterone or not.

By the way, I am not arguing that this group should be included. I am still unsure though is how they can go about excluding CAIS athletes without the bank of studies and reviews that we have for the other male groups to be excluded. Sure they can make it a blanket ban but without the robust evidence we currently have, it might get overturned and may create a leverage point.

I have also seen that there is discussion about whether they are or are not over represented in female sport based on how to define the parameters and the body type.

Sky News was a bit of a terf-fest earlier today - an extract from Seb Coe's press conference followed by a report which was spot-on 'non-invasive cheek swab' 'testing for DSDs' 'unfair advantage from going through male puberty'..

There was also a report about male violence against women and girls that actually talked about male violence against women and girls, not 'gender-based violence'.

The wind is definitely shifting...

i'm starting to hear all that shady waffle bollocks through the ears of other people now. Not just terf ears

No presumption of advantage based on sex? Breaking down barriers? (designed to stop cheats). Pretending that gay people aren't allowed in sport 🤣

I know it's what they've always been saying, but finally, the risible jibber jabber has broken the jibber jabber sound barrier, and everyone can hear it.

Instincts say CAIS individuals do have an advantage as they are disproportionately represented in elite sports. It might not be as easy to quantify that advantage but it does suggest a lot more research needs to go on to identify why.

I think Swyer syndrome is also problematic. Many cases of Swyer are only diagnosed when the individual undergoes investigations for infertility. And as they have a functional uterus (just missing ovaries) they can actually undergo artificial implantation with a donor egg. Some forms of Swyer are caused by a completely absent SRY gene so they would pass the cheek swab. However in some forms the SRY is present but completely non-functional and these individuals would fail.

And of course the SRY can be translocated to an X chromosome so women with both functional and non-functional SRY genes exist.

All corner cases of course but WA need to be prepared to have a coherent policy on this as I’m not sure that blanket “no SRY gene allowed” will be permitted by the CAIS.

Five years on from the start of Covid, which required most people to take cheek swab tests to prove they didn't have Covid.

People cannot start pretending that cheek swabs are invasive etc.

It just seems wrong that one group of males is included unless it can be shown that that particular group has an advantage. Many subsets of males might not have an advantage, so why special treatment for this group? I genuinely do not understand why they should be treated differently to, say, disabled males. All males should be automatically excluded from a protected female category, surely.

I know CAIS individuals cannot utilise testosterone for the pubertal boost, what I was saying is that testosterone is not the only androgen and clearly they are sensitive to some androgens or they couldn't make testes and testosterone in the first place.

I may be wrong about the strength but even just being taller than females is a good enough reason to exclude, because height is an advantage in many sports and the reason they are taller is because they are male. Plus there is the over-representation in elite female sport. There must be advantage, even if it is just not having periods or something like that.

While looking for something else, I found a study from which I have taken the following paragraph.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9266792/

Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is an X-linked recessive genetic condition, characterized by malformations that appear as a result of an androgen receptor (AR) mutation. This mutation interferes with and disrupts the normal interaction between androgens and their receptors. Androgen insensitivity syndrome implies the existence of a partial or total lack of response or sensitivity of androgen receptors to androgen stimulation [1]. This alters the masculinization process in chromosomal male patients (46XY karyotype) and will lead to the development of a phenotype that can range from normal female external genitalia to normal male external genitalia, but with various degrees of infertility and gynecomastia. These anatomical characteristics are consistent with the degree of androgen receptor sensitivity to the androgen stimulation [2]. Complete, partial, and mild androgen insensitivity syndromes fall into the generic category of 46XY disorder of sex development.

I realise it's only one study, and I can't even begin to parse it but the para quoted (which seems uncontroversial) suggests that CAIS and PAIS and mild AIS are on a spectrum. So the distinction between CAIS and other levels of insensitivity may be arbitrary anyway.

I suppose my point is that we don't have to prove anything except that they are male. Whatever the phenotype or the fertility prospects, we know which people living with DSDs are male and which are female.

The female category exists because females as a class are uncompetitive with males as a class. That is the reason for the category.
Eligibility for the female category is being female - not being uncompetitive with (other) males. It's a category for females, not for people in general who are uncompetitive with males. Because that opens up the female category to anyone at all, not just females.

Common sense is starting to prevail again.

On over-representation, this is from Emma Hilton's twiX (my bold):

This group of people exists. XY genetic males with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) can produce T, but use not a single molecule of it. They are functionally T-zero. 7/
Consequently, in utero development is phenotypically female, they are observed at birth as female and socialised as female. And they qualify for female sporting categories. 8/
The IOC logic (and that of invested parties) tells us that CAIS females are going to be the least competitive of all females. After all, non-CAIS females have at least some T that they can put to use. 9/
The frequency of CAIS in the general population is 1 in 20,000. The frequency of CAIS in female athlete cohorts is 1 in 420. CAIS is nearly 50 times more prevalent in female athletes than in female couch potatoes. This is a massive overrepresentation. 10/
CAIS females succeed as athletes way more often than non-CAIS females. How puzzling that the only thing the IOC asserts confers sporting advantage is functionally absent in these females with clear sporting advantage. 11/
Whatever underpins CAIS female sporting advantage, it is independent of functional T. Thus, the IOC position that T is the only factor influencing sporting advantage - and - the only action a male must take to “fairly” compete against females is to reduce T, is untenable. End/

I understand that there might be challenges, but surely all that WA would have to say in their defence is that these athletes are male.

clearly they are sensitive to some androgens or they couldn't make testes and testosterone in the first place

No. Testes develop due to the influence of the SRY protein. No androgens involved.

I have seen this document.

As I say, there is a whole lot of discussion with little clear evidence. I was surprised when you said there was documented strength advantage, as I have not seen it. But I also don't dispute the possibility that it will be found in the future. Height has been one of the main places of agreement. I have a tweet saved from Dr Hilton that explains how the height is impacted if anyone is interested.

I have also watched Dr Emma Hilton soften her stance a little from 2018 and what you have posted. I have been watching her discussions carefully and it does seem to revolve around what definition is used for CAIS & PAIS.

Hence at the moment, of course, there has to be a judgement made about the degree of masculisation as it says in the policy upthread.

3.1.3 they have sufficient androgen sensitivity for that testosterone to have a material androgenising effect.

This here could be one of the contentious issues if they outright made it a blanket ban on 'any male, including those with insensitivity to testosterone' as I said. I could see someone fighting this in court for leverage.

Yes, if it is the case they are over-represented in elite sports, it does suggest an advantage.

What would be an interesting question is, if the advantage related to something like height, would that be considered to be an unfair advantage, if there are also women who are that height in sports? As opposed to an advantage that is more distinctly male.

I can see arguments both ways but making either would depend on understanding more about the cause of the advantage, and if the advantage even really exists.

If it was decided there was an unfair advantage that would mean that individuals with CAIS would really be in a position that neither the male nor female categories would be appropriate, and perhaps some other kind of accommodation like a paralympic category might be appropriate.

Yes. There is more than just CAIS, I agree.

I do think it will be making a policy for now to exclude the obvious groups and then later on, making that final adjustment. But that is my own observations.

And I do wonder if it is not just 'height' but general skeletal proportions and bone density too. I don't have this information in my archive and have not seen it mentioned by experts. I do wonder though whether after all the obvious masculinisation group has been excluded that attention will be turned to these other groups who are considered to have not 'masculinised' and analysis using the knowledge that we have gained over the past 5 years.

Sure.

But what definition do you want to use for 'female' vs 'male'?

Because I don't consider that it is just chromosomes that make a person male or female. Do you?