On Intersex Athletes In The Olympics

I think Olympic women’s sports should be open to anyone assigned female at birth whose testosterone levels (whether exogenous or endogenous) fit within appropriate anti-doping guidelines.

I don’t just think this because it’s fun when everyone on the Internet is mad at me simultaneously. I genuinely believe this is the fairest approach for everyone.

Why do we have women’s sports in the first place? Sometimes the sports are legitimately different, as in men’s gymnastics and women’s gymnastics.¹ But most of the time, it’s because we like it when women win medals, and if the Olympics were gender-integrated they almost never would.² Many women feel a particular connection to other women that they don’t to men. For example, many women are more invested in the women’s version of a sport than in the men’s version. Girls are often more likely to look up to female athletes than to male athletes. Many women are more likely to buy products endorsed by female athletes than male athletes. And so on.

Because the reason for the gender division is social, it’s all right if the way we make the division is also social. The basic question isn’t “fairness.” A separate division for women is no more or less fair than a separate division for people with below-average lung capacity, or people who live in an area where no one plays a particular sport, or anyone else who is less likely than average to win a gold medal. The basic question is whom women get invested in, look up to, buy products endorsed by, etc.