In 2009, 18-year-old Caster Semenya won gold in the 800m women’s race at the World Championships in Athletics; she later won silver at the London Olympics in 2012 and gold in Rio. But despite her impressive athletic accomplishments, Semenya’s masculine appearance and deep voice have sparked global controversy about her sex, spurring an intense debate over her eligibility to compete in the women’s track and field category. Tests revealed that Semenya had hyperandrogenism, a condition characterized by high levels of testosterone and considered a performance advantage, even while other athletes with equally-inherent advantages have not been subject to the same scrutiny.
Semenya has faced this kind of scrutiny her whole life. As a child, she would have her female genitals verified by school officials after races. Now, years later, the world’s fastest female 800m runner has had to endure “gender verification testing” to determine her eligibility for elite athletics. “I have been subjected to unwarranted and invasive scrutiny of the most intimate and private details of my being,” she has said of her ordeal. The discrimination Semenya and other hyperandrogenous athletes have faced for a condition beyond their control is unmatched in sports history, though top-tier competition is rife with genetic abnormality.
The International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, and athletics culture at large remain committed to creating strict guidelines for athletes’ biological makeups in an attempt to ensure fair competition. However, with the multitude of biological advantages seen in elite sports and the different degrees to which they affect outcomes, blanket rules that put all athletes on equal footing detract from the sport and its athletes. Biological advantages, whether they’re height or hyperandrogenism, should be accepted as an unavoidable factor in any sport. The fairest policy is one by which all athletes compete without either enhancing or otherwise interfering with their natural abilities.
The debate about sex categories gained publicity in 2012, when the IAAF limited the eligibility to compete in the women’s category for female athletes. By the IAAF’s 2012 regulations, hyperandrogenic female athletes could either withdraw from competition and give up their athletic careers or receive hormone treatment to suppress testosterone at the risk of long-lasting health effects. In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended the IAAF ban following an appeal by a hyperandrogenous Indian sprinter, Dutee Chand, allowing Semenya to compete in Rio. The Court determined that there was insufficient evidence that athletes benefitted enough from performance advantages incurred by higher testosterone levels to warrant their exclusion from the female category and gave the IAAF two years to provide evidence to the contrary. Without this evidence, the rule will be declared void in 2017. The IAAF will likely have little trouble proving its case; Semenya’s times are seconds ahead of her competition in a sport where milliseconds can make the difference between winners and losers. There is a substantial body of evidence to prove that athletes derive a performance advantage from higher levels of testosterone. However, the more important question is not whether hyperandrogenous athletes have a significant performance advantage but whether or not this advantage merits exclusion and is substantially different from the natural advantages others athletes possess.
Athletes voluntarily agree to a set of rules that level the playing field without which fair competition would be impossible. Competition in athletics is divided into separate men’s and women’s categories because men usually outperform women. Across all sports, women’s world record times are consistently 10 percent slower than corresponding men’s world records, which has been attributed to men’s higher testosterone levels. The IAAF thus separates men from women so that women have a fair chance at success in their races against biologically similar competitors.
Sex categories function to group athletes with similar biological attributes together, and they generally perform this function well. However, some athletes are nonbinary or intersex, making binary sex categorization inappropriate. As current policy does not account for intersex athletes and their biological advantages, binary categories and competitors are often conflated with a level playing field. In the face of such a dilemma, overhauling sex categorization or introducing new ways of testing to determine eligibility for sex categories such as testosterone testing does little to address the issue. Instead, recognizing that intersex athletes’ genetic advantages do not make them outliers amongst professional athletes may be the better path forward. Shifting away from an obsession with leveling the playing field is imperative for the IAFF and athletic culture, as many other biological factors make some athletes compete better than others.
Genetic traits that produce a higher level of testosterone confer an advantage in sports, but so do genetic traits such as increased red blood cell count, longer wing-span, and even larger foot size. The IAAF views these features as advantageous, but not unfair. Michael Phelps has an extraordinary combination of advantageous genetic phenotypes – double-jointed ankles which bend 15 degrees farther than most and a wingspan longer than his height – which make him unbeatable in the pool. Ethiopian and Kenyan marathon runners typically live at higher altitudes, increasing their oxygen capacity. One Finnish Olympic cross-country skier had abnormally-high hemoglobin levels, similarly increasing the amount of oxygen his body could handle. Yet while all of these athletes’ bodies are built for their sports, their genetic quirks are heralded as biological perfection while Semenya’s is attacked for allowing her to perform too well.
To suggest that hyperandrogenous athletes’ advantage is unfair because it diminishes the winning chances of athletes with less-favorable biological capital is to suggest that only athletes with so-called “normal” attributes can fairly compete against one another and that a completely fair competitive environment can be created. No blanket rule will ever account for the plethora of possible genetic advantages, and the degree to which they affect athletes, without unfairly disadvantaging those athletes whose situations are outside the bounds arbitrarily deemed acceptable by international sports federations.
Recognizing this impossibility, advantage can be accounted for within the framework of a sex spectrum on which biological differences exist and therefore can be expected, not regarded as unfair. This is not to suggest that anyone should be allowed to compete in any category. Nongenetically attained advantages, such as performance-enhancing drugs and certain types of athletic wear, should be regulated; there is a difference between genetically and artificially-engineered success.
The likelihood that medal winners will have some sort of genetically-conferred advantage is high, be it a long wingspan or high testosterone levels. It is counterintuitive to search for the most exceptional athletes in the world and then insist that they be anything but genetically exceptional. These athletes are not cheating; they are simply playing to their strengths, and ultimately, those strengths should not be grounds for discrimination.