Front Burner - Who gets to compete as a woman in sports?

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

Olympic gold medallist Caster Semenya, from South Africa, has lost her appeal against proposed rules from track's governing body that require some female runners to lower their naturally high testosterone levels. It's a ruling that's expected to have huge implications on the future of women's sports. Today on Front Burner, Katrina Karkazis helps us understand why. She's a bioethicist who's been studying the regulation of hormone levels in women's elite sports for years.

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20s. Uncover. The Village. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Here they come. It'll be Semenya all by herself. She has destroyed them in the last 200 metres. This field has been littered with personal bests and national records, but they weren't to deny the favourite.

Caster Semenya is a two-time Olympic champion from South Africa, a record-breaking runner. She's 28 years old and has aspirations to continue winning races. But according to TRAC's highest governing body, if Semenya wants to do that again, she's going to have to lower the amount of testosterone in her body. That ultimatum came after Semenya lost her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport earlier this week. The majority of the panel found such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable, and proportionate means. On the one hand, people think this is really unfair to Semenya because she's simply leveraging her biological gifts.

In this case, elevated testosterone levels. Basically what Kastor is being told is that she's not woman enough, that she's too strong to be a real woman. But on the other hand, people believe that letting her compete is unfair towards other female athletes, many of whom share lower testosterone levels. I think it's about time that Kass looked after the majority and thought about how we're going to protect female sport. Katrina Karkazis has been studying the regulation of hormone levels in women's elite sport for years. Today, why this issue is so complicated to navigate,

and what this latest ruling against Castor Semenya might tell us about the future of women's sport. This is FrontBurner. Katrina, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. Can we start here? Can you explain to me what it is about Castor Semenya's body that's different from other women's bodies? In reality, there's very little that's different. other women's bodies? In reality there's very little that's different but the one piece that brings her under this regulation is that she was born with a variation that gives her naturally higher testosterone levels than the majority of women but certainly not all women. Simenia's level

is in public but the races the IAAF targeted are the ones she runs. So the options now take hormone suppressants like birth control and deal with possible side effects or don't run those races. And I want to get in a minute to the science behind whether or not testosterone gives you essentially an edge in sport. But first, you know, people have been debating this case for years. an edge in sport. But first, you know, people have been debating this case for years. I'd be interested to hear your perspective on why you think this is such an emotionally charged issue. There's essentially warring camps on both sides. You know, it's interesting, because when I first started working on this, I really didn't think it would be so charged. But I think you've really hit on something, which is that it's incredibly emotional for people.

And if I had to characterize what each side thinks, although obviously there are so many views, I would say on the one hand, there are people who find these kinds of regulations to be grossly unjust, that they single out women who are just born the way they are. It's not like they're cheating. It's not like they're doping. They just are born with a body that's given them this special difference. Semenya's lawyers challenge the rules on the basis of human rights. They argue her advantages in sport are no different than any other genetic variations. The very difficult thing for Kastor is all she wants to do is compete the way that she was born naturally. And in a world where we're telling athletes not to put any prohibited substances in their body because we're so concerned about doping,

we think it's deeply ironic that this rule requires athletes to take substances to change who they are naturally. Everybody agrees they belong in the category. The question is really, should they be allowed to compete with these higher testosterone levels? Right. And this idea of high testosterone levels naturally occurring, it seems that in a lot of other places, natural ability is usually celebrated in sport, right? We're talking about Michael Phelps' limbs and how they help him swim really fast. Michael Phelps stands 6 feet 4 with enormous wingspan of 6 feet 7, creating the elongated stroke that

has broken 25 individual world records. The Baltimore Bullets does it again. Or Shaquille O'Neal's stature and what that does for his basketball skills. 7 foot 1, nearly 300 pounds, yet only weeks beyond his 19th birthday, LSU sophomore Shaquille O'Neal is already being heralded as one of the top centers in the universe. If he's small, short, big, fat, tall, just go out and kill him. Who taught you that? My father.

So why do you think that this issue, this issue of naturally occurring testosterone, is different? In some ways, I have to sort of drag you into the weeds by the side of the road for a second. And the reason is that if we weren't talking about testosterone, we would really be talking about all of the policies that preceded this, which have been called sex testing policies or gender verification regulations. So for as long as women have been in elite sport, these policymakers running these sports governing bodies have tried to find a way to look at women or women's bodies and determine whether or not they believe that they belong in the category, the female category. And so then the question is like, why? Why would you be preoccupied with this for decades? Why do you think that? Why do you be preoccupied with this for decades? And why do you think that?

