I guess somebody lacked the willpower to obey the 8 hours/40 comments rule.
I can imagine that the condition carries grave health risks, but what kind of "operation" would do any good? Testiculectomy?
I think orchiectomy is correct term.
2: That's interesting, because that was the immediate flag for me. I don't have nearly the relevant health knowledge to assess whether this is in the realm of "Yes, endocrinologists widely agree that cancer risk is massively elevated due to sex hormones not being processed through traditional biological equipment," or "This is a totally baloney claim that says more about the fears and prejudices of the experts than anything else, along the lines of the 'OMG people with XYY are going to be massively dangerously aggressive and violent!!!!' that happened in the '70s."
And I haven't googled for a better understanding. Enlightenment welcomed.
There was an episode of "House" where this cropped up. An androgynous teenage fashion model had testicular cancer.
1: No one really believes in that rule, tog.
...and which in turn produces muscle bulk, body hair and a deep voice.
I'd like to point out that two out of three ain't bad. Ladies....
4: Google says 4- to 40-fold higher cancer risk, but the real issue is that cancer in an internal testis is much harder to detect than in a descended one, and so is also more likely to metastasize before it's detected.
Though I don't know why it would be more difficult than ovarian cancer, so.
Sigh. This whole thing depresses me. Feminist blogs are now writing things like "She is being punished for transcending gender!" If there are to be women's track events then unpleasant calls like this are going to have to be made. And it will really really suck for intersex people.
If she's transcended gender, why does it make any more sense for her to compete in women's than in men's events?
Why is the IAAF giving advice on medical procedures to begin with?
4- to 40-fold? That's not an estimate, that's a wild guess. Plus, we don't know (from that) what the starting number is. Four times a very tiny number is still a very tiny number.
(not criticizing you, apo, just doubtful of the data thus far)
||
So I was just at a post-thesis defense reception, at which I was introduced to the new doctor's mother. She finds out where I went to undergrad, and asks, "Do you know C/raig S/egall?" I smile to an inappropriate degree while trying to stop myself from bursting into laughter, and respond, "Yeah, I think I had bio with him. He actually just had a letter to the editor published in the Washington Post." I left out the part about having just been discussing him on a blog.
|>
What this blog needs is more C/raig S/egall.
Though I don't know why it would be more difficult than ovarian cancer, so.
Wouldn't ovarian cancer be more likely to cause detectable bleeding sooner?
Well, here's a more authoritative (looking) source that says "Cryptorchidism is the most significant risk factor for testicular cancer, increasing the risk up to 11-fold."
Why should the intrasex women be punished for NOT transcending gender?
18: There's already a lot of blood that comes from there.
Ovarian cancer is difficult to detect and has a relatively high mortality rate as a result.
There is no real reason that ovarian bleeding would be easy to detect. There is a bit of plumbing that way but nothing substantial. It is the uterus that does all the bloody work.
22: Yes, but normally it's periodic, not continuous.
(I have no actual knowledge, except that my s-i-l's cancer was discovered because a period that didn't end led them to the ovarian metastasis and from there to the rest. But this is the internet, which makes 18 incomprehensible.)
i recalled a lecturer hypothesizing that elevated body temperature plays a role in malignant transformation of the undescended testes, it's like much more cooler in their usual place than in the abdomen
It is a difficult question... what is the appropriate place for athletes with non-standard gender?
This issue came up on one of my old rugby teams (I'm a woman). A post-op MtF transsexual wanted to play with us. We ended up deciding to allow her to join without too much fuss, but that was basically because it was an extremely causal league where the point was just to have fun, and nobody cared that much if she had any inherent physical advantages. (To be honest, I'm not sure if she would have or not). But I can imagine that it would have been a bigger issue had it been a situation where winning mattered.
Cryptorchidism is the most significant risk factor for testicular cancer
Skimming the thread upwards, I read this as "Cryptosporidium", and was utterly bewildered.
I thought people who actually transition could compete in the Olympics? There was an m2f judo medalist? I am not sure it has ever happened in the other direction.
30: Huh, could be. I have no idea... since it wasn't a big deal for us, we didn't do a whole lot of research. Also, this was about 7 years ago, so it's possible official rules have changed since then.
Aha. Yes. From here:
Edinanci Silva: Born with both male and female sex organs, the Brazilian judo player had surgery in the mid-90s so that she could live and compete as a woman. According to the IOC, this made her eligible to participate in the games and she competed in Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens in 2004.
"Judo guy" was rejected as inappropriate.
"judoka" is standard (or "jūdōka" - the first two are double-length vowels).
Even if a 250 lb. prop went M2F and wanted to play on a women's team, the mismatch with the other 175 lb. prop would be a big disadvantage....
I have no clue how to handle an intergender competitor in sports that are gender-segregated
It's apparently something that comes up fairly often: I read a source earlier today (and can't re-find it) saying that 8 athletes were found to be intersex at the 1996 Olympic Games and all were allowed to compete in women's events. There are lists of acceptable intersex conditions (total AIS is one).
