Athletics’ absurd new rules for women

Runners like Caster Semenya are being told that their natural advantage disqualifies them from competition

Caster Semenya, the South African middle-distance runner, is the world champion in the women’s 800 metres. But because of new regulations unveiled on Thursday by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), she’ll never be able to win that race on the global stage again as a woman — unless she submits to medical procedures to alter her body. The regulations, which are to take effect this November, mandate that women athletes with naturally elevated testosterone levels, like Semenya, cannot compete in any races between 400 metres and a mile unless they undergo endocrine treatments or surgery to bring those levels down into what is judged to be the “acceptable” range for females.

Back in the day, dividing sports by gender was easy. People who had been raised as girls competed as women. Those raised as boys competed as men. But the more science we obtained, and the more competitive (and lucrative) sports became, the more officials started insisting we had to be careful not to let athletes who were “really” males compete with “real” females. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the IAAF, the two groups that govern international track and field competition, have tried, over the years, various ways to be “fair”: Making women athletes show their genitals to screeners; testing women athletes to see if they have a Y chromosome; and, more recently, checking their hormone levels to see if they make “too much” testosterone.

In 2012, in response to questions raised about Semenya, the IOC and IAAF issued new rules saying that women found to have hyperandrogenism — androgen levels, including testosterone, closer to or in what is considered the male-typical range — would have to subject themselves to hormonesquashing medical interventions or not play as women.

Caught in this web, the Indian sprinter, Dutee Chand, challenged the rules in 2014. In response, the international Court of Arbitration for Sport required the IOC and IAAF in 2015 to come up with better evidence that their rules made sense. The IOC did more research and decided that it can now at least prove that high levels of androgens in women matter to track performance in races of 400 metres to one mile. Hence last week’s new rule.

A 2014 study by IAAF-affiliated scientists estimates that seven in 1,000 elite women athletes have a Y chromosome with hyperandrogenism, a rate “140 times higher than expected in the general population”. And that seven in 1,000 figure would be even higher if it counted all the differences of sex development that can cause hyperandrogenism.

But the truth is that no elite athlete’s body can be called fully “typical” in a statistical sense, and every other type of inborn advantage is allowed in sports. You can be born with natural advantages in terms of muscle development, oxygen processing, vision — all of those are allowed, without question.

High levels of testosterone

As Chand put it in her court testimony: “I am unable to understand why I am asked to fix my body in a certain way simply for participation as a woman. I was born a woman, reared up as a woman, I identify as a woman and I believe I should be allowed to compete with other women, many of whom are either taller than me or come from more privileged backgrounds, things that most certainly give them an edge over me.”

It’s worth noting that men who naturally make extraordinarily high levels of testosterone are allowed to play without question. Additionally, the World Anti-Doping Agency, which regulates doping in sports, allows men who can prove they have naturally low levels of testosterone to take testosterone supplementation without considering it doping. So how is this just about natural hormone levels and fairness — and not actually about cultural norms of sex and gender?

But women born with differences of sex development are subject to a whole different set of principles. For them, natural advantage is considered unfair, and unlimited testosterone is understood to be something men get to enjoy, even though all women also make it naturally.

In the 1980s, the Spanish hurdler, Maria Jose MartinezPatino, had her life turned upside down when she was discovered to have a Y chromosome. She lost her athletic scholarship. She lost her fiance. And she faced humiliation on the international stage, as did Semenya. The Indian sprinter Santhi Soundarajan attempted suicide after having her sex brought into question in 2006.

The data may be convincing when it comes to the question of what testosterone, on an average, can do for particular athletes in particular sports. But the new policy around this hormone is absurd and cruel. As the lives of Semenya, Chand, Martinez-Patino and Soundarajan show, this is not just a game. ■ Alice Dreger is a historian of science and medicine and the author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice.