Nell Payne retweetledi
The IOC just announced their policy on DSD and trans athletes in the female category. Let's skip the outrage and go with the scientific facts:
The modern debate started almost 20 years ago with the rise of DSD athletes who were winning world/Olympics (See: Semenya and others).
It came to a head when DSD athletes swept the podium.
The had the single biggest performance boost we can get, androgenization. Something that none of their competitors could ever have.
So debates commenced...
It's important to put in context how big a boost males get from simply being males. It's a larger boost in performance than if you were Lance Armstrong or Barry Bonds and hopped up on all the performance enhancing drugs known to man.
That's how large it is. It's why from 100 meters to races hundreds of miles long, the performance differential is generally 10-15%. Even larger in some strength events.
Every male gets this boost. It doesn't men all men beat all women, of course.
There's significant overlap in performance. My wife is going to better than 99% of men in distance running.
But...that boost gives each male a 10+% jump in performance that no female ever gets. We can see it in the athletic data and the progressions of men and women at puberty.
So...governing bodies and experts debated what to do about it. Women were losing millions of dollars in total to folks who had a male androgenization advantage.
We went from doing nothing, not much of a real policy to eventually instituting testosterone rules.
THe thinking was, testosterone can be a surrogate marker. It also gave DSD athletes a venue to still compete in the male category. They could lower their T to typical female levels, and still race.
There were a few problems with this. First, it obviously only took into account CURRENT T levels. A large part of the boost comes from androgens through a lifetime.
Second, this was challenged in court by DSD athletes. It was a long process that led to some strange policies along the way (for instance, rules only applied to certain event groups). It was tricky to regulate and be fair, and telling someone they had to have a medical intervention to compete came with ethical issues.
So that was eventually scrapped. I'm simplifying and summarizing years long backs and forth, obviously.
Track and field moved to the policy the IOC just adopted a year ago. Using the SRY test as a screener.
Why? It was simpler, straightforward and applied to all females, so their wasn't a separate DSD and trans policy.
It also put the dividing line for segregating sports by sex instead of a surrogate marker.
It's a one time screener, and then with specific follow up if potential DSD.
There's an exception for CAIS athletes because androgenization has little to no effect on them. So they do not have an advantage.
So what? I've seen this policy framed as immoral, fascist, and even nazism...which is crazy...
But the point is...it's a result of 20 years of debate, research, and trying to figure out a solution to a tricky problem.
There's a lot of people who don't know or are ignorant to the decades this has been going on.
Why is it important to separate sports based on sex?
Because it's the biggest performance boost we could get. If we didn't, there would be zero professional women athletes in an open category.
That's how big the gap is. And I for one value and think women deserve the spotlight to compete and show off their hard work and talent.
I've spent my life coaching women at the elite level to do so.
You might here people say it's a ban. It's not.
Every athlete still has a place to compete. You can do so in the category that matches your biology, in open events, or recreational events that this does not apply to.
A rough analogy: Longevity guru Bryan Johnson can't compete in the under 18 category no matter what age score his crazy metrics say he is.
We have categories and classification to ensure everyone has a chance to compete.
Yes, we pick what categories are important. But it's hard to argue that sex isn't a very important one.
So there you have it. It's been 20 years in the making. It started with DSD athletes with an androgen advantage winning championships and has evolved from there.
It's not perfect. Nothing is. We've debated, shifted policies, etc. But lots of smart folks and researchers have been trying to figure out a just and fair solution for a long time.
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