The Science of Sport has some good coverage of the medicine and the regulations:
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/08/caster-semenya-male-or-female.html
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/09/caster-semenya-update-results-awaited.html
And the "8 intersex athletes" must have come from http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/09/caster-semenya-leaks-begin.html
Those Science of Sport posts are really interesting, thanks!
We were watching it with friends and we all said, "OMG, she's a man!" Was surprised when they actually starting testing though. They've since apologised for letting the speculation be leaked everywhere, but that's a bit bloody late for her. She gets to keep the gold medal anyway.
There should be some sort of ban on quoting from the Daily Mail though.
There should be some sort of ban on quoting from the Daily Mail though.
The Sunday Mail is still O.K.?
re: 42
There are two different Sunday papers with Mail in their name. The Daily Mail's paper on a Sunday is called the 'Mail on Sunday'. They can't use the 'Sunday Mail' name because that's used by the Sunday sister paper of Scotland's Daily Record [which is a tabloid but not a fount of pure evil like the Daily Mail].
44: I'd forgotten. It's been 15 years since I lived in England. Not that I was a regular reader of any paper during that time.
The Sunday Mail is still O.K.?
No. (That was another in our series of short answers to easy questions...)
A post-op MtF transsexual wanted to play with us.
A MtF transsexual would have much less advantage than Semenya did, because part of the MtF procedure would be taking lots of estrogen plus testosterone agonists. Semenya looks like she's hormonally a man, period.
Testosterone is such a huge determinant of athletic ability. Semenya's winning time in the women's world championship would make her a decent boy's high school track competitor. It might win her a high school district meet.
I will provide the anacho-genderqueer viewpoint, just because Minne isn't around:
1. Someone who lives as a woman should be able to compete in women's events. (And frankly, outside of an extremely authoritarian state which would force the issue, it's difficult to see anyone voluntarily living as a different gender purely for the thrill of athletic competition. Living as not-your-gender is no fun.)
2. This will probably mean that a small number of events will be won by transwomen. That's not very terrible. I thought sport was about form and speed and prowess, not about making absolutely sure that only the most ladee-like ladeez held titles.
3. This will probably also mean that some other events will be won by sorta-intersex folks, whether their gender is only a little bit indeterminate or a lot. Again, this doesn't make me very sad. There are way more not-perfectly-one-gender people than most folks know about.
4. The price for having only genetically perfect ladeez compete is pretty goddamn high, and I don't think it's worth it. Frankly, I'd rather have no Olympics at all than have one woman go through this vicious media process.
On a personal note, I often wonder just what would turn up if I were to have a really complete battery of tests. After all, I'm very wide-shouldered and narrow-hipped, I'm not exactly the most hairless woman in the world, I have a lot of non-neurotypical characteristics that are more common in men, as far as I know I probably can't conceive and I strongly suspect that I have all kinds of minor endocrinology oddness. Years of routine medical care suggest that I don't have any really obvious abnormalities, but if someone really, really wanted to make an issue out of it down at the chromosomal level, I sure do wonder what would happen. And yet I live--as they say--as a woman, think of myself as a woman, etc.
What we need is to have Body-Spectral Olympics, where everyone competes in one big mushpot, and you're handicapped according to how able you are from being a total vegetable. The only thing we'd be left measuring is willpower.
Frankly, I'd rather have no Olympics at all than have one woman go through this vicious media process.
But, the most likely effect, if the genetically male start to take the top spots, isn't no Olympics, but back to men-only Olympics (or men's events and women's volleyball will be the only things most pay attention to). Extremely authoritarian states are not exactly rare and, historically, have been willing to fudge gender for national glory or whatever you get for winning in sports that people only watch every four years.
48: that would destroy women's sports overnight. There are thousands and thousands of men who could beat the best women in the world at athletic events. Surely a couple would be willing to wear dresses for a while, and they would collect Olympic golds, endorsements, etc.
51: So what we're really, really saying is that if we allow transwomen and intersex women to compete in women's events, actual regular men will come to dominate those events? That somehow, in order to win the women's events at the Olympics, Belarus is going to force its male athletes to live as women? Wear women's clothes? Act like women? (And I would imagine not be lesbians, since most of those states aren't exactly queer-friendly?) And this is going to work? Yeah, there were a few problems with the USSR, but they were kind of a special case and it's not as though no perfect ladies ever won any events during the Cold War.
And isn't the logical extension of this that college teams, the WNBA and maybe even high school teams should require some kind of gender testing? Because what if you're sorta-kinda intersex and nobody has ever pushed the issue, you think of yourself as a woman, you're really fast and you end up training for Olympic track? And then the truth comes out!
And isn't it unfair that potentially-intersex women could be winning college sports scholarships even now?
Are there any conditions that make men abnormally good at a sport? Like giganticism could parlay into weight-lifting or being a little person could parlay into the small-spaces event?
I'm not sure how well-remembered it is today, but the Renée Richards story was pretty interesting. Since she only started playing as a woman when she was part 40 (she got to about ~20 in the world). If she had done it in her athletic prime and possibly then legitimately competed as #1 it would have been a much bigger story. She had been a very good player as a man (captained Yale), but not at the very top. As it was, she had to win a lawsuit against the US Open to play after they denied her entry in 1976.
only genetically perfect ladeez
False. Transwomen can, do, and have competed in the Olympics.
