Impossible “Choices”: The Inherent Harms of Regulating Women’s Testosterone in Sport

Karkazis, Katrina; Carpenter, Morgan

doi:10.1007/s11673-018-9876-3

Cited by 56 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The IAAF research has also been critiqued by a number of researchers (e.g. Camporesi 2018; Karkazis and Carpenter 2018;Menier 2018;Sőnksen et al 2018). We add to these critiques in this analysis of IAAF research based on our unique (partial) access to original IAAF research data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific integrity and the IAAF testosterone regulations

2019

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In April 2018, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced new regulations governing the eligibility of certain female athletes with differences of sexual development accompanied by elevated levels of natural testosterone. Such women with testosterone levels above a specific threshold would be banned from competing as females unless they were to undergo medical intervention. In this paper, we examine key elements of the scientific basis offered by IAAF in support of the regulations, based on a subset of original performance data provided to us by IAAF. We identify significant flaws in the data used by IAAF leading to unreliable results. Further, these failures have not been corrected by IAAF or the academic journal which has published them, leading to a comprehensive failure of scientific integrity. We argue that the IAAF testosterone regulations are based on a flawed scientific foundation and that this case offers more general lessons for the sport governance community on the importance of upholding the standards of scientific integrity expected in other areas of policy and regulation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific integrity and the IAAF testosterone regulations

2019

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“…In 2011 (shortly after Fox's controversial case), the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) developed new regulations for determining athletes' eligibility to compete in female categories. The new regulations required athletes to have testosterone levels of less than 10nmol/L at least twelve months before competing [28].…”

Section: Involving Trans Persons In Sport: a Brief Overview Of Cases mentioning

confidence: 99%

Something’s Got to Give: Reconsidering the Justification for a Gender Divide in Sport

Bianchi

2019

Philosophies

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The question of whether transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in accordance with their gender identity is an evolving debate. Most competitive sports have male and female categories. One of the primary challenges with this categorization system, however, is that some transgender athletes (and especially transgender women) may be prevented from competing in accordance with their gender identity. The reason for this restriction is because of the idea that transgender women have an unfair advantage over their cisgender counterparts; this is seen as a problem since sports are typically guided a principle called ‘the skill thesis’, which suggests that sports are supposed to determine who is most skillful by maintaining a fair starting point. In this paper, I argue that if the skill thesis ought to be maintained and there continues to exist no conclusive evidence in support of unfair advantages possessed by trans women, then we may want to re-consider the gender binary in sport. Rather than having male/female categories, it may make more sense to categorize athletes based other sport-specific factors (e.g., height, weight, etc.). This may help to maintain the skill thesis while at the same time removing potentially unfair and discriminatory barriers against transgender athletes.

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“…In athletics, the wrongful treatment of intersex athletes has a long history as well, particularly in "outing" female intersex athletes before they even realize they have an intersex condition (Karkazis & Carpenter, 2018). This act of outing athletes has a destructive effect; it has affected athletes over the past century and continues to affect them, ranging from the ending of professional sports careers (e.g.…”

Section: Intersex and Sportmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the new policy gave its rationale for this new upper limit in the final "End Notes" section, using testosterone as the singular determinant of sex categorization is inconsistent with medical practices, which use a multitude of markers to do so, such as internal/external genitals, gonads, and chromosomes (Karkazis, 2008;Pieper, 2016). Moreover, several scholars have pointed out irrefutable problems with the research methods, analysis of data, and conclusions drawn from the Bermon and Garnier (2017) study, thus invalidating the study, and calling into question the ethicality of the new 2018 IAAF policy (Franklin, Betancurt, & Camporesi, 2018;Karkazis & Carpenter, 2018;Menier, 2018;Pielke, 2018;Posbergh, 2018;Sönksen et al, 2018).…”

Section: The Newest 2018 Iaaf Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Same Tricks, New Name: The IAAF’s New 2018 Testosterone Regulation Policy for Female Athletes

Posbergh

2019

IJIDI

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On April 26, 2018, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) released its updated version of its policy on athletes with hyperandrogenism, in a discriminatory attempt to define the term female through specified levels of testosterone, and to thereby provide asolution to the problem of athletes who fell outside of their socially constructed gender binary. The IAAF’s attempts to uphold this outdated binary system is a reflection of normalized scientific discourse which creates accepted, supposedly normal, behaviors and bodies at the expense of and resulting in the oppression of those who challenge these dominant regimes of knowledge (Foucault, 1978). Certainly, the prioritization of scientific knowledge is nothing new for the intersex community, given the history of irreversible genital surgery on newborns and young children with genitalia that is incongruent with current sex standards to make them fit societal gender ideals (Davis, 2015; Karkazis, 2008). In this paper, I trouble the IAAF’s supposed solution to intersex athletes through a Foucauldian understanding of biopower and science-based constructions of knowledge and truths, with particular attention to the perpetuation of health disparities within the intersex community. More specifically, I examine the site and role of female athletes’ bodies, such as Caster Semenya, whose rights to equitable and just treatment were cast aside in order to uphold artificially constructed and societally accepted ideas of male and female. I use Semenya’s narrative, coupled with the scientific discourse in the IAAF’s decision, to explore the subsequent, but unsurprisingly repetitive, reproduction of the hierarchical power relations between governing sports bodies and athletes, especially female athletes.

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Impossible “Choices”: The Inherent Harms of Regulating Women’s Testosterone in Sport

Cited by 56 publications

References 31 publications

Scientific integrity and the IAAF testosterone regulations

Scientific integrity and the IAAF testosterone regulations

Something’s Got to Give: Reconsidering the Justification for a Gender Divide in Sport

Same Tricks, New Name: The IAAF’s New 2018 Testosterone Regulation Policy for Female Athletes

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