Good enough? The ‘wicked’ use of testosterone for defining femaleness in women’s sport

Abstract

Since the 1930s, sports administrators have insisted on various mechanisms to assess ‘femaleness’ for the purpose of competition in women’s sport. Most recently, the criterion has turned to testosterone. Specifically, if a woman naturally produces testosterone that registers in what sport authorities consider an ‘unnatural’ range, she must suppress that testosterone to compete in women’s events. The testosterone threshold will undoubtedly expand to include cis, intersex, and trans sportswomen, despite their respective and significant differences. Taken together, these types of regulations are confusing and contradictory, quite possibly sexist, and most assuredly ‘wicked’, as Rittel and Webber formulated with regard to ‘wicked problems’. A historical analysis of the regulations for ‘femaleness’ in sport, contextualized with other testosterone-related policies, reveals the impossibility of sex determination, the faulty assertion that testosterone is a ‘male hormone’, and the prioritization of sporting rights over human rights.

Keywords:

• Sex determination
• sport
• testosterone
• sexism in sport

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In this article, I use the terminology consistent with organizational policies and regulations with a deep respect for the debates concerning terms such as DSD, intersex, trans, transgender, and related identifiers.

2 In 1992, the IOC’s Medical Commission continued by looking for a specific gene on the Y chromosome—the SRY gene—associated with sex differentiation. At the 1996 Games in Atlanta, Georgia, eight female athletes out of total 3,387 (1 in 423) exhibited the SRY gene. Additional examinations determined that seven of those women had androgen insensitivity syndrome (four complete, three partial), and one woman had 5α-reductase deficiency, in which testosterone cannot be converted to its active metabolite, dihydrotestosterone. Medical authorities cleared all eight women to compete as women. In light of the time, expense, disturbance, and ultimate futility of genetic sex testing, the IOC declared its cessation in 1999 (Serrat and Herreros 1993; Elsas, Hayes, and Muralidhara 1997; Genel 2000).

3 The authors acknowledged that some of the criticism was valid, but maintained confidence in the study’s original findings (Bermon et al. 2018).

4 The IAAF published ‘Version 1.1’ of its Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification (Athletes with Differences of Sex Development) on April 23, 2018. It published ‘Version 2.0’ of the same regulations on May 1, 2019. In Version 1.1, the ‘relevant’ DSDs included 5α‐reductase type 2 deficiency; partial androgen insensitivity syndrome; 17β‐hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 3 (17β‐ HSD3) deficiency; congenital adrenal hyperplasia; 3β‐hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency; ovotesticular DSD; or any other genetic disorder involving disordered gonadal steroidogenesis. Version 2.0 omits congenital adrenal hyperplasia and 3β‐hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency as ‘relevant’ DSDs.

5 Harper (2017, 152) proposes that as ‘an alternative to strictly using the athlete’s self-identified, or government-identified gender, athletic gender could be used to separate gender in other arenas from the appropriate competition category for athletes’.

6 In a related case, USA Powerlifting barred the participation of trans women, defying the policy of the International Powerlifting Federation, which governs the sport on a global scale (USA 2019).