In the interview, her French trainer and biology professor stated that he referred her to a world class endocrinologist, who confirmed “she is indeed a woman, despite her karyotype and testosterone levels.” In other words, she’s XY and male testosterone levels. (They never made it clear what facts were relied on for the “she is indeed a woman” statement, but obviously it wasn’t her genome). The following exchange took place between the journalist and trainer/bio professor immediately after this statement about her karyotype: Some claim that XY profiles have a physical, muscular superiority over XX profiles. “People say that everyone should play sports. Everyone, except these people? Some suggest creating special categories, but even within a group of hypoandrogenic or hyperandrogenic people, there are differences among them. There is such a significant variation that categories cannot be established.” Her trainer also admitted they had to lower her testosterone levels to below male levels.
Everyone makes testosterone, and we all do so in different amounts. There is plenty of diversity in the amount of testosterone for female athletes with XX chromosomes as well. As long as she’s not doping, any advantage that her natural body has given her is fair game, as it always has been.
This amount of discussion about this poor woman’s body is honestly exhausting. I’m glad she’s filed a legal complaint for online bullying. Maybe we can get off her back and let her enjoy her well-deserved gold medal.
There are well established reference ranges of normal values for males and females and different age groups. It’s not a problem from a medical point of view to find out which people have abnormal values.
The discussion is not about this specific person. It’s not a personal matter. The discussion is about the rules. Either testosterone should be removed from the list of doping substances for every female athlete or otherwise those who are out of range should not be eligible to compete. The current rules promote blatant unfairness and that hasn’t anything to do with any specific person.
Understandable, but at the same time you would not want « regular phenotype » women to be excluded from professional sports because they are not competitive with intersex people. I mean that’s the reason why we have women categories in sport so that they don’t compete with men.