True intersex is quite rare and pretty obvious when it happens. Gender is much more of a binary distinction than a continuum.
Isn't this just the ZOMG-straight-men-will-totally-dress-up-as-women-to-get-into-women's-bathrooms argument?
Gender is much more of a binary distinction than a continuum.
This is much more of a can of worms than an innocuous statement.
53:
Belarus is going to force its male athletes to live as women?
I think it is fairly certain that China already fudges birth records for advantage in gymnastics. With a billion people, I bet they could find plenty of XY-women or cross ID's men.
And isn't the logical extension of this that college teams, the WNBA and maybe even high school teams should require some kind of gender testing?
The sports where nobody hears of what you do unless you go to the Olympics are very different. To hope to compete takes years of constant effort. What woman is going to do that after noticing that they don't have a real shot at the Olympics? All of the driven, capable female athletes will go to other sports or areas to excel. (To the extent that running really quickly is pointless, I suppose that could be a net gain for humanity.)
re: 58
No. The rewards from being a successful athlete are somewhat higher than those for getting into women's bathrooms.
We know historically it happened. It seems like, historically, it didn't really happen that often, even in the days when no genetic or endocrine testing was available. Given the massive increase in potential rewards available now, I'd suspect there's probably more of an incentive now.
That said, I doubt we actually end up with a situation in which men competing as women was a widespread problem, but it'd definitely happen, I'm sure about that.
Obviously people are going to make different trade-offs between valuing sports and um, upholding anarcho-genderqueer values. But I'm always entertained to see people who don't value sports say the choice is straightforward.
As I write this, I realize it could sound like a slam at Frowner, which wasn't at all what I meant. I meant only what I said, that one side of the balance isn't important to some people.
54: Depending on the definition of 'conditions', of course there are. Almost anyone world-class is going to be physically weird somehow.
53: Argh. Mostly, I don't care enough about sports to care if hormonally normative (I have no idea what a respectable way to say "not intersexed at all" is, if I'm not being sarcastic about the concept) women are competitive in the Olympics. But it seems weird going back and forth between thinking that there are lots and lots of intersexed people out there, and that formally opening sex-segregated women's athletic competition to anyone who socially and psychologically identifies as female wouldn't have much of an effect.
The Samoan women's olympic team would suddenly be hella competitive for a small country -- they've got a respectably sized population of genetically and hormonally male, socially female people. Probably the rest of Polynesia as well.
58: well, it would be sort of similar if there was a big pot of gold in the women's bathroom.
59: Should have qualified as physical gender. In any case, the entire premise of sex-segregated sports for women is that physical gender is a binary, so if you want to question whether that is true then you're questioning whether we need separate sports competition for women at all.
This is much more of a can of worms than an innocuous statement.
Do you have a problem with invertebrates, heebie?
So China fudges birth records? Has the world ended? I guess I just don't see that things are terrible and awful now, and again the price of micro-policing everyone's gender to guarantee that no blurry cases happen is very, very high. Plus it just reinscribes all kinds of insanely creepy ideas about femininity and gender.
XY women are still women. People who live as women, who identify as women, who present as women are women. As someone who has very very recently been gender-harassed, this touches me nearly.
Where 'hella' came from in that comment, I'm not sure at all. It's not generally in my vocabulary.
54: Depending on the definition of 'conditions', of course there are. Almost anyone world-class is going to be physically weird somehow.
I meant, does anyone have specific examples where we could see how it's handled. Like, are there any banned, naturally occuring conditions?
I don't think maintaining sex-segregated athletic competition can be squared with anarcho-genderqueer values anyway.
The thing is, there is no tidy solution because gender itself isn't tidy. However, as important as organized sport may be I still tend to think that wrecking someone's life because she's intersexed and didn't know about it in order to preserve the current sporting order is pretty grotesque.
Do you have a problem with invertebrates, heebie?
It's more the lack of lungs that really bothers me.
48: that would destroy women's sports overnight
This seems overwrought; basing policy on extreme outlier cases almost always makes for bad policy. It doesn't seem fair that Semanya, who has lived as a woman all of her life and if examined by any of us non-doctors would be declared female, is now disqualified from future events based on a genetic anomaly she didn't even know she had.
Her times in the 800-meter are flirting with (but not reaching) the female records, but are nowhere near the men's records. My gut reaction is that she should be allowed to continue competing in women's track.
This thread suffers terribly from sex/gender confusion.
70: I don't think her life will be wrecked. I think there will be lots of sympathy for her. It sounds like she has excellent community and familial support and her head is on straight. But she will have some choices to make because of the medical angle.
57
True intersex is quite rare and pretty obvious when it happens. Gender is much more of a binary distinction than a continuum.
So what? Gender may be more of a binary thing than a continuum, but that doesn't mean it's not a continuum at all.
I think slow men should be allowed to compete with the women. And there should be a third gender for slow women, because I've always wanted to compete.
