Sex in Sports: Why Pure Freedom Isn’t the Answer, A Response to Newbould (2015)
In Melanie Joy Newbould’s “What do we do about women athletes with testes?”, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, she argues that sports should stop requiring gonadectomies and other medical requirements for intersex and transgender women to compete (2015). Instead, she offers an “alternative proposal [:] Men and women could be permitted to compete in accordance with their self-identification, but gonadectomy for women who have testes might be voluntary, not enforced.” Newbould writes this amid new cases involving intersex in women’s sports, from Caster Semenya to Dutee Chand. Furthermore, she writes amid growing acceptance of trans people and ever-changing laws about their participation in sports. These new rules, including genetic testing on women who look suspiciously masculine, have allegedly caused numerous problems when the women were outed as intersex to themselves and to the world, from suicide to failed engagements. However, Newbould’s solution, to allow trans and intersex women to compete against other women without having to conform to any physical standards of womanhood, requires two things to be true: that testes aren’t necessarily an unfair advantage, and that sex fraud, which Newbould doesn’t even mention, doesn’t exist and could never exist. These two assumptions are at best questionable, and at worst entirely incorrect.
The problems that Newbould is attempting to address include the outing, exclusion, or forced surgeries of intersex and transgender women competing in women’s sports. The question of how to treat such women is not a new one; it’s actually been going on since the 1930s (Heggie, 2010). This basic problem exists because sex is not binary. Sex is determined by at least a dozen genes, not just a single gene that is one of two options (Newbould, 2015). There exist many disorders of sex development, or intersex conditions, that place people off the sex binary. Additionally, though many transgender women are not outside the gender binary in terms of how they self-identify, they can often be outside a more anatomic binary. Depending on where they are in their transition, they may or may not have male genitals, and they may or may not be on hormones. Governing bodies have tried to eliminate this diversity with new requirements for both trans and intersex women who want to compete with other women. Trans women must undergo gonadectomies, genital surgeries, and hormone therapy, while intersex women who are not androgen-insensitive must just undergo gonadectomies (Newbould, 2015). While it does seem obvious that genital surgeries should not be required since penises provide no unfair advantage, Newbould goes one step further. Newbould argues that self-identifying trans or intersex women with no androgen insensitivity should be able to compete regardless of biology. In other words, whatever current standards governing bodies require of these women like gonadectomies or hormone therapy should be replaced with a simple question: do you identify as a woman? She justifies this solution with the claim that it isn’t clear that testosterone provides an unfair advantage (2015).
This claim, if not absolutely wrong, could be refuted by simple statistical analysis. For example, if intersex women gain no advantage from their testosterone, why is it true that intersex women are much more common in the sporting world than in the general population? (Bermon & Garnier, 2017). In one study, the prevalence of hyperandrogenic 46 XY disorders of sex development (DSD) was 140 times larger than in the general population, at a rate of about 7 in 1000 women (Bermon & Garnier, 2017). Testosterone must be an advantage if hyperandrogenism (having high testosterone), raises your chance of being an elite athlete by 140 times.
Outside of simple statistics, there are numerous studies that demonstrate exactly how testosterone is an unfair advantage. Most people know that men tend to be better at physically demanding sports, but not everyone knows what characteristics about men enable this to be true. One of these characteristics is anaerobic performance, as analyzed by Batterham & Birch in their 1996 study “Allometry of anaerobic performance: a gender comparison”, where they tested peak power output using an ergometer. They discovered that men had almost twice as much absolute peak power as women, and even when controlling for amount of regular physical activity, this was still roughly the case. Foddy & Savulescu, in their 2010 study “Time to re-evaluate gender segregation in sports,” put this phenomenon even more succinctly, writing “men are larger, stronger, and faster.” Why is this the case, though, that men are so physically superior in sport? According to this study, it is because “men normally have much higher levels of androgens than women throughout their lives. It is entirely because of this difference that we consider it to be unfair to expect women to compete with men in athletic sports” (Foddy & Savalescu, 2010). Here we find the most damning piece of evidence against Newbould: the reason men are better at physical sports is because of testosterone, so how can it be not be an unfair advantage? Testosterone is important and an advantage because, as Roy J. Shepard writes in his 2000 study, it “increases the synthesis and decreases the breakdown of proteins,” in addition to stimulating the production of human growth hormone. It also causes the growth of bones, red blood cells, and skeletal muscles (Foddy & Savalescu, 2010). Simply put, “Testosterone is why we segregate sports” (Foddy & Savulescu, 2010), which makes it easy to call it an unfair advantage.
Even taking men totally out of the picture, female athletes with testosterone levels in the top 1/3 of the competition did between 1.78% and 4.53% better in middle-distance running, pole vault, and hammer throw than female athletes in the bottom 1/3 of testosterone levels (Bermon & Garnier, 2017). This may seem like a small difference, but when records are broken by mere seconds, one can see how a multiple percentage point difference can be the deciding edge in who takes home a gold medal or a world record.
