I don't like Sebastian Coe. I am always criticising his half-baked decisions and his resistance to change. The only domains where he appears decisive are money and politics. But I hate him for his decision to ban the Russian (and Byelorussian) athletes from international athletics competitions on purely political criteria. But this article will be different.
As you probably know, Coe is candidate for the position of the IOC president. His chances are more than slim. He is in bad terms with the current IOC president T. Bach, and the eligibility rules have been recently modified in a subtle way so as to block his path to the presidency. But a few days ago he gave an interview in which he made clear his stance concerning the inclusion of transgender athletes (as well as those with DSD) competing in women’s events. He believes that the current IOC guidelines on the matter are ambiguous, and it is necessary to establish clear and unequivocal rules. In his own words
"It must be a clear policy, and the International Federations must have some flexibility," he explained. "But it is the IOC's responsibility to create that landscape. For me, it is a very clear proposition: if you don't protect the women's category, or if you're in any way ambiguous about it for any reason, it won't end well for women's sport. I come from a sport where that is absolutely sacred".
We have all seen during the Paris Olympics, two boxers, from Algeria and Taiwan, participate in the women's tournament while they had been barred from competing in the 2023 World Championships because, according to the International Boxing Association, both fighters had "male DNA, with XY chromosomes". With the IOC blessing, they won olympic gold medals.
Thanks to Lord Sebastian Athletics has managed to rid the discipline from athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma, to name but a few.
But the battle is far from over. The question for transwomen participation in female sport has by now become political. People, with progressive ideas and who do not understand anything in sport, blinded by the ambient woke-ism, maintain that the participation must be on the basis of self-determined gender. While I do not share the attitude of the (far-)right, who condemns all LGBTQ tendencies, I draw an impassable line when it comes to sports. Women have fought for ages in order to obtain the right to compete in sports. No supposedly right-thinking arguments can despoil them of their hard-won rights. Transwomen should never be allowed to participate in women's sports.
The IOC should have settled this argument long ago. Unfortunately they keep pretending to be unaware of the problem. And their framework on fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations has opened the road to trans-women (i.e. men) to invade cis-women (i.e. genuine women) sports.
Scientists like Ross Tucker and Emma Hilton have been for years explaining these basic truths to everybody who was willing to listen. They have co-authored an article entitled "Fair and Safe eligibility criteria fo Women's Sport"
Their solution is articulated around the following points
(a) recognising that female sport that excludes all male advantage is necessary for female inclusion;
(b) recognising that exclusion from female sport should be based on the presence of any male development, rather than current testosterone levels;
(c) not privileging legal “passport” sex or gender identity for inclusion into female sport;
and
(d) accepting that sport must have means of testing eligibility to fulfil the category purpose.
Athletes who experience male-typical development from testes producing testosterone, have physiological differences creating athletic advantages and safety risks, even in athletes with XY DSDs who might have been observed as female at birth. The issue is whether male development occurred. This is binary, and is answered by a screen followed by tests run in series (in rare cases) to inform decisions. This is infinitely better than subjective visual judgments of who qualifies and who does not. The current technology enables a screening procedure for “sports sex” that involves a simple cheek swab to determine sex chromosomes. This screen can be performed reliably and quickly.
In case you are wondering about the differences between men and women here is a graphic from a work of R. Tucker showing that the differences can be huge when it comes to force.
Still people, blinded by ill-construed feminism, maintain that there is no real difference and all this is a social construct. Just read the arguments of the "feminist sport approach". Unfortunately, more often than not, the champions of these ideas are women.
Fortunately there still are some sane voices. Reem Alsalem, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women and girls in her report on “Violence against women and girls in sports”, recommends that female categories in organised sport be only accessible to cisgender women. And in an interview, in the wake of the Olympics boxing debacle, she proposed the reintroduction of sex testing and advocated for the cheek swab test. In her own words: "We know that there are simple, efficient, dignified ways of testing sex, that are notinvasive, that are cheap and that are reliable".
The International Consortium on Female Sport, an organisation fighting for the preservation of fairness in women's sport published an pen letter addressed to the IOC urging them to review and re-establish its sex-based eligibility guidelines (female sex verification was abandoned in 1999) and restore safety and fairness for female athletes. The Olympic Charter states that athletes are entitled to participate in Olympic sports without discrimination based on sex. The ICFS asserts that “there can be no greater example of sex discrimination than allowing a male athlete to compete against women and seize from them a medal, a placing or even a chance to compete at all”. Categorisation by gender identity, which forms the backbone of the IOC position, does not guarantee fairness or safety for female athletes.
To put it in a nutshell, the IOC position simply fails to recognise the rights of female athletes. So, for this once I am praising Lord Sebastian for his uncompromising stance concerning women's sport, and the policy he will implement if he is elected at the IOC presidency. However, unfortunately, the IOC assembly will probably choose, Bach's protégée, K. Coventry over him and one of the first things that she will do, following in Bach's steps, will be to allow men to take over women's sport, essentially killing it.
