World Athletics mandates genetic testing for female athletes

Female athletes who want to compete on the international stage in women's events will be required to undergo a one-time genetic test, the World Athletics Council announced.

The new changes take effect Sept. 1, just in time for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo that begin Sept. 13.

The test for the SRY gene, which is located on the Y chromosome and determines male sex in humans and other mammals, can be used to determine biological sex.



I've heard some conservative pundits touting this as a "big win", but I don't know if it's as a big of a win as they're thinking.

While it prevents the thing they want to prevent -- by making all women do it (rather than selectively doing it using prudent common sense and observation), it's a partial concession to the contrived premise of "the differences between trans women and cis women are so minute and virtually undetectable, that we have to do a genetic test to confirm one way or the other"


I think this measure can be described as "feeding common sense some crumbs from the table of idealism"