The Olympic Games are upon us, and reliably they will focus some attention on divisive social issues. They’re supposed to be about friendship, but arguably their real value has always been in their ability to draw the highest number of eyeballs to the visible demonstration of the things that divide us.
Ever since Ben Johnson broke the world record for the 100 metres at the 1988 Seoul Olympics — a race in which six of the eight finalists failed drug tests at some point in their careers — the Games have been synonymous with cheating. Performance enhancement, super-suits, backward glances at East German world records: humanity at its best and worst simultaneously.
The ethics of cheating are straightforward enough, assuming the existence of a level genetic playing field. That assumption — or rather the sub-assumption of binary genders — is becoming increasingly shaky, causing conniptions across the sporting globe.
In the lead-up to Tokyo, it looked like Namibia might be banking medals via two 18-year-old rising stars named Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi. Together they’d run four of the five fastest times in the 400 metres this year.
Mboma and Masilingi are female by birth. They had no idea, until the news broke, that their natural testosterone levels exceed the “normal” range, such that under World Athletics rules they cannot compete in women’s races unless they take medication to reduce their levels. Both women declined to do that, so they’re out of the Olympics.
A person who will be competing in the women’s competition is Laurel Hubbard, a transgender weightlifter from New Zealand. She is the first openly transgender Olympic athlete ever. The reason she can do so is that, under IOC guidelines, she has a testosterone level below the set benchmark.
Some people would say that that’s all a bit off — by means of an arbitrary dividing line two “real women” are excluded while a “former man” gets to compete? Put aside this offensive stereotyping and think about it in non-discriminatory terms, however, and the outlines of a deeper problem begin to emerge.
What has driven Olympic regulators to the point where they’re using the brutally simplistic measurement of a single, naturally-occurring hormone to decide who gets to play, while ignoring the other multiple complexities of gender and transgender status?
The famous case of runner Caster Semenya is instructive. She was banned from competing in athletics in 2018, and her discrimination claim to the Court of Arbitration in Sport failed. The court upheld a rule requiring athletes with “disorders of sex development” (previously called “intersex”) to reduce their testosterone levels if they want to compete as women.
Essentially what it ruled was that discrimination on the grounds of sex or gender identity is allowable if it is a “necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of attaining a legitimate objective” — that objective being the level playing field.
It’s not just the Olympics, of course. World Rugby has banned trans women from playing in women’s competitions, citing that their physique, muscle mass and strength pose a risk to cis-women. There’s science to support that stance: research has suggested that biologically-born men enjoy on average a 30% physical advantage over women in weightlifting, for example, which is only reduced by about 5% if you subtract the testosterone difference from the equation.
Other sports have tried to move in a more inclusive direction, with results as repulsive as those the Olympics are producing. The trans AFLW player Hannah Mouncey decided to withdraw from the AFLW draft, stating as her reason the psychological effects that the process of testing was having on her.
As trans cyclist Kristen Worley wrote in her book Woman Enough, she was constantly labelled either a freak or a cheat, but the worst was the intrusion: “They felt utterly entitled to ask me embarrassing, intimate questions about the details of my surgeries, and talk openly about my body in front of me, as if I wasn’t there.”
That’s the human cost of trying, theoretically ethically, to maintain fairness. But it ignores a very obvious question: what is it we are seeking to maintain?
Simply, what sporting codes are defending is a binary construct which no longer holds. There never was such a thing as the level playing field, of course, but the real issue is the insistence on maintaining a division of people into two mutually exclusive groups: male and female.
For all the squealing of the loud majority that humanity is binary, we’re just not. Semenya was born the way she is, as were Mboma and Masilingi. Mouncey and Hubbard were born, biologically, the way they don’t identify. They are people and they’re entitled to compete no less than anyone else.
Where the binary construct is forcing us is to a new definition of man and woman, determined not by genitals but a hormone level. Above the line, male; below, female. That makes as much sense as your instincts are telling you it does.
Where it should lead us is to a place where another arm of rugby has been tentatively pointing; in some junior rugby union competitions, players are being graded by weight rather than age, acknowledging major differences in physical maturity between little boys and girls, partly random and partly to do with genetics.
That creates its own set of problems, such as body shaming. There is in fact no easy answer, ethically. What should be clear is that there’s definitely no answer scientifically.
Where we urgently need to veer away from, however, is this business of measuring who can be female on a scale. It’s all kinds of wrong.
What are your thoughts on this subject? Share them with us by writing to letters@crikey.com.au, and don’t forget to include your full name if you’d like your letter to be considered for publication.
Michael Bradley is the managing partner at Marque Lawyers and Crikey legal correspondent. Emma Johnsen is a senior associate at Marque.
The beginning of the end for women’s sport.
Laurel – as Gavin – Hubbard competed internationally in competitive weightlifting. Hubbard at 43 is the oldest competitor in this sport at the Tokyo games. The average age of women weightlifters is 23.
As a biological male, Hubbard has a natural biological advantage – going through puberty makes a difference. Hubbard began to call himself a woman at age 35. That makes a difference.
Women suffer from this experiment. Every time a trans-identifying man wins a medal in a women’s sport, women lose. Women are told to shut up, be quiet, and accept a man in their spaces and their sport.
I agree with you on this: women are not a hormone level.
Sport. Bah.
No. They are XX chromosomes.
Hear, hear!
I’m with the TERF’s (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) on this. There is the science of Sex …it is either of the two categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions. Sex is not ‘assigned’, but rather observed at birth based on external sex characteristics.
‘Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity.
Gender dysphoria is a distressed mental state arising from a conflict between a person’s perceived gender identity and the biological sex of the person. Trans women are biological males that choose to live as a woman, or believe they actually are women.’
Males have more physical advantages over females due to basic differences in physical characteristics and capacity. As sport tends to rely on physical skill, strength and prowess then there should be a third category in sport for trans people.
I agree with you, but it needs to be acknowledged that there are a small number of people who, by reason of physical abnormality, do not fit within the male/female dichotomy. Caster Semenya is one: she was born without a uterus or ovaries, and (although the reports are not entirely clear) with internal testes. She is a magnificent athlete, but she is not a woman like other women and she competes against them with huge physical advantages. Contrary to what is asserted in the article, she does not have a “right” to compete in women’s races because although she was identified as a girl when she was born (she has a vagina and no external male genitalia), she is not physically a normal woman. That is terribly unfortunate for her, but it’s a consequence of the way she was born.
The phrase “internal testes” is a good example of mindset – in a person with vagina and no discernible male genitalia they would be more accurately described ovaries.
The soi disant male genitalia, with which some people claim familiarity, are the female – ie human template – parts moved outside the body as an experiment, “as flies to wanton boys“.
Three categories might be a solution but it seems to me we are still left with the existing conundrum – where are the new lines of category eligibility to be drawn? There will still be some winners and some losers, although possibly not as many as now.
If outright performance, irrespective of gender balance, was to be the sole yardstick of excellence, naturally occurring physical and mental abilities of all individuals in a combined competition would rule the roost much as it does in the two current gender silos. The first question to be addressed would have to be how many silos do we need or want for everyone to be appropriately recognised for their performance excellence? Then come the category eligibility definitions. Both issues are equally fraught.
I don’t like elite sports – it is intrusive and not that healthy – most things elite athletes do are for performance and at the detriment of long-term health.
Why do people admire elite athletes? Broadly speaking, they possess a combination of winning the genetic lottery at birth + perseverance + skill. With the first part, there is a distinction between winning the genetic lottery as a woman and opting to compete in the women’s category after developing and going through puberty as a male. There are trans athletes such as Janae Marie Kroc who do not compete in the women’s category (and do not plan to) as they acknowledge the inherent biological advantage.
The binary construct in elite sports was a broad brushstroke meant to create a level playing field for women, which was previously only dominated by men. If you look at biological women, there are certainly outliers where a few individuals have much higher testosterone levels or are built quite differently – take Serena Williams, for instance. Her performance outshone most female tennis players for a good decade. But if you were to make her compete in the men’s category, I don’t think she’d even be in the Top 100, even at her peak. Not that it was ever questioned, but it still makes sense for her to be in the women’s category. I feel sorry for the female runners Mboma and Masilingi, who were told to reduce their naturally occurring hormone levels. I don’t agree with that ruling.
But the discussion about a woman being built stronger (naturally) is a vastly different story from, say, a Top 200 obscure male athlete potentially becoming #1 after transitioning to become a woman (even with hormone treatment levels maintained as set out by rules). This is also a different story to trans men competing in men’s sports – which occurs much more rarely.
Most of the money in elite sports comes from sponsorships and ad revenue. These arbitrary rules will be made by those who throw money at the sport.
‘most of the money in elite sports comes from sponsorships and ad revenue (and) arbitrary rules will be made by those who throw money at the sport’
Absolutely fundamental point which the writer fails to mention. Given that most of the major corporations are now pro ‘trans rights’, it’s depressingly inevitable that any criticism of Hubbard regarding his undeniable advantage (Bradley describes such criticism as ‘the squealing of the loud majority’) will be howled down as ‘transphobia’.
So yeah, ‘follow the science’ – except when it doesn’t accord with your political views.
Yeh! Follow the science! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/
Thanks, great reading, but not really relevant to the topic at hand. ‘Disorders of Sex Development (DSD)’ are quite rare, statistically speaking, and it is not the basis on which Hubbard bases his claim to identifying as ‘female’.
“I think there’s much greater diversity within male or female, and there is certainly an area of overlap where some people can’t easily define themselves within the binary structure,” says John Achermann, who studies sex development and endocrinology at University College London’s Institute of Child Health.
This is the point. Human sex is not a simple binary, and it isn’t simply a question of taking account of some rare DSDs.
What you’re talking about is a blog post with a pretty graphic.
You might want to try this one if you’re interested in science: https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/2/in-humans-sex-is-binary-and-immutable
For the majority of people though, biological sex ‘is’ a simple binary. This does not negate the fact, as you rightly note, that some people do not fit neatly into either category.
Acknowledging this however, does not assist when attempting to find an equitable outcome to the problem outlined by Bradley & Johnsen in this article. As they state ‘what should be clear is that there’s definitely no answer scientifically’.
This only leaves a political or cultural ‘answer’ and in the current environment, biological women could very will be the losers.
The scientific answer is clear. The binary does not hold, it is false. Often this is not too much of a problem because society is reasonably flexible, and one can find a niche. However, in high-stakes sporting competitions the category of “biological women” is essentially contestable and whatever definition is chosen will favour some people and disadvantage others. Obviously because lots of money is at stake this is problem… so we have to ask ourselves why we pay sports people so much in the first place?
Olympic athletes are not well paid, so that is a red herring.
Agree that DSDs are an issue, but it simply isn’t contestable that Lauren Hubbard, say, is a biological woman.
The amount of money paid to elite athletes, via appearance fees and product endorsement, is staggering. But as long as these athletes continue to attract huge attendances, the corporate world will happily continue to pay such amounts. So yes, where such large sums of money are involved, ‘problems’ will arise. That I can agree with.
I think though, that this is a side issue to the topic of the article. When you say that ‘the category of biological women is essentially contestable’, I would argue that is most cases, it is not. Any attempt to include men who identify as women in elite sport will be to the detriment of biological women. Intersex people, who account for around 1.7% of the population, are, in my opinion, a separate category to those who people who transition later in life, as Hubbard has done.
“When you say that ‘the category of biological women is essentially contestable’, I would argue that is most cases, it is not.”
I am proposing that there is no single stable set of persons with the characteristic “biological woman”.
Actually there is, aka in the actuarial world, as “the share of the population that consists of women of childbearing age.”
Yes there are. Humans on a developmental path (even a dysfunctional one) to produce large gametes (eggs) are women.
There are a whole number of activities that are segregated by sex, not gender identity. Sport is one of them for a good reason. Regardless of how one feels about oneself and how one identifies, the real and ongoing advantages conferred by male puberty are undeniable.
I note that women were not allowed in the past to identify into maleness for voting purposes, or for the purposes of not being raped, or subject to the sex-based wage gap. Why are men now allowed to leverage their biological advantages in women’s sport?
Why is there a growing number of men discovering their inner womanhood after being convicted of crimes so they can be placed in women’s prisons, to the detriment of the female prisoners?
Foetuses are not aborted in some countries based on their gender identity, but because of their female sex. Women deserve sex-based provisions. Being a woman is not a feeling in a man’s head.
As disturbing as is the M/F gender dysphoria industry (treatment & ops are not cheap) the astonishing increase in the number of young girls (often pre menache) claiming to be male is off the charts by comparison – it’s only the comparatively recent emergence of this phenomenon that skews the numbers.
Most non western societies for millennia have had no problem with those who chose the role of other than their true sex, Native Americans,Pacific Islanders, Deccans, Asiatics and most of sub Saharan Africa.
Just shows how screwed up the (only) 3 monotheistic patriarchal delusions are.
And of course, AWAITENINGED – wotta non surprise!
Being Friday, this means no chance of appearing before Monday arvo – IF AT ALL.
A new category is needed, for men with above average testosterone levels, unfair that they compete against us averages.
Also, the better co-ordinated, fitter blokes should not be allowed to compete against Norms.
Most societies had, until relatively recently, quite complex and pervasive rituals and ceremonies to admit boys to manhood because the difference, if any, is so minimal.
Girls know when they are women.