This series was originally written and posted in March 2019, after intersex athlete and Rio Gold Medalist Caster Semenya's hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Since then, it has been confirmed that none of the medalists in the women's 800 meters in Rio were biologically female; put differently, both the men's and the women's podiums in that event were swept by athletes who are biologically male.
Also since I wrote last, the focus of the scientific work has been less on intersex athletes and more on transgender women and girls—specifically the extent to which it's possible to mitigate male-sex linked performance advantages through testosterone suppression and/or gonadectomy. Testosterone (T) is the hormone we love to hate, and recently there's been a lot of hate, including from activists in the academy, at the ACLU, and elsewhere who have cynically spun and thoroughly politicized the science. Thankfully, relevant experts have stepped up to the plate to right many of those wrongs, including Carole Hooven at Harvard, Emma Hilton, Ross Tucker, and Joanna Harper. We can and should argue about what to do with results data and science facts, but prevarication about what they are is not the stuff of good policymaking.
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