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...

I have very little knowledge about conditions like CAIS and Swyer's - I remember they were discussed in detail during the Olympic boxing row, but I obviously didn't retain much info about them!

My question to anyone with expert knowledge of them is: are people with these two syndromes likely to be athletes, or is their condition inimical to intense physical activity at elite level?

This is interesting news and I see that I'm not the only one surprised to see it reported even handedly in The Guardian, rather than the Observer.

I think that the scientific illiterates of the university philosophy dept can be safely ignored.

We know the definition of male and female. DSDs are classified as affecting either male or female embryos. Scientists know which are which and I would be happy to go with that classification. The sexual development of male embryos is affected by AIS, but not the sexual development of female embryos (although in rare cases, menarche is delayed, I believe). This is the point. The athletic advantage they clearly have must be due to being male - socially they are women, they are trained as women, they are subject to female socialisation. The only thing different about them is that they are in fact male. Height alone would not explain the advantage, and in any case their greater height is a result of being male.
The source of the advantage is as important as the size of the advantage.

MariedeGournay
You asked:
My question to anyone with expert knowledge of them is: are people with these two syndromes likely to be athletes, or is their condition inimical to intense physical activity at elite level?
I am not an expert, but CAIS athletes are very successful in sport. From my post above quoting Emma Hilton -
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/
Swyers syndrome individuals need (female) hormone therapy to have healthy bones but I don't know much more than that, I'm afraid.
I also don't see why it matters whether they would be elite athletes or not. Every woman who runs ParkRun type races cares about fairness.

Not directed at Marie, just general questions -
Why are we not thinking about the women and girls who are displaced by a male athlete? Why are we starting from the premise that the male athletes must be accommodated? How is that any different from insisting that athletes like Semenya and Khelif and Lin should be regarded as female?
Doesn't this remind anyone else of the "tiny minority" argument?
This movement across categories only goes one way - there are no female athletes with DSDs taking "female advantage" into male sport.

Edited to add quote

I understand very well what you are saying Wanda.

And yet, people such as Emma Hilton are very careful around making it clear that the definition of female in her opinion is about 'body type'. ie. A body that has been formed around the production of a particular gamete. Not just chromosomes but also in some rare instances body parts and functions. If I remember correctly, Emma supports some male people who might fall into the chromosomal definition of 'male' to participate in female sports due to their bodies not forming around the production of small gametes.

For those reading, here is her explanation of what happens with Swyers.

x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1819697582647484898

If we are going to exclude all male people, we have to have robust evidence so that their exclusion can be defended in court. It is fine to discuss this all in theory, but without the robust evidence a full 'genetically male' ban may simply be over turned. I can understand the frustration, I wish it could be a clear cut decision. However, I genuinely don't know how it can be a blanket ban on all male DSDs at this time.

Well, I just don't agree with Emma Hilton, then. Her conclusion is illogical and unfair to women. Having a female phenotype is obviously not the whole story and does not negate male advantage.

Anyway, got that off my chest!

I think you will find that Dr Hilton has explained her workings on this 2018 tweet.

She has just posted this in response. I remember she has clarified this quite a number of times in the past, particularly during discussions about Khelif.

https://x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1096019343891226624

"This is getting some attention today. To ads a caveat: some people previously responding have pointed out, perhaps correctly, that the numbers of XY athletes competing in female sports will include PAIS and Swyer syndrome. PAIS athletes will have some testosterone response."

Thanks, that's interesting and helpful.

(Edited because I misread tweet originally!)

Yes. That is my point.

We have to be careful in how we quote statistics surrounding CAIS and Swyers.

And of course they are 'male' genetically. However, if they really don't process testosterone due to lack of receptors, or lack of testes etc there needs to be robust information about where their advantage lies to exclude them.

The advantage could be the general height and skeletal proportions. Or even their pelvic shapes. But, do those, once a very firm number has been established where it can be accurately stated that no testosterone advantage has been delivered to specific group, deliver an advantage that is insurmountable for female people. At this stage, I would suggest that they do have some advantage. It remains to be measured however.

