Choose your Own Sex- Confused about the Caster Semenya Ruling? This is For You!

                                      Choose your Own Sex                                                              

Male is XY, female is XX-> yes or no

Male is penis, female is vagina-> yes or no

Male is testosterone, female is oestrogen -> yes or no

*count your yeses and/or your nos*

1 or more yeses? I KNOW YOU WANT TO LOOK AT WHAT'S UNDERNEATH, have a cheeky wee read. This article is your business even if Caster Semenya's medical documents are not...

3 nos? Read for shits and giggles but you already understand basic science, congrats.

If you don't like reading here's a podcast/radio thing with my uni lecturer, Alun (listened for the science, stayed for the soothing Welsh accent).

If you’ve watched the best romcom and cult films of all time you’ll have seen consequences of testosterone abuse in male bodybuilders. In ‘50 Fifty First Dates’ the brother is a comic character because he so poorly covers up his doping behaviour and gives it away with that squeaky voice. Anyone remember Robert Paulson in ‘Fight Club’?

More testosterone doesn’t necessarily mean ‘more male’ because of the way we all have both oestrogen and testosterone and they can actually interact with each other and change each other’s production rates and things.

   

Pop-culture has been trying to tell you that for ages, even if you aren’t sciencey.

But are they a man or a woman? WE NEED TO KNOW. If you go through any kind of Biology education you’ll be presented with the two sex chromosomes- XX for woman and XY for man. These sometimes come with stereotypically male and female traits. What you really need to know is, whispers, there are more than two, woohoo!

Sometimes, if you’ve got a good teacher, they’ll tell you about the others- a singular X or XXY, Turner’s and Klinefelter’s and Double Y Syndrome and XXX+ Triple X Syndrome that challenge the binary. These are very rare but you know what’s rarer? A human that can break the 100m World Record…

If your personal definition of male and female is through external sexual reproductive organs

 You might be confused  when you learn that some XY individuals- if they have a very slight genetic mutation can be insensitive to testosterone and be born with what quacks like your average looking vulva (external bits) but be genetically ‘male’ and not have a full-on vagina (the passage to the womb because no womb). You know what occupation is perfect for T resistant individuals? Modelling! Some incredibly successful models are intersex with perfect boobs, minuscule fat mass and that to-die-for, no-hip pelvis (actually due to caesarean sections women with narrow  pelvises are surviving through childbirth so that particular ‘wide hip’ female trait is disappearing). If that’s your definition, genetics and external genitalia will sometimes be at odds and you might want to check your Western Beauty standards too…

If your definition is ‘sex hormones’ oestrogen and testosterone

Then you’ll also run into trouble because you women who go through the menopause (or very old men) have a drastic decrease in both oestrogen and testosterone to such low levels that they may be neither male nor female. Same with people with eating disorders/relative energy disorder whose bodies stop producing hormones as a last-ditch to save calories.

Even with no genetic mutation the levels of ‘male’ and ‘female’ hormones can differ widely amongst individuals and at different times of the day and the month that there is no ‘one or other’. There are general ‘ranges’ like there are for wingspan and leg length but Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps got applauded for being genetic outliers. Applauded for being supermen.



(I read another article which said the Phelps Usain argument was invalid because sport classifies on sex, not arm or leg length.This is a valid point worth considering. So sport classifies on sex. Yet, there is not ONE thing that makes you male or female. It's a continuum or a spectrum like colour. A very, very complex continuum.

NOT THIS

MORE LIKE THIS

There's not a point where you can make a clean cut. So the IAAF have made a messy cut, a bloody and damaging cut and it's my female performance category you're cutting into, MINE. I have issue with who is doing the cutting because it isn't scientists. It's like your operating surgeon being switched out for a butcher who is ignoring the medical textbook and shutting his eyes.


Scientists know there are huge numbers of little variables that go into what we know as sex. Chromosomes are one tiny variable, hormone sensitivity, if you menstruate or not, if you use the pill and historic discrimination of access to sport. 

Men and women share portions of all these little variables and at some point along the spectrum the 'androgenic effect of the 'male' variables' club together to make men around 10% faster in the elite running discipline over all distances. 

At the same time, all the 'estrogenic effects of the 'female' variables' club together to make women around 10% weaker. Where the estrogenic effects are concerned though it's just a hunch. Science has not done nearly enough investigation into 'female' variables, so we basically have no idea how these variables impact performance. Caster has many of these estrogenic effects to make her performance well below your male sports category. 

She also has an unknown group of variables which currently make her women's 800m world champion. What I'm saying is the biggest variable might be her leg length difference just like it was for Usain- maybe Usain had much less testosterone than his competitors? That fact might have blown this debate out the water. But his hormone levels weren't available to the public. Because men are allowed to be supermen without investigation into exactly what makes them men.)
Addition made 2 days after original publish date on 5/5/19

I think the obsession over testosterone in females is so typical of a male dominated sports governance- it’s not all about dicks or rather gonads (the site of testosterone production in men, women produce testosterone too though WHOAH). But men are allowed to be super-strong and women are not. The site of this almighty and coveted masculine power…Who runs the world? Old, white men who are, SO IRONICALLY, dependent on Viagra, sorry Beyonce. Wait is that a man on your logo IAAF? By your definition I think it is...

When women show the same type of genetic abnormality- this time in testosterone production and/or sensitivity (you can have really high testosterone levels and no sensitivity remember) they are held-back. Similarly, my team mates still stress out about how muscly they look. Men don’t own the right to muscles and that sleek lean look. At the same time, I’m your classic big-hipped, fat-conserving female phenotype and I constantly feel pressure from the media to lose weight and look a bit more athletic. Stop policing our bodies, everyone!!!

Men don’t own the right to be strong. But this is what the IAAF are saying- you can be strong but not too strong if you want to be in within our definition. We must have all our female athletes look good in crop tops otherwise it won’t be good to watch, duh! 

 It’s probably not even the testosterone difference that makes Caster stronger but if she gets breast cancer or an increased heart attack and stroke risk from oestrogen use it might make her weaker or…dead. The International Medical Association have strongly advised that no doctor carry out the tests the IAAF are asking because they breach the Helsinki human rights agreement.

Caster isn’t the aberration here. The IAAF is.

The one, poorly conducted study that the IAAF have based this decision on is wrong in almost every way. How do we know? Because science has distanced itself from it in almost every way. Their study was akin to the cigarette companies doing inhouse studies to say their products were entirely safe. They want Caster out and so they’ve made it so.

This is what women look like IAAF, get used to it but you don’t know because you don’t give us the scientific studies we need!

You do one substandard study that is fatally flawed and say that it’s enough because who wants to give women the time and access to real data that they need to be true performance athletes? Not you IAAF. I love science and what it can achieve. I’d fully support scientific studies to identify just what female variables were performance enhancing or not! You are teaching society scientific studies don’t matter. Oh yes they do. Women are so underrepresented in sports science data it is ridiculous. More please.  

I wrote this after alllll my athlete friends asked for my Scientist-athlete opinion. Trying to write up my MSc project and start my racing season. This I assure myself will be quicker than having 11 different chats! Just a quick messy one. Someone help me with my screen layout...how awful is it.

If you like reading and want more:

Here are three more good reads---

-this personal account

and

-this more sciencey one

and 

-this fully sciencey one