The Debatable Line Between a Natural Gift and an Unfair Advantage
To the Sports Editor:
Re “Fighting for the Body She Was Born With,” Oct. 7: Requiring Dutee Chand to alter her natural body to fit more closely the idealized physiological/chemical model of a female is outrageous when other athletes use prosthetics or exploit natural gifts of height that clearly give them a considerable advantage in sports.
No one tells our basketball stars to have leg surgery to shorten their limbs because they are at the far end of normal human distribution in height. Yet the International Association of Athletics Federations, track and field’s governing authority, has arbitrarily decided that there is a distinct biological cutoff between male and female testosterone levels.
Male and female hormone level distributions are apt to overlap, as all traits do. That should not serve as a basis for disqualification.
KENNETH CROSSNER, Somerset, N.J.
To the Sports Editor:
I feel that levels of natural testosterone in any female athlete’s body should never disqualify her from competing within the gender group that she belongs to. High testosterone levels, while perhaps positively correlated with strength, are not so correlated to disqualify a woman from both being considered a woman and being allowed to compete against women.
If the world athletic organizations would like to categorize athletes by testosterone bands instead of by binary gender, let them revise the rules. Until then, it’s quite simple: Without major anatomical questions, gender testing by testosterone should be off the table.
KEVIN NICHOLAS, Mount Vernon, N.Y.
Published in NY Times.
Original Story of Dutee Chand in Newyork Times