Biological sex is neither a binary nor a continuum. It is at least three dimensions, two of which can be thought of as continua (morphology and hormonal balance) on one of which is a small handful of unordered discrete states (chromosome variety and number.)
There should only be one category, "Most Improved", and everyone is compared with their past selves in an ongoing continuum.
66: So China fudges birth records? Has the world ended?
Demonstrably not (leaving epistemology aside). But women's athletics are the result of much effort and I would be unwilling to toss them over for what is, regardless of how you measure it, a very small percentage of people. In sports where muscle mass is a crucial factor, I don't see how you could allow gender self-selection without killing XX women's ability to compete at the highest levels. Which would basically kill those sports (track, etc.).
2. This will probably mean that a small number of events will be won by transwomen.
Specifically, the ones for which there are great financial rewards for winning. 100% of those will be won by transwomen.
in order to preserve the current sporting order is pretty grotesque
Thing is, everyone who ran that race is relying on the current sporting order. They all devoted years of their lives to training, and they did it because they thought they had a chance. In as much as losing the central event of their ambitions is "wrecking their lives", they just got shafted by someone who has an advantage they can't legally duplicate. I don't think there's an option here that doesn't damage someone.
If chromosome variety and number can't be put into an orderd series, does it count as a "dimension" of sex?
What i had in mind was that to accruately specify someone's sex you would need at least three variables, one of which is restricted to certain values.
slow men should be allowed to compete with the women
We've already got enough on our plates policing gender to start judging intelligence as well, heebie.
74: I just think she'd have to be a very, very unusual young woman not to mind having all her gynecological details broadcast to the whole entire world, all future dates, all future employers, all future writers-of-articles-about-her, etc. And to bear up under the onslaught of sociopathic unpleasantness on the internet ("Just ignore it!").
69: I really do think that's the answer -- if not hassling intersex or trans women is worth the damage to sex-segregated womens sports is worth it, it's worth it. But I don't think arguing that it won't have a significant effect holds up.
Frowner, I don't mean to be insensitive here (which doesn't mean that I'm not being insensitive, of course). But the gap in athleticism between (hormonally normative) men and women is such that a (hormonally and genetically) male athlete wouldn't have to be terribly remarkable to be competitive in women's sports at the highest level. There are a fair number of trans women out there, and those of them that have the athleticism of men, despite being women, would be extraordinarily advantaged in women's competitions.
Maybe the decent thing to do is to suck it up and accept that cis women aren't going to be competitive athletes at the highest level, or just back off sex-segregrated competition completely. But I can't believe that opening women's athletics to anyone identifying as a woman regardless of hormonal/genetic/physical indications of sex generally wouldn't have a significant effect on outcomes.
81 is a better way of putting what I was getting at.
So China fudges birth records? Has the world ended?
Presumably, one girl's world kinda ended, when she lost to someone with an advantage that is currently outside the rules. By the time you're an Olympian, that event is the world to you.
This seems overwrought;
I was referring to Frowner's suggestion that anyone who chooses to cross-dress and lives as a woman be allowed to compete in women's sports, regardless of their biological sex. Which I think probably would destroy women's sports almost immediately.
People like Semenya (born with female genitalia but who have undescended testes) are probably rare enough that allowing them to compete to compete wouldn't wreck women's sports, but it could have a negative effect on it -- being a women's champion might gradually come to imply not being a full biological woman.
If chromosome variety and number can't be put into an orderd series, does it count as a "dimension" of sex?
Well, it can still be an indexed set, at least.
they just got shafted by someone who has an advantage they can't legally duplicate
Almost any world-class athlete has a genetic advantage over the rest of the world that the rest of the world can't legally duplicate. I'll never be able to develop the muscle mass of the average NFL lineman without steroids.
With my Turrets-esque constant fiddling with words, I hope you all appreciate the willpower I've shown around the name "Semenya".
68: Like, are there any banned, naturally occuring[sic] conditions?
At the very end of the Pistorius thread, I brought up the Eddie Gaedel story which is an example. He was a dwarf and was brought to walk (and admittedly as a piece of showmanship) by Bill Veeck in 1948. He walked and was replaced with a pinch-runner. His contract was immediately voided by the league for making a "mockery of the game" and , Initially, major league baseball struck Gaedel from its record book, as if he had not been in the game.
I have no idea of the status today. In the '70's the A's under Charlie Finley employed several sprinters who were purely base-running specialists, which is not that far different in some respects from the Gaedel situation. Purist assholes like George Will grumbled, but the league did ont step in.
76 and 78 are the solutions that would maximize the benefits of sport for everyone. So I would favor those.
I really think that some kind of "has lived as a woman for X amount of time minimum" with X being measured in years, should take care of our anxieties about the onslaught of men claiming to be women. It's true, you'd probably get a few guys willing to claim to be trans for years and years at a stretch, but it's difficult. Picture to yourself being told that you could compete for (not necessarily win) a great prize if you first spent five years dressing, acting and presenting as a gender you are not. And that your performance would be under tremendous media scrutiny. And that a lot of people would hurl transphobic abuse at you. And that if you had sex that was not heterosexual you would be under even more scrutiny. So no straight men pretending to be trans while sleeping with women! I just don't think that a significant number of men would do this, even if the prize were a million dollars and your very own Playboy photoshoot.
she lost to someone with an advantage that is currently outside the rules
Mmm, I don't think Semenya's condition is outside the rules, so much as not addressed at all by the rules.
