Jon Pike Profile picture
Jul 31, 2024 18 tweets 3 min read Read on X
This threatening and distracting post is, itself, unethical (in my view). Here's why I think this:
... The @DZFOOTBALLDZ account agrees, in another post, that the athlete in question has a condition like Caster Semenya. That condition is a male, 46XY DSD: 5alpha Reductase Deficiency. We have known that this is the condition, since the World Athletics regulations ...
... and the testing of those regulations in the Court of Arbitration of Sport in 2019. You can read the judgment here: ...tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user…
... this confirms that athletes like Semenya are karyotypically male. That is, they have male chromosomes. But this might not be the point if we are interested in phenotype. In sport, we are interested in whether athletes have specifically *male advantage* ...
... this depends largely but not wholly on male puberty and the affects of circulating testosterone. If someone's body is completely immune to androgenisation (CAIS cases), then there is, arguably, no male advanatage at all, and these cases are, ethically, quite hard. ...
... but if @DZFOOTBALLDZ are correct, and the condition in question is 46XY 5ARD, ('like Semenya') then this is not a tricky ethical problem.

What is in question is *whether the athlete in question has male advantage* Let's keep our eye on the ball...
... What *doesn't* count for resolving this question?

Your preferred pronouns
How you dress
How you were brought up
What it says on your passport
Your 'legal' sex
Whether you are, or are seen as 'trans' or not.
Your 'race' or ethnicity.
How your genitals look
...
... People on all sides should remember this: I *don't care* how the athlete in question was dressed in their childhood, or how they dress now.

What matters is, as CAS said in 2019, "immutable biological characteristics". The regulations concern ...
... "a group of individuals who have certain immutable biological characteristics (namely a 46 XY DSD coupled with a material androgenising effect arising from that condition)" ...
... and this is important because "It is human biology, not legal status or gender identity, that ultimately determines which individuals possess the physical traits which give rise to that insuperable advantage, and which do not." ...
... We know, for certain, that the possession of the following characteristics is jointly sufficient for an athlete to be biologically male:
i) XY chromosomes
ii) the existence of testes (producing small motile gametes)
iii) the existence of male-typical levels of ...
...testosterone and
iv) sensitivity towards those levels of testosterone such that they drive physiological change through puberty.
Some people have speculated about PCOS and CAIS in these cases.
PCOS cases fail, obviously, on i) and ii).
CAIS cases fail on iv). ...
... But 5ARD cases, covered by the 2018 regulations and meet all four of these criteria.

The standard story about such athletes is just false. In referring to Semenya as a female athlete with abnormally high testosterone levels, the story has barely a nodding acquaintance ...
... with the truth. Semenya is, indeed, legally female. But Semenya is biologically male. As well as being biologically male, CS have normal levels of testosterone, which has had an androgenising effect. (andros = man, genesis = becoming) ...
... (By the way. I think the World Athletics rules are terrible: there should have been no route into female competition from reducing testosterone).

Let's go back to the rational for separate female competition: Male physiological advantage. ...
... again, this is what justifies female sport both in terms of fairness and safety. Male advantage justifies the *existence* of female sport, and it gives the *conditions of eligibility* for the female category - it must exclude male advantage. ...
... Allowing male advantage into female sport unquestionably undermines both fairness and, where appropriate, safety. And this is precisely what the @IOCmedia is licencing.
This is unethical.
I do not believe that female boxers at the Paris games can have given their ...
... fully informed, rational consent to such match ups. I also believe that the post I'm quoting places unreasonable pressure on those boxers.
It is, for those reasons, deeply unethical.

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More from @runthinkwrite

Jul 29
If you refuse to allow males* (see end note) into female sport, are you thereby violating their (human) rights? (as the UN mandate holders seem to think)

Ofc, I think the answer is *no*.

But consider what you need to think first, in order to think that the answer is *yes*. ...
... You need to think that discriminating against (= treating differently) males in this way is unjust.
You need to think that males have a right to compete in female sport (this is the right that is violated)
If males have a right to compete in female sport, ...
... then there is *no* general or individual right to female sport, since sport in which males compete is not female sport.
That means that no individual woman (=ahf) has a right to compete only with women.
That means that female sport *as a whole* is rights-violating ...
Read 7 tweets
Jul 10
A new tack: Two leading advocates of males in female sports have got a new line: broadly that separate sports for women are not fully justified and that we need a massive research programme to establish if they are necessary. ...
... and in the meantime, men should play in female sport so as to be kind to them

Here's Yannis Pitsiladis, in a paper published last month: Image
And here's Madeleine Pape, this afternoon. Image
Read 10 tweets
Jun 24
This is *very* weird, and I need to think about it, and maybe write longform about it:

Caster Semenya, who is male, (see pinned paper) won the Olympic gold medal *twice* - notoriously in Rio in 2016 but *also* in 2012, because ...
... of the disqualification of *female* athletes who were doping with T. Those female athletes - dopers, ofc - were subsequently disqualified and their medals redistributed. This is the latest one. ...
... There's a battle for the 800m this summer, featuring Femke Bol, Audrey Werro, and Keely Hodgkinson, aiming to take down the (doped) WR of Kratochvilova. It's difficult not to think of that competition as just corrupt AF for *decades* ...
Read 5 tweets
Jun 18
For Lausannologists (IOC watchers, that is) Margali Martowicz has just left her post as Head of Human Rights at the IOC. Martowicz was, with Madeleine Pape, the author of the terrible 'Framework Document' of 2021, replaced (that is, junked) by the new, fair, policy ...
... announced earlier this year. It's not for me to judge her overall commitment to human rights. But Martowicz did serious damage to woman's rights to fair sport. It would not surprise me if Martowicz resigned when the new policy was brought in ...
... and has been striking a deal/working out her notice since then.
Still, it reinforces my (still speculative and outsider) view: the IOC has put this to bed.
There's no going back.
There will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, especially in academic circles ...
Read 5 tweets
Apr 16
Important!
The International Olympic Committee has published a series of FAQs abut the new eligibility policy for female Olympic sport.
I haven't gone through it all yet, but it's good to see moves to correct all the misinformation being circulated.
olympics.com/ioc/athletes/m…
Right, I've read through these properly and they are *excellent*. Someone, (or some people) in Lausanne has got a real grip on this. They are thoroughly immersed in the evidence, and argument, and, most importantly, they can write in a clear and definitive way. ...
... the difference between this document and the complete mess of the 'Framework Document' of 2021 is clear. I'm particularly pleased to see two features: a proper account of 'category fairness' and an important distinction between ...
Read 15 tweets
Apr 6
Thanks to @HagFeminist for tipping me off to something that I hadn't noticed before: that the influential body in Norway, the Biotechnology Council, has said that Norwegian athletes should be able to get the SRY screen in Norway, and the law should be changed accordingly.
... this was back in February. This seems to me entirely reasonable. I can see the general point of a law preventing the use of genetic testing for non-medical purposes - to prevent the exploitative use of testing in employment decisions, for example. ...
... but I don't think this carries over to sex testing for sport eligibility. So I think the Norwegian change of view makes sense. It isn't law, yet.
The reason this is significant is because many of the legal academics on the other side make a Very Big Deal ...
Read 7 tweets

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