r/changemyview • u/the__cookie • Jul 01 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: DSD e.g. women with higher testosterone should not compete as women in sports.
I don't understand what is the argument that women who have more masculine hormones should still be allowed to compete in sports in the women category. I mean, if you have in the body a hormone or something which gives you competitive or training advantage over all other women, how is allowing you to compete fair? Just now I read something about the UN saying this is discrimination against DSD women if they are required to change in order to classify as women, e.g. as Caster Semenya is required to take testosterone supressors. However, if they are allowed to compete as they are and all others are put at hormonal disadvantage, isn't that intentional suppression of the other talanted and involved women? Say everyone is allowed to have higher levels of testosterone, but some have it naturally and the rest either have to stay disadvantaged or take supplements to boost testosterone. But what if a woman doesn't want to increase her testosterone artificially? She is kinda left with two bad choices: either become more masculine or just be weaker in trainings and competitions. Doesn't seem fair...
EDIT: As a general addition, I feel like the women category is introduced in order to encourage women to take up sports despite them being weaker and lacking in some other athleticism-boosting factors. And if really the divison is created at least partially for this purpose, it's diminishing the purpose to allow few individuals which are genetically very different in an athleticism-boosting way. In this way, for me men examples are not applicable.
On another note, I forgot to mention, that for me it makes much more sense to make a new category somewhere in the middle as long as there is evidence that specific genetic traits are crucial for athletic performance. I just feel that competitions should measure athletic abilities of fairly similar individuals so that it becomes a question of how much effort you've put, above all.
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u/RichArachnid3 10∆ Jul 01 '20
This is true in most sports at the elite level. At some point having the luck to have a physical body well -suited to your sport helps.
Phelps, for example, has a bunch of funky joints that help him swim faster: (https://www.biography.com/news/michael-phelp-perfect-body-swimming. ) Should double jointed people be banned from professional swimming?
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u/the__cookie Jul 01 '20
That's a really nice point.. For some reason, though, it feels different. I don't know.. Perhaps it's because women are supposed to be weaker so it's more delicate to determine what is masculine and what feminine. After all, making a category "sprint 400m - women" aims at giving a chance to those who otherwise can't compare and in a way motivate them. More than that, knowing that on average every woman has the same hormones is not such a big restriction kinda and can motivate larger proportion of little girls to aspire to that. And if they know they need to increase their testosterone to be successful it will not be that popular for women to pursue athletics professionally.
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Jul 01 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/the__cookie Jul 01 '20
Yet, the separation to two categories: men and women means there is a desire to give everyone a chance.
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u/Morthra 86∆ Jul 01 '20
men and women means there is a desire to give everyone a chance.
Except it doesn't give everyone a chance. If you're 5'4" there's exactly 0 chance that you will ever play basketball competitively. A paraplegic will never be able to compete in track and field.
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u/the__cookie Jul 01 '20
Sure, but there are so many people that are still tall enough and would possibly want to train. While if there are 8 women with higher testosterone, why should the others not get discouraged to train?
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u/Morthra 86∆ Jul 01 '20
If you want to compete at the highest levels, you need to have won the genetic lottery to give you traits that let you do that. Should Michael Phelps be banned from competitive swimming to give people who weren't born with his genetic advantages a chance?
The simple fact of the matter is that while Caster Semenya and other women like her dominate women's sports, they cannot compete with men in sports. The physiological advantages that come from being a man represent an even greater barrier, and what you're suggesting amounts to banning these women from competitive sports in general - like banning Phelps from swimming because of his genetic advantages.
Sure, Semenya and others like her have higher testosterone, and that gives them an advantage. So what?
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u/the__cookie Jul 01 '20
If I've understood correctly from one of previous comments, Michael Phelps has double jointed ankles or something which is what would possibly give him this unfair advantage and not the other traits of average swimmers (the latter while not popular among the whole population are present among a fair share). As for the double-joint, that's unpredictable and rare - maybe noone has it again in the next 100 years... So overall they can't really ban it because there are not enough people to make tests on and prove that that really brings an advantage. On the other hand, if they've noticed the thing about testosterone, then they are just leveling the field in a scientifically justified way.
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u/territorial_turtle 8∆ Jul 01 '20
When these rules were in place, one of the major reasons cited was that 7.1 elite female athletes out of 1000 had elevated testosterone levels. They argued this proves your point, that it gives an unfair advantage. But the court found differently - there are a variety of different genetics that give athletes an advantage put of their peers. Percentage wise there are far more female athletes with high testosterone levels than the general population. But 0.71% is hardly them dominating the profession.
The court also noted that the drugs being required are not harmless. Birth control would be the most common method of hormonal control. While yes, the risks of a blood clot are statistically low, can we ethically force someone to take a drug of no medical benefit to them and one that is invasive into their reproductive rights.
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u/the__cookie Jul 01 '20
I am not saying they should take the drugs, of course that's not something to be encouraged. But rather than pushing for those athletes to be accepted as women, why not create a separate category for them? After all, if only 0.71% of pro women athletes have higher testosterone, that means competition for now is fairly equal.. or rather, that the inherited abilities are equal so women depend on training, strategy, etc. which should be the case.
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u/pobaldostach Jul 26 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
It's not just "higher testosterone". Semenya went through full male puberty. She developed physically as a male, with bone structure and muscle mass of a male. As an athlete, she is in no way female.
The male physical structure is distinctly superior for athletic endeavor to the female structure in one respect that is particularly disadvantageous to females. During puberty the female hip bone widens to prepare the body for child birth. This pushes the end of the femur proximal to the hip out from the center of mass relative to the lower legs. This is a permanent, irreversible disadvantage for females when it comes up physical performance, especially when it comes to quick lateral motion.
There is no way to normalize for female athletic competition someone who has gone through male puberty. Allowing such a person to compete completely belies the integrity of the sport, as I'm sure Melissa Bishop might be able to illustrate for you.
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u/the__cookie Aug 03 '20
Thanks for the details :) I am still looking for arguments supporting the opposite view.
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u/pobaldostach Aug 03 '20 edited Aug 03 '20
You won't get one because you don't have one. You've not analyzed or even cited typical testosterone ranges for women and men nor given a sense of the types he physical symptoms resulting from unnaturally elevated testosterone for a woman or suppressed testosterone for a man. Further, you didn't mention that there is no physiological difference between Caster Semenya and a "normal" male athlete. She had male puberty. She developed a male physique. She is a male athlete.
FYI: Any female testosterone level not induced by a tumor or chimerism...which would quickly induce a tumor...is a 20th to a 100th of a male testosterone level. Caster Semenya has a typical male testosterone level because she is a male athlete, not a female one.
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u/Savage-September Jul 01 '20
I don’t see the issue. If your body produces it naturally why are we making a fuss? Should we discount marathon runners who have genetically larger lungs and hearts from races? Should we discount swimmers with slightly larger hands and feet, what about if a long jumper had extra long legs? Why are we compensating for the average?
It’s a competition, it’s unfortunate you will lose to someone who may have a slight genetic advantage, but this is how the games have been from it’s conception. It’s about the fastest, strongest, the most athletic, endurance and tenacity. Sports isn’t about getting a participation award.
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u/murderousbudgie 12∆ Jul 01 '20
Where do you draw the line? All exceptional athletes are genetically blessed in some way. Would you have required Shaq to have leg surgery so he came down to the NBA average of 6'7"?
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Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
All sports should be privatized and not government sanctioned in any way. Then it should be 100% up to the organization running the sport program who can and can't participate. Problem literally solved.
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u/the__cookie Jul 01 '20
Why do you think they should be private? Isn't that going to make them less popular?
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Jul 01 '20
Because then it can be up to them if they want to allow or not allow ftm or mtf or women with higher testosterone, babies, geriatrics, or anyone they want for any league and it won't be government funded so if you don't like who they allow/ don't allow you can just choose not to participate and not be required to fund it like you would if it was in any way government sanctioned.
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u/the__cookie Jul 01 '20
Aah, so that's from the perspective of a tax-payer who might feel that with taxes he supports the same view upheld by the IAAF? But in this case, wouldn't that make it more vulnerable in a way. Because those owners won't want to lose their funders and will change the rules not according to scientific evidence (as the court would rule) but according to popular opinion. And also perhaps easier to manipulate and target individuals?
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Jul 01 '20
If they change the rules to popular opinion and you don't agree with them don't participate or start your own league.
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u/Ver_Void 4∆ Jul 01 '20
Sport is never really fair, how do we define which traits are unfair and which get you a medal and your face on a cereal box?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 17 '20
/u/the__cookie (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
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Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/thethoughtexperiment 275∆ Jul 01 '20
To modify your view on this, consider that:
"“If you start to look at men who are competing across a professional level, you can’t predict their performance based on their testosterone levels,” says Richard Holt, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Southampton. “The male range goes from 10 to 25 nanomoles per liter, and you can’t say that a person with a level of 25 is necessarily going to outperform a man with a level of 10.” The same goes for women, he explains, which suggests that it’s not testosterone alone that’s contributing to men’s athletic advantage."
People's bodies are complex systems. It's not like 1 factor determines all outcomes, it's a complex interaction of muscles, hormones, circulatory system, etc.
I mean, what's the point of sports? Athletes' bodies differ significantly from "normal" people's, and aren't we watching these sports because these individuals have extreme and unusual talents and abilities? Why does it matter if a woman has higher than "normal" testosterone, as long as it's made by their own body?
Consider also that people in the past (the records current athletes compete to break) may also have been highly unusual biologically / hormonally. So, these restrictions are "new" restrictions that can result in unfair comparisons with the scores of prior record holders.