Mick Hartley

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The Semenya affair

Here's the BBC report on the latest Caster Semenya ruling: 

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favour of double 800m Olympic champion Caster Semenya in a case involving testosterone levels in female athletes.

The 32-year-old South African was born with differences of sexual development (DSD) and is not allowed to compete in any track events without taking testosterone-reducing drugs.

A three-time 800m world champion and 800m and 1500m Commonwealth champion, Semenya has been in a long-running dispute with World Athletics.

Regulations requiring her to have hormone treatment were introduced by the governing body in 2018. Semenya has twice failed in legal battles to overturn the decision.

However, the case at the ECHR was not against sporting bodies or DSD rules – but specifically against the government of Switzerland for not protecting Semenya's rights and dates back to a Swiss Supreme Court ruling three years ago.

In a lengthy judgement published on Tuesday, the ECHR found the Swiss government did not protect Semenya from being discriminated against when its Supreme Court refused to overturn a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), which upheld the World Athletics rules.

It's all a bit abstruse. What's going on? Why should Semenya be forced to take testosterone-reducing drugs?

The whole issue makes no sense unless it's made clear – what the news reports never make clear – that Semenya is a man.

Carole Hooven (author of Testosterone: The Story of the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us) explains:

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In full:

Caster Semenya has won a recent ruling. Caster has a Difference (or Disorder) of Sex Development (DSD), and the press has been misleading the public for a long time about about athletes with DSDs. People with DSDs deserve compassion and to live their lives free of harassment, with access to appropriate healthcare, etc. But cases such as this force the issue of their specific, sex-based biology.

Caster and others with her DSD are not females with "hyperandrogenism," i.e., abnormally high levels of testosterone. They are males with testosterone-producing testes and XY sex chromosomes, and normal levels of testosterone for their sex. They experience the physical benefits of this high testosterone during puberty, which translate into athletic advantages over females. The issue for sports is that athletes with the relevant condition, 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD), may be socialized as female and even be legally female.

5-ARD is caused by a mutation in the gene that codes for the enzyme 5-alpha reductase, which converts testosterone into a more potent androgen, DHT. This androgen interacts with the androgen receptor, like testosterone, and is necessary for the typical development of male external genitalia (penis and scrotum) and the prostate. Without DHT, female-typical external genitalia develop. DHT is also responsible for male-pattern baldness and dark, coarse facial hair, which is why people with the condition have smooth skin that can give a feminine appearance.

Here's relevant bit on DSDs from the most recent Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification for Athletes with Differences of Sex Development, linked to below (pg 2):

"Some individuals have congenital conditions that cause atypical sex development (known as “Differences of Sex Development”, or “DSDs”). In certain cases, this may lead to an individual being assigned at birth a legal sex of female and/or having a female gender identity, notwithstanding that the individual has fully functioning (internal) testes rather than ovaries."

So the “decision makers” are aware that athletes affected 5-ARD are male, and that they experience the benefits of male puberty. The requirement to reduce T to typical female levels isn’t discriminatory, since these are males who are asking to compete in the female category. But more significantly, all the relevant scientific evidence shows that reducing male T in adulthood does not undo the physical benefits of male puberty.

It’s too bad that almost no mainstream media outlets will tell the whole truth. We need to rely on journalism report facts, so we can arrive at informed views about relevant policies. And the truth about sex is important when it comes to protected female spaces, like women’s sports. #sexmatters

Yes, sex matters. This matters:

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