The 2024 Olympic Games come to an end today for weeks. The best athletes in the world have been competing in Paris for the chance to claim a medal. I love watching Simone Biles and the US gymnastics teams with my daughters. Just seeing that excellence and them winning big. It's been just incredible to witness.
Now, it's par for the course for us to see extraordinary female athletes on the international stage. But there's something many people don't know about the women who compete in elite sports. For nearly a century, women athletes have faced questions about whether they were in fact women and over the years they've had to take tests to prove it.
This is a subject of a new podcast series called Tested. It's from NPR's Embedded and CBC in Canada. Tested digs into the history of sex testing in elite sports. And it focuses on a particular group of runners who these days are labeled DSD athletes. DSD stands for differences of sex development. As a catch-all medical term used to describe a condition in which a person's chromosomes, sex hormone balance, internal anatomy or external genitalia don't develop as expected.
And sports authorities believe some women with DSDs have an unfair advantage in sports because they have higher levels of testosterone than what is considered average for a woman. These questions about fairness and who can compete as a woman are alive and well. Just last week in Paris, two female boxers, Iman Kalif of Algeria and Lin Yutin from Taiwan, face questions and hateful commentary about their gender.
Last year the International Boxing Association had disqualified the two boxers saying they failed unspecified sex eligibility tests. But the International Olympic Committee, known as the IOC, defended them and said they were eligible to compete in the women's category and the Olympics. Over in Tracking Field, the people who govern the sports say that in order to be eligible for the female category, athletes with DSDs must lower their testosterone.
And that requires taking medications that can have pretty bad side effects. Rose Eveleth is the host of Tested and they've been reporting on the story for a whopping 10 years. Before the latest boxing controversy broke out last week, my colleague, Amartina spoke with Rose about the series, how it came about and how this history of sex testing continues to resonate today. Stay with us. Support for NPR and the following message come from Amazon Business.
Everyone could use more time. Amazon Business offers smart business buying solutions so you can spend more time growing your business and less time doing the admin. Learn more at AmazonBusiness.com. This message comes from NPR Sponsor Squarespace. Kickstart or update written content on any website, product description or email with Squarespace AI, generating instant personalized results that know and show your brand identity.
Explain what your site is about, choose your tone and enter what you need to get short or long form text. No matter the placement, Squarespace AI makes it easier to go live, stand out and succeed online. Use code NPR to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This message comes from NPR Sponsor Mint Mobile. From the gas pump to the grocery store, inflation is everywhere.
So Mint Mobile is offering premium wireless starting at just $15 a month. To get your new phone plan for just $15, go to mintmobile.com slash switch. Rose Eveleth joins me today. They are a journalist and producer whose new series tested examines the history of gender sex testing in sports. Rose, welcome to the Sunday story. Thanks for having me. All right, so the series is all out now for people to binge if they want six parts in total covers over a hundred years of sports history.
That is a lot. Rose 100 years. So how did you discover this topic and what made you want to tell the story? Yes, so this for me started a long time ago actually. I've always been a sports guy. I love sports. I love playing sports. I love doing sports and following sports. And I was an intern actually at Scientific American way back when I was first starting my career in journalism. And I was always looking for sports stories to write about.
And I had also been assigned a lot of stories about really fancy prosthetic devices, you know, bionic arms and all that stuff. And so I was looking for something to write about to prove my worth as an intern. And I found the story of Oscar Pistorias who at the time was very famous for being sort of this bionic man. They called him the Blade Runner. He's a double amputee who ran on these two Cheetah blades.
He really, really wanted to run against able-bodied runners. And there was a big debate about whether he should be allowed. And you know, there were rival labs and these questions of how do you measure an unfair advantage? And as I was researching that, I came across Caster Semenia, another South African runner who in 2009 had sort of burst off the world stage and won an incredible race in Berlin at the world championships.
And instead of being celebrated, wound up being sort of thrust into this media circus around her gender, people saying things like, well, she's maybe not totally a woman. So of course she won. She has this advantage. I had sort of seen that happen in 2009, but I think it was so confusing to me that I didn't, it didn't really register. And then when I got interested again, it just hit some neuron for me where I just could not stop thinking about it.
And I spent the last 10 years researching this. I've been pitching the story for eight years actually. And so I'm very thankful that both the CDC and Canada and NPR picked it up. So before we dive in more on Semenia's story, because yeah, that's also a very fascinating case. For me, Rose, this goes back a long, long way to I remember specifically when Tiger Woods left Stanford early to become a professional golfer.
And then about a year after that, he got lacic surgery. So one of the most physically gifted golfers out of college. Now all of a sudden has the eyes of an eagle on his head where, you know, in a sport where you need great eyesight. So I always thought about like what exactly means to have an unfair advantage or or just an advantage. And what exactly does that mean when it comes to how we judge people's performance? Are they getting too much of an advantage if that makes any sense?
Totally, totally, right. And it is this ongoing question in sports, right? There are certain kinds of injections that baseball players get into their shoulder, right? To like rejuvenate the tendons of the shoulder. There are people who have said this is a rumor that I have never been able to confirm that some pictures are getting preemptive Tommy John surgery, right? To replace the tendon in their elbow.
Is that unfair? I think it's such a fascinating question. And so much of sports is about these tiny margins and these little advantages that you're going to get by doing one thing or another that it is so fascinating. Okay, so back to some men for a second. So tell us about her story, what wound up happening to her because that's one of these stories that I think is is in so many ways so unfair because we kind of don't understand a lot of what happens when it comes to someone in her situation.
Yeah, so castor's some an incredible runner from South Africa. She is known in the track and field world in 2009. You know, she's winning races. She's looking really strong. But because of the way sports media works, there's not a lot of coverage of races in South Africa and South Africa and Africa in general. But I did talk to somebody who was covering track in Africa at the time, a journalist named Celestein, Karone.
Some athletes told us, oh, is this new guy in the 800 meters? We really doubt whether she's female. And I'm like, yo, backup, what do you mean? And they're like, we are not sure about her. For them, it was how she looks and how she speaks. And one of them actually was like, I thought she was just too fast for a guy. And I didn't, I honestly didn't make anything of it until the 2009 World Championships when now all have so to speak up your clues.
Castor doesn't really get global attention until she goes to the World Championships in 2009. They're held in Berlin. And she wins this 800 meter race. And she wins it handily, right? She kind of runs away with it. This is a junior, an African junior champion who has come out of nowhere and is running away with this world championship final 155 46, the fastest time again in the world this year for this unknown castor, Semenya of South Africa.
Castor is really strong. She's got this really great personality that you see in, you know, athletes where she's flexing at the camera. She's really confident. And she shows up and she wins. And again, instead of being able to celebrate that win, she winds up being accused of maybe being a man or at least some percent of man.
And she's got the head of the track and field organization say, you know, yes, she is a woman, but maybe not 100%. And there's all this speculation about her body and her biology and who she is and all of this. And it was really confusing, I think, for everybody at the time because there was, most people weren't saying, oh, she's actually a man in disguise or anything. That's not really what people are saying, but it was this much murkier.
She's there's something wrong about her. She's not a correct woman in some way or another. And this conversation wasn't just happening privately among athletes. It was also happening very publicly. We have more now in a controversy that has erupted in Germany after a championship track meet there. The big question this morning is whether one of the runners should be in the men's or women's race.
Officials ordered her to undergo a series of tests. They are looking for proof that South Africa's golden girl is not a boy. Seminia might seem masculine, even for an 18 year old boy. And to most eyes, she does not look like a girl. And after winds up in this really weird position because at the time in 2009, there weren't really any rules on the books that regulated the participation of athletes like Caster who have variations in their sex biology.
So there was no rule saying that she couldn't run or that she had to run with certain restrictions. But also apparently the track and field organization, which at the time was known as the IWAF is now world athletics, they decided that still it wasn't quite right. And they were more, they kind of come to an agreement, her team and the IWAF come to an agreement and they say, okay, you can run, but you have to get your testosterone level.
She has, Caster has higher testosterone level than the quote unquote average woman. You have to get your testosterone level down to below a certain number for six months. And then you can race again. Just to be clear Rose, there's no suspicion that she's injecting herself with testosterone. This is naturally occurring testosterone, no fault of her own. Correct. Yes, this is her body makes more testosterone. And there are a lot of reasons why this can happen.
There's sort of broadly in medical terms called differences of sex development, DSDs, she's a DSD athlete is the way that world athletics refers to her. And yeah, so there's no cheating going on here. This is how Caster was born. There are other women like this, they're born like this. And so Caster in this situation was asked to regulate, which meant taking medications to lower her testosterone level. And so she does that.
And she actually gets back on the track, but because this deal that she's made with the IWAF was in private, nobody knows. And so there's this moment where she gets back on the track, but everyone thinks that nothing has changed. And then again, you get this new cycle of people saying, well, should she really be here? Is this really fair?
So Caster is kind of the biggest name in this sort of modern era from 2009 onward. And she's kind of the first big sort of famous case at this happening, but she's certainly not the only one. And how has what happened with her impacted other athletes? Yeah, so you know, Caster burst onto the scene. Like I said, there's no policy. And I think that the governing body of track and field, I think they probably realize that this is not sustainable.
And so we have this situation where you have one deal in private with this one athlete, but no rule that says this or that. So they put together a working group. And in 2011, they come out with this new set of regulations that regulate testosterone. And we're kind of living in that era. We're living in the sort of testosterone era of regulation of female athletes. Those exact terms of the testosterone rules have changed over time. In 2023 last spring, they updated them again.
And now what it means is that some women with certain DSD conditions have to regulate their testosterone. And again, this is naturally occurring testosterone. They have to bring it down to a certain level. So I've been traveling around the world to meet these athletes who are regulated by these policies, including Christine Boma. So Christine Boma is this superstar in Namibia. She won the silver medal last Olympics in Tokyo in the 200 meters.
And she is one of these athletes who is now sort of being regulated and told that she has to take this medication. So she is actually choosing to go for the medication, try and lower her testosterone so that she can stay on the track. There are other athletes who I talked to for the series who chose not to do that and went different directions. But Christine is trying. She tried to make to Paris and tried to kind of get up back out there.
So Rose, the two athletes we've been talking about are both from Africa, the southern part of Africa. But generally who is most impacted by these policies? It's a good question. I think it's an important question. As far as I know from all my reporting, all of the women who have been impacted in this more modern era since 2009, since Caster are all black and brown women from the global south. I don't know of any woman who is not in that category who's been impacted by these policies.
So what do you think? I mean, why why them? Why is that? Yeah, I think there are a lot of reasons for this. One is that these tests are not done on every single woman. They're only done if a woman seems like perhaps she might fall into the DST category. And it's not really clear what that means and who gets to decide the actual process by which an athlete gets tested is really opaque.
But there are a lot of folks who have suggested that there is a racial component to that that some women look more like women and some don't. And there's a long history of black and brown women being written about and perceived as less female, less womanly, less feminine. There's a very long eugenic colonial racist history there.
There is also the fact that there is a big gap in healthcare between different places. And a lot of people point to this as one of the reasons why you're seeing this. So in general, broad strokes, folks in the global north tend to be born in hospitals, tend to go to regular checkups when they're babies, and will probably be diagnosed with some of these DST conditions, differences of sex development early.
And maybe treated. But in general, if you're an athlete in the global north, by the time you're 18, 19, breaking onto the world stage, running in these big events, you already know that you maybe are one of these athletes. And maybe you're already taking some kind of medication. That is not true in the global south. You know, the women I've been traveling around and visiting, they are not born in hospitals, they're not going to regular, you know, pediatric checkups.
They are learning this about themselves when they're 18 or 19, when world athletics asks them to take a test. So all of a sudden, you know, Christine is being told, hey, actually there's this thing that you didn't know about your body that you're different in this way. And that's total news to them. And so I think there's also that going on. So there's many, many layers here of why this is the case.
So world athletics has rejected any suggestion that their policies are racist. There was a human rights watch report that came out about these distinct racial imbalances and in response world athletics put out a press release, which I have here and I'll read a quote to you from. They say, quote, we remain committed to fairness for women in sport and reject the allegation that biological limits are based on race or gender stereotypes.
And I should also say that I did reach out to world athletics for the podcast, but they declined to be interviewed. I mean, none of this is brand new. We're talking about the latest stuff to hear, but I mean, this goes back a while. How far back does this go? Yeah, I mean, this really goes back to the very first time women step on the track at the Olympics, 1928 is the first year women are allowed to compete in track and field at the modern Olympics.
Immediately, you have men pointing at athletes saying that's not a woman. There's something wrong with her. And 1936 is the first policy on the books where they have a rule that says, you know, if there are questions of a physical nature, they're very vague about what those questions might be, but that these women could be examined.
And for many years or decades after that 1936 policy, there was this kind of case by case basis examination. And then in 1966, they decide that actually we need to test every woman. And the way we're going to do that is what are called the nude parades or the peak and poke tests as some of the athletes called them, which are kind of what they sound like they would take women into a room and they would ask them to get naked so that they could examine their body.
And we actually talked to some women who had to go through this and who were very bewildered as to why they had to do this, what was going on and talked about how terrible it was. Women like Carol Martin, who through the discus at the 1966 Commonwealth Games, and she told me just how shocked she was. I remember we were taken under the stands before the competition into a large room and had to pull my pants down in front of this woman so she could see I had a vagina.
I remember thinking, what the f*** is this? And I was a nice person. I never said that at the time, but I remember thinking, whoa, this seems a little invasive. This seems a little inappropriate. I mean, can't you see I'm a girl? Unsurprisingly, those tests were very unpopular. And I think sports organizations knew that that was sort of a not long for this world.
So nude parades really only last a couple of years and then they decide, okay, well, we still need to test all athletes to make sure they're women, but we need to do so in a way that does not involve these very invasive and terrible physical examinations. And so they come out with a new test called the bar body test, which is a way you look into the microscope, you look at someone's cells, and if you have XX chromosomes, you'll see this little black dot.
And that's called the bar body named after Canadian Marie Bar, who fun fact actually wrote to the IOC several times, being like, please stop using my test like this. This is not an appropriate test, and it does not actually show what you think it shows, but they committed to that. Then from 1968 all the way to 1999 for 30 years, every woman who competed at the Olympics had to go through one of these chromosome tests and get a certificate of femininity, a little card.
It looks a little bit like your library card or your driver's license that has your photo on it, and you had to show it for every event. There's one woman who did not have to do this. One exception was ever made, and that was a princess. Princess Anne did not have to do this. She got an exception because she was a literal princess. Every other woman had to do this and show their card, which is sort of mind blowing to me. If you wear the crown, can't you just wear the crown and not show the card?
Yeah, it's very funny, Princess Anne was like, I'm not doing that, and they were like, okay. When we come back, Rose and A get into the question of fairness in sports. Stay with us. This message comes from progressive insurance, where drivers who switch could save hundreds on car insurance. Get your quote at progressive.com today. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. This message comes from progressive insurance, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average.
Get your quote at progressive.com and see if you could save. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, National average 12 month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed, who saved with progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. This message comes from NPR sponsor Quince. Even on a budget, you still deserve nice things.
Scoop up timeless high quality goods for 50 to 80% less than similar brands with Quince. Go to Quince.com slash style for free shipping and 365 day returns. We're back with the Sunday story. Amartina is talking to Rose Eveleth about their new podcast series tested from NPR's embedded and CBC in Canada. So let's get into the science because these systems and the systems of evaluation are developed by sporting bodies.
They aren't necessarily experts on human bodies. So what does the science say about these women and whether they actually have an advantage or not on their fellow competitors? It's such a good question. And as a science reporter, it is one of the most frustrating ones that I encountered in reporting this because the real answer is that we don't know.
We don't have good science done here. There is a really big debate in this space around what evidence is appropriate evidence and which kinds of studies are actually worth learning. And so right now, the argument that world athletics is making is that these women that we're talking about, these women with DSD conditions are in their words biological males.
And what that means is that they don't need necessarily to study these women in particular. All they have to do is look at all of the literature that exists in science around the sports performance of men. Now, there are a lot of other experts who say that's not how evidence is built. That's not appropriate. These are not equivalent populations.
What you would want to do if you were going to do an ideal study here is that you would look at these DSD athletes that are being regulated and you would compare their performance and their testosterone levels against the women who don't have those DSD conditions and are performing that study as far as I know.
And I have asked every single person I could find that study has not been done. So we don't know. We have a lot of sort of tangential evidence. We have some ideas around what testosterone maybe does to the body. But we don't have good evidence really to pinpoint the advantage that these women have, which means that this conversation gets really complicated and confusing, I think, because both sides come into the argument saying, no, no, the science is on our side.
And so if you are a layperson or even a science reporter and you're hearing both sides say that it is very confusing to figure out who is right. So this brings us back then rose to the age old question of fairness and what is fairness. How do you go about answering a question that might not really have an answer? I mean, can you tell me what fair is?
I cannot, I mean, I can tell you what I believe fair is, but I cannot tell you what you should believe fair is. And I don't think there is an objective value for fair, right? And this is I think a thing that is one of the reasons the story is so interesting to me is that I think we would love there to be a scientific test for fairness. That would make our lives so much easier. But that's not how it works, right?
We can use science to try and help us understand what's going on, but science can't tell you what is fair. That is at the end of the day of value judgment that you have to make. And then in my opinion, you have to then own that choice that you've made. And that's why this gets so thorny, right? Why is this fair? And some people say, yeah, this is fair because these women, I believe these women have an advantage, even if it is small, and these other women on the track don't.
And so it's important for me to create as much of a quote unquote level playing field as possible, right? And that's what I think is fair. And then there are other people who say, well, wait a minute, this isn't fair because these women, again, aren't doing anything. They were born like this.
How is it fair to ask them to remove whatever potential small advantage they may or may not have? And that's a subjective decision at the end of the day. And that's, I think, why this is such a complicated topic is that it isn't like, oh, we'll just do that. Like, oh, we'll just do a blood test and we'll tell you what's fair. You know, we'll make a measurement. We'll do a calculation.
And that's why you can debate this till the end of the day. And in some ways, that's also why some sports organizations can just kind of do whatever they want because there isn't necessarily an objective truth here, an objective, like correct answer.
Yeah, I mean, is it fair that Michael Phelps has the lungs of a whale? You say, Bolt has a stride that's longer than anyone else. So, yeah, I guess, yeah, those are questions that we can debate and argue over for a long, long time and never really have a great answer. So, I mean, where do we go from here? I mean, what does the future of this issue look like?
You know, the Olympics just happened and we saw, you know, incredible athletes doing incredible things. And the International Olympic Committee has a charter. And they, in fact, in 2021, came out with a framework for fairness and inclusion that argues that sports organizations, if they are going to regulate these athletes, have to do so with evidence that comes directly from the populations that we're talking about.
And that sort of ideal study I mentioned earlier that you're studying really literally the people that you are trying to regulate. World Athletics at this point has not done that. So, some people would say, okay, well, IOC, you have this framework. World Athletics is not following it. Are you going to do anything about that? And the answer seems to be, no.
We'll sort of see what happens. I think that there is a growing movement to try and ask questions about this. But World Athletics has been very clear that this is their sport. They get to make the rules of their sport. And this is the rule that they think is appropriate. There's not a lot of ways of holding an organization like that accountable. They are not a government organization. They don't have to follow international human rights law.
So, they can kind of do as they please. And so, it will be very interesting to see if they change their minds or not depending on how much pressure they may or may not get. Sports isn't a really complicated position because sports is binary. There are men's sports and women's sports. But we know that human bodies are not binary. And then also on top of that, human gender is not binary, right?
Neither sex nor gender in the human world are binary. And so, what do you do with that information? And I don't think there is an obvious clear answer. And I think we can do better. I really think we can do better. Rose Eveleth is host of the new Embedded Series Tested Rose. Thank you so much for telling us about the series. Thanks for having me. This was fun.
That was journalist Rose Eveleth talking about their new series Tested, which you can listen to now in NPR's Embedded Podcast Feed. This episode was produced by Andrew Mamba with help from Raina Cohen and edited by Leana Simstrom with help from Alison McAddom. It was engineered by James Willets and Patrick Murray.
The rest of the Sunday Story team includes Jenny Schmidt, Justine Yann, and Hazel Feldstein. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Have a great rest of your weekend.
Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Up first sponsor free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Up first plus at plus dot NPR dot org. That's plus dot NPR dot org. This message comes from NPR sponsor Merrill. Whatever your financial goals are, you want a straightforward path there. But the real world doesn't usually work that way.
And if you don't understand that, that's why with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. Go to ML dot com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a bank of America company. What would you like the power to do investing involves risk. Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fener and Smith Incorporated registered broker dealer registered investment advisor member SIPC.
And I hope thisгwoods weze. T Bulgarian adherent currently, there's an interview to you into our message and details. Thank you for having me. Yep. That's the best addition e над poster.