Additionally, for Newbould’s solution of segregation along self-identifying lines (2015) to work, there would need to be no sex fraud, but there is actually a long history of it. Sex fraud, where a man pretends to be a woman in order to win, would render Newbould’s solution useless because a male athlete could simply identify as a woman and never face further investigation. Newbould doesn’t mention this, but there is a long history of sex fraud in sports, which is actually the entire reason sex testing began, even its initially quite embarrassing ways. The first famous example of sex fraud was in the 1930s with women’s high-jumper “Dora” Ratjen, competing for Nazi Germany in the 1936 Summer Olympics, as a replacement for a Jewish high-jumper named Gretel Bergmann (Berg, 2009). At age 17, Ratjen not only competed, but won the gold and set a new world record. However, Ratjen had the phenotype of a man as she was capable of ejaculation (Berg, 2009) and even had to bind her genitals while competing (Heggie 2010). Even if one thinks genitals are unrelated to gender in sport, it is notable that Ratjen also felt like a man, and had since she was 10 or 11 (Berg, 2009). He competed for his country as a woman, but when his condition was discovered two years later, he reported feeling relieved (Berg, 2009), changed his name to Hermann, and lived the rest of his life as a man. It turns out that Ratjen was probably intersex (Heggie, 2010), but according to Newbould’s doctrine of self-identification, because he identified as a man, he was always a man, and did therefore commit sex fraud.
Examples of sex fraud exist more recently as well. In the 1960s, when sex testing began by inspection at the hands of female doctors, a practice often referred to as a naked parade, six Eastern bloc athletes withdrew (Reeser, 2005). This move suggested to the world that they were worried about failing the tests and being outed as men masquerading as women to bring glory to their countries and the economic system of communism. Among these athletes were the Press sisters, who after 7 years of dominating track and field events like shotput, discus, and hurdles, setting numerous world records, retired at ages 27 and 29 in 1966 as soon as such sex verification testing was introduced (“Irina Press”). Though they went on to live as women, unlike Hermann Ratjen, their careers will always carry with them a suspicion of sex fraud given the circumstances of their retirements.
Now acknowledging that sex fraud has a history, we should look to the future that Newbould (2015) proposes, one of complete freedom to compete in the category of your choice. Russia, whose sporting pride rivals that of the Eastern bloc countries of the 60s, has a rampant recent history of doping with dangerous (Spivak, 2001) drugs like EPO. If instead of doping, all Russia had to do in order to cheat was have some of their athletes identify as women, why would they not do that? It could even be temporary, as Newbould makes no mention of requiring identity to be lifelong (2015).
To combat the problems of intrusive and mandatory sex verification requirements and tests in sports, Newbould proposes that we remove the tests altogether, allowing athletes to compete with whichever category fits their identity (2015). She asserts that this solution is workable because testosterone, found in large amounts in self-identifying women with DSD like AIS or hyperandrogenism, has no unfair effect on sports. This is a very questionable claim since testosterone is why we segregate sports at all; it is what makes men so much better at physical sports in the first place (Foddy & Savulescu, 2010). Additionally, women with more testosterone have been proven to better at some track events (Bermon & Garnier, 2017), albeit more recently than Newbould’s 2015 study. Furthermore, for Newbould’s solution to work, sex fraud must never occur, which hasn’t been true in the past, and almost definitely wouldn’t be true in the future, considering what athletes have done for a gold medal. Since these two assumptions, that testosterone isn’t an unfair advantage and that sex fraud won’t exist, break down upon further inquiry, so too does Newbould’s argument.
References
Batterham, A. M., & Birch, K. M. (1996). Allometry of Anaerobic Performance: A Gender Comparison. Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology,21(1), 48-62. doi:10.1139/h96-005
Berg, S. (2009, September 15). 1936 Berlin Olympics: How Dora the Man Competed in the Woman's High Jump - SPIEGEL ONLINE - International. Retrieved February 7, 2019, from http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/1936-berlin-olympics-how-dora-the-man-competed-in-the-woman-s-high-jump-a-649104-2.html
Bermon, S., & Garnier, P. (2017). Serum androgen levels and their relation to performance in track and field: Mass spectrometry results from 2127 observations in male and female elite athletes. British Journal of Sports Medicine,51(17), 1309-1314. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2017-097792
Encyclopedia Britannica (2018, March 03). Irina Press. Retrieved February 7, 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irina-Press
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Newbould, M. J. (2015). What do we do about women athletes with testes? Journal of Medical Ethics,42(4), 256-259. doi:10.1136/medethics-2015-102948
Shephard, R. J. (2000). Exercise and Training in Women, Part I: Influence of Gender on Exercise and Training Responses. Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology,25(1), 19-34. doi:10.1139/h00-002
Spivak, JL. (2001). Erythropoietin use and abuse: When physiology and pharmacology collide. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology,502, 207-224.
Wiesemann, C. (2011). Is there a right not to know one's sex? The ethics of 'gender verification' in women's sports competition. Journal of Medical Ethics,37(4), 216-220. doi:10.1136/jme.2010.039081