Further to 95: And that you'd be expected to keep it up for years, since living as a woman for five years on the nose, then winning the Olympics and then going back to living as a man would subject one to rather unpleasant media coverage, plus probably all kinds of governmental pressure, etc.
So no straight men pretending to be trans while sleeping with women!
Because nobody would ever think to say "I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body."
96: Well, no one really knows what her condition is yet. If it's AIS -- which a lot of folks are thinking is the case -- she may well be able to continue to compete as a woman. Apparently others do.
Part of the problem is trying to write policy for a transitional social state. What makes haggling at the margins over who's female enough to play women's sports problematic is that it's wildly socially disfavored, here at least, to be of ambiguous gender. If that weren't a social problem, then I don't think drawing a line for the purpose of sports somewhere around "Within a hormonally ordinary range for a cis woman, whether spontaneously or as a result of medical treatments to aid transition" would be cruel -- someone could be living as a woman and identify as such without being 'women's sports qualified' and have that not be traumatic.
92: I don't see women.
Yes, I know, ya meant the other thing.
All of this just seems to reveal a basic incoherence in what sport is supposed to be rewarding. People want to watch "the best," so that heebie improving her running time over what it was before won't make international news. It's just too slow. But people also want "the best" to be somehow authentic to the athlete, so that we are really only measuring their effort and willpower, which means that it really should be international news when heebie improves her running time.
I'll go ahead and go overboard here and say that this is a basic flaw with liberal individualism. We want to reward people as individuals, but really very little of any interest is a result of individual effort.
re: 95
I sometimes think you are wilfully blind to certain facts. Athletes spend decades of their lives doing arbitrary things that are difficult. They go through pain and injury, and financial and relentless physical hardship from the time they are kids. They already take dangerous untested illegal drugs and cheat in inumerable ways in order to gain tiny advantages.
The idea that 'transphobic abuse' is going to be the deal-killer for 100% of the people who might be tempted to compete out of their biological sex is laughable.
Also, you are replacing a biological standard with a social standard. Who gets to decide what countrs as living as a woman? What exactly constitutes feminine identity here? Wearing a dress? What? I hardly think that's going to fit with any value system you want to promote. After all, women should be able to wear whatever they want, and talk however they want, and sleep with whoever they want, and adopt any lifestyle they damn please.
If self-identification involves nothing more than stipulating, then with absolute certainty men will compete as women. If it involves adopting a female identity then you run into all of the same problems with defining what that is that you do with physical/biological sex.
95, 97: There is a great deal of evidence that people will endure all kinds of risks (medical, social, financial) for athletic glory. It seems a bit strange to me, but you see it everywhere.
98: Because if lots and lots of these theoretical men who are so happy to live as the less-privileged sex for years at a stretch will all be completely believed if they all say that, yes. No one will be embarrassed, no one will be followed by reporters, there won't be incredibly painful scandal mongering; plus lots and lots and lots of straight women will be totally willing to sleep with a creepy guy pretending to be trans. I mean, I would! Seriously, being trans is difficult. It's not just putting on a dress and still getting treated exactly the same.
To my mind, a policy that discourages most incidents is sufficient, substantially because preventing a man who will stop at nothing to compete in women's events from competing in them is probably impossible.
Also, how many non-trans men really want to go down in sporting history as the winners of the women's track event or whatever? Few, I imagine.
s'ttaM third paragraph is I think exactly right.
95: So no straight men pretending to be trans while sleeping with women! I just don't think that a significant number of men would do this, even if the prize were a million dollars and your very own Playboy photoshoot.
I don't know what the fa'afafine population of Samoa is precisely, but I'd guess there are thousands of Samoan women who have sex with men, live as women, and are genetically XY, and hormonally within a normal male range, and aren't wrecked about it at all. The Samoan women's Olympic team would suddenly be a juggernaut.
There's an awful lot of gay men and trans women in the US, who could on the one hand cross-dress, or on the other hand forgo hormonal treatments that might affect their pretransition athleticism, and not have to substantially compromise their sexuality to compete as women.
Justice and kindness might require totally re-evaluating the concept of women's sports, but it really would have a substantial effect.
Yes, but you are begging the question of what it means to live as the "less-privileged sex" (I think you mean gender, really.) There will apparently have to be rules -- what will they be? Who makes them? Does it involve skirts, long hair, and heterosex?
102: That incoherence is getting very pressing now that there are so many artificial ways to improve your performance. But I think that's really most true about elite sport (the dichotomy you're talking about it very much related to the dichotomy between elite spectator/fun participation in sports). I also don't think that's the issue with the segregation of womens' sports, which I see as very much driven by a social conception of sport. It's very difficult for the community aspect of sports to take shape among women -- for beginners to come in, be encouraged and mentored, look to role models, gain skill -- if they have the huge disadvantage of competing against men from the start. That might be less true before puberty, but it's certainly true after.
103: Well, everyone is willfully blind to certain facts. I tend to think that's how subjectivity is constituted. So you're right there.
Yeah, I think a social standard also kind of sucks. It's not how we would do things if I ran the world. But it's a lot less horrible and humiliating to say "your driver's license says "female"; you introduce yourself as female; you use the women's bathroom; you don't describe yourself as male, etc" and you have done this over a long period (which is pretty much what a lot of trans folks have to go through to qualify for certain treatments, and it's not easy for them) than to poke about in people's clothing and/or genes.
We don't have a 100%-perfect system now but we have an adequate one. Preserving an adequate system while reducing harm seems like a legitimate goal to me.
105.last: How many national coaches and sporting association officials whose very livelihoods depend on getting positive results will begin actively recruiting or "hinting" to not-quite-at-the-top athletes to follow this path.
Also, how many non-trans men really want to go down in sporting history as the winners of the women's track event or whatever? Few, I imagine. It is difficult to imagine the psychology of such a person, but apparently there are plenty. A while back there was a scandal where short men* played as twelve year olds in the little league world series. What glory would there be for a grown man** to beat a bunch of twelve year olds? I guess enough to motivate some people.
*maybe they were just older teens, whatever.
** Or even like a sixteen year old.
112: Or a ball man at the US Open?
102
I'll go ahead and go overboard here and say that this is a basic flaw with liberal individualism. We want to reward people as individuals, but really very little of any interest is a result of individual effort.
I'd call that a basic flaw of pro sports, and/or its audience, rather than liberal individualism. Not to get all "but I don't even own a TV" about it, but I really don't follow sports at all.
112: Robert is trying to keep me from my dream of winning a toddler beauty pageant.
re: 110
Oh come on. Seriously? That essentially comes down to self-stipulation. You think there won't be a LOT of people prepared to endure the hardship -- oh teh horror! -- of carrying a driver's license that lists them as female in return for the chance at millions of pounds of potential income? I think your viewpoint is hopelessly confused.
I would believe all of this much more if women's bathrooms worldwide were full of perverts in dresses, just like folks who believe that men will do anything--anything!--to perv on women in the bathroom always predict.
I'm also not clear on why it's bad for a transwoman or intersexed person to compete in women's events in the Olympics (which affects only very, very skilled athletes) but completely fine for transwomen and intersexed women to scoop all the women's athletic scholarships, which one can only assume that they're doing even as we speak and which affects many, many more young women.
Two things that used to surprise me are 1) what a small, but non-trivial subset of men are willing to do to win an athletic event and 2) what a small, but non-trivial, subset of women are willing to put up with to have sex with a man who wins athletic events. (I'm sure there are cases for both of these with the genders reversed, but I tend to run in very conventional circles.)
re: 117.1
What people? I've never heard anyone predict this. It's a piece of bullshit strawmannery.
You keep conflating various different positions. No-one is saying that intersexed individuals shouldn't be able to compete. What we are saying is that your proposed system, in which sex is self-stipulated, is going to lead to men passing as women. Which it is.
Oh come on. Seriously? That essentially comes down to self-stipulation. You think there won't be a LOT of people prepared to endure the hardship -- oh teh horror! -- of carrying a driver's license that lists them as female in return for the chance at millions of pounds of potential income? I think your viewpoint is hopelessly confused.
What I do know is that it's incredibly hard for trans folks to live as the "wrong" gender. I imagine that if one were competing for millions of dollars it would be a bit easier, but not that much.
I mean, if folks would rather just intensify the contradictions in women's sports so that they get ever creepier and more heavily policed and more bound up in performing gender correctly, that's your apres-midi and not mine. One earth, many worlds, or whatever it was that Subcommandante Marcos said, I guess.
The thing is, wanting to spy on women in bathrooms is only one pervsion among the many that men can have, and even then, there are easier ways to do it than dressing up as a woman. But winning international sporting events is the holy grail of atheletic competition, and for many victory-fixated men, becoming a woman would be the only way to do it.
I think Megan's point upthread is crucial: If I was a woman who had devoted my entire life to making the Olympics, only to be knocked off the medals by people who have testicles, I'd be ticked.
There isn't a solution that doesn't hurt anyone. Trying to create such a solution just moves the locus of pain. I'm pretty sympathetic to the plight of transfolk dealing with a gender-binary world, but there either has to be an arbitrary yet precise distinction or there has to be none at all. The former screws a small number of trans people who are into sports. The latter ends professional women's sports altogether.
Also, if you are going to make a precise yet arbitrary distinction to sort a continuum into a binary categories, having testicles ought to put you in the "man" category under any non-crazy categorization.
re: 120
You are talking about transpeople who are conspicuously adopting the symbols and signifiers of another gender.
Unless you are going to stipulate 'flowery dresses, and long hair only' that isn't going to be an issue in the athletics case tha you favour. Someone can carry a driving license that says female but just rock about wearing jeans and short hair and a nice stubbly beard if they want. Unless you are going to start stipulating what a female identity involves, as in prescribing norms of femininity, the case of actual extend transgendered persons and the athletics case aren't remotely similar.
more bound up in performing gender correctly
Huh? The sex-determination testing has nothing whatever to do with performing gender. What would police gender performance is whatever body is set up to monitor and define "living as a woman."
Seriously, Frowner, your viewpoint is hopelessly incoherent.
What people? I've never heard anyone predict this. It's a piece of bullshit strawmannery.
No, it isn't. It's not an Unfoggedism and I wasn't clear about that. It's a pretty standard radical feminist anti-trans argument which has appeared in discussions on Feministing, Pandagon, etc (I think people may have alluded to a similar concern in weak form here). What I was trying to convey is that there are similar arguments about what men will do to have access to women's spaces (which is always "men will do anything for access to X, no matter how difficult, embarrassing or degrading) and we actually have the chance to see that those arguments are false.
having testicles ought to put you in the "man" category under any non-crazy categorization.
Even if they are undescended testicles and you are androgen insensitive? I know people in this category are sometimes labeled "male pseudo-hermaphrodites," but I don't know how much force that should have.
having testicles ought to put you in the "man" category under any non-crazy categorization.
Shouldn't having a vagina put you in the "woman" category?
This point by Frowner: Preserving an adequate system while reducing harm seems like a legitimate goal to me. Is very good, and quite general.
Also I want to point out that the definition of "woman" for social purposes (like driver's license, use of bathrooms, etc.) need not be the same as the definition for sporting purposes. There's no intrinsic reason that every part of life has to use the same definition, and perhaps some definitional flexibility from situation to situation might serve the harm reduction goal of Frowner's quote above.
128, 129: Any forcing of the continuum into binaries runs into problems, but the essence of the issue is hormonal, not physical. I think Rob's androgen-insensitivity example is good, as it challenges my criterion fairly well, but perhaps it's one of the cases in the "You're just plain fucked. Again" category, which is inevitably going to have a few people in it.
Is it quantifiable how much of an advantage each of the variables between morphology, endocrinology, and genetics confer? From reading the Science of Sport link, it seems as though there are plenty of people who fall in the Wonder Zone between M and F and are permitted by tribunals to play as F.
Are there any non-sex-segregated sports?
Are there any non-sex-segregated sports?
Equestrian events and auto racing.
Are there any non-sex-segregated sports?
You'd think there'd be room for a team sport that required a skillset most easily met by combining women and men in the same team. Perhaps some combination of Rugby and Rhythmic Gymnastics..
The sex-determination testing has nothing whatever to do with performing gender. What would police gender performance is whatever body is set up to monitor and define "living as a woman."
You think that recent "Oh, look at her now!" media stuff with Semenya in a dress and getting quoted about how she just loves dresses isn't a direct result of the whole media unpleasantness around sex-testing? Plus all the nastiness on the internet about women athletes generally? The more unpleasant the testing, the more people will feel obliged to perform femininity correctly out in the world. Obsession with people being "really men" pressures women--trans and other--to perform a stereotypical version of femininity just to keep themselves safe. There is already an intense form of gender policing.
131: People with AIS do compete already as women.
If we both removed the sex wall and allowed unlimited use of enhancement technology, women would have equal access to high level sport as men. Anyone, man or woman, with the money and the right doctors could set their hormones to competitive levels, engineer their hemoglobin to carry more oxygen, and replace their legs with titanium springs.
a skillset most easily met by combining women and men in the same team
135: Uh, sure. But looking like a man doesn't get you tested. Dropping 17 seconds off your time in a year does.
137 suggests that we're going about this wrong -- we should use sport as an arena in which to advance the deregulation of not just sex but corporeal humanity in general.
works for me, but I have to admit I'm one of the ones who doesn't feel the sports thing.
140: Perhaps we could all support a post-human olympics and then there would be comity! We could all meet up at the "swinging from your tail while lifting heavy weights with your robot arms" event.
62
Obviously people are going to make different trade-offs between valuing sports and um, upholding anarcho-genderqueer values. But I'm always entertained to see people who don't value sports say the choice is straightforward.
As I write this, I realize it could sound like a slam at Frowner, which wasn't at all what I meant. I meant only what I said, that one side of the balance isn't important to some people.
This is correct. I, for example, give little weight to upholding anarcho-genderqueer values.
141: But then you'd have monkeys masquerading as transhumans and you'd destroy hominid sports overnight.
If a f2M decided to compete as a man, could he use the hormonal treatments that are a sex reassignment to enhance his abilities beyond those of cis-men banned from taking steriods? Are their other enhancements that might be available to someone as a part of the sex-transition process?
I give great weight to arachno-genderqueer principles, but I live in fear of angry mobs of gay spiders.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I think I'd rather watch 134 than 138.
142: I had suspected as much, funnily enough.
I was just reading some other commentary by a black woman writer who feels that part of the reason Semenya was read as "unfeminine" from the start was that she did not conform to white/white-EuroAmerican beauty norms and that if she had her other less feminine characteristics might have been ignored.
I'd rather watch 134 than 138
Evidence suggests you're in a tiny minority.
146: but what about 141?
Personally, I still favor the Olympic handjob team, because I am young at heart.
Alright, my lunch hour has lasted an hour and 22 minutes. I need to get back to work.
NOW DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!
148: Yes, but 134 hasn't had a real chance yet.
What I do know is that it's incredibly hard for trans folks to live as the "wrong" gender.
Also incredibly hard: becoming a world-class athlete. Which is a silly thing to do, but some people are into it. As with springs-dude, I don't care if world-class sport dies of its own incoherence, but I'm very much in the minority on that, and it's hard to see how the balance of harm reduction tips in favor of taking care of a small number of people of non-standard sex at the expense of the vastly larger number of people who for some strange reason give a shit about world-class sports.
Re: 100
"I don't think drawing a line for the purpose of sports somewhere around "Within a hormonally ordinary range for a cis woman, whether spontaneously or as a result of medical treatments to aid transition" would be cruel"
I think this is reasonable. If we want to have more than one class for a competition, then we should structure them along a boundary that isn't otherwise socially/politically loaded. (Yes, the new boundary becomes loaded, but it doesn't bring (explicitly) all the baggage of the old one.) We shouldn't use sex OR gender as criteria for the two classes, instead we should use hormone-levels, or something similar. Maybe three classes would be better than two, then we might get (nearly) completely female and male classes and and an inter-sex class.
Not able to read the whole thread yet, but the question of M2F and unfair advantages came up in flat-track roller derby a few years ago when a non-local team had a trans woman tryout for their league. She exceeded the minimum requirements for the team and was one of their better skaters but not their best. This, plus a complete openness on her part and a genuine willingness to accept the rare instances of other teams asking that she not play them out of fear of unfairness led them to allow her into their local league and their travel team. Their travel team played our local league's travel team shortly after, on which I have friends, which is how I heard about it. Watching the match, I was struck by how she got as much as she gave and how clearly happy she was on the track. At the time, WFTDA didn't have a policy on situations such as this and I'm hoping, after seeing her skate, that if they do have a policy that it's on the permissive side.
On the topic of trans folks in general, I highly recommend the documentary Prodigal Sons if you get the chance. It's about a trans woman who was her high school's star quarterback returning to her remote home town for her 20-year high school reunion and trying to rebuild her relationship with her brother. Not what I expected and intensely fascinating.
Perhaps we could all support a post-human olympics and then there would be comity! We could all meet up at the "swinging from your tail while lifting heavy weights with your robot arms" event.
Somebody call Charles Stross and see if he can clear his schedule to write the first few volumes of The Prehensile Quanta before the next summer Olympics.
Somebody call Charles Stross
Not me. The cops said one more and it's harassment.
This thread is pretty dead, but I really recommend reading all three of those Science of Sport posts linked above, to get a sense of how complex and probably not what you think the actual rules and process of testing are.
159: Definitely. I particularly recommend this one, which is extremely detailed and also explains how nearly all women found to be genetic males through the mandatory Olympic testing are cleared to compete as women.
To summarise the Science of Sport articles, in ways that the thread seems to have not known:
* there are lots and lots of XY women competing, and known to be competing, and approved to be competing, in women's events. It was 8 at the Atlanta Olympics, so perhaps some hundreds at least in elite sport as a whole over the lifetime of professionalised elite sport
* there is some probably smaller but definitely non-zero number of transwomen competing in elite women's events
And the world and the athletic careers of XX (or XXX women, of whom there are quite a lot) have not ended, as the XY competitors with particular syndromes and testosterone levels seem to have been correctly judged not to have an advantage.
In both cases, the key test, but not the only test, seems to be whether the competitor has testosterone levels in the female group or the male group, since unlike almost every other six-differentiated human characteristic (height, strength) the highest testosterone women do not slide into the bottom/middle of the male values, there's a big gap between a woman with very high testosterone and a man with very low testosterone.
six-differentiated
sex-differentiated. I'm not even a New Zealander...
I'm not even a New Zealander
Maybe if you applied yourself...
Okay, I still stand by my initial "women who say they are women are women and this is not going to result in the destruction of women's sports", but I admit that I misunderstood the actually-existing testing system which is more sophisticated than I thought and I likewise admit that I ought to have read the article before running my mouth. So I take back a percentage of my vitriol.
Probably everyone has seen this already, but if you haven't, it's an interesting article about political history of gender testing from Out Sports. It notes only one case of a man dressing as a woman to compete--and he came in fourth.
You think there won't be a LOT of people prepared to endure the hardship -- oh teh horror! -- of carrying a driver's license that lists them as female in return for the chance at millions of pounds of potential income?
I can't imagine that you'd still be able to get millions of pounds of potential income as a highly successful professional female athlete if "professional female athlete" meant "willing to claim to be female."
You'd probably just end up in a situation where only conventionally female women could get any sponsorship deals.
re: 166
There's probably some truth to that, and sponsorship is already fairly heavily slanted to 'marketable' [i.e. attractive looking] female athletes. However, it's not just about sponsorship, per se. There's prize money at stake. But yeah, in circumstances in which 'willing to claim to be female' was the criterion in question, then I'd imagine the sponsorship system would be influenced by that.