🧵World Athletics (the international governing body for track & field competitions & world records) will now require genetic testing to verify female sex. The Guardian says doing this will also "bar athletes with a difference of sex development (DSD) – who are reported female at birth but undergo the physiological benefits of male puberty – from the female category."
This is a misleading comment, and it's brought to you by the erosion of clear & shared language. Unfortunately there's been full buy-in from progressive outlets like the Guardian. theguardian.com/sport/2025/mar… "Assigned female at birth," is often taken to mean, simply, "female." "Reported female" is better, but the casual reader likely doesn't make distinctions between "reported" and "assigned." But either way, are these DSD athletes male or female? Unclear in the article, but not in reality. That's because there's no mention of the fact that the athletes with DSDs who will be barred from the female category are male, with XY chromosomes and testosterone-producing testes. If they experience the "benefits of male puberty," testosterone is having a profound, positive impact on their athletic ability.
The Guardian article can easily give the impression that these athletes are females who happen to have high testosterone, and are being discriminated against for their natural variation. That's not true.
Here's more info (from a previous tweet) on that particular DSD and the relevance for sports: x.com/hoovlet/status…

🧵The Archives of Sexual Behavior recently published a special section on the difficulties scholars are facing in teaching, clinical practice & research in the area of sex & gender. Open access links to the 4 articles (including mine) are below. 1/ I described some of the trouble I’ve had at Harvard in response to speaking about the binary nature of sex, & I make some recommendations about how universities might better handle these kinds of situations in the future. We are telling our stories because #academicfreedom, 2/

"the idea of maternal instinct as something innate, automatic and distinctly female is a myth, one that has stuck despite the best efforts of feminists to debunk it from the moment it entered public discourse." nytimes.com/2022/08/26/opi… The reason that the idea of a "maternal instinct" has stuck is that it is true. The whole point of instincts is that they are "innate," meaning, the capacity is present from birth—natural or inborn. Ready to go given the "right" developmental stage, individual circumstances,

Long 🧵
In his article entitled “Biological Science Rejects the Sex Binary, and That’s Good for Humanity,” Princeton anthropologist Agustin Fuentes informs us that “Science points to a more accurate and hopeful way to understand the biology of sex…
sapiens.org/biology/biolog… that is more conducive to respect and flourishing.” What is this new take on the biology of sex that should replace the “sex binary,” and how will it promote respect and flourishing? Neither question is clearly answered in his essay. What is clear is that Fuentes thinks