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World Athletics’ Sex Testing Policy Revives a Harmful, Discredited Practice
World Athletics calls it “protecting” women’s sports. History calls it discrimination.
Apr 09, 2025
On March 25, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe announced that the track and field governing body would introduce chromosomal testing of women athletes to “doggedly protect the female category.” Concern around “protecting” women athletes and the women’s category has resurged in recent years as the issue of transgender participation in sport has become politically expedient in the United States culture war, culminating in President Donald Trump’s executive order in January banning athletes from participation on teams that don’t align with the sex assigned to them at birth.
Sex and gender verification has been utilized by sport organizations for over a century. Previous methods included “nude parade” physical examinations requiring genital inspection, chromosomal testing, and testosterone level testing. However, World Athletics (previously known as the International Association of Athletics Federations, or IAAF) stopped mandatory sex testing in 1991, due to scientific inaccuracy, inability to prove unfair advantages, and ethical concerns. Women athletes could continue to be tested if their gender presentation was deemed “suspicious.” Notably, Indian track star Pratima Gaonkar committed suicide in 2001 after failing a sex test. In the 2010s, South African distance runner Caster Semenya and Indian hurdler Dutee Chand endured intense public scrutiny over their sex and gender after they were assumed to have androgen insensitivity syndrome. This is one of many conditions that are broadly classified as differences of sexual development (DSDs), and can occur for many reasons but are usually linked to sex chromosomes or anomalies in how the body produces or responds to hormones such as testosterone.
Unlike the World Athletics’s 2023 policy that banned trans athletes from competing in the women’s category, this policy targets women who were assigned “female” at birth, identify as women, and have always lived as women. They simply don’t have the XX chromosomes that World Athletics now deems necessary.
Chromosomal testing does not determine athletic performance and has been condemned by scientists and human rights organizations as discriminatory and unethical.
The new policy requires mandatory chromosomal testing, including a check swab and dry-blood test. While World Athletics claims to have consulted 70 sporting and advocacy groups, it is unclear who was included. Their cited scientific bibliography is largely authored by individuals affiliated with World Athletics, ignoring significant research questioning the ethics and efficacy of female eligibility policies in sport. Notably absent are two pieces by Roger Pielke and colleagues: one exposing flaws in World Athletics’ original 2011 policy and another reaffirming those issues after the organization admitted its female eligibility research was flawed.
The well-established problem with World Athletics’ chromosomal testing is that it actually has no linkage to performance. Put simply, “failing” a chromosomal, DNA, or sex test tells us nothing about whether an athlete will destroy a world record or even win a race. “Failed” tests, more often than not, indicate a chromosomal anomaly—something that neither enhances an individual’s athletic ability nor impedes their quality of life (if this were the case, it would probably be diagnosed way before an elite sport competition!). The inability of chromosomal testing to determine an “unfair” performance advantage was resoundingly proven by geneticists, bioethicists, medical researchers, physicians, and endocrinologists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was what led to the abolition of mandatory sex testing.
Systematically, policies like these disproportionately target women from the Global South and reinforce racial and gender biases. A 2020 Human Rights Watch report detailed discrimination, surveillance, and coerced medical intervention that elite athletes from the Global South experienced when seeking to comply with sex testing practices. The women interviewed detailed how medical practitioners did not fully explain the tests and procedures conducted, and the humiliation and discrimination they experienced in their communities when their medical records were disclosed without informed consent. This may be why earlier, in 2019, the World Medical Association released a notice imploring physicians to “take no part in implementing new eligibility regulations for classifying female athletes.”
These concerns highlight the urgency for educating sport governing bodies, and the general public, about the broader implications for the autonomy and safety of girls and women that can result from “protective” policies in sport. While the new World Athletics policy does not mandate surgical alteration, history shows the risks of such regulations. In 2013, four elite women athletes underwent gonadectomies and partial clitoridectomies—an unnecessary and harmful procedure classified as a form of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C)--to comply with eligibility rules. These policies can serve to legitimize and reinforce cultural practices with serious health risks for girls and women.
Women athletes must already carefully negotiate their athleticism with market-driven expectations of femininity to secure sponsorship deals, which are especially critical for women athletes because of the sport industry’s pervasive pay inequity. Mainstream beauty norms—favoring whiteness, thinness, and hairlessness—inform which bodies will be deemed “suspicious” under World Athletics’ new policy. Black and brown athletes, particularly those with more muscular builds and deeper voices, are more likely to be targeted. Research shows that elite women athletes already feel they are forced to choose between appearing “strong” or “feminine”; the reintroduction of sex testing may add further pressure for women athletes to conform with rigid gender norms to avoid harassment and surveillance. Athletes like Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Semenya endured an onslaught of online attacks following public scrutiny of their gender. Women in sports generally already face disproportionate abuse, with an NCAA study finding that women basketball players receive three times more abusive messages than their male counterparts.
World Athletics’ claims that chromosomal testing will protect women athletes and the women’s category. However, chromosomal testing does not determine athletic performance and has been condemned by scientists and human rights organizations as discriminatory and unethical. Rather than “protecting” the women’s category, these regulations reinforce harmful gender norms, disproportionately target women from marginalized backgrounds, and risk severe personal and professional consequences for women athletes.
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'Chaos and Fear' at CDC Amid Order to Retract Journal Articles to Purge 'Forbidden Terms'
"How can the government decide what words a journal can use to describe a scientific reality? That reality needs to be named," one journal editor said.
Feb 02, 2025
Employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been ordered to pull any articles under consideration for publication in medical or scientific journals so that they can be checked for certain "forbidden terms" including gender, transgender, and LGBT.
The order was sent in an email to CDC division heads on Friday by the agency's chief science officer, a federal official toldReuters on Sunday. Inside Medicine broke the news on Saturday and provided a screenshot of the full list of terms that needed to be scrubbed.
"It sounds incredible that this is compatible with the First Amendment. A constitutional right has been canceled," Dr. Alfredo Morabia, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Public Health, told Reuters. "How can the government decide what words a journal can use to describe a scientific reality? That reality needs to be named."
"We can't just erase or ignore certain populations when it comes to preventing, treating, or researching infectious diseases such as HIV."
The order is an attempt to ensure that CDC is in compliance with U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order mandating that the U.S. government only recognize two sexes: male and female. The papers will be withdrawn so that a Trump appointee can review them.
The "forbidden terms" CDC employees are supposed to avoid are, in full: Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, and biologically female, according to Inside Medicine.
The order covers both papers under consideration and those accepted but not published. According to Reuters, if a CDC employee worked on a paper with nongovernmental scientists but did not initiate it, they have been asked to remove their names.
The new order is separate from a demand two days into the administration that government health agencies including CDC freeze all communications with the public. It follows reports on Friday that CDC webpages and datasets involving HIV, the LGBTQ community, youth health, and other topics were no longer accessible as the agency attempts to comply with the Trump executive order on transgender identity and another on banning government Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.
"It is Orwellian, it really is," Steven Woolf, director emeritus and senior adviser at Virginia Commonwealth University's Center on Society and Health,
In response to the purges, scientists, science journalists, and public health advocates have worked to preserve the datasets, with everything on the CDC website as of January 27, 2024 preserved at ACASignups.net and downloaded data sets also available on Jessica Valenti's Substack Abortion, Every Day.
"Censoring data on ideological grounds is wrong. It is unscientific, and it is designed to eliminate opposition and erase dissidents," virologist Angela Rasmussen, who was involved with the data preservation efforts, wrote on social media.
The journal article retraction order has created uncertainty and confusion at the agency, Inside Medicine reported:
How many manuscripts are affected is unclear, but it could be many. Most manuscripts include simple demographic information about the populations or patients studied, which typically includes gender (and which is frequently used interchangeably with sex). That means just about any major study would fall under the censorship regime of the new policy, including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else, let alone anything that the administration considers to be "woke ideology."
Meanwhile, chaos and fear are already guiding decisions. While the policy is only meant to apply to work that might be seen as conflicting with President Trump's executive orders, CDC experts don’t know how to interpret that. Do papers that describe disparities in health outcomes fall into "woke ideology" or not? Nobody knows, and everyone is scared that they'll be fired. This is leading to what Germans call "vorauseilender Gehorsam," or "preemptive obedience," as one non-CDC scientist commented.
There are also concerns that censoring such a broad list of terms would have unintended consequences for public health.
"We can't just erase or ignore certain populations when it comes to preventing, treating, or researching infectious diseases such as HIV. I certainly hope this is not the intent of these orders," Carl Schmid, the executive director of the HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute, told Reuters.
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Federal Judge Blocks DeSantis Attack on Trans Youth Healthcare
"Today's ruling is a powerful affirmation of the humanity of transgender people, the efficacy of well-established, science-based medical care, and of the rights of parents to make informed healthcare decisions for their children."
Jun 06, 2023
In a rebuke to Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature and its far-right governor and 2024 presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the enforcement of certain anti-trans rules recently adopted by state medical boards as well as specific provisions in Senate Bill 254, a new state law that criminalizes gender-affirming healthcare.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle's 44-page ruling prevents Florida from applying its ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth to three children whose parents are plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against the state.
Hinkle argued that Florida's moves to prohibit doctors from providing and minors from receiving so-called "puberty blockers" and other hormonal treatments constitute "purposeful discrimination" against transgender people and are likely to be found unconstitutional.
"Nothing could have motivated this remarkable intrusion into parental prerogatives other than opposition to transgender status itself," wrote Hinkle, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton. "The statute and the rules were an exercise in politics, not good medicine. This is a politically fraught area. There has long been, and still is, substantial bigotry directed at transgender individuals."
"Common experience confirms this, as does a Florida legislator's remarkable reference to transgender witnesses at a committee hearing as 'mutants' and 'demons,'" Hinkle continued, referring to disparaging comments made in April by state Rep. Webster Barnaby (R-29).
Hinkle added that the families who joined the emergency motion for a restraining order and preliminary injunction would suffer "irreparable harm" if their adolescents were denied access to "medically necessary" care consistent with the guidance of every major medical organization in the United States.
"My husband and I have been heartbroken and worried sick about not being able to care for our daughter in the way we know she needs," one of the plaintiffs, who is identified as Jane Doe and has a daughter named Susan, said in response to the ruling. "Today my entire family is breathing a huge sigh of relief knowing we can now access the treatment that we know will keep Susan healthy and allow her to continue being the happy, confident child she has been."
The civil rights groups representing the plaintiffs said that "today's ruling is a powerful affirmation of the humanity of transgender people, the efficacy of well-established, science-based medical care, and of the rights of parents to make informed healthcare decisions for their children."
"The court recognized the profound harm the state of Florida is causing by forcing parents to watch their kids suffer rather than provide them with safe and effective care that will allow them to thrive," the groups continued. "We are incredibly relieved that these Florida parents can continue to get healthcare for their children while we proceed to challenge these bans and eventually see them fully overturned."
As Politico reported, "The preliminary injunction does not apply to other minors who may wish to obtain treatment, but the ruling suggests that a key part of the law itself could get knocked down as the legal challenge proceeds."
Florida's boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine adopted rules prohibiting doctors from offering gender-affirming care to trans youth in March. That ban was codified into state law when DeSantis signed S.B. 254 on May 17, one week before announcing his bid for the GOP's presidential nomination.
But S.B. 254 goes much further than formalizing the state medical boards' discriminatory rules. Among other things, it empowers Florida officials to take trans children away from their parents if they receive gender-affirming care. In addition to authorizing kidnapping, the law limits the ability of trans adults to start or continue receiving gender-affirming care and threatens to put doctors who violate the new restrictions behind bars.
S.B. 254 is one of several anti-trans laws that Florida Republicans and DeSantis have approved this year. Progressive advocacy groups issued a travel advisory for the state in April.
It is also one of 70 anti-trans laws enacted nationwide during the current legislative session. More than 525 bills attacking LGBTQ+ individuals, including over 220 that target trans people, have been introduced across the U.S. in recent months.
Before Hinkle issued his ruling on Tuesday, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the groups representing Florida parents, took the unprecedented step of declaring a "state of emergency" for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S.
Regarding the narrowly focused ruling, HRC and the other groups said it indicates that "the plaintiff parents are likely to succeed in their claims that S.B. 254 and the boards of medicine rules unconstitutionally strip them of the right to make informed decisions about their children's medical treatment and violate the equal protection rights of transgender youth by denying them medically necessary, doctor-recommended healthcare."
The groups added that "the challenge to the boards of medicine and S.B. 254 healthcare bans is likely to proceed quickly to trial."
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