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Sport isn’t about fairness it is about celebrating people who have refined their unique physiologies to excel in a particular event.
That includes very tall people whose unique physiology makes it easier for them to jump over the tallest height. In 2017, scientists working on the Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits (GIANT) Project found that 83 genetic variations can have an effect on human height.
“The genes affected by these genetic variations modulate, among other things, bone and cartilage development and growth hormone production and activation”,..
Professor Guillaume Lettre, one of the chief scientists working on the Study from the University of Montreal in Canada, told the Daily Mirror. And height is just one example of the human physiology. https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/people-taller-others-scientists-finally-9739549
The DSD Regulations focus on one specific aspect of the genetic and hormonal advantages that make some people faster, quicker, more coordinated, more supple, and/or stronger than other people – testosterone.
They argue that elevated testosterone in athletes with one of seven DSDs gives them such an unfair advantage in a narrow range of events that it is necessary to exclude them from female competition.
The GIANT Project shows that other drivers, such as genetics, also have an effect on the advantage that one person has over another, even in these narrow range of events. But height isn’t a protected category in terms of IAAF events, unlike the IAAF’s female category.
In the Chand case, the IAAF was tasked with proving the assumption that elevated testosterone plus virilisation resulted in the 10-12% competitive advantage that it asserted males held over females. Rather than doing this, it submitted new Regulations...
that narrowed the scope to athletes with one of seven DSDs, if testosterone levels above 5 nmol/L had an ‘androgenising effect’ (i.e. if it was taken up by their androgen receptors and boosted their physiology) in female events run between 400m and one mile.
Scientists commissioned by the IAAF have spent a great deal of time collecting research proving a link between dosing people with testosterone and measuring increases in muscle mass, strength, circulating haemoglobin and oxygen transfer.
It also has collected research which shows that if testosterone is suppressed, decreases in all of the above can occur. It has evidence that in DSD athletes covered by the Regulations, testosterone suppression results in a decrease in performance.
However, this evidence appears to rely on a small number of athletes, some of which were subject to major surgery. As such, whether the CAS can accept that a drop in performance proves that in athletes covered by the Regulations.....
..endogenous testosterone at above 5 nmol/L provides them with such an unfair advantage that it is necessary to exclude them from female competition, remains to be seen.
Human rights considerations highlighted by the UN also underpin Semenya’s challenge to the DSD Regulations. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that an athlete who refuses to acquiesce to the DSD Regulations and...
..is prevented from competing in international female events would be stigmatised as being a man.
‘The IAAF is not classifying any DSD (Differences of Sexual Development) athlete as male’, read an IAAF response in a The Times article.. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caster-semenya-olympic-champion-is-biological-male-iaaf-lawyers-will-argue-n52dsmsnv
‘The IAAF is not classifying any DSD (Differences of Sexual Development) athlete as male’, read an IAAF response in a The Times article.. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caster-semenya-olympic-champion-is-biological-male-iaaf-lawyers-will-argue-n52dsmsnv
‘To the contrary, we accept their legal sex without question, and permit them to compete in the female category. However if a DSD athlete has testes and male levels of testosterone, they get the same increases in bone and muscle size and strength and increases in..
... haemoglobin that a male gets when they go through puberty, which is what gives men such a performance advantage over women.
Therefore, to preserve fair competition in the female category, it is necessary to require DSD athletes to reduce their testosterone down to female levels before they compete at international level.’
Unfortunately for the IAAF, the language used in the 2018 Study doesn’t help the perception that the DSD Regulations are discriminatory. ‘Sex classification in sports […] requires proof of eligibility to compete in the protected (female) category’, it reads....
‘This deceptively simple requirement for fairness is taken for granted by peer female competitors who regard participation by males, or athletes with physical features closely resembling males, as unfair’..
..This appears to suggest that if you look like a man, you shouldn’t be allowed to compete as a female.
‘In women, supraphysiological testosterone effects are known to produce virilization side effects that may be only slowly and...
‘In women, supraphysiological testosterone effects are known to produce virilization side effects that may be only slowly and...
..partially, if at all, reversible’, it continues. This statement contains an assumption that athletes affected by a DSD would want to reverse the effects of their condition.
Jonathan Taylor, who drafted the DSD Regulations, was specific about the need for the DSD Regulations. “The distinction between men and women we have established are not because they have an Adam’s Apple, a beard,...
..or a penis, but because they have testicles pumping out testosterone”, he told The Sports Integrity Initiative.
Sex differences in physical attributes such as muscle size and strength and circulating haemoglobin levels give male athletes an insurmountable competitive..
Sex differences in physical attributes such as muscle size and strength and circulating haemoglobin levels give male athletes an insurmountable competitive..
...advantage over female athletes in sports where size, strength and power matter’, he later wrote in a response to an article written by The Sports Integrity Initiative.
These advantages (which translate, in athletics, to an average 10-12% performance difference across all disciplines) make competition between men and women as meaningless and unfair as an adult competing against a child or a heavyweight boxer competing against..
flyweight....
flyweight....
...Only men would qualify for elite-level competition; the best female athlete would not come close to qualifying.’
This comment again raises the question about why, if this is the case, the IAAF is only introducing the DSD Regulations to cover events run between 400m and one mile, and not other events. Also, as illustrated by the GIANT Project..
...and explained above, factors other than testosterone also influence muscle size, strength, and circulating haemoglobin levels.
An argument often proffered in defence of the DSD Regulations is that in their absence, the IAAF will be forced to drop its female classification entirely, leading DSD athletes and transgender athletes to dominate the podiums. However, as explained,...
..the DSD Regulations only cover athletes with one of seven DSDs in events run between 400m and one mile, and only if circulating testosterone at above 5 nmol/L has an ‘androgenising effect’ on the athlete’s physiology.
Despite the fact that DSD conditions are more common amongst elite athletes, they are still rare. The sporting events covered by the regulations only involve races run between 400m and one mile.
As such, the idea that if Semenya wins her case, the IAAF would abolish the female category leading DSD athletes and transgender athletes to dominate appears to be little more than a political scare tactic.
The background to this argument is presented in a 2010 paper written by Ross Tucker and Malcolm Collins. ‘Gender categories exist for the very reason that performance differences between males and females require that two separate categories exist’, they write....
If, for example, a height category for athletes below a certain height were created to facilitate participation by shorter individuals in the sport of basketball, then fairness of competition would require that athletes taller...
...than this limit be compelled to participate in the higher competition, even though their height is “natural” and represents no intent to cheat.
In much the same way, authorities must defend equality of competition in the female category when the equality is questioned as a result of a physiological factor that challenges the basis for the gender categories in the first place...
Attempting to maintain the separate gender classifications, but failing to appropriately manage where individuals with DSDs and potential performance advantages should compete would be analogous to having a system where weight classifications exist,...
...but then waiving the weight limit for certain individuals who cannot reduce their weight enough to fit into the required category.’
An issue with this argument is that it appears to legitimise sport to create whatever categories it wishes without considering whether they are fair.
To follow this logic, the IAAF could rule that because Kenyans are good at distance running, they must race in their own category and be prevented from competing in international events.
In order to prove that this proposition is necessary and proportionate, the IAAF would have to show that the magnitude of advantage enjoyed by the Kenyans is so large, that allowing them to compete against other distance athletes would be unfair on those other athletes.
