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The article I'm referencing was from back during the Olympics, when the IOC ruled she could run, sorry I did not find the link. There was no mention of the fact

The article I'm referencing was from back during the Olympics, when the IOC ruled she could run, sorry I did not find the link. There was no mention of the fact she was intersex. In terms of the article you reference, first: "mid-distance running seems to be testosterone independent" this is highly speculative, and I say bogus. Men utterly dominate women in that sport, and most of the differentiator is 'testosterone'. Most importantly - Caster is not famale. She is a woman, yes, but her sex is not male or female, she is intersex. We divide sports ultimately on the basis of sex, not really 'gender self identification'. The NYT et. al. are oddly trying to conflate gender and sex due to their concern about 'rights'. They are creating a straw men situation "people attacked female athlete's in the past" as though this is 'more of same'. It's not - there's totally reasonable and fair grounds to discuss the intersex positioning in all of this. If someone has the testosterone levels of a man (and testicles that produce it) has XY chromosomes ... well maybe they ought not to be competing with other women for whom this would be very unfair?

pas 7y ago
> Men utterly dominate women in that sport, and most of the differentiator is 'testosterone'. Naturally, but maybe because they are bigger (and have bigger muscles, and have better VO2max?) and that's probably not due to testosterone, but due to the whole body having the male body plan set as set-point from a very young age. > Most importantly - Caster is not famale. She is a woman, yes, but her sex is not male or female, she is intersex. I'm simply not up to date on this topic to know. What female means? Is that a biological only term? If yes, does it mean having only female-like characteristics? Is that a genetics term? Of course, the whole problem is that whatever dimensions we look at, in terms of athletic/sports performance, in (almost?) every sport based on some biomechanical activity the distribution of outcome has a nice bimodal shape, and it kind of makes sense to make two leagues/categories, to make races interesting. And naturally, where these distributions intersect with the other very bimodal distribution (that is the spectrum of biological sex, or male-female-ness), we find that in almost all cases it matches the male-ness or female-ness part, so it was easy to sort athletes into their respective leagues, but the middle part was never empty. There was always females that were bigger/faster/stronger than some males, and of course their female-ness was regularly questioned on the basis of fairness. (Which is a completely valid question.) > If someone has the testosterone levels of a man (and testicles that produce it) has XY chromosomes ... well maybe they ought not to be competing with other women for whom this would be very unfair? Yes, and I would have no problem with saying that we don't know exactly what makes her better, maybe it's not testosterone per se, but it clearly seems to be biologically based more than based on how well she trains, what kind of shoes she wears, etc. And I don't know how the Athletic Federation (and the Court of Arbitration) argued exactly, but it seems that the NYT op-ed claims that they cited something that does not make sense (the too high testosterone levels), and in that regard the op-ed is probably right. (Hence why I called their argument simple, not the problem.)

pas 7y ago

> Men utterly dominate women in that sport, and most of the differentiator is 'testosterone'. Naturally, but maybe because they are bigger (and have bigger muscles, and have better VO2max?) and that's probably not due to testosterone, but due to the whole body having the male body plan set as set-point from a very young age. > Most importantly - Caster is not famale. She is a woman, yes, but her sex is not male or female, she is intersex. I'm simply not up to date on this topic to know. What female means? Is that a biological only term? If yes, does it mean having only female-like characteristics? Is that a genetics term? Of course, the whole problem is that whatever dimensions we look at, in terms of athletic/sports performance, in (almost?) every sport based on some biomechanical activity the distribution of outcome has a nice bimodal shape, and it kind of makes sense to make two leagues/categories, to make races interesting. And naturally, where these distributions intersect with the other very bimodal distribution (that is the spectrum of biological sex, or male-female-ness), we find that in almost all cases it matches the male-ness or female-ness part, so it was easy to sort athletes into their respective leagues, but the middle part was never empty. There was always females that were bigger/faster/stronger than some males, and of course their female-ness was regularly questioned on the basis of fairness. (Which is a completely valid question.) > If someone has the testosterone levels of a man (and testicles that produce it) has XY chromosomes ... well maybe they ought not to be competing with other women for whom this would be very unfair? Yes, and I would have no problem with saying that we don't know exactly what makes her better, maybe it's not testosterone per se, but it clearly seems to be biologically based more than based on how well she trains, what kind of shoes she wears, etc. And I don't know how the Athletic Federation (and the Court of Arbitration) argued exactly, but it seems that the NYT op-ed claims that they cited something that does not make sense (the too high testosterone levels), and in that regard the op-ed is probably right. (Hence why I called their argument simple, not the problem.)