Unfair advantage?

Deleted User · May 1, 2019

Just reading the story about Caster Semenya, and it's a really tricky situation. You might think that the difference between men and women is obvious, but in some cases it's not. The boundary isn't clear cut, it's blurred. And some people fall into that 'intersex' category.
So where do you draw the line, for the purposes of creating a fair competitive environment for sports?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/48102479

Member2095118 · May 1, 2019

There are other considerations, but it's uncomfortable all around.
Yes, she and others did have an unfair advantage in the middle distance events, 400m - 1 mile. She competed and won in a 5000m race, but is thought she would not win a major event at the distance, which falls outside the new restrictions.

She is not forced to take medication, but would need to for 6 months to compete.
Yes, it's unfair on her, but it could be encouraged to find others like her and one or two others I've seen, and it has been unfair on her competitors.

It has been hard to recognise a "middle gender" if you like, named DSD, and early on I thought it was obviously blatant fraud, more so than some athletics drug cheats in the past (I had some sympathy for them). Now I'm uncomfortable, but think this may be the right decision to restrict DSD ladies competing at these distances against other women. The details of the 6 months of medication I'm unclear about, but they should decline on principle and I would support that decision.

I don't know why this has only come to the fore in the last 10 years or so. More investigation and more decisions for the governing bodies to make in the future.

Semenya has her titles and had a good if curtailed career. I don't know …

More here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/s...erone-limit-athletes-like-Caster-Semenya.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ansgender-runners-identify-female-get-unfair/

Hadron · May 1, 2019

How do you define "fair"? Is it an unfair advantage that Usain Bolt has longer limbs than me? Is it unfair that some weightlifter has genes that respond to exercise by increasing muscle bulk easily, as opposed to someone else whose genes mean that they do not respond in that way (yes, that's a very well-defined genetic difference)?

Unarguable biologically male atheletes have a range of testosterone levels, as do unarguably female ones. And these ranges overlap, and the correlations between testosterone levels and performance are actually quite weak. The scientific conclusion is that this one quantity is only part of the story, but the effort to define "clear" rules based on simple metrics will always produce unfair outcomes in individual cases. You might hope that the people trying to define these things will do as good a job as they can, but boiling it down to one number will always be inadequate, and the reasons for doing so will always be largely political. And there's a lot of money involved, and a lot of people whose definition of "fair" is "if I can claim it was unfair that she beat me/my athlete that makes me richer". And the people judging will be constrained by the rules, and rules that do no, cannot, reflect the complexity or reality will always produce unjust outcomes, one way or another.

Deleted User · May 2, 2019

Well the metric used by IAAF is testosterone levels. Do male and female levels overlap? I'd like to see some data on that. Yes a female athlete could have naturally high levels of the hormone, but are they on the same level as a man? I doubt it. And Semenya has been ordered to take drugs to reduce her level, so the IAAF obviously thought it was too high.
Of course this could all be politically/money driven, rather than a desire to create a level playing field for all athletes. Who knows, but it's rather sad if that's the case. I tend to think there's way too much money sloshing around in sports these days, but that's another discussion.

bcrichster · May 2, 2019

LV426 said:
Just reading the story about Caster Semenya, and it's a really tricky situation. You might think that the difference between men and women is obvious, but in some cases it's not. The boundary isn't clear cut, it's blurred. And some people fall into that 'intersex' category.
So where do you draw the line, for the purposes of creating a fair competitive environment for sports?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/48102479

Simple. Don't let genetically born ppl participate in the opposite sex's contests.. almost any male can out lift or out perform femalez of same size and body mass. To do otherwise is simply labeled as 'cheating', point blank

Hadron · May 2, 2019

Yes, the ranges for males and females do overlap, and that's true for althletes and sports people as well as the general population. Don't have a reference handy but there was a lot of discussion of this same issue a couple of years ago and I remember and article that went into some detail on this and related matters.

This is why I don't really trust the IAAF's rules: when there's a controversy there is pressure to draw up rules, and institutional demands will favour simple, clear rules even if what they are ruling on is more complex than can be captured by them.

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Unfair advantage?

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