Last week, World Athletics released a new set of recommendations surrounding the participation of athletes with sex variations. The top line is that if the recommendations are adopted, “DSD athletes” (like Christine) would no longer be able to compete at all at the elite level.
Unsurprisingly, Henk and Christine are upset. “It’s crazy putting them through this and then turning it around,” Henk told me. Christine and her teammate Beatrice Masilingi are both training hard and competing in the indoor season, and excited to get back out there for the spring. They have been taking the medications, working through the side effects, playing by the rules. These regulations, if adopted, could end their careers entirely.
You can find the document itself here. Below I’ve gone through some of the most frustrating and confusing bits of this new document.
The first thing to know is that these are not yet officially adopted rules. They are a set of recommendations, made by World Athletics based on a “consultation process” via a Working Group on Gender Diverse Athletes that they ran in March of 20231. The recommendations were presented to the World Athletics council in December and approved and are now being made public for “stakeholder consultation.” At the bottom of the document, WA lists a series of questions that it would like feedback on that it will ostensibly take into consideration when deciding whether to adopt these rules.
In theory, if enough athletes and coaches (in particular those who are not DSD athletes) speak up against this, WA might decide not to implement the rules. Now would be an amazing time for athletes who have been outspoken about opportunities for women in sports to use their voices for good, to help advocate for their more marginalized colleagues.
With that said, let’s look at the recommendations themselves.
As has become the norm, WA begins by saying that they do not “judge or question gender identity.” They then go on to deploy the same language we talked about in the show, around “biological sex” and the need for a clear “biological” division between male and female categories in sports.
A few specific claims I’d like to highlight here:
“There is no new countervailing evidence that would suggest that transgender women and androgen sensitive XY DSD athletes are biologically different to each other in relation to the design and goals of the Female Category.”
In other words, WA believes that nobody has sufficiently proven to them that DSD athletes and trans women are not the same, biologically. In reporting Tested, I asked a couple of doctors about this, and they all were very clear that they believed that new evidence didn’t need to be provided to this effect because it’s already well known to the medical community. The key phrase here is “in relation to the design and goals of the Female Category.” Later in the document they outline the “modern goals” for the Female Category as:
a. equality and fairness for female athletes,
b. growing the commercial value of the category,
c. using the category as a vehicle to empower females within Athletics and throughout society.
These are subjective goals — which are fine to have, but the idea that science could provide evidence that proves anything about trans or DSD athletes in relation to these goals makes no sense.
“Some XY DSD athletes and medical ethicists are concerned about the medical risk-benefit calculus for athletes with XY DSD who do not experience gender dysphoria and would not undergo treatment if it was not to comply with the sport’s testosterone suppression requirements.”
This one is particularly frustrating to me, personally. They have turned the ethical objection to asking women to take testosterone to compete — an obligation they themselves invented — and turned it back around against these women as an argument for banning them.
“Some human rights experts have also become concerned about the human rights of female athletes.”
Here they specifically cite the strange and controversial UN report we covered in this past newsletter, one that was met with a lot of pushback from experts in the space. Here we have a study, in real time, of how this kinds of faux consensus is built.
World Athletics then goes on to make some recommendations for policy changes. They want to merge the trans and DSD policies into one. And in that they make a triumphant return to (drumroll please) chromosomes.
“This recommendation proposes that World Athletics affirm both its longstanding design for its Female Category as a space where XX athletes can compete only against each other.”
And to affirm that, World Athletics is suggesting that:
“in advance of and as a pre-condition for any athlete’s competition in the Female Category at elite level, World Athletics should be in possession of test results that establish their eligibility.”
In other words, going back to a blanket mandatory chromosome test for all female athletes. The very thing that existed for thirty years at both the IOC and WA. The thing that scientists and doctors and athletes spent decades fighting against.
In the language of this document, any woman with a Y chromosome is considered a “biological male.” They then go on to say that these “biological males” can only compete in the female category if they are “completely insensitive to androgens.”
What this means is that by the language of these rules, Maria Patiño (who you heard about on episode three), would be considered a “biological male.” She might be allowed to compete in the women’s category, but only if she is “completely insensitive” to androgens, which is something that is not easy to prove. Most people have some sensitivity to androgens, even if just a little2. Christine Mboma, Max Imali, Caster Semenya, Dutee Chand, Aminatou Seyni and the rest? Not allowed to compete at all.
Those who took the drugs, hoping to play by the rules and be allowed to keep their careers? It’s unclear what might happen to them. The document does hint at the idea that they might be accomidated in some way — the document suggests that WA “adopt measures to address the reasonable reliance interests of those who are currently in the pipeline.” But they don’t say what those measures might be.
The recommendations also say that “This recommendation proposes initiatives aimed at supporting all elite athletes, including gender diverse athletes, and at ensuring that World Athletics’ eligibility rules are understood by all stakeholders and by the public.” And “The initiatives would also ensure that elite gender diverse athletes – those who, like all elite athletes, are among the best in the world according to their age, biological sex, and skill – are supported as they compete in their designated Categories.”
At no point do they say what these “initiatives” might be. And I’ve talked to these “gender diverse athletes” and let me tell you, they certainly do not feel supported.
All told, this is a return to an earlier era of sex testing. Mandatory cheek swabs or dry blood spot analysis for every single female athlete in order to compete at the elite level3. Making Tested I often joked that it felt like reporting on a dark and twisted game of wack-a-mole. And here we are again, the chromosome mole returns.
I’ve heard all kinds of theories in the last 24 hours about why this is happening, none of which I can really confirm. Coe is, as I talked about here, running for President of the IOC. Some people have theorized that he wants to be able to say that he had already “sorted out” the issue of DSD athletes at WA as part of his campaign. Others have told me they think that the election of Trump and the surge in transphobic bills and Executive Orders here in the United States has emboldened Coe to take a harder line. The lack of a CAS update on the case we covered on the show might have something to do with it as well. I don’t know. It’s all speculation at this point.
No matter what, the athletes who have worked so hard and tried their best to follow the regulations, are heart broken right now. I’ve spoken with a handful of them, along with some lawyers and advocates, and they’re all trying to figure out what to do next.
I hope we see athletes step up in support of these women. I hope there is a push from the medical and ethics community to tell World Athletics to reconsider. I hope that political leaders who have sway in the international sports world speak up.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this, and let you all know as things develop.
- The names of the members of that working group can be found here. None of them are particularly sympathetic to the case of DSD athletes. ↩︎
- We talked here about the various types of androgen insensitivity here if you want a refresher. ↩︎
- The rules here are very explicit about how this is only for elite level competition. I’ve always found this attempted olive branch a little frustrating. First of all: in many sports the line between elite and amateur is blurry. Second of all: when do you start testing a kid? When they’re in middle school and start dreaming of going to the Olympics? Imagine being an athlete, training hard and getting really good, dreaming of the Olympics, only to then be told “actually this is where your time ends.” ↩︎