Why do you think that is the case? Because I think there's this idea that women are inherently weaker, and they're sort of a vulnerable category, and it needs to be protected. Men might infiltrate the category, they might masquerade as women and try to compete. And so we need to police this category really rigidly. And so there's been a really long history of trying to exclude some women. And a lot of those women have been women with intersex variations. And what that means simply is they don't have the biology that we typically think of as male typical or female typical, but it doesn't mean they're not women. And is the idea here that they lean more towards men than the sport would like? You know, so that I think is a really interesting question,

because there's something about this sort of broader cultural fear of, uh-oh, this is too close to masculinity. This is too close to male typical. But it doesn't even have to be about bodies. You can be too fast or too strong. And women athletes get questioned. I think Serena Williams is a great example of this, where people look, some people anyway, look at her musculature and start raising questions about her gender. The Russian Tennis Federation president has been suspended from the WTA for one year. In an appearance on Russian television, Tarpyshev referred to Serena and Sister Venus as the Williams brothers,

later going on to say, quote, it's frightening when you look at them, but really, you just need to play against the ball. And so it's sort of a broader problem in women's sport. And then it's really come to a head in this area because it's not just criticism of some women athletes. It's actually regulations designed to bar them from sport and slow them down. And that's what makes this different. The governing body for track and field argue that people with a difference of sex development have an unfair advantage. I think this is pretty straightforward, and it's very straightforward for any international

federation in sport. Athletics has two classifications. It has age. it has gender. We are fiercely protective about both. And I'm really grateful that the Court of Arbitration has upheld that principle. What do you make of the argument that is not just about sex, but also about race? In Castor Semenya's case, and I'm thinking of other athletes that have also been regulated around elevated testosterone levels, Duti Chand, an Indian sprinter. Castor seemed destined to miss the Rio Games.

seemed destined to miss the Rio games. But in 2015, the ban was lifted when a runner from India, Dutee Chand, also barred because of high testosterone levels, sued the International Track and Field Governing Authority and won. Here's why this is interesting and sort of complicated. We know that the vast majority, if not all of the women who are being targeted under this regulation

are black and brown women from the global south. And I would hope that the listeners like scratch their head for a second and say, well, why is that? Like when you think about testosterone levels, there's no reason that we should be finding pockets or huge swaths of this in the global South versus the global North. And the reason is that in the U.S. and other global North countries, there has been a long history, decades long now, of medically changing the bodies of women with intersex variations, normalizing them, so to speak, so that, you know, they don't have any what's thought of as like male typical traits, like if women have testes, take them out. Those kinds of interventions haven't happened to the same degree in the global south. So you have women with intersex variations. It's not that there's

more of them. It's that this whole medical paradigm was never systematically implemented in these places. So luckily, quite honestly, these women have been allowed to live and grow up with their bodies unchanged by medicine. So when we're talking about DSD athletes, that stands for Differences of Sexual Development. Athletes with elevated testosterone levels. The question is, does this actually affect their performance?

Does the International Association of Athletic Federations have a point? It feels to a lot of people like they do have a point and a really strong one. With the idea that women with higher than typical testosterone levels will always perform better than women with lower levels. And that it's not just a small difference, but a large enough difference that it leads to an unlevel playing field. And so people who support the regulation are like, wait a second, that's not fair. These women have a competitive advantage and we're disadvantaged because of that. We have lower levels. We can't do what they can do. But there's kind of two questions mashed up in here.

The first one is, do women with higher levels actually perform better? Right. And science can try to answer that question. It turns out it's actually hard to answer. And that's because there are so many factors that go into athleticism. Many of them have nothing to do with the body, right? But training, socioeconomic status, nutrition, air quality. But the other part of the question is, even if they did have a performance difference, is it unfair? And science can't answer that question for us.

That's for all of us out here to debate among ourselves. Like, what is the difference between having a physiological difference and growing up in a really wealthy family where you have access to all kinds of resources? Should that be viewed the same or differently? Why is there this tendency to prioritize biological difference and call that unfair over all other ways of thinking about what contributes to athleticism and whether those things might be equally unfair? And that's where people are stuck. But isn't there an argument that testosterone is measurable and that there's a clear relationship between testosterone and things like lean muscle mass and physical strength? You know, were it so simple, I thought, to a really important issue, which is that reasonable people could look at what's here and come to very different conclusions about not

only the science, but the ethics of requiring women to undergo medically unnecessary interventions. I can say this decision is certainly not the perfect one, but is there a perfect decision in this situation? You know, I spent a lot of time with my colleague Rebecca Jordan-Young looking at the science, the broader science around testosterone and athleticism. And it's not as simple as what the regulations say and what so many people think. And really simply, there's no clear, predictable relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean it doesn't affect muscle.

But you can't actually say that women with higher levels will always perform better than women with lower levels. We'll be back in a second. Canada's largest library of audiobooks, including exclusive content curated by and for Canadians. Experience books in a whole new way, where stories are brought to life by powerful performances from renowned actors and narrators. With the free Audible app, you can listen anytime, anywhere, whether you're at home, in the car, or out on a jog. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book. Go to www.audible.ca to learn more. One thing I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around in the IAAF's decision is what they've put these restrictions on. Essentially,

they're saying that women like Castro Semenya need to lower their testosterone levels if they want to compete in certain races. So they can't compete in the 400 meter or the 800 meter, but they could compete in the 1500 meter. So can you help me understand that? Because there's like just 700 meters difference. So if testosterone is so important to your athletic ability, then like why suddenly is it not as important if you're running 700 more meters? a question that so many people have that is so confusing. If you're going to discriminate against people, which everyone in the court and outside agrees, this discriminates against women and it discriminates against a particular subset of women. The panel found that the DSD regulations are discriminatory. You have to have a valid reason to do it.

And so here the reason is unlevel playing field. But the majority of the panel found that on the basis of the evidence submitted by the parties in the procedure, such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF's objective. But one percent performance difference isn't enough. And then the question becomes how much difference is too much, right? How much advantage do you need to have before someone thinks it's unfair? And they didn't have the evidence for these other events. And that is a really important point because it sort of supports, it doesn't sort of, it really supports this idea that

tea isn't kind of this one-stop shop for being an amazing athlete. At the risk of stating the obvious for our listeners, when you say tea, you're talking about testosterone. Yeah, yeah, testosterone. Sorry, it's a little catchy shorthand that I use because it's easier than getting the multisyllable. Totally. syllable. Totally. So I want to talk to you about how this ruling will now be used in a much larger global conversation about gender and a much larger discussion about gender and sport. In your opinion, how does this ruling fit into the debate around transgender athletes, specifically a person transitioning from male to female who wants to compete?

One of the things to be really clear about is while there are certainly connections between intersex and transgender that just have to do with broad ideas about femininity, masculinity, appropriate bodies, right? And certainly both groups have been heavily stigmatized and discriminated against. In sport, there have been different regulations for different groups. And so for a long time, there were actually no transgender regulations. And then in the early 2000s, these transgender regulations came along. Policy developed in 2003 said transgender athletes needed reassignment surgery, legal recognition of that reassignment, and at least two years of hormone replacement therapy.

But in general, what these sports governing bodies want right now, and it's problematic, they want one hormonal threshold for anybody competing in the female category. That applies to trans. That applies to anybody competing in the female category. And so it is really then taking sports performance and reducing it to hormone alone and saying this factor here is the most important. The interesting thing is people have a lot of ideas, well, transgender women will naturally dominate in sport. But when you think about the fact that trans women have been allowed to compete since 2004, none insofar as I know have ever

made the Olympic podium. So it's not the case that there's sort of this, you know, group of super women who are trans that are dominating sport in the same way that there's not the case that women with high T levels or higher T levels are also dominating. I want to play a clip for you now from Joanna Harper. She's the first transgender woman to consult with the International Olympic Committee on Gender. She agrees with the ruling and argues that it's about preserving the integrity of women's sports. Here she is talking to my colleague Carol McNeil. I would suggest that any human being who has testes, has male levels of testosterone, and has functioning androgen receptors should be competing in the men's division.

And so that is the correct sporting category for those individuals, regardless of their gender identity. Are they always going to win over women who were born women? No, no, of course not. There are many factors involved in sports success. However, the best men will always beat the best women. To allow human beings with testes, with functioning androgen receptors and male testosterone levels into women's sports would be a travesty I think. So what do you make of her argument, the idea that the best men

will always beat the best women? She's pointing to a lot of biological traits that are considered masculine and male typical. And I really feel like it's a scare tactic. The real question is, do they have a performance difference? And is that difference higher and unfair? That's the question at hand. And what bothers me about this statement is that unless you have some kind of evidence for a sport performance difference, what in the world are you basing this on? It's a really disappointing kind of argument. And what we need to be doing is not telling people based on their biology, what category they do factor into athletic ability, and if you don't think that testosterone is the way to measure this, then what is the way forward?

So I think we need to think for a second about what the problem is here. If the problem is that men are trying to masquerade as women, then that's the problem that we need to deal with. But history has shown us that there's actually really no evidence of that trying to happen. If the problem is that there are women with certain physiological traits and that gives them a performance difference, then we need to look at the degree of difference and then make a secondary assessment about whether that's unfair. The evidence that I've seen doesn't support even that first belief, which is that higher T gives you a performance difference. And it's of a magnitude that it's almost typical to the general difference between men and women. But the general

difference in sports performance between men and women is roughly 10 to 12%. And if you look at any athlete that's competing as a woman, they're never clocking times that are 10 to 12% better than their peers. If they were, they'd be clocking male typical times. So it's not so simple that there's sort of this male typical advantage. This is a lot of anxiety around people wanting a clear and definitive gender binary between male and female. There's a cultural desire for a very simple distinction. Science tells us that it's far more complicated and that we're never going to have the kind of clean lines that people want. Katrina, thank you so much.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. Tonight, Kastor Semenya will run in what could be her last 800-meter race before the rules around limiting testosterone are actually enacted. It's the Diamond League meeting in Doha, Qatar. She's running against 2016 Olympic silver medalist Francine Nyon-Saba, who interestingly also recently revealed she had a similar difference in sexual development DSD characteristics to Semenya. That's it for today. FrontBurner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced by Matt Alma, Chris Berube, Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, and Shannon Higgins.

With help from Hannah Alberga. Derek Vanderwyk is our sound savant. OG of executive producing is Nick McKay-Blocos. I should say that is not my nickname for him. We have much cooler producers that call him that. And I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and see you Monday. Thanks for listening and see you Monday. a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy?

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