July 31, 2025

World Athletics is indeed going back to mandatory sex testing.

In unsurprising, but still pretty unfortunate news:

Yesterday, World Athletics announced that it would indeed be bringing back genetic sex testing for all female athletes. I wrote to you about these proposed rule changes a few months back, and now they're official. Sigh.

I've seen a lot of incorrect reporting and information about this floating around, so let's talk through it together.

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What do the rules say?

Starting on September 1st of this year, every single woman who competes at the elite level of international athletics (track and field for my fellow US based folks) will have to undergo a genetic screening to prove they are female.

Member Federations are going to be responsible for actually doing these screens¹ — which means that every single country's athletics federation is going to have to figure out how to round up and test its women. World Athletics says that the test can be done by either a cheek swab, or a blood test, "whichever is more convenient."

That swab or sample will then be analyzed in what World Athletics is calling an "SRY test² " — a test that looks for something called the "sex-determining region Y protein." This is essentially a gene, located on the Y chromosome. If you have it, according to World Athletics it means that you're actually a "biological male." And in that case, you cannot compete in the women's category.

This is, of course, an inaccurate oversimplification of a much more complex reality — which we covered at length in Tested. This kind of genetic screening is exactly what doctors, athletes, and activists spent decades in the 70's-90's begging the IOC and World Athletics to drop, because the test was inaccurate, invasive, and ineffective at finding so-called "masquerading males." World Athletics no longer seems to think that men are truly sneaking into women's competition to win metals. But they do think that some women who have genetic variations, are actually men and have an unfair advantage. (This has, again, not ever been proven.)

What this policy means in more regular terms is this: women with genetic differences in their sex biology — who were assigned female at birth, have lived their whole lives as women, and who have never had any idea that they have a variation in sex biology — will be barred from competing.

Some carve outs

There are some exceptions to these rules that are worth calling out.

1. Women (who, in the policy, World Athletics insists on calling "biological males") who had previously managed to get their testosterone down below 2.5nm/L under the previous policy. That includes Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi. (I'm not aware of any other athletes who have managed to do this, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.) These athletes must agree to continue taking medication to keep their testosterone below 2.5 nm/L if they want to keep competing.
2. Athletes with Complete Androgen Insensitivity (CAIS) — in other words, athletes who might have the SRY gene but whose bodies are unable to process testosterone — are exempt from this policy. This is interesting (and a bit fraught) because diagnosing CAIS is not easy. There are over 900 androgen receptor mutations that can contribute to this, and it can be hard to know where the line actually is between calling someone's androgen insensitivity "complete" vs. "partial." Athletes who test positive for the SRY gene are expected to pursue this potential follow up and appeal their ban on their own³.
3. Trans men (who, in the policy, World Athletics insists on calling "biological females") cannot compete in the female category (even though they would pass the SRY test) unless they have been off testosterone for at least four years⁴.

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A thing to know

I've seen a lot of folks zero in on one particular line in the press release about this: "The transitional provisions do not apply to transgender women as there are none competing at the elite international level under the current regulations."

If there are no trans women competing then what even is the point of this policy, they say.

In other coverage, reporters have made it sound like these rules will make it impossible for trans women to compete at the World Championships in Tokyo this fall.

Both of these come from perhaps the same core misunderstanding. There are no trans women competing at the elite level because World Athletics banned them in 2023. Which means that there are no trans women who are suddenly not going to be allowed to go to Tokyo, because they were not allowed to even try.

The policy does collapse the old "DSD regulations" and the rules for trans athletes into one, joint policy.

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Why are they doing this?

I get asked this question a LOT. And there are a lot of different answers, obviously. There's all the history we covered on Tested. There's modern conservative backlash to social progress, and the rise of fascism globally. There's a continued lack of education around the reality of sex biology.

But I want to focus my answer to that question in this particularly newsletter on one specific claim that World Athletics is making when it tries to explain why it must do this thing that violates human rights and conflicts with modern medical best practices and positions. And that's the money.

World Athletics claims that they must police the women's category in this way because "It is really important in a sport that is permanently trying to attract more women that they enter a sport believing there is no biological glass ceiling⁵. The test to confirm biological sex is a very important step in ensuring this is the case." (Emphasis mine.)

This echoes something that World Athletics told me in the one email they ever sent back to my many questions: "World Athletics has only ever been interested in protecting the female category. If we don’t, then women and young girls will not choose sport. That is, and has always been, the Federation’s sole motivation." (Emphasis, again, mine.)

The organization cited participation (and thus income for the sport and World Athletics itself) again in their memo announcing the potential rule changes, stating that the "modern goals" for the Female Category were (emphasis below, you guessed it, mine):

a. equality and fairness for female athletes,

b. growing the commercial value of the category,

c. using the category as a vehicle to empower females within Athletics and throughout society.

Over and over we hear this idea that World Athletics has to do this because if they don't, women won't choose track and field, and if they don't choose track and field then the federation cannot grow the sport.

I want to spend a little bit of time with this claim, because I think it echoes a broader trend: blaming a small, marginalized group for a problem that they have actually nothing to do with.

The idea that women will choose not to go into athletics if they might have to compete against other women with variations in sex biology is something I have never seen proven. In fact I've never even seen an attempt to prove it. It's also a claim I'm deeply skeptical of. I have spoken with a lot of track and field athletes across all different levels for many years and I have never once heard this said out loud — this idea that they might leave the sport, or that people might not choose track and field because it's not strict enough when it comes to the female category.

When I ask women in athletics what they think the sport needs to do to recruit and retain more athletes they say things like: equal pay, protection from predatory coaches and managers, better facilities, better events. None of them say anything about mandatory sex testing.

So why does World Athletics keep making this claim?

Here's what I think is actually happening: participation in athletics is not growing the way World Athletics wants it to. Athletics has not quite cracked the code of making their sport appealing and attractive in the modern media market. Sure, during the Olympics everybody watches, but when those few weeks are over, only the most die-hard fans are tuning into meets and races. World Athletics knows this, because in its annual reports it talks about the challenges of appealing to a modern audience, particularly in non-Olympic years.

It's hard to get a good statistical picture of the global rate of participation in sports, but surveys and studies suggest that while other sports are growing rapidly, athletics is fairly stagnant in terms of participation. This is especially true if you look at the trends for women. One study found that in Europe, girls across almost every age range are participating in athletics less than they used to.

The average income of a professional track and field athlete is much smaller than their peers in other sports. Just a few weeks ago, Michael Johnson, four time Olympic champion on the track, had to announce that he was cancelling one of his shiny new Grand Slam Track events because an investor had pulled out and the organization had huge cashflow problems. At Faith Kipyegon's big, buzzy attempt to run a sub-4 mile, the stands were shockingly empty.

Meanwhile sports like basketball, soccer, and volleyball⁶ are all becoming increasingly popular — likely in part due do the surge in attention around leagues the WNBA, NWSL and WSL that create opportunities for women to get paid real, professional sports salaries and compete globally. (This is not to say that every professional woman in basketball or soccer is getting paid a zillion dollars, there are clearly issues there too as evidenced by the current WNBA negotiations, but it's a general picture of things.)

Athletics is still popular, don't get me wrong. But it's not having the same boom in growth of women's participation and interest as other sports around the world are. And that means it's not making the same kind of money that other sports are. World Athletics would like to change that, but it seems to me that they're not exactly sure how.

Enter: a boogeyman. What if, they say, women aren't choosing athletics because they think that they will have to compete against other women who might have an "unfair" advantage? There is, again, as far as I can tell, no evidence that this is true. But reality doesn't matter so much in these situations, does it?

It's easy to make this claim because in some ways, it's nearly impossible to disprove. It's extremely hard to study why someone hasn't made a choice to participate in something. Because they're not in front of you, you have to figure out how to even find people to ask the question. And as far as I can tell there has been no study attempting to do this for this particular case. And so you can blame anybody you like based on prejudice and vibes — and, crucially, act like you're "solving" a problem that doesn't exist.

You can reduce a complex, really difficult problem into an easy one with a clear villain. And since your enemy is such a marginalized group, they can't effectively defend themselves.

We see this same move, for example, with Democrats blaming the loss of the 2024 election on trans folks and their expectation that the party would adhere to its platform and protect their rights. There's no evidence that support for trans rights did anything to hurt Democrats at the polls (in fact, trans rights are broadly popular). But that doesn't stop highly paid Democratic strategists and centrist Democrats from saying it as if it is fact.

I think we're seeing the same thing happening with World Athletics — on top of all the baseline transphobia, fascism, and general rejection of anything that sounds like it might be "progressive." This is not the core or only reason, but I think it's something that's been under-covered in discussions of this issue.

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One other small rant

Look, there are a billion reasons this sucks. I covered most of them in Tested, and I'm not going to rehash them all here because I suspect that if you're this deep into the Tested newsletter, you all already have listened to the show and you know.

But I do want to point out on thing that kind of bugs me. When this announcement came out yesterday I immediately saw a ton of people say some variation of: this is going to harm so many women who are going to find out they have a sex variation through these tests!

And yes, that's true. But it also kind of irks me when that's someone first line of critique. Because we don't have to invent hypothetical women who might learn this about themselves via these tests and be harmed. There are living, breathing, women right now who are being sidelined and harmed by these policies. Who have had to make really challenging decisions involving tradeoffs between their health and their desire to compete. Who have been maligned and harassed and driven out of sport. They have names: Dutee Chand, Maximila Imali, Evangeline Makena, Beatrice Masilingi, Christine Mboma, Annet Negesa, Francine Niyonsaba, Caster Semenya, Aminatou Seyni, Margaret Wambui.

(And those are just the women with variations in sex biology, not all the trans athletes who are harmed by these policies too.)

You don't have to imagine hypothetical victims here. They already exist!

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What happens next?

It's a good question, and I don't know. I have reached out to some of the lawyers and advocates you heard from on Tested, and they seem to still be sorting out their strategy here. I'll keep you updated as I learn more.

An athlete, or a group of athletes could in theory take their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, arguing that this new policy is unfair and discriminatory. But CAS has not been particularly sympathetic to these women in the past. And those lawsuits are expensive.

The policy certainly violates the IOC Framework for Fairness and Inclusion — as WA has yet to provide evidence that women with an SRY gene have a clear and large advantage on the track. But the old policy also violated this framework and the organization chose to do nothing about it, so I don't expect them to anything now⁷.

So, ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I wish I had a better answer for you here but we'll just have to see what happens.

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FOOTNOTES

(because it’s that kind of newsletter)