Olivier Rioux is a 7-foot-9-inch college basketball player for the Florida Gators. Rioux is a freshman center weighing approximately 305 lbs. Born in Canada and already known as the tallest college basketball player in history, he also holds the Guinness World Record for tallest teenager.
He raises issues related to the transgender sports controversy as well as some that Ethics Alarms has discussed in earlier posts. Several involved intersex runner Caster Semanja, who has always identified as female but who regularly crushed female competitors in sports competitions because of an unusual amount of male hormones. When she was required to artificially lower her natural hormone mix to compete against women, I wrote,
“We can’t have special leagues and categories for however many gender categories science identifies and activists fight to have recognized, and there is no justification for creating artificial standards to eliminate outlier performers. The “solution” imposed on Caster Semenya—force her to take drugs that eliminate her natural advantage—is horrifying. How is this different from banging brilliant kids on the head until they have brain damage and no longer dominate their less gifted fellow students in school? What right do the sports czars have to declare an unprecedented, unique competitor unfit to compete because her, or his, unique qualities are advantageous? Why are so many woman condemning Caster as a cheat, when they should be defending her as a human being with as much right to compete as she is as anyone? Because she’ll win? Because it’s unfair that God, or random chance, or her own dedication rendered her better at her sport than anyone else?”
Ethics Alarms 
I’d say even if he’s a tall kid, he still has to develop his speed, reflexes, and shooting arm. Other players can still be faster and better coordinated. Also, if he has full-on giantism, his height may have health costs down the line, so he out to be able to enjoy it while he can. I think it’s alright for one-in-a-million mutants to play their chosen sport; their opponents need to learn to adapt.
The difference between this and men playing on women’s teams is that the latter risks being a more regular, and thus more risky and unfair occurance.
Exactly one trans woman has ever competed in any Olympics in recorded history.
She came last.
With the new(or rather, recycled from last century) IOC SrY cheek swab test, she would be disqualified, regardless of hormone levels.
In the LA Olympics, 8 of the 3387 female competitors failed this SrY test. None were trans.
The discoverer of the SrY gene wrote this:The SRY gene cannot be used as the sole determinant of biological sex because its presence (on the Y chromosome) does not guarantee typical male development, nor does its absence guarantee female development. Due to genetic translocations, mutations, or hormone resistance (like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), individuals can have an SRY gene but develop as females (XY females), or lack it but develop as males (XX males).
There have been no scientific papers even suggesting the SrY gene itself conveys any sort of advantages. The IOC’s use of the test is on the theory that it is a sufficiently reliable indicator that the athlete once went through a male puberty, and therefore presumably has an unfair advantage.
None of the women who failed the test in LA had been through a male puberty.
I’m not sure that any of this matters.
Divisions exist as a general rule to group together people who are similar to each other in order to make room for more people generally. We do this for all kinds of reasons ranging from safety to fairness to entertainment value.
Step back from the women’s division for a second… Think boxing. If there weren’t weight divisions, no one from stawweight would ever be able to compete, not because they wouldn’t win, but because they’d probably die.
The women’s division is necessary because without it, women would never podium except on the margins. Yes, yes, we all know the story about how a woman once beat all the men at skeet shooting in 1992 prompting the IOC to separate the sexes so the men could medal too…. But stories like that are few and far between.
This is where I’m going to be blunt, and I’m sorry, but I feel like these conversations die in euphemisms. There are very few places where sex actually matters, but when it does, it tends to matter a lot. Sport is one of those places. Men and women’s bodies are different. They are configured differently in objectively measurable ways, and while there are developmental points where those differences increase, they are different from birth. Asking for exceptions to the sex-based division based on individual metrics kind of miss the forest for the trees: Men aren’t women. The division isn’t “people who have T values less than x” or “people who have never undergone a male puberty” or “people without the SrY gene”, the trans lobby is trying to shoehorn trans women into these spaces by whatever metric they think they can achieve and in doing so forcing the IOC to come up with some kind of standard that would achieve the goal of the division. And instead of including trans people, those standards are disincluding women.
Which, frankly, is probably the correct thing to do. Even if you want to argue that this is somehow actually fair, this hits me like people who dehydrate for weigh in and then drink a gallon of water the moment they step off the scale. It’s not healthy, it’s not sportsmanlike, and in the case of hormones, I consider it juicing. As opposed to taking unnecessary medical treatments to try to pigeonhole themselves into a certain metric, perhaps those trans competitors would be better off being told no at the get-go, and then work off the same understanding that the vast, vast majority of people come to terms with on the daily: They aren’t going to compete in the Olympics. It’s because their body isn’t configured the right way. Some people are too short, some people are too fat, some people have heart conditions, or bad eyesight, or suffer from seizures. Sport isn’t an affirmative process, it’s a competition.
“Even if you want to argue that this is somehow actually fair”
“this” in this context was used poorly. I meant to refer to an ad lib for any metric being advocated for by the trans lobby.
Yes, thank you! Women aren’t men with low T.
Exactly one trans woman has ever competed in any Olympics in recorded history.
She came last.
With the new(or rather, recycled from last century) IOC SrY cheek swab test, she would be disqualified, regardless of hormone levels.
In the LA Olympics, 8 of the 3387 female competitors failed this SrY test. None were trans.
The discoverer of the SrY gene wrote this:
The SRY gene cannot be used as the sole determinant of biological sex because its presence (on the Y chromosome) does not guarantee typical male development, nor does its absence guarantee female development. Due to genetic translocations, mutations, or hormone resistance (like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), individuals can have an SRY gene but develop as females (XY females), or lack it but develop as males (XX males).
There have been no scientific papers even suggesting the SrY gene itself conveys any sort of advantages. The IOC’s use of the test is on the theory that it is a sufficiently reliable indicator that the athlete once went through a male puberty, and therefore presumably has an unfair advantage.
None of the women who failed the test in LA had been through a male puberty.
You make a compelling argument against this particular test and I am convinced that a different technique to determine the occurrence of male puberty is needed to establish fairness.
I would simply say that we stop using the terms men and women in categories in which we are trying to segregate males and females and simply use male and female.
If an athlete has always presented themselves as a female and lacks external male genitalia then it should not matter if that person has some translocated gene in their DNA.
Nonetheless, the question remains. Should we bar people of the same sexual category whose unusual DNA structure may provide a competitive advantage. My answer is NO. Doing anything else would start us down a road toward mediocrity. When everyone is equal there is no reason to compete and competition is what drives human progress – not laws forcing equitable outcomes.
Oh crap. My answer to should we bar people is an emphatic NO.
I thought initially that I was answering the question of should we allow people etc.
Jack can you fix that so others won’t get confused.
I did. And I’ll leave this entreaty up to make sure no one is confused.
Don’t you hate it when you say or write the opposite of what you mean? My ex-fiancee called that the JMS: “Jack Marshall Syndrome.”
Just as female chickens are ‘hens’ and male chickens are ‘roosters,’ female humans are ‘women’ and male humans are ‘men.’ They are our species-specific terms for the two sexes.
As such, there’s nothing improper about describing the sport divisions as men and women.
Not to argue against your point, but just for accuracy: two transwomen competed in the women’s boxing finals in the last summer Olympics.
I don’t think they were transwomen, though. Both boxers are males with DSDs, like Semenya. That difference didn’t make them any less dangerous to the women they boxed against, though.
A study from the University of Utah found males’ average power during a punching motion was 162% greater than females’, and the weakest man was still stronger than the most powerful woman. https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/carrier-punch/
You’re right! Boy was THAT falsely reported!
I think that this cannot be made into policy. After all, exceptions make for BAD policy. As with any exception, this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis when it occurs.
The issue in the minds of MOST people, that I know at least, is not that we hate intersex people, but we see people with perfectly functioning hormones and genitalia utilizing exceptions for people with true physical abnormalities to do silly or horrible things. There are enough cases of functional males getting access to women’s areas and causing serious issues. “Transwomen” raping real girls in bathrooms and DV shelters as well as “Transwomen” sitting naked in the women’s spa getting erect at the women (and perhaps more importantly teenaged girls) who came to a single sex spa to not be affected by a lustful gaze. A man who enters into a woman’s sport puts women at an unfair disadvantage. Either we have sex segregation, or we will take sports away from any female but the freaks.
Transgenerderism, or at least the part that most people consider to be transgenderism, is all in the head. While one can say that an intersex person has a problem in their head, that is much the same with saying that fibromyalgia is in the head or migraines are in the head. Intersex, people with genuine physical abnormalities, whether it is chromosonal, hormonal, or the true hemaphrodite in the physical sense, are exceptions to be considered with compassion and acceptance. Most of the conditions that I am aware of as intersex conditions meet the definition of a physical disorder, and have significant effects on the body, health, and even lifespan of the sufferer. Transgender, on the other hand, only has effects on the body and lifespan if it is treated with opposite sex hormones, puberty blockers, and cosmetic surgery. This isn’t just a genetic abnomality, but a medical condition.
My policy for transgender would be to disallow men in women’s sports (and women in men’s sports). Full stop.
The issue then comes with people with genetic abnormalities, which include the classification intersex, but also include gigantism, women with odd amounts of testosterone, etc, as well as any other physical malady. If you have a medical condition, exceptions are exactly what you need, and here’s how I suggest, at least in a general sense, how they should be handled. For consideration for an exception, a doctor’s note would be required. And before anyone complains about needing a doctor’s note, I have a kid with a medical condition. I need a doctor’s note for about anything, from school attendance to getting on a plane without being pulled aside for being suspected of a bomb hidden in her abdominal cavity. It is a fact of life for those with medical conditions. It’s not that hard, either to get or to hand out like candy at Halloween. Then we need to consider safety and fairness. Safety is the big issue for an over-performer, where as fairness is important for under-performers, the other side of the spectrum.
For safety, we need to look at the sport. Swimming, where the swimmers are in different lanes, probably has no issue with genetic freaks like a guy two years my senior in high school. He definitely had advantages in swimming, but wasn’t hurting anyone. Football, however, is a contact sport. An extra-large, burly kid, well above the bell curve could cause very significant risk of severe and perhaps permanent harm above the expected. Volleyball, as we have seen, is an issue for someone well above the bell curve in musculature. If a sport is expected to have some risks, then anyone who’s physical abnormalities, far above and beyond the typical, that greatly increase those risks should not be allowed, for the safety of all the involved.
There is also the fairness aspect. Is it fair to the others playing? When someone has a medical condition, life is unfair. Can we do something to include them in the fun without drastically harming someone else? The story of an autistic kid who wanted to play in one game of baseball and having the opposite team play nice with him to give him the win seems wonderful, but is it fair to all the kids on either team who worked hard and wanted to win? Should this be required, that we allow special needs folk to get the kind of special treatment in all sports so that they can have fun at the expense of the other people who worked hard on their skills having to give up the chance to compete? Kids with heart and lung conditions may really want to play sports, but if they are allowed, the entire team has to slow down and ease up, which is unfair. I have a daughter with significant medical complexity. I would love to send her to 4-H Summer Camp and the rules state she can go. Having spoken with the adult sponsors, they are hesitant to take her. She would be in elevated risk of harm at the camp, and if they reduced the risk to her, it would negatively affect the other campers. So she doesn’t get to go. Unfair to her, yes. Fair to the others, yes. There are times where someone can participate and not harm others and there are times when the harm is minimal. If a kid REALLY wants to play a sport that could normally not do so, is there a time we can allow it, such as a practice game, or a match that doesn’t determine rankings?
On the other side of the fairness spectrum, there will almost always be someone better than you. The “freaks” will always win out, and that’s how it goes. Someone who has advantages that nature gave will, with similar training and dedication, always win out over someone without those advantages. For someone exceptional, they will always be accused of cheating, but if they aren’t, there is no reason to forbid them. Socially, being exceptional is a disadvantage, but if you’re ok with people saying lies about you, go for it. If someone has a photographic memory and finds enjoyment reading encyclopedias, they will have an advantage on Jeopardy. That’s not unfair.
So my opinion, which is not fully informed on the kids’ conditions, is as follows. The girl with extra testosterone in track? Let her do it, but know that she will always be accused of cheating, since she is so much faster than the rest. She should not be penalized in the sport for cheating, but socially, that’ll be a fact. She and her family will have to live with that. The extra large boy in football? Forbid him. The kids he is playing with will be at elevated risk of severe injuries.
The extra large boy in basketball? Well, he’s harder, but the rate of injuries from fouls that my friends and family experienced in basketball was pretty high. No sense in increasing the already decently high risk of concussions, broken bones, and soft-tissue injuries, just to let someone who is so much larger play. If the extra tall, and theoretically heavier, boy wants to play, I suggest that someone show why he is of no additional risk to his teammates, or that he choose a different sport. I had two very tall kids in high school with me, brother and sister. The brother was freakishly tall, over seven foot, equivalently heavy (though thin) and too clumsy to be safe in basketball. He chose swimming, where he was a top performer, while adding no risk to anyone else. In college, he got into crew and went to the Olympics twice, though never earned a medal. The sister was smaller at 6 foot 2 freshman year in high school, and lacked the typical clumsiness that the overlarge folk tend to have. She was not a horribly aggressive player, so was of little risk to those playing against her. Even so, she was an excellent player. She got scouted for a professional team in Turkey and played with them for a few years.
Unfortunately, life is not fair. People with certain physical conditions see that more than others, but we cannot make the exception into the standard. Instead, we need to apply the Incompleteness Theorem when required. These kids, and other people with various medical conditions, are precisely why the Incompleteness Theorem is so important.
“I think that this cannot be made into policy. After all, exceptions make for BAD policy. As with any exception, this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis when it occurs.”
The main ethical value at stake here is “fairness”. The way I understand “fairness” in sports is that the same rules apply to every person and to every team in the same way. If there are to be exceptions to a rule, than these need to be stated up front; exceptions to a rule should not be made on a case-by-case basis, post-hoc and ad-hoc, as that would be unfair to the person or team hurt by the ruling on the fly. The understanding of fairness in sports emphasizes objective criteria instead of subjective feelings.
In another comment on this post by Sarah Bales (perhaps the same poster as Sarah B?) I read “Competition advantages are things we let play out in sport: skill/speed/height/lung capacity/wingspan. Incredibly tall athletes, like Rioux, enjoy competition advantages, and that’s allowed and even celebrated.” Competition advantages do not make sports unfair. Trying to ban Rioux from competing in his favorite sport in which he excels is like the people of Lilliput trying to tie down Gulliver. Arguments as “he is too tall, too big, too strong, too fast; he might be dangerous and hurt us” sound like rationalizations to limit a competitive advantage deemed too tall.
Sarah B is not the same poster as Sarah Bales; it’s just a coincidence.
Not the same Sarah. I think HT’s weight class and the ideas of different divisions covers it better than I did.
However, case by case exceptions is the rule when you have a kid with complicated medical and other disability issues. It seems that if it works for one side of the spectrum, it can work for the other side just as well.
Brittney Griner at 6’8″ was considered monstrously tall when she played for Baylor, and she led them to an NCAA title her junior year.
However, her senior year, Louisville managed to figure out a defense in the Sweet Sixteen, upsetting Baylor and making it to the championship game before getting blown out by UConn.
As I recall the ESPN commentators where aghast that those upstarts dared to cut Griner’s career short when everyone knew she was destined for another Final Four. But then the ESPN folks always have like to fawn over the star players, especially in women’s basketball.
This post conflates competition advantages with category advantages, but they’re not the same thing. As such, the existence of outlier athletes like Rioux has nothing to do with whether we should let athletes with category advantages compete in sports categories they don’t qualify for.
Competition advantages are things we let play out in sport: skill/speed/height/lung capacity/wingspan. Incredibly tall athletes, like Rioux, enjoy competition advantages, and that’s allowed and even celebrated.
Category advantages are things we control for by creating categories. Sometimes we draw lines between sports (motor bikes don’t compete against road bikes), and sometimes we draw lines between athletes (with age/weight/sex categories).
Semenya is a male with a DSD and (as far as I know) a completely typical amount of male hormones for a male in that age bracket. We are not, in fact, talking about a female with “an unusual amount of male hormones.” Sex is a CATEGORY advantage, which means Semenya (1) is welcome to compete in the male category; but (2) cannot compete fairly in women’s track & field, against female athletes.
“I think that this cannot be made into policy. After all, exceptions make for BAD policy. As with any exception, this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis when it occurs.”
The main ethical value at stake here is “fairness”. The way I understand “fairness” in sports is that the same rules apply to every person and to every team in the same way. If there are to be exceptions to a rule, than these need to be stated up front; exceptions to a rule should not be made on a case-by-case basis, post-hoc and ad-hoc, as that would be unfair to the person or team hurt by the ruling on the fly. The understanding of fairness in sports emphasizes objective criteria instead of subjective feelings.
In another comment on this post by Sarah Bales (perhaps the same poster as Sarah B?) I read “Competition advantages are things we let play out in sport: skill/speed/height/lung capacity/wingspan. Incredibly tall athletes, like Rioux, enjoy competition advantages, and that’s allowed and even celebrated.” Competition advantages do not make sports unfair. Trying to ban Rioux from competing in his favorite sport in which he excels is like the people of Lilliput trying to tie down Gulliver. Arguments as “he is too tall, too big, too strong, too fast; he might be dangerous and hurt us” sound like rationalizations to limit a competitive advantage deemed too tall.
The question for me truly comes into play when the size and feature *completely* eliminate the athleticism, luck, and probabilities during the sport. Olivier is nearly of size and wingspan that he could stand outside of the Key (avoiding a 3-count) catch a pass over everyone’s reach, and drop it directly into the hoop without much of a jump. He could do that for 20 years and have a 100% field goal accuracy. He could probably score 150 points a night and never lose a game if the team just spammed that move exclusively.
Or in another scenario, he decides he wants to make NFL money and he gets put in as a tight end. He only plays when the team is within 10 yards of the endzone and when the ball is snapped, he gets in the endzone and stands as tall as possible with his arms high above to catch a pass. Here, the risk of injury is far greater with a dirty or late hit, perhaps targeting the knees.
In both scenarios, the sport is damaged, the competition is damaged, and no one actively admires the effort of the athelete because, well, there’s not much effort. Kind of like playing a game with your 2 year old on a 4 ft tall hoop. It’s not competitive.
Counterpoint: Maybe there are strategies teams develop to counter such advantages – I’m just not creative enough to think what they are; but probably in the case of basketball, involves putting the 5 opponents on the 4 non-giants defending aggressively on a lob pass to the giant – with an aggressive 3-pt shooting average and aggressive offensive rebounding for the misses….. who knows?