I'm reading the sportsgene by Epstein and it is amazing - fascinating, especially that when specialists were asked to do this they could not find an easy way of doing it - the genetics involved are ridiculously complicated and the lines between Male / Female simply are not that clear cut

Crocodile Dundee had a pretty good system, if I recall.

Comedy.

This will make a formidable human interest story during the hundreds of hours of coverage during the Olympics. It will be interesting to see if Chand gets to the finals in the 100 m.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

I'm guessing that NBC doesn't touch it.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Thank you for saying this. I have been telling people for years that gender, as we know it, is a social construct - not a biological one. Each person has to be considered holistically to determine whether they are 'male' or 'female'. Obviously we could use genetics, but as you have probably learned, genetic females can represent as males and vica versa. It isn't common but it is regular enough that we know about it. What bothers me is that this almost always targeted at females and the tests/questions they use are invasive and insulting.

Because that is where the issue lies?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

The problem is the criteria and the methodology. The first real ethical problem I have is for the amount of effort that goes into it, how many people have they found who were men who decided that what they want to do is turn into a woman so they could compete in an easier field of athletes. What is normally happening is that someone who has been passing as female for their entire life is being asked to 'prove' they are a woman because they have broad shoulders and good muscle tone. If you can't see the dilemma with that then you aren't sensitive enough. Ask a random woman if they would be cool with being prodded (literally) to confirm they are indeed a woman.

You complained that this is almost always targeted at females. I responded that it is likely because that is where the issues are, not that there isn't a dilemma. How would sex testing not be targeted at women? As uncommon as it might be for there to be an issue with a woman's gender, I'm guessing it is almost unheard of for there to be an issue with a man's gender in sports.

As for being sensitive: being married for 20 years this fall, and the father of two daughters, lends some amount of sensitivity to such issues.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Except 99% of the time you're wrong.

Let me rewind and put into context that when I say "you" I didn't necessarily mean your person but in general when people talk about this issue they tend to forget that there is a person who we are essentially accusing of lying about something so core to their being and then inspecting the most private parts of them based on some sort of masculinity scale to determine whether the woman is 'too manly' to compete in women's sport. It is nauseating.

You're right that the impulse to test come from questionable motives, i.e. "This person doesn't look like we think a woman should look." That thought process frustrates me, because I think women(and men) should be able to look however they goddamn well please without their gender being questioned. You also correct that testing for simply X/Y is also misguided to simply ensure a fair women's field.

However, if nothing is done about people with outlying biology, it seems like women's sports could lose quality in competition and potentially frustrate a large portion of the population. As an example, this year Caster Semenya is just going to destroy the olympics in the 800m, almost everyone agrees. There is speculation that she could win the 400 and 1500 if she really wanted. Of course, the opposite argument is that all sorts of people have outlying biology in other ways that allows them to be excellent at sports and we don't handicap those people. However, this issue seems to come down to simply testosterone.

As a side note, most of my thoughts on this are not my own. This article/interview I found very informative: http://sportsscientists.com/...rt-qa-joanna-harper/ .

It is nauseating but what's the alternative? If we stop trying to divide athletes into men and women then in almost every instance any athlete with female characteristics of any sort will become irrelevant. Paula Radcliffe becomes average, Mollie Huddle's new 10-K AR becomes a decent club time.

Setting up a separate corral within sport for women requires strictly regulating who gets to play in that corral. How do you effect that strict regulation without being invasive? In society at large it doesn't matter. Whatever your thoughts on the fluidity of gender the % of people who are intersex or identify with a different gender is tiny and doesn't (or shouldn't be allowed to) impact how they interact with everyone else. In sport the same is not true. There's a good chance 5/8 finalists and all 3 medals in the women's 800m in Rio will go to athletes believed to have some intersex characteristics. Unless we figure this out the same will be true in many more events 4 years from now.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

There is no alternative and we shouldn't be testing women for gender, period. If you have been passing as a woman for your entire life (I am deliberately not including people who transition from male to female) but you happen to have nice broad shoulders and narrow hips - that is not enough to say this woman needs to be prodded around and then what...she is determined to be 'too masculine', what does that do to this poor athlete? You can tell this is primarily men who are engaged in this because it is so totally asinine that only a man could have thought it up. I think the issue is we take sport WAY too seriously, if we start prodding women to judge their level of masculinity we are going too far.

BTW my opinion on this is informed by an in-depth article that was done by Real Sports last season which focused on an African female runner. If you have access to HBO NOW or if you can find it on you tube it is totally worth the watch.

THIS.

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http://www.jt10000.com/

I worked with a female shotputter that was very proud to show her IOC gender identity card back in 1988. With all of the purported East German and USSR shenanigans of the time, female throwers were under a lot of scrutiny.

The whole topic is very difficult.

Surely you jest. Gender is not biological. And the emperor is wearing a fine suit.

sure it sucks for the person who has always considered themselves a woman to be told they're too much of a man to compete as a woman. but its pretty crap for the woman who misses out on an olympic medal because 3 people who could just as easily lived their lives as men took the medals.

if you're going to have gender separate competitions you have to draw a line somewhere. the reality is as you say that gender is a continuum rather than a definitive 2-state set so there is no clear way to differentiate gender so someone is always going to end up in a grey area.

the only option is to say there is no such thing as gender and have open competition which then means pretty much all women should give up competitive sport.

if you're not clearly disabled you don't go to the paralympics. if your not clearly old you don't compete in masters grades. if you're not clearly a woman why would you be in a women's competition?

i can also see though that while i am clearly a man (though some may question my shaved legs), like probably most here as endurance athletes, i am not the most manly man ie i am lean rather than a muscle bound hulk. as such i am never going to succeed at weight lifting etc but i can beat most running and cycling. we're all unique and suited to different things regardless of gender

Come on, really? So you punish a woman who has more masculine traits. Why not ban tall people from basketball? This is why I think we take this too seriously. You actually think this is a reasonable practice. The line is simple, you were born and given a female name and live as a female as long as you can remember...you are a female in the eyes of sport. Imagine this being done to men, I am sure your attitude would change at least a little bit. We aren't talking about hermaphroditic people (intersex people are not common, and extremely uncommon in sport); we are talking about honest to god women who are being told they may be 'too much of a man' to compete. Is this not disgusting to you?

We don't divide basketball into tall and short leagues. We do divide sports into men's and women's competitions. When that is done a line must be drawn or the division is meaningless.

Thank you Pat for putting the energy into expressing these views, as clearly as possible, FWIW I agree with you.

I think one of the challenges (at least in the US) is that we are just beginning as a society to think critically about these topics, I know that even just several years ago I would have probably had different opinions and views largely because at the time I never seriously pondered these issues of equality.

Good luck with that, when the Russians or Chinese introduce their women's Olympic pursuit team that weighs more than the Alabama defensive line, and they tell the world that these women were given female names at birth and lived as females their whole lives. And really, what is a female name? Is Leslie or Lesley female? Crap, I cannot remember. A work colleague of mine was named John, and she clearly identified as female. She was even born with a vagina and everything. I guess we will have to convene the international court of naming and identification.

When you try to legislate to the exception, especially a theoretical exception, then you create a system so hopelessly complex that it is meaningless and unenforceable.

I wanted to interject that, from what I've read, it is becoming a much bigger and more common issue than many people realize. Despite being very uncommon in the population, intersex athletes are in fact massively overrepresented at the highest levels in women's sports. For example, according to Ross Tucker, it is very likely that 5 of the 8 competitors in the women's Olympic 800m race finals will be intersex.

This raises a rights issue because it is hard to fairly balance everyone's rights. We want intersex people to have a fair way to compete. Making them compete as men means that they likely will not be very competitive at the Olympic level. On the other hand, if we allow them to compete as women then it seems like that may mean that people born as women (non-intersex) will not be very competitive at the Olympic level.

In the end if you have two competitions (men's and women's) you have to draw the line somewhere and, since there's no clear cut distinction, anywhere you draw it some people will be close to the line and disadvantaged. We are in the process of figuring out for ourselves where we are comfortable drawing the line.

I personally liked the "testosterone test". I.e., regardless of your genes, if your body produces *and* uses testosterone then you have to compete as a man. This seems like a pretty good measure of exactly why we need to draw a line between men and women in sport. (As an aside, that test has currently been stayed by CAS for further review, so this year there are athletes competing as women whose bodies produce and use testosterone.)

The issue is not broad shoulders and narrow hips. In the case you refer to it is believed to be internal testes and, very relatedly, testosterone levels in excess of 10 nmol/L which is 3x higher than a level that would cover 99% women (I'm cribbing this from the Science of Sport Article btw). In my view she is a woman because she identifies as one and that applies in every aspect of life. With the possible exception of sport (and fwiw I appreciate her predicament and admire her courage in the sporting sphere). If you don't want to make the sporting exception that's fine - and a logically coherent position - but it amounts to telling every aspiring female 800m runner that doesn't have internal testes and astronomical testosterone levels to pick another career. I'm surprised anyone would take that position without some hesitation but, as I say, each to their own.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek