[This text file is for possible future revisions/additions to http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html .] More notes about Tested with Reo Eveleth, https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1733-tested . Note: Eveleth followed a two-track narrative structure, starting with the early history of IOC and similar bodies' perception of, and response to, perceived problems of gatekeeping womanhood for sports, and then switching to discussion of 2020s results for current top athletes. Looking Back (track 1): 1928 first track & field at Olympics in Amsterdam. 800 meter race. Linda Radke of Germany finishes way ahead. Finishers looked "tired". Perceived as too taxing for women. Organisers banned the 800 for women until 1960. Sets pattern for men deciding whether women can compete, and whether they are women at all. Recent Developments (track 2, cont'd.) 2021 Christine Mboma of Namibia has many wins. DSD (differences of sexual development) women then banned from middle distances (400, 800, and mile). Mboma "outs" herself as DSD by moving to an even shorter distance, 200 meters. Looking Back (track 1, cont'd.): Very beginning of women's competition in sports showed this attitude: In 1928, women were suspected as being "too manly". 1936 IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) has first policy about "suspicious" women in track & field. Note to prevent confusion: In 2019, IAAF rebranded itself to World Athletics (referenced as "WA", lower down in these notes). Olympics Study Center in Lausanne has old minutes and correspondence from the mandarins of international sport, going back to 1896. Tight-knit group comprising the IOC were all men, all old money. Thinking about this problem is not recorded in the records, very vague. Avery Brundage letter said "feminine girls" need to be protected from competing with "monstrosities". Historians point out that the real discussion was unofficial, literally over beer in clubs. Concerns: 1. Cheaters. (Men trying to pass as women.) 2. Woman who participate might literally turn into men. (This was then believed to be a thing. See "balance theory", below.) 3. Women drawn to sport might not really be women in the first place. This was never explicit. "Balance theory" of sex traits, then-prevalent, assumed this could be tipped, e.g., athletics could turn women into men. 1936 Berlin Olympics: Nazi fascism included rigid gender roles. Sports officials were not seeking logic or precision, but rather control, and later spoke openly of "sex control" as an aim, to mold the women participating to their ideals. Needed an example of the need for this control. Arrived in the form of 1935 revelations about Czech track star Zdeněk Koubek, who had set a world record for the 800 meter dash at 1934 Women's World Games. Was intersex, won as a woman, retired in 1935, then changed sex: Returned his medals, women's athletics records cancelled. About same time, Mark Weston, a British shot putter, participated in the Women's World Games in 1926 and 1930. He retired in the early 1930s, pursued a career as a massage therapist, and transitioned in 1936. 1930s American OC head and IAAF member Avery Brundage wrote to head of the 1936 Olympics, worried about "hermaphrodites" competing, and suggested "a physical examination by medical experts". Wilhelm Knoll, a Nazi sports doctor, wrote an op-ed calling Koubek a fraud and advocated for medical exams to prevent similar transitions, introducing the idea of sex testing in sports. IAAF passed rule allowing for examination at the 1936 Olympics of athletes whose sex was called into question. (First-ever official rule.) Nature of the examination and its criteria were _unstated_. "Testing" happened in the shadows, with vague policies, done on a case-by-case basis, with no official guidance or criteria. Through-line of Koubek to Weston to Ratjen to Walsh https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3007680/ 1960s changed the testing. Context of Cold War and Eastern Bloc women's victories, e.g., the Press sisters from Ukraine winning in 1960 and 1964. (They retired in 1966 when IAAF announced testing of athletes competing in the upcoming European championships.) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irina-Press Probable doping, which was widespread. IAAF established medical commissions to figure out what to do about doping, _and_ to take charge of "sex control" (their words). IAAF decreed in 1966 mandatory examination of all female athletes. E.g., Eighth British Empire & Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica (1966): Peek and poke test (nude parade) in room under the stands. Does she have a vagina? Continued through 1966-67. Raised controversy and were lastingly infamous. Sporting bodies searched for another method, and found the Barr-body genetics test. Murray Barr of Canada had noticed this body in 1948 in cats, a small dark dot in the nucleus of some cells. Found that it correlated with femaleness. Watson & Crick's discovery five years later gave Barr bodies a gene context, an inactivated second X chromosome. 1967, IAAF switched to Barr-body testing. Passing conferred a wallet-sized "certificate of femininity". This started in track & field. Olympics followed suit, 1968 to 1999. Dr. Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, prof. of genetics, 1970, argued in Glasgow against application of this policy at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Had been asked to run the sex-testing lab, refused because he knew Barr-body testing would not solve the officials' problem of excluding men masquerading as women and women who aren't womanly enough. (They had dropped the "balance theory" concern about sport turning women into men.) Murray Barr publicly opposed use of the Barr-body test for checking athletes. In 1966, wrote that "the presence or absence of sex chromatin [Barr body]... is a minor detail in the femaleness or maleness of the whole person." Unfair exclusion of XY women wasn't merely hypothetical: It happened immediately -- though it's not known how many women's careers as athletes were quietly and immediately ended. To read (for me): Sex Testing: Gender Policing in Women's Sports. By Lindsay Parks Pieper . (Urbana : University of Illinois Press , 2016 . x , 250 pp. Paper, $22.95.) Pieper and other scientists have persistently tried to get sports officials to understand they're getting the science wrong. But they hit a brick wall. Murray Barr himself in 1987 wrote to Canadian Olympic Committee saying the use of his Barr-body test in sports "has been an embarassment to me". Officials didn't listen. Prince Alexandre de Merode, head of drug testing policy for the IOC, ran the program from 1967 to his death in 2002, stuck to his pretence of a bright line. 1987, he wrote a letter to the protesting scientists lobbying the IOC, explaining his feelings: "When we carried out the first tests, in 1968, we simply wished to put a stop to the development of a particularly immoral form of cheating, which had been spreading insiduously within high-level sport." In the letter, he doesn't explain what form of cheating he's referring to, but one can infer he means men sneaking into women's competition. de Merode then wrote that sex-testing had solved this problem. He literally declared that the scientists' points were irrelevant, that the officials had made the problem go away and given a clear-cut answer. Some athletes did want some form of test, and anything seemed likely better than the nude parades of 1966-67. And doping had become infamously prevalent, so a widespread attitude was: well, since we'll be tested anyway, they might as well check our sex using testing. Alison Carlson in 1987 came across an article in Women's Sport and Fitness magazine about sex-testing, which IOC was then calling "gender [sic] verification". Alison started reading more, joined forces with the group of doctors fighting against the policy. She'd been a serious tennis player, thought carrying around a "certificate of femininity" was absurd. She was also a budding journalist. Felt scientists just needed to explain to athletes and the public what a travesty this was. Had to find an athlete to speak to. Ran across the 1985 case of Maria José Martínez-Patiño. Alison wrote her an impassioned letter. Telephone call back in a few months. "Please help me. I want to work with you." They conferred for three days. Resulted in 1991 article in Women's Sport and Fitness. Picked up by mainstream media, suddenly got public attention to the injustice. Pressure on officials to actually do something, got ordinary people involved. Much more pressure, letters from scientists, postcards, press attention. Internal pressure within sports organisations. Finally, in 1992, IAAF caved, and dropped sex testing. Just about every medical society came out against these tests. June 23, 1999, the group of scientists fighting testing received a celebratory fax from Swedish geneticist and IAAF official Arne Lundquist, saying IOC had scrapped the tests. 2000 Sydney Olympics were the first Games in decades with no "certificate of femininity". But... new IAAF policy, per Lundquist, was that "the medical delegate shall have ultimate authority in all medical matters. He shall also have authority to arrange for the determination of the gender [sic] of the competitor, should he judge that to be desirable." Lundquist said the IOC would soon have a similar policy. Note: There was no statement of what such a delegate would be looking for, what would rise to the level of true suspicion, and no protocol stating what test would be used, or why. In 2009, sex-testing returned. Recent Developments (track 2, cont'd.): South African sprinter Caster Semenya was what did it: her looks, her muscular appearance, her deep voice, and how fast she is. World Championships for track & field in Berlin. Semenya smoked everyone in the final for the 800 meter. Wild public and private debate and rumors. IAAF General Secretary Pierre Weiss told reporters "She is a woman, but maybe not 100%." Semenya underwent a battery of tests, showing DSD. IAAF offered her team a deal, privately: Suggested she have gonadectomy. (IAAF denies this.) Semenya's team worked out alternative: take meds to lower testosterone, qualifying if she reached a stated level and stayed there for six months. All of this was in secret, and there never was an official policy at all. Side-effects bloating, hot flashes, fatigue, headaches, nausea, mental fog, trouble sleeping, fever. July 2010, Semenya returned to competition, and returned to winning -- but the deal was private and off the books. 2011, IOC press conference proclaiming new rules for both Olympics and WA events. Remarks from IOC president Jacques Rogge show an embarrassingly primitive understanding of the role of hormones in sexual development, essentially testosterone = male, estrogen = female. (Idiot.) WA had a theory that Semenya had an advantage, because of the effects of testosterone during puberty. WA needed something to substitute for the failed Barr-body and SRY-region genetics tests, so they glommed onto testosterone as a basis for the new rule, dubbed the "Hyperandrogenism Regulations". Ceiling for testosterone was set to 10 nanomoles per liter, then 5, then 2.5. Appendix 2 to the rules doesn't exactly state what are deemed reasonable grounds for suspicion of high testosterone, but there are line drawings of differing amounts of hair on the upper lip, the chest, and the back. And also a scale, with more drawings, showing different breast sizes. Book for me to read: "Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography" by Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis There's a widespread belief that DSDs are more widespread in the Global South, but this is unproven. (Several reasons for this belief cited, some racist, some not.) But meanwhile, the 2011 rules were flagging more athletes. Indian sprinter Dutee Chand in 2012 was national champion for the 100 meter under age 18, had several wins, was tested, and was told she could not compete because her "male hormones were too high" and she'd have to lower them -- but she said no. First formal legal challenge: Athletic Federation of India dropped her from the 2014 Commonwealth Games for hyperandrogenism, then also for the 2014 Asian Games. Chand appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). CAS decided in 2015 to suspend IAAF rules in "Dutee Chand v. Athletics Federation of India (AFI) & The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)", finding that there was a lack of evidence provided that testosterone increased female athletic performance, and notified the IAAF that it had two years to provide the evidence. She resumed competing well, 2016 through present. Chand's panel of experts, in the CAS proceeding, showed IAAF didn't actually have any evidence to prove that she had an unfair advantage. But this was a _provisional_ ruling. IAAF (renamed in June 2019 to WA) worked on providing "evidence". (This subthread resumed 5 paragraphs down.) 2022 Christine Mboma and Kenyan sprinter Maximila Imali, 100 meter race. Mbona pulls a muscle, ruining her season. Imali is considered XY DSD by WA, and unlike Mbona is fighting the WA rules in court. 2014 "tests" of Imali, physical exam, blood tests, naturally occurring testosterone. She was nonetheless allowed to compete because court challenges had suspended WA's rules. However, in 2018, WA rolled out new regulations, permitting XY DSD athletes with elevated testosterone to complete in some events but not others. Imali's main event, the 400 meter, was off-limits unless she artificially lowered her testosterone. She was dropped from Kenya's 400 meter team in 2019, the day before she was supposed to fly to a meet in Japan. Athletics Kenya says it "couldn't risk" taking her, but Ismali says she saw a paper claiming she shouldn't be allowed to go because she would ruin Athletics Kenya's reputation. Imali keeps setting national records in the 100 and 200 meter. Spring 2023, another rules change, expanding the rule to all distances. Mboma chose to have her testosterone chemically suppressed. Wasn't ready to give up on racing. Needed to ensure that her serum testosterone reached below the required ceiling. Elize Botha, physician, helped her. Botha says WA gave no help, only the same policy statement repeated. Regs say athletes should "consult their medical teams for advice". In a lot of the world, there is no medical team. Botha spent hours studying technical materials and consulting experts. Officials had said that a regular dose of an oral contraceptive should suffice, but Botha found that this was not consistently keeping Mboma's testosterone below the required level. Eventually switched to a combination of an oral contraceptive and an injection. Mboma has few side-effects, except the injection feels numb. (Something else, but I'd have to re-listen.) Worried about long-term side-effects. World Medical Association has stated that this treatment is unethical, because there is no medical need whatsoever. March 2024, Mbona has kept her testosterone low, as required, for six months. Proof sent off to the authorities. A few weeks later, WA says she's cleared to compete, and can be at the Paris Olympics if she runs a qualifying run time at a qualifying WA meet. This ended up being the same Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi where she'd been injured. But she had a bad run. Imali was watching but disqualifed because she refused to comply. Some spectators were sympathetic. Others felt her bad performance validated the suspicion about DSD athletes. But what does "athletic advantage" mean in sports? What makes one type of advantage fair and another unfair? (Examples of genetic mutations and variations that give advantage. Should we exclude basketball players for being tall?`) Is this something to celebrate, or being a natural-born cheater? CAS agreed that sex-based advantages might require regulation, but required WA to prove how big this advantage was, before allowing their reimposition. The "two years to find evidence" element raised suspicion among researchers. CAS had asked WA a simple question: How big an advantage from testosterone did someone like Semenya or Chand have? Logically, studying this question would require comparing testosterone levels and performance of DSD (women) athletes with non-DSD (women) ones. But WA didn't do that study. There are no such studies. Instead, two WA researchers, Stéphane Bermon and Pierre-Yves Garnier, published a 2017 paper in British Journal of Sports Medicine, looking at testosterone levels of all athletes regardless of DSD status, then argued that they had found evidence that higher testosterone levels means better performance, but only for middle distances, 400 meter race, 400 meter hurdles, and 800 meter race. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/51/17/1309 https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/17/e7 (correction) But critics noticed problems: 1. The researchers were not independent, but rather associated with WA. 2. Experts found their results weird. Why only middle distances? Roger A. Pielke Jr., prof. of science policy at U. of Colorado, said his bullshit detector was ringing. Pielke publicised his misgivings on his blog: https://leastthing.blogspot.com/2018/04/some-resources-on-testosterone.html https://leastthing.blogspot.com/2018/05/reverse-engineering-bermon-garnier-2017.html https://leastthing.blogspot.com/2018/06/iaaf-opens-up-on-testosterone-some.html https://leastthing.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-call-for-bermon-and-garnier-2017-to.html https://leastthing.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-deeper-dive-into-scientific-basis-for.html Other researchers joined in. April 2018, WA announced a new policy, and said it was based (at least in part) on the 2017 study. New rule reimposed the testosterone ceiling, and lowered it to 5 nanomoles per litre, applying it only to middle-distance events. Then, a few months after release of the new policy, Pielke got access to Bermon and Garnier's data, and found many errors of multiple types. 17-22% of the data was simply erronous. Eventually, the authors admitted the issues, and offered a new analysis, where the claimed advantage showed only in one running event. But WA made no change. Only recourse would be in court, so Semenya opened new CAS case against WA in Feb. 2019. (Podcaster talks to one of WA's experts, Richard Joseph Aukus, MD, endocrinologist at U. of Michigan. Aukus says, in essence, DSD women are too male.) Irony: WA says it would never question an athlete's sex or gender. But in the CAS case brought by Semenya, they argued the DSD women affected by their policy are, in their words, "biologically the same in every material respect as male athletes without DSDs". And that, thus, they would allow these women to complete in the male category. The point: After losing the Dutee Chand case, WA's language changed, and they started using language about intersex women like "biological males". Katrina Karkazis points out the language is part of a suite of rhetoric (talking about chromosomes, testes, etc.) designed to be dog-whistles to sell the notion these are men, at which point WA could finesse the requirement to compare DSD to non-DSD women, since men having a 10=12% advantage on track & field is indisputable. Dr. Eric Vilain, pediatrician at UC Irvine, and expert on treating DSDs, had testified for Semenya, and had worked with IOC and WA to set the original 10 nanomole/litre threshold, and is not opposed to regulation, just wants the regulations to make sense. Comparing biological males without DSDs to women with DSDs is just not the same as directly comparing DSD and non-DSD women athletes, and pretending otherwise is illogical. In the Semenya case, her team argued that any advantage she and other DSD women had was minuscule compared to a cis male, and that she didn't even have the women's record in the 800 meter, being the fourth fastest woman runner. WA didn't even try to address that question, and in fact a WA representative argued to CAS that perhaps Semenya just didn't try hard enough. Core legal issue in the 2019 case was proportionality of burden. Semenya testified to the personal health harm. After the hearing concluded, WA made a stunning statement: that "these medications are gender-affirming", that women like Semenya, Imani, and Mbona should want to take them if they really are women. (This was from coauthor Garnier of the 2017 study.) Podcaster asked Aukus, who had testified on WA's side, about this. He says this make no sense. Several researchers concurred. May 1, 2019, CAS released its verdict: Agreed the rules are discriminatory, but that the discrimination is necessary, reasonable, and proportionate to achieve the objective sought. This what green-lighted WA keeping the DSD regulations, expanding them to all sports, and lowering the ceiling from 10 nanomoles/litre to 5, and then from 5 to 2.5. January 2024, Imali planned to bring a case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland in fourth months' time, arguing rules are discriminatory and deny her human rights. "Today, sex testing policies are different and not even called sex testing anymore. The modern version involves 'eligibility requirements' set by individual sports federations, not the IOC. Many federations exclude all trans women and many intersex women and cis women with high testosterone levels. Some use chromosome tests, which were discredited in the 20th century but are now returning." https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/sex-testing-at-the-olympics-the-history-of-discrimination-against-trans-athletes-and-women/ar-BB1qG1at Imali in April 2024, a week from the CAS trial, said she was constantly in touch with people helping her. Struggles to find the money to continue competing, feed herself, pay her coach, get to the track. Arranged to chat by phone every day of the trial, but Imali on day one, instead of answering her call, got a cryptic note asking her to call her lawyers. Case seems to have had some dramatic turn, but none of the parties are talking. Because there's been no decision, Imali cannot attend the Paris Olympics, because she is not allowed to run a qualifying race. Other affected athletes had attended the trial, and had conferred, had had solidarity for the first time, and resolved to no longer take being oppressed. In 2023, Semenya also won a case in front of the European Court of Human Rights, which the Swiss government is appealing. Christine Mboma: Going through regular blood tests and taking meds. But still needs to run a qualifying race by June 30, 2024. After coming in last in the Kip Kano Classic, she ran a small race in Namibia, but didn't do a qualifying finish there, either. Consulted a sports psychologist, decided not to give up. Visited Paris as a tourist, in June, tried for a qualifying time at a race in Ramall, but missed. Last week of June, had her last chance for a qualifying race in Cameroon, strong start, but halfway through gets passed by everyone and finishes last, too slow to qualify. Unclear whether her poor showings were the meds, her hip flexor injury from two years ago, the stress, or all of the above. Finds she cannot get back to peak competition weight. Coach thinks she's been sleeping more than usual. Feels tired, like she can't do things. Many other athletes have been affected. No DSD athlete, to the podacaster's understanding, will be competing in Paris. Among the many others the podcaster followed is Aminatou Seyni from Niger, who also agreed to take the meds. She was cleared to race again in June, but too late to qualify for Paris. Another case is Annet Negesa of Uganda, told in 2012 she could no longer compete, and who agreed to surgery to remove her internal testes. She says, at the time, nobody spoke to her to ensure that she understood the procedure. She thought she was merely going to get an injection to get the testosterone out of her body. She says the surgery and post-surgical care have ended her career. Her story was featured in 2019 Human Rights Watch reoprt "They're Chasing Us Away from Sport". At least three other athletes have had similar surgery. WA claims it never pressures athletes to have such surgery, and it's not required. Another case is Margaret Nyairera Wambui of Kenya, who won gold in 2016's Kenyan National Trials, in the 800 meters -- qualifying for the Olympics. But a lot of the crowd was shouting "not a woman" in Swahili. Piyoshni the atheltes' rights advocate is in touch with 38 athletes affected by these rules, not just in track and field. No non-DSD athletes are willing to talk to the podcaster on the record, though there have always been whisperings and undertones. Review and Possible Solutions: If we keep these regulations, at what age should the genitalia tests and blood tests occur? Another option would be regulations based on better science. IOC parted ways with WA in 2021, saying it was getting out of the business of regulating DSD athletes. That year, it published general principles, e.g., fairness and exclusivity, while leaving it to bodies like WA to make their own rules, but stressing that those rules should be evidence-based, based on data gathered from a population consistent with the athletes being regulated. This implies IOC is suggesting WA is using bad science, since most of its data didn't come from DSD athletes competing at elite levels. But a set of principles are not action. IOC inclusion specialist Madeleien Pape says IOC is attempting a balancing act. It needs sport-specific knowledge to make a reasonable decision about what is fair and meaningful competition, and IOC doesn't have that knowledge, so is unable to decide for each sport what the eligibility rules should be. Another option would be to drop the effort at special rules for DSD women. Let DSD women's possible advantage be just another type of native advantage. Or: Create a third (intersex) category, alongside the sex binary. Or a trans category. Or a non-binary category. Or put all intersx, trans, and non-binary athletes into a single third pool. Problem: A third category requires athletes to out themselves, as either intersex or trans. Not good. The numbers involved are very small. This raises another problem, of practicality. You don't have enough for teams in team sports. Last solution: Stop enforcing the sex binary in sports. The big question: What is fair? Do fairness and inclusion necessarily clash? Note: Transwomen [RM: who transitioned after puberty] are now entirely banned by WA, as of March 31, 2023 (ironically, International Transgender Day of Visibility) -- whereas DSD women can compete with the specified restrictions. Does this difference make sense? Weird conundrum: Advocates for transwomen in sports often argue for policies limiting testosterone in DSD women. For transwomen, suppressing testosterone is gender-affirming care, but it's the very thing that is causing harm to Imali and Mbona. So, advocates for DSD women and transwomen are at odds with each other. But, there's also a lot of confusion about the difference betwen the two groups. Many say WA is contributing to that confusion. In the 2019 CAS case, WA's lawyers tried to explicitly link the questions of transwomen and DSD women -- trying to create a narrative that both are a threat that must be protected against. Sylvia Camparesi, bioethicist at King's College, London, thinks it's no accident that WA is conflating trans and DSD athletes, in part because, if WA were to permit DSD athletes to compete without any regulations, it would be untenable to maintain a ban on trans athletes. In the WA mindset, both are the same thing, "biological males". Camparesi thinks this was strategy, to support the suggestion that, if we don't regulate DSD, then we'll end up with transwomen running away with all the women's trophies. Nobody at WA was willing to talk or answer questions for this program. More at: https://www.tested-podcast.com/ (End of notes about "Tested".) Article about Koubek and the early (1930s) history of trans people and the Olympics: https://www.vox.com/culture/364032/trans-athletes-olympics-2024 Science-challenged standard from the International Boxing Association. https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/08/01/what-to-know-about-olympics-gender-debate-after-italys-angela-carini-withdraws-from-womens-boxing-match/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Yu-ting https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/07/sport/athletics-testosterone-rules-negesa-imali-running-as-equals-dsd-spt-intl-cmd/ 2026 IOC bushwah: https://apnews.com/article/ioc-olympic-transgender-female-eligibility-520cd9cee152a312767a667acf77dbc8