These last years have been troublesome, in some ways - but to see National Governing Body after NGB, and International Federation after IF coming out, (albeit some more clearly than others) for the integrity of female sport - has been a joy.

It exposes something important ...

https://twitter.com/IceHockeyUK/status/1898010780122902952

... The TRAs took a top-down approach. TRAs captured the policy making apparatus at a high level - like the IOC - and 'retraining' in various bits of convoluted language was pushed hard, as a substitute for policy. So they never really established a justifiable, rational, policy. The IOC's ...

Three reasons why this study is worthless, in my view. These are not technical reasons to do with study design, though there are those as well. I'll group the reasons under three headings: 1) Performance metrics, 2) Body metrics, 3) Fair sport...

https://twitter.com/EvaPoen/status/1893296304584831183

...So: 1) Performance metrics. We know, already, that lots of different variable inputs, like training load, can affect performance metrics. Those who push t-reduction assume that some (small) reduction in performance generates conclusions about fairness and categories. But they fail to provide any argument to that effect.

We know that T-reduction may have some effect on some performance metrics.

So can lead weights.

So what?

So. I've been looking at the World Athletics consultation on DSDs, announced earlier this week, and I think I've spotted a shift. If so, it's good and important.🧵
Here's what the consultation document says, side by side with what the IAAF said at CAS in the Semenya case (2019)
.. I should say that I think WA (IAAF: they're the same organisation) have been trying to do the right thing for quite a while, so none of this is an attack on their will.

I think the new move is to say 'we're not interested in your gender identity, it's not relevant, we don't judge or question it, that's up to you. ...

A couple of reflections about process, as we get to the end of a fluffed opportunity after a years long process. I've been involved in quite a few of these eligibility discussion, as you might expect, and still the best model is @WorldRugby: Two days, in a big room, face to face, with lots of different perspectives argued out. ... ... This is very different from a series of Zoom presentations over several months, with none of the 'experts' cross-questioning each other. It's a *deliberative* model you need. It's an *iterative* model.

So @worldtriathlon has just released new eligibility rules fro Transgender Athletes. The embargo on these rules passed about two hours ago, so you can see them and download them here.

The politest way to describe these is as a bit of a curate's egg.
triathlon.org/documents In this thread about the new eligibility rules I’ll analyse them, saying what I think they get right, what they get wrong, and what these rules say about the developing and changing regulation of female sport, and the fight to preserve the integrity of the female category.

The regulations are difficult to sum up, because they are a bit of a mess. If you really want a TL:DR: I think they are deeply confused, to the point of being incoherent, but in practice likely to be OK.

I think that it’s unlikely that, under these regulations, any male triathlete will get to compete in the female category. I can’t be certain of this: World Triathlon has left itself open to having its own Lia Thomas moment. If this happens, it will only have itself to blame. I think the proposals are, in part, unethical, and in some respects cynical, but that this won’t turn out to be a huge problem in practice.

Perhaps the best way two understand this is to start with two positions: the first is that of the Fair Sports Brigade, and the second is the T-suppression sports scientists. The FSB (people like @FondOfBeetles @cathydevine56 @Scienceofsport and me) tend to prefer a Female category and an Open category. We are also critical of a division between elite and non-elite sport, holding that women have a right to fairness at all levels of sport. I should add that some of us (including me) were consulted in the WT process.

Well, we got Female and Open, but we also got a division between elite and non-elite sport. And the T-Suppression people, like Yanis Pitsiladis and Joanna Harper got the elite policy.

This is very odd, and interesting, because so far, lots of these policies have differentiated between elite and non-elite, but the other way around: the elite have had fair sport secured, whilst the non-elite have been told to ‘be kind’ and allow males who identify as women to compete in the female category...

This @ECB_cricket response to the widespread calls for a boycott of the upcoming match between En gland and Afghanistan is interesting. I'll be a bit charitable, and then a bit analytical 🧵
bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/… ... Whilst it's easy to see this as a rebuff to those calling for a boycott, I'm not sure it's as simple as that. The ECB say:

"A coordinated, ICC-wide approach would be significantly more impactful than unilateral actions by individual members."

And this is *true.* ...

It's been clear for a while that there is a shift in the argument from the other side, away from the claim that T suppression makes it fair for TW/TiM to compete in the female category. ... ... I think the T suppression argument (which was never much good) has collapsed. Now the advocates of males in female sport have gone in two directions. ...

There's a new edition of the Sociology of Sport Journal (@SSJ_Journal) and it's making me twitch and grind my teeth. I still can't get over the intellectual dishonesty and sloppiness of some contributions to the debate over sport eligibility. Here's an example from a ... ... sometime interlocuter here @MichaelSabres14.

