Norvegia: il test sessuale genetico dei corridori è illegale e potrebbe essere una violazione dei diritti umani
https://www.nrk.no/sport/nedslaende-beskjed-rett-for-vm-i-friidrett_-kjonnstest-kan-vaere-brudd-pa-menneskerettighetene-1.17554507
di MarlinMr
22 commenti
Next head line: Female Runner with large beard wins all Norwegian national races.
Stunning and Beautiful ✨
#Shock message before World Championship: Sex test could be human rights violation
“We have 14 girls who have qualified, and they will participate,” confirms national team doctor Ove Talsnes.
Before that, the women must go through a gender test. Earlier this week, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) revealed that Norwegian athletes have ended up in a difficult bind; the gender test is illegal in Norway. It is also illegal for Norwegian organizations and healthcare personnel to facilitate such a test.
“A huge challenge,” says the national team doctor.
Before the summer, Norwegian track and field athletes were informed that they must undergo gender testing. It was then that the federation discovered that the test is in violation of the Biotechnology Act. Talsnes risks breaking the law if he helps Norwegian athletes get genetically tested.
#Disappointing news
Lawyer Olaf Halvorsen Rønning, who has experience with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), has some disappointing news:
‘The right to genetic information is perhaps one of the most personal things we have. It is protected as one of the most fundamental human rights,’ Rønning tells NRK.”
NRK has been in contact with several athletes who are going to the World Championships, but they do not wish to comment on the matter. National team doctor Ove Talsnes has been in contact with several of the women who are traveling to the World Championships and will be gender tested.
‘Initially, it is uncomfortable,’ Talsnes said on the Wednesday evening program Dagsnytt 18.
He also said there that he has not heard of anyone who has objections to the test, and that it is something the athletes want in order to have a fair competition.
That is not enough for lawyer Rønning, who has a clear message:
‘In a case like this, where the Storting (Norwegian parliament) has said it is not legal, a breach of human rights could occur.’
‘So, one is violating human rights?’
‘Yes, Norwegian authorities could risk violating human rights if they do not protect the athletes’ privacy when faced with illegal demands for testing from the sports federation.
The lawyer justifies it this way:
‘Interventions and regulations regarding what is protected by this right must fulfill certain specific requirements. Both a basis in law and be proportional.’
The international athletics federation (WA) is surprised when they receive the message from NRK.
‘We are very surprised and a bit concerned about the question of human rights. In October, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women believed that such tests should be conducted in sports,’ says WA’s head of press, Maggie Durand, to NRK.
That does not change the matter, according to lawyer Rønning.
‘If such requirements are to be introduced, and how they should be formulated, can in principle only be done through law, and not solely through the rules of the sport.’
#More sports are following suit.
The World Athletics Championships begin on Saturday, September 13. The International Boxing Association (WB) has also introduced gender testing before its World Championships, which started on September 4.
‘You can certainly look at the law in isolation, but we have to elevate this beyond reading legal paragraphs. As the regulations are in Norway now, it is not permissible for Norwegian girls to practice their profession,’ says Ove Talsnes.
‘Sports cannot place themselves above the rules that the Storting (Norwegian parliament) has actually made. Until they have stepped in and provided new regulations, we believe that sports and the sports federation must respect the rights that athletes have and not facilitate tests like these,’ says lawyer Rønning.
It’s interesting that in the 90s, Norway literally tried to ban this exact kinds of tests by law, but legal work found that it was _already_ covered by the extensive biotechnology law.
Genetic information is considered some of the highest regarded private information in Norway, and any test like this, which is not for medical reasons, is simply considered a human rights violation.
Parliament made it pretty clear that it’s simply a no go. And setting requirements outside the law like that, simply can’t work in a parliamentary democracy.
oh shit, this level of intelligence
There was [a discussion yesterday](https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1n8xief/frances_female_boxers_are_banned_from_world/) about the same issue for the French boxing team. It baffles me that some people are totally OK with disclosing their DNA to labs (even paying for it !) without any insurance against present or future misuses, and without even considering that their DNA is not only theirs, but also that of their relatives.
It is quite incredible that the GDPR was able to pass in a society where so many people have zero clue about personal information.
Talk about diminishing actual human rights violations..
It does make sense on one level. But I do wonder how you stop even obvious cases of abuse if you are not allowed to test? This issue is and has always been a mostly hypothetical rather than a practical one but I am curious what would happen.
And in moments like these, people start to wonder what kind of world they live in.
There are genetic tests that can look at simple things without sequencing all DNA.
For example, there’s a very common procedure that tests a pregnant woman’s blood to see if the foetus has trisomy (Downs syndrome). They can also test whether there are any Y chromosomes in the blood, which will determine whether the foetus is male (Y chromosome present) or female (Y chromosome absent).
A similar thing could be carried out here
Screw that. All participants in a sport have the right to know that their opponents are on the same playing field as them.
So basically a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” type of a problem.
But why? Just as you are tested about drugs or doping you could be tested about your gender.
So maybe make it simple and just cancel the women’s sport categories and let everybody compete each other.
Isn’t this the case for the whole GDPR compliant zone? Can you process biometric and medical data without a legal requirement?
Are there other tests that can be done?
isn’t it just a cheek swab to test for XXor XY?
Look… isn’t there a way of determining if a woman was born a woman without genetic DNA testing and such?
PCR DNA testing means you give a company your whole dna sequence wich not only violates privacy laws but they could sell said info or the dna itself.
Thats why hormone trst have been the standard for decades, as it was consensus that said hormones were what affected the most and doesnt discriminate, this hasnt been a problem and it IS NOT a real problem on competitive environments like the Olympics and international competitions.
We do not have an over representation of trans people wining the category as if male of the same weight were entering. What we have is an over representation in news of the cases in which a trans person wins, often from competitions without hormone testing and a lot of times if you check said trans person track record they arent dominating, they just won one out of many, and always it called due to an unfair advantage, even is the track record is mid, and sometimes even if the person IS NOT TRANS a witch hunt is formed.
And finally, a really important thing to note is that while hormone levels can be check and applied to all, chequing chromosomes isnt a magic solution. There are cases and the more its studied the more there are, women being born xy and still having menstruation, the hormone levels of whats considered appropriate for women in sports, the bone density, and even being able to carry out a pregnancy and produce milk. Are we going to exclude them as women too?
I think we can all agree that the reason there are sports sections for men and sorts sections for women, is because men perform better than women.
So i don’t think anybody who is intellectually honest will deny men have an unfair advantage of they compete with women.
The real question is, how can we do less invasive tests.
Maybe noon contact sports like running need a different classification system like weight/ size, rather than seperation by male/ female? I don’t know the practicalities of that, but the current system just seems to open the door for abuse.
Theoretics aside, do we have statistics showing transwomen consistently dominating in their fields?
since you’re dead set on being transphobes under this post, whether out of sheer ignorance or malice:
The general public is just ignorant on trans people’s biologies at the cost of blanket discriminative views. Any *blanket* ban on trans children in sports is *inherently* discriminating.
Trans girls who transition **before onset of male puberty** undergoes normal female puberty and have **completely cis-level female skeletomusculature**.
Even in trans women who were fully/partially exposed to testosterone-driven puberty, there is no “clear abuse of power and the difference in strength”.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/58/11/586
A 2024 study, funded in part by the **International Olympics Committee and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine**, concluded that transgender women athletes may actually have several physical disadvantages when competing with cisgender women. Some of the study’s key findings:
– Transgender women performed worse than cisgender women in tests measuring **lower-body strength**
– Transgender women had a higher percentage of fat mass, lower fat-free mass, and weaker handgrip strength compared to cisgender men
– Transgender women’s **bone density was found to be equivalent to that of cisgender women**, which is linked to muscle strength
– There were **no meaningful differences found between the two groups’ hemoglobin profiles (a key factor in athletic performance)**
Anyone argues against medical transitioning in minors with gender dysphoria is against **medically-necessary care** that aims to prevent life-long regrets and dysphoria. Medical transitioning in minors is **life-saving**. Major best-practice guidelines and policy statements that **explicitly support** gender-affirming medical care for transgender and gender-diverse minors:
– **WPATH – *Standards of Care v8* (2022)** – Chapter 6 details adolescent care: recommends reversible puberty blockers at Tanner ≥ 2 and allows gender-affirming hormones around age 16 (younger in rare cases) following multidisciplinary assessment and informed consent.
– **American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) – Policy Statement “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents”** – Describes puberty blockers and hormones as “medically necessary and potentially lifesaving,” urging insurance coverage and legislative protection.
– **American Psychological Association (APA) – *Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People* (updated 2021)** – Endorses biomedical interventions (puberty suppression, HRT) within an evidence-based, affirming, consent-driven framework alongside mental-health care.
– **American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) – Policy Statement on Access to Gender-Affirming Healthcare** (2024) – “Strongly opposes” efforts to restrict puberty blockers or HRT for youth and supports continued research and funding.
– **American Medical Association (AMA) – Policy H-185.950 & related statements** (most recently reaffirmed 2024) – Declares puberty blockers and hormones medically effective and necessary; opposes coverage bans and legislative restrictions on care for minors.
– **American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) – Committee Opinion 864 “Health Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals”** (2021) – Urges insurers to cover GnRH agonists and adolescent hormone therapy; condemns discriminatory barriers.
– **American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) – Policy “Care for the Transgender and Gender Non-Binary Patient”** (updated 2023) – Recognizes gender diversity as normal variation and explicitly supports youth access to puberty blockers and hormones.
– **Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines for Trans & Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents** (v1.3 – 2021) – National consensus recommending timely puