Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes and internal testes. Semenya has "high natural testosterone" as a result of having male anatomy and hormones. The specific regulation Semenya has been fighting is explicitly "limited to athletes with ’46 XY DSD’ – i.e. conditions where the affected individual has XY chromosomes."
The idea that testosterone confers physical advantages of strength/speed is not "vague biological determinism" it's one of the most basic facts of our existence. It the primary reason sex-segregated sports exist in the first place.
"To say that an XY human can’t compete in the women’s category of professional sports unless they lower their testosterone below 5 nmol/L — a figure that is still 7.5 times the value of the average woman competing at the 2011 and 2013 track and field World Championships and a figure that not a single healthy woman born with XX chromosomes, ovaries, and producing estrogen at puberty can reach — isn’t a huge human rights travesty. It’s a protection of women’s sports."
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/05/what-no-one-is-telling-...
Trans women don't tend to have testosterone levels that high anyway, and if they did their doctors would be worried about it. Obviously not a comprehensive study but, have the testosterone levels of a trans woman [0] (she's relatively normal, other than the fact she insists on debating strangers on the internet). That's ~.4 nmol/L (why sports and medicine use two different measures is also very confusing, unit conversion here [1]. Given the advantages testosterone gives in sports [3] I'd wager most women competing aren't hovering around the minimum levels (which is where most trans women are going to be by virtue of how anti-androgens work). Instead of unscientific blog spam, how about a study published by the National Collegiate Athletic Association [4].
Basically as the knowledge of the underlying science grows the idea of simple binary for fair sporting competition makes increasingly less sense, I wouldn't be surprised if elite institutions started to drift more toward "hormonal weight classes" (and so thinks these scientists [4])
[0] https://imgur.com/a/z9DR2cD
[1] http://unitslab.com/node/136
[2] https://sci-hub.tw/10.1210/er.2018-00020
[3] “[t]he available, albeit incomplete, evidence makes it highly likely that the sex difference in circulating testosterone of adults explains most, if not all, the sex differences in sporting performance.” https://sci-hub.tw/10.1210/er.2018-00020
[4]“[a]ny athletic advantages a transgender girl or woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen therapy.” https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/NCLR_TransStudentAt...
I'd wager most women competing aren't hovering around the minimum levels (which is where most trans women are going to be by virtue of how anti-androgens work). Instead of unscientific blog spam
Again, Semenya is not transgender[1] and her T hormones are not hovering around the minimum levels, which is the entire reason for the ongoing debate. The "unscientific blog spam" was referencing the IAAF study of competing athletes[2]
not .6 as you're implying with the 7.5x figure ...
which indeed showed the average T level for 1332 female athletes was 0.67. 5 / 0.67 = 7.46
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/05/03...
[2] https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28673896/
The performance advantages they measured, in the events inwhich there were any, are explicitly linked to fT not non free testosterone and even then aren't being presented as causative.
"Our study design cannot provide evidence for causality between androgen levels and athletic performance, but can indicate associations between androgen concentrations and athletic performance. Thus, we deliberately decided not to exclude performances achieved by females with biological hyperandrogenism and males with biological hypoandrogenism whatever the cause of their condition (oral contraceptives, polycystic ovaries syndrome, disorder of sex development, doping, overtraining). As a consequence, the calculated mean fT value in the present study is higher than the 8.06pmol/L median value previously reported in a similar female population."
They certainly don't appear to be arguing that hyperandrogenism in women should be a disqualifying condition. Especially in running events like the ones Semenya competed in since the performance gains appear most significantly in the throwing events.
"Our hypothesis is that ...androgens exert their ergogenic effects on some sportswomen through better visuospatial neural activation."
Something that was pointed out to me recently that I thought was quite insightful. The greater societal acceptance of trans men compared to trans women seems to parallel the greater societal acceptance of cis women presenting in a masculine way compared to cis men presenting in a feminine way.
Which leads to the interesting idea that the key to societal acceptance of trans women may be widening what is considered socially acceptable for cis men.
To me the truth of the matter is that this is a very complex issue with no simple answers. People altering their physiology through hormones obviously can give them advantages or disadvantages that others don't have. As can having different hormone mixes when growing or through puberty. As indeed can a myriad of other genetic factors.
I honestly can't think of a way to make this fair. Do you have any suggestions?
Trans woman; trans men would be competing in the male competitions, and seem to be invisible in the whole trans debate anyway. The problem with this is that it's almost entirely based on prejudice and people saying things that turn out not to be true, along with vague biological determinism. Hence the Caster Semenya debacle (not trans, intersex AFAB, but high natural testosterone).