2022 African Women's Cup of Nations

‼️Sad news from @NGSuper_Falcons camp: Top striker @AsisatOshoala is out of the ongoing #WAFCON2022. She sustained a Grade 2 Medial Collateral Ligament strain in the game against South Africa. She is due back in Spain on Thursday. Get well quick Asisat!

— The NFF 🇳🇬 (@thenff) July 6, 2022

 

🤕🇳🇬 Asisat Oshoala a subi une rupture d'un ligament collatéral médial de grade 2 lors du match contre l'Afrique du Sud. Elle est forfait pour le reste de la #TotalEnergiesWAFCON2022 avec le Nigeria. pic.twitter.com/QSjx4P7pAd

— FC Barcelona Femení 🇫🇷 (@FCBFemeniFR) July 6, 2022

a real serious and big study should be done about this injury ! how many players this year ???

PS: and the three Barca 's attackers in less than 2 months (Hermoso, Putellas, Oshoala)

 

The number of women of color who have been barred from sport by stupid cis-inspired gender gatekeeping is tragic and infuriating.
If someone is unnaturally tall or really good at building muscle or have highly efficient metabolism, people don't bat an eye, but suddenly naturally high testosterone is a problem? Give me a ********ing break.

 

Sorry, this is nonsense. Do you want to allow males to play in female teams? The testosterone level allowed is much above what females have.

 

If fear of AMAB people entering female sports is keeping actual cisgender females from participating, then that fear has gone way too far. Natural diversity is a thing.

Also, TBQH, reducing people to their hormone levels is incredibly dehumanizing and should never had entered the conversation in the first place.

 

The question is: Why is the testosterone level so high? Is it because she has testicle?

 

There are a multitude of reasons why a female might have naturally high T. And as noted before, this issue seems to affect women of color far more than caucasian women, which honestly reeks of historical biases in Western medicine not accurately capturing the full extent of what's "natural".

The fact that you jump to speculating on an athlete's genitals, with zero historical evidence that she's intersex or anything other than a cisgender woman, is telling and honestly more than a little bit creepy... Besides, if an intersex person is AFAB and has identified as such her entire life, then she deserves to continue competing as a women regardless of "how intersex" she might be.

 

"The elephant in the room is to deal with this issue of gender verification, which seems to be discriminatory, in the sense that you seem to have it in this competition [but not others].

"But these are professional players, who are also playing professional football in different leagues, where that requirement doesn't seem to be in tandem with what CAF is asking."

Consider.

Banda was eligible to play in Tokyo most likely because the norm for testoterone count in Olympics was set a bit broader (by IOC, AFC or perhaps Japan Medical Asoc,).
For this competition CAF (or perhaps Morocco Mediacal Asoc) introduced their own norm which is much more strict or narrow and she didn't pass it.

For me that's all there is about it.
One single medical standard don't exist and never will - people are too much diverse for it - on that scientists agree. Which leave unperfect solutions that on occasion gonna be exploited by different agendas.

 

Very much this. Medical research historically has largely been based on data from tests on white men, with women of all races being far less studied, much less women of color.

And, Banda played in the 2014 U17 WWC plus multiple games for Zambia since 2017, including the Olympics. All of that was okay, but now it's not? There's a sudden new standard being implemented by CAF, and it's stupid.

 

Major flop by Cameroon.

 

The more I've thought about this, the angrier I've become. So, I'll respond with a couple of more questions: Why does Michael Phelps have such a long torso and long wingspan? Why is Lebron James so tall? There is natural variation in all kinds of physiological characteristics that give athletes an advantage in their sport, but they don't disqualify them from competing. Governing bodies testing testosterone levels has not been reciprocated by any kind of "gender testing" among men's sports. And the athletes who keep getting banned in multiple sports are almost all African women. That's not by accident. It's not only racist, but sexist as well.

 

LeBron James is not disqualified from competing because we have no categories based on height in Basketball. If we had a category for players under 2,00 meter he wouldn`t be allow to compete in it. In Football we have two categories: male and female. Males have a big physical advantage over females as you easily can see when male youth teams beat the best female teams. So it`s necessary to make this differentiation if you don`t want to exclude women from top-class sport.
Gender testing in men`s sport is not necessary because having female sex characteristics doesn`t give you an advantage compared to men. On the other side having male sex characteristics can give you an great advantage compared to women. A high testosterone level alone is not enough to ban a player.

You can find the FIFA regulations for gender verification here
https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/3950e57162ea513d/original/ihf3yx6kw3insqt6r0i6-pdf.pdf

Banda can have played many years with these high testosterone level because the gender verification only happens when there is a request. Not only Banda but also three other Zambian players don`t play at WAFCON because of gender verification requests so it`s obvious for me that the requests came from an African association and it has nothing to do with racism.

 

I'd recommend looking into the history of gender testing. Women in the past have undergone procedures and taken medication with no medical reason and at risk to their own health simply in order to compete. Did you also know that one of the major causes of hyperandrogenism is PCOS? (For those who don't know what PCOS is, it's cysts on ovaries which can cause heavy and/or painful menstruation and a host of other symptoms...the point is it only happens if you have ovaries! To be clear, I'm not saying this is the case for Badra, just making a point.)

Also would you be interested to know that in a study of male and female athletes, using the current "standard", 16.5% of male elite athletes had testosterone levels below the male range and 2% crossed into the female range, while almost 15% of female athletes had an above the permissible level meaning there is significant overlap and much more natural variation than the standard allows. (from https://www.scientificamerican.com/...dn-t-keep-female-athletes-out-of-competition/) You don't also see men being stopped from competing because they have too much natural testosterone, do you? The point is that maybe the standard is to allow natural variation for men but not for women, and so gender testing is inherently policing women's bodies.

And you're missing the point on racism...there's natural variation of testosterone in women, and African women often seem to be on the higher end of that natural variation. The standard itself of how much testosterone is allowed is racist. I don't care who asked for the testing.

 

The players don`t get banned just for a high testosterone level. There is always a examination by independent experts. So even if African women would have a higher natural variation (any proof for this?) it only means that more African women are in danger that their gender will be doubted but it doesn`t mean that women without male sex characteristics will be banned.

 

Since you mentioned racism, it is worth mentioning that the referenced endocrinological study on Olympic athletes was full of white athletes.
Just look at the athlete breakdown by sport (ice hockey, bandy?!?, rowing, canoeing, swimming, alpine skiing). For the love of Buddah, that is white!

https://www.researchgate.net/public...lite_Athletes_in_the_Post-Competition_Setting

The study went as far as to eliminate female football players from the study, despite the existence of 54 women in the 2012 Olympics. 37 of 72 male football players were included in the study. Why?

Females are 34.4% of the overall sample size. Athlete breakdown by sport does not match the number of athletes tested for serum testosterone levels (males: 454 vs 446 in serum test; females: 239 vs 234 in serum test).

When the study compares male vs female percentages, the study fails to address the 2:1 ratio disparity between gender sample sizes. Rather convenient, to say the least.

 

It`s `Elite Athletes`, not Olympic Athletes. Only whites in Track and Field and Basketball? What do you mean by `existence of 54 women in the 2012 Olympics?`