can’t we have Sarah Barker write all of the Track articles?

No woman *could* compete. I guarantee an exception would be made for someone who was actually competitive in the event. Missy Franklin is the best female swimmer ever in history, and her best times in her best event are much slower than any olympic caliber male.  It’s just the way it is.

It’s either two divisions, or it’s one. You’re never going to have the support nor even the number of athletes necessary if you’re going to start creating even more arbitrary divisions than what we have now.

Running has divisions for men and women. Caster Semenya is a woman, therefore she runs in the women’s division.

Having two divisions has to be enough. I feel bad for Semenya and others that have hyperandrogenism but there is not enough of them nor enough interest to build a financially viable 3rd division*. If she wants to compete against the men awesome best of luck. But, yeah there will be people screwed in any decision you…

Right. But why is that the case? It’s because during puberty, boys experience a surge in testosterone - much more than girls do - which causes them to grow and gain muscle mass at a higher rate than girls experience. Testosterone is not the be-all/end-all decider of athletic performance, and is certainly not the…

Because not a single female would be able to compete. Over a thousand high school boys in just the US have beat the Woman’s world record in the 100 meters. You can change that to ten’s of thousands for the least convtervosial time.

You are making an assumption that rational thought and human decency are the same in this case. What is the purpose of women’s sports? To me, it is a place for biological females to compete against other biological females to see who is the fastest strongest most endured that way females can have a chance to compete…

It most certainly is a false equivalence on many levels to compare Semenya to Phelps.

A better question would be to ask why running has separate divisions for men and women. 

The more fundamental reason it’s different is that Michael Phelps competes in an “open” division for all the best swimmers in the world with no barriers to entry. Any human fast enough to compete is allowed in.

No there will not NOW be baselines because baselines have existed for T since the first anti-doping rules went into effect. Yes, HGH levels are tested for. Samples were taken for HGH years before there was an effective HGH test available.

Additionally when we look at the podium from the 2016 Olympics, we have the following:

I’m saying that arm length is not the criterion through which swimming divides its competition into classes. Testosterone levels, for better or for worse, is the criterion that track and field has decided to use to define the male and female divisions.

Yes. The better comparison would be weight classes. It’s not a tall, or big-boned, person’s fault their bone mass puts them into higher weight classes. But since weight is something that gives an advantage in certain sports, weight classes exist to maintain competitive balance.

This is vastly different than Michael Phelps long arms, or Usain Bolt’s stride length. As a former college runner in the 800m race, I can vouch that short runners beat tall runners frequently. The advantages that Michael Phelps and Usains physiology give them can be measured in fractions of percentages over the…

Hot take: All sports involve completely arbitrary line-drawing with regard to their rules — there are no objectively correct rules for a given sport that can be deduced through scientific testing, nor is there some platonic form of a given sport that can be reasoned out — thus this standard is just one more…

I like this article from Drs. Ross Tucker and Joanna Harper (the latter of whom is an expert in gender issues in sport), which discusses the issue with some nuance. https://sportsscientists.com/2016/05/hyperandrogenism-women-vs-women-vs-men-sport-qa-joanna-harper/

Exactly! But that statement wont make a good, angry, click baiting headline. For women’s sport, there has to be some arbitrary cut off. But where wil that be? Poor Caster is the edge case, but someone has to be.

There isn’t - the women’s divisions in sport exist to address the differences in genetics.