Go for it!

We all have our limits.

The Guardian sports pages, and Sean Ingle in particular, have been reporting (as opposed to opinion-writing) on trans and DSD issues for years.

That's just weird and unscientific, but I suppose it doesn't greatly matter for equestrian categories.

In the case of CAIS they are thought to be over-represented among female athletes, so there is clearly some advantage there, despite them being phenotypically female. I don't think there are any figures for Swyer's as it is a much rarer condition and often goes undetected until much later in life.

I imagine the "follow-up tests" that are being proposed should an athlete test SRY-positive are there to make these determinations.

They also need to be careful not to eliminate XX individuals who have an inactive SRY gene (those with an active SRY gene would be banned on testosterone levels anyway, despite being women).

At this stage, I would suggest that they do have some advantage. It remains to be measured however.

That is the nub of my disagreement. We don't need to measure the advantage, we only need to know that the source of it is being male. Not natural advantages which occur in the female population.
Height is also notable because tall women are rarer than tall men.

Ross Tucker gives the example of an unfit cyclist hiding a small engine in the frame of the bike - that competitor wouldn't win the bike race but having the engine would still be an unfair advantage. Ditto a very small amount of exogenous testosterone - the cheater might not win but they would do better than they would otherwise due to an illegitimate source of advantage.

Debating whether the advantage is insurmountable is so close to the meaningful competition argument which Jon Pike writes about - that if women have some chance of winning against males who claim to be women who are testosterone suppressed and taking cross-sex hormones, ie if MCWs don't always win women's competitions, then that that is meaningful competition. Whereas of course it is not fair competition because the males have something that women cannot train for, ie male advantage.

And yet Jon Pike, Dr Emma Hilton and I also believe Ross Tucker, who you are quoting and using their arguments all have said that for the moment those particular groups of male people who don’t have bodies producing and/or processing testosterone are not likely to be excluded at this time.

I suggest you take it up with them.

The WA seems to be effectively implementing the recommendations of this paper that many of the people we quote in these discussions authored.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/sms.14715

Absolutely CAIS athletes have male advantage and should be banned also. Not only do they have skeletal advantage, they never, ever have to worry about periods, training around them, altering training, suppressing them, competing with them, losing a block of training because of them, picking up injuries because of them.

Think how many days per year per career that involves.

Wouldn’t it be great if all that funding that was used by Hamilton and Harper had been used instead to review that group so that at the same time all males with DSDs would be excluded? It is just another element of the disadvantages that female athletes have had to put up with.

Sadly, I think we are going to be left with a partial exclusion and have to campaign further for full exclusion. I would welcome being wrong and that WA pull out a full exclusion.

I wonder also though, will this sex testing then produce the very detailed information that then can be used to study those that are included (if the new regulations do include any male people with DSDs) ?

Or will there be an ethical constraint that means that the WA will not be able to use this information for such review purposes?

As far as we know it will initially just be a test for the presence of an SRY gene. If the SRY gene is detected then further investigations. If it is not detected then you’re good to go. So potentially some XY individuals with a completely absent SRY gene (some cases of Swyer’s) could pass the test.

(The SRY gene is the gene for maleness and is usually on the Y chromosome. The ‘default’ is for mammalian embryos to develop as females, males are basically a weird mutation triggered by an active SRY gene,)

It really needs to be for any presence of a y chromosome.

This wouldn’t catch XX individuals with an active SRY gene. Such individuals have male puberty advantage even if they later suppress testosterone.

I note the usual TRA suspects are melting down and being racist comparing black women to men as they like to do.

Fair point. I just feel that it's tricky taking only some groups out as others will claim discrimination. At least Coe is trying it just needs refining, I guess.

Actually, I just remembered that WA rules already ban individuals who have been through male-type puberty regardless of their karotype or current testosterone levels. Same as UCI.