Michael Burke wants to argue against Gender Critical Feminists so much that he seems to have forgotten some basic standards of intellectual discourse. I'll unpick this step by step.
Here's the paper ($) ...
journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/…

OK, so I'll indulge in a Friday thread here, on a couple of papers that have come out in a new journal, and Open Access, because I think they show something important ... ... there are three contributions: first a paper from Hamilton, Pitsiladis, second a critical letter from @TLexercise. @ChrisKirk_ASP @BrowngaGreg @MaryOConnorMD and Noel Pollock, and third, a response from H,P, et al. ...

On the claim about Banda, Khelif, Semnya et al, there are perhaps two philosophical issues that it would be useful to disentangle. Here's a thread in which I try to do this. ... ... The first question is 'what is sex?' But, rather than address that head on, lets take a much simpler and narrower question: 'what is the appropriate criterion of sex in sport?' ...

It's good that @BBCSport have given this some coverage: kudos to Jean and the many people who made this happen. I'm struck by the following slippage from @FA 🔽. Here come a few comments:

https://twitter.com/JeanHatchet/status/1858521317642781051

... The T suppression model doesn't work for lots of reasons, - and I don't buy it at all - but one is exemplified in this sentence: what is an 'appropriate' length of time to 'minimise' any advantage? You'll see that there are *two* variables here: ...

An interesting feature of the Coe/IOC reporting is this counterposition A few comments follow ... ... It's true that many of the TRAs in sports academia and amongst international NGOs cloak their demands in human rights talk. Amongst these are organisations like @Sport_Rights and the increasingly notorious @EthicsInSPORT. See, for example this ludicrous statement that ...

New paper out from Sadamasu, et al.
Its a broadly empirical paper, showing that transmen tend not to change category after transition (continue still compete with females) and stay at the same level of competition...
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… ... whereas transwomen change category to compete in the female category and tend to go up a level in competition.
Before you file this away under, 'Well, knock me down with a feather: whodathunk it?' I think it's important to get this empirical work out there, and I know that the ...

Preliminary (but long) thread on the charge in the Williams et al @AdamRutherford letter that mandatory sex screening is a "Coercive Offer"
In our reply we make the quick point that, if this was true, other enforcement of eligibility rules would also be coercive offers. ... and this is true, and was enough to say, given word limits.
But this argument - that there's no morally relevant difference between our proposal and others that are readily accepted - isn't enough.
The whole posing of the question in this way is misguided and strains the ...

Suppose something (that is false) was true. Suppose that the opposition to Blair Hamilton playing for Sutton United or to Valentina Petrillo competing in the female category at the #Paralympics2024 was based on simple prejudice, like overt racism. What would follow? ... ...to my mind it would follow that the FA should suspend Sutton United, and exclude all the female players who objected from all competition. ...

Personal Announcement (thread)

I have agreed to settle a long-running legal dispute with my employer @OpenUniversity and a colleague. Here is the agreed statement: ... I can't comment on the settlement but I can say that I very much welcome it.

Unlike other disputes involving GC academics, I have not needed to crowdfund this process, because I have been supported and legally funded by my union @ucu doing what a union ought to do...

My comments on CAIS cases, and my endorsement of @michaelpforan's comments have been misunderstood. I hope this isn't wilfull. Here's a shot at explanation of my view - which is 'CAIS cases are genuinely tricky'. ... ... I think that in most cases the sport argument is fairly straightforward, but this is an area in which there is a genuine intellectual and ethical difficulty. It should not need to be said, but I'm profoundly committed to the integrity of women's sport, and MF is, too...

The logic of 'strict liability' in dope tests is this: If you have a banned substance in your body, then you may have an unfair advantage. That possibility of advantage is *still there* if a competitor spiked your drink, or you inadvertently took a contaminated supplement... ... the fact that you have done nothing wrong, were unlucky, or were, at the maximum, negligent, does not alter the fact of advantage. An Anti-Doping Rule Violation has been committed, simply by the presence of a banned substance in your sample...

'Legal' or 'passport' sex cannot be the basis of eligibility rules in sport for two *very* obvious reasons ... ... 1) Legal sex does not map across to male physiological advantage. It's male physiological advantage rooted in biological sex that determines the fairness and safety of eligibility rules for sex categories in sport...

This threatening and distracting post is, itself, unethical (in my view). Here's why I think this:

https://twitter.com/DZFOOTBALLDZ/status/1818592113954562251

... 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 ...

So the ever reliable @seaningle asked the key question at the @iocmedia prezzer just now, about the two male boxers in the female competition. Here are some comments on the answer from Mark Adams, for the IOC... ... Adams said that the two boxers in question were designated as female on their passports.

But this - 'passport sex' - is not the right criterion for assessing male advantage (and male risk) in sport. As CAS correctly determined in 2019: