It is not about the law, it is about common sense.

Dutee Chand, a 19 year old female athlete from India, is challenging her ban by the International Association of Athletics Federation at the Court of Arbitration for Sports at Lausanne in Switzerland. She has been banned because her testosterone levels are higher than deemed normal for human females. She is not accused of cheating by using muscle enhancing drugs, which are based on androgens, but is unfortunate in that her body naturally produces high levels of male hormones. Her lawyers will argue that it is discriminatory to carry out gender typing in women and not in men and since, it is not her fault the her body naturally produces an excess of male hormones, she should not be disqualified. Our magnanimous Sports Ministry is bearing the cost of her appeal. The same Ministry did not back Sarita Devi whose banning by the AIBA was case of thuggish bullying to cover up for blatant cheating, depriving her of victory against a South Korean opponent at the Asian Games in South Korea. While Sarita Devi's case was clear Ms Chand's case is debatable. In 2009 a South African athlete, Caster Semenya was banned for possessing both male and female organs. She has been treated for her condition but has not won anything since. The gender of an individual is not always clear cut. There are conditions which produce indeterminate sex. Some are genetic. Out of 46 chromosomes that humans have, X and Y determine the sex of an individual. A normal woman has XX while a normal man has XY. Those with Klinefelter Syndrome have XXY and, although they look like men, they have problems with their genital organs. Those with Turner's Syndrome look like female but have only one X which makes them sterile. Then there are problems with glands. In Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia genetically normal females may have male characteristics and since this condition is serious it must be treated whenever it is diagnosed. In Testicular Feminisation Syndrome a genetically normal male has female type genitals because his body tissues do not respond to testosterone. These people have undescended testes which must be removed because there is a very high rate of testicular cancer. Experts are right to say that just because gender is indeterminate it does not mean these people are abnormal. Lawyers have latched on to this to say that this is discrimination. Is it? What if a female athlete demands the right to take male hormones so as to achieve the same level as Ms Chand? Will she be allowed to do so? Ms Semenya's case has shown that the extra testosterone was indeed giving her an advantage over other female athletes. The only solution would be to let men and women compete together, as they do in chess and bridge. That would make rugby very interesting indeed.