Protecting the Integrity of Fair competition in Womens Sport

[El Guapo]

There was a lot of discussion around Iman Khalif's gold medal showing at Paris.

Some of it good some if it not so good but this is an Area that people do seem to take an interest in.

Iman Khalif, although we haven't been told directly, is a 46XY DSD (Difference in sexual development) athlete. This means she is genetically a male (XY Chromosomes) but has not development the primary sexual characteristic of a male, i.e. she does not have a penis.

She has internal testes which provide her with Testerone levels comparabele to a man i.e. about 5x that of a typical female. Testerone is the primary differentiator in the differences in sporting performance between males and females, which is about 12% in most sports up to about 35% in power events like weightlifting.

I know these things because the sport i have most of an interest in had been dominated in certain events (800m) by DSD athletes for a decade or more most notably Caster Semenya but also Francine Niyonsaba, Christine MBoma, Workuha Getachew and if rumours are correct Maria Mutola.

The issue of DSD athletes interacts with Transgender athletes in that having experienced male puberty, even if you supress T, there us still a retained advantage in height, muscle mass, bone density, Pelvic structure, grip strength etc.

How much is hard to quantify but its up to about 10% i think. Trans women suppress T medically to a limit of about 2x normal women (i believe). So the two categories are unrelated but linked in that they retain advantage from a sporting perspective over typical women.

This story will take off again in about a week as there is a 50 year old Italian Paralympian who has won multiple 100m titles as a man in the visually impaired category (T12), and is set to compete in the female division having transitioned in 2019

Valentina Petrillo: Italian sprinter set to be first transgender Paralympian

Valentina Petrillo is set to become the first openly transgender athlete to compete at the Paralympic Games, having been selected to represent Italy in Para-athletics in Paris.

www.bbc.com

Sporting bodies are struggling to keep to the spirit of sport for all and allowing inclusion in the face of mounting evidence of retained advantage for DSD and transwomen in sport.. It is a noble aspiration that everyone can get a chance to participate fully in sport but its impossible to do so as a way to ensure a fair chance of winning.

I have a lot of sympathy for DSD athletes who would be barred from the female category but i believe in the interests of fairness they should not be allowed to compete in the female category.

I don't have any sympathy for Transwomen wanting to compete in the female category. Ultimately their decision to transition is a choice (even if they would argue that its not a choice) but they have significant advantages and all choices have consequences. This seems like a small consequence in the scheme of things.

That is my opinion. Others will have others.

I hope that the discussion stays here and not every thread gets overrun with this stuff. Its boring as fuck at the end of the day.

[TL/DR] if you want talk about this stuff do it here and not elsewhere

 

[Jukka]

The DSD issue is very difficult to grapple with. The trans issue should never be allowed to take off, and it's just daft of any sporting body/organisation that does. I'm also at a loss as to why the community itself seems pretty intent on pushing for the rights of trans women to compete in female events as it only serves to create a totally unnecessary lighting rod for abuse and grief. Fundamentally, female disciplines are supposed to be handicapped to allow fair competition for females. All handicapped disciplines need a dividing line, and unfortunately for DSD athletes it seems they cross the dividing line.

 

[Matlock]

That's a really well thought out post.

I think that at a high level, it will have to come down to a balancing of competing rights. The rights of a trans or DSD person to compete versus the right of other competitors to be safe. Safety has to trump in those cases. That is unfair to trans and DSD athletes, and I think we have to acknowledge that it is unfair, but that when competing interests are being balanced, it is always unfair to someone. I think there has to be absolute zero tolerance by sporting organisations of the type of bulling and mocking that we saw in the recent Olympics.

I wonder, though, what happens at lower level sports? Like if you have a 13 year old who has transitioned. Are we saying they can't play sport with their school? Can they join the local GAA club? I think that situation is going to be the far more common one and it is harder to make a call on. A 13 year old isn't probably going to have much of an advantage, and at that age there are so many differing advantages anyway. There is a photo at home of one of my brothers playing under 14s. He was small for his age and was the smallest on the team. The tallest lad on the team was twice his height. Literally twice his height!

I wonder does social inclusion matter more than physical safety in that scenario?

Finally, my husband would know a lot of highish level athletes through his own athletics stuff down through the years. We were talking about this before and I opined that surely few if any athletes would transition just for a competitive advantage. His answer was "I could name 5 runners off the top of my head who would lop off their cock to win an Olympic medal" ;-)

I think that says more about the mindset of runners than of trans people though!

 

[Matlock]

The DSD issue is very difficult to grapple with. The trans issue should never be allowed to take off, and it's just daft of any sporting body/organisation that does. I'm also at a loss as to why the community itself seems pretty intent on pushing for the rights of trans women to compete in female events as it only serves to create a totally unnecessary lighting rod for abuse and grief. Fundamentally, female disciplines are supposed to be handicapped to allow fair competition for females. All handicapped disciplines need a dividing line, and unfortunately for DSD athletes it seems they cross the dividing line.

I think maybe they react to it as it feels like another (and very public) way in which they are being invalidated.

That's why I think it needs to be treated as a medical issue, not a social judgement. Like, a trans woman athlete is a woman and has the right to be addressed as one. She has the right to dignity and respect. She may not have the right to compete in a specific event because of a hormonal advantage, but there should be compassion around it.

Like JK Rowling's comments that Iman Khalif's expression of joy at having won a match was "A man delighting in having been allowed to beat up a woman" was fucking disgraceful and I hope that she she has to pay compensation for that and her other comments. Whether or not Khalif should have been allowed to compete, she was allowed to compete and to demonise her for it is not on, imo.

 

[Philby]

Great thread so far folks.

Ross Tucker covers this topic really well on his pod.

In the holy trinity of safety, fairness and inclusion you have to sacrifice one or more of these to some degree.

Unless you are dealing with a sport where traditional aspects of physical prowess are irrelevant (...for example: strength, muscle mass, skeletal structure)

In sports like boxing then safety has to be the primary concern. It should be one of the most simple sports in terms of tackling this thorny issue.

 

[El Guapo]

That's a really well thought out post.

I think that at a high level, it will have to come down to a balancing of competing rights. The rights of a trans or DSD person to compete versus the right of other competitors to be safe. Safety has to trump in those cases. That is unfair to trans and DSD athletes, and I think we have to acknowledge that it is unfair, but that when competing interests are being balanced, it is always unfair to someone. I think there has to be absolute zero tolerance by sporting organisations of the type of bulling and mocking that we saw in the recent Olympics.

I wonder, though, what happens at lower level sports? Like if you have a 13 year old who has transitioned. Are we saying they can't play sport with their school? Can they join the local GAA club? I think that situation is going to be the far more common one and it is harder to make a call on. A 13 year old isn't probably going to have much of an advantage, and at that age there are so many differing advantages anyway. There is a photo at home of one of my brothers playing under 14s. He was small for his age and was the smallest on the team. The tallest lad on the team was twice his height. Literally twice his height!

I wonder does social inclusion matter more than physical safety in that scenario?

Finally, my husband would know a lot of highish level athletes through his own athletics stuff down through the years. We were talking about this before and I opined that surely few if any athletes would transition just for a competitive advantage. His answer was "I could name 5 runners off the top of my head who would lop off their cock to win an Olympic medal" ;-)

I think that says more about the mindset of runners than of trans people though!

There were 5 state high school Champions in tack and field this year won by Trans Girls (Biological males) so that'd be about 15-18 year olds.

They take school sports more seriously than we do, indeed to win any state title means significantly greater chance of getting recruited on scholarships worth potentially $400k for young athletes.

Mara Yamouchi is very vocal on this in the UK , i can't remember the number but she identified about 50 age grade female park run records held by Biological males. Park run scrubbed their website of records rather than deal with the controversy.

your 13 year old trans girl in the GAA would be able to compete. The GAA have no trans policy that I know of. It'd probably be fine but not for the little girls sitting on the bench behind her, who may give up before they mature properly and never a sporting career at whatever level. Or when the trans girls turns 14 and hits male puberty and hits harder, runs faster and hurts an opponent who gives up. Not fair on the opponent then either. Its tricky. no doubt.

There are plenty of stories of Paralympians cheating their categorisation tests. I heard of one swimmer who had her leg amputated from the knee go back and get the rest up to the hip removed just to get reclassified. Also Lia Thomas is a good case study 200th in NCAA as a man, NCAA champ as a woman.

Edit. GAA don't have a policy but LGFA do, trans girls aged 12-15 can compete if they reduce T to <10 nmols/l for 12 months

 

[poulgorm]

Of all sports, you would think that boxing would not allow transgender women to participate. For obvious reasons.

Running, swimming, cycling etc, transgender women may have an inbuilt advantage, but at least those sports are non-contact.

 

[El Guapo]

Of all sports, you would think that boxing would not allow transgender women to participate. For obvious reasons.

Running, swimming, cycling etc, transgender women may have an inbuilt advantage, but at least those sports are non-contact.

The issue there is that the IOC elected to preserve inclusion because they had to its in their charter.

The outsourced fairness to the governing bodies to deal with themselves so WA, FINA, World Aquatic, World Rugby all mandated controls of some form or another

So did the IABA, but the IABA were not involved in the Olympics the IOC ran things directly. The Khalif controversy is entirely of their own making. Nobody is to blame but the IOC

I suppose this has some advantages in that sports where the male/female divide isn't so stark like shooting or archery can allow inclusion, indeed why categorise at all for these sports

 

[Cloudy O'Ranieri]

The DSD issue is very difficult to grapple with. The trans issue should never be allowed to take off, and it's just daft of any sporting body/organisation that does. I'm also at a loss as to why the community itself seems pretty intent on pushing for the rights of trans women to compete in female events as it only serves to create a totally unnecessary lighting rod for abuse and grief. Fundamentally, female disciplines are supposed to be handicapped to allow fair competition for females. All handicapped disciplines need a dividing line, and unfortunately for DSD athletes it seems they cross the dividing line.

Sorry, I know this is a serious thread so far, but that was an open goal!

 

[TheRebelRoar]

I have a lot of sympathy for DSD athletes who would be barred from the female category but i believe in the interests of fairness they should not be allowed to compete in the female category.

I don't have any sympathy for Transwomen wanting to compete in the female category. Ultimately their decision to transition is a choice (even if they would argue that its not a choice) but they have significant advantages and all choices have consequences. This seems like a small consequence in the scheme of things.

That is my opinion. Others will have others.

One hundred percent agree with this.
The most striking aspect of the recent Olympics with the two boxers was the amount of social media commentators that conflated DSD athletes and Trans athletes as being the same.
Ridiculous in my eyes