The Informer

3 May 2018

If we are competing on a fair playing field, that means accepting intersex athletes as they are, not as you want them to be.

Health, Media, News & Politics, Sexuality, Society & Culture, the informer, World News

The IAAF, the world athletics governing body, announced new rules last Thursday, including a new classification for female athletes with ‘differences of sexual development’, in other words, intersex athletes. This means intersex athletes will be required to lower and maintain their testosterone levels, in order to be eligible to compete in international competition.

This is an issue for Intersex athletes, who present with both typically ‘male’ and typically ‘female’ sex characteristics. To be clear, these rules that the IAAF have announced are only for specific athletics events, including mid-distance running – the events run by Caster Semenya.

The IAAF has tried to introduce similar rules previously, but they were overturned in 2015. In order to provide better evidence to support the implementation of these rules, the IAAF commissioned a study on the effect of high testosterone levels in female athletes and the unfair advantage this might produce. It found that “in certain events female athletes with high testosterone levels benefit from a 1.8 per cent to 4.5 per cent competitive advantage over female athletes with lower testosterone levels”.

There are two problems with the validity of this research. As pointed out by Dr Karkazis, the IAAF has funded, analyzed and published this data themselves. It’s research specifically designed to support their argument, and therefore isn’t impartial.

The second problem is with the data itself. The report authors ran their test 43 times to come to their conclusion, for example, when you do a statistical test you flip a coin. If you flip enough coins, you’ll eventually get a head. If you do enough statistical tests, you’ll eventually find the result you want.

What does this kind of classification and segregation mean for not only intersex athletes, but the intersex population?

We spoke to Morgan Carpenter, Co-Executive Director of Intersex Human Rights Australia, formally OII Australia, about what these kind of rules, that define a person’s eligibility based on the levels of testosterone in their body mean for intersex athletes and the intersex population, as they see guidelines created that exclude them from competing at their best and put them in a position to only be able to compete by taking medication to regulate their bodies.

This segment aired on JOY 94.9 on 3^rd May 2018.

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