The IOC: The Hormones Maketh The Woman, Ctd

Joining the debate, Amanda Schaffer sketches out what could be a fairer policy than the IOC's:

People who are chromosomally XX and living as legal women should compete as female Olympic athletics, no matter what their bodies look like and no matter their testosterone levels. Under the current policy, XX-ers with naturally high testosterone could be ineligible to compete as women, and that seems wrong. Some XY-ers should also be deemed women for the purposes of sport, like those with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and many with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, too. Yes, this last category would entail some hard judgment calls, but at least it’s a smaller group. And rather than a narrow focus on testosterone, a more encompassing algorithm that takes into account chromosomes, genitals, gonads, and hormones seems like the only plausible approach.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth McClung calls attention to another controversial rule dealing with gender in sports:

[The International Association of Athletics Federations] decided late in 2011 that ALL ‘mixed gender’ records for the marathon/half marathon would not qualify for world records. Even though many races for men finish with the leader at or under the women’s world record, the IAAF decided that women running with men gives an ‘unfair advantage’.

The number of races which are separate make this decision a direct blow against female marathoners, who had to wait nearly a century to be able to run a marathon in 1984 (after creating female marathons, and campaigning the IOC for decades). In a spiteful attack on women, the IAAF decision was that all ‘mixed gender’ race records would not count, and that was RETROACTIVE. Which, for the USA meant that the female USA record set in 2009 was eliminated because it was in Chicago, a ‘mixed gender’ race, and now the 1984 record is the ‘official’ USA record. And that Paula Radcliffe's marathon run of 2:15…didn't happen, officially (thanks to retroactive IAAF decisions)…. Men’s records set in mixed gender races remain as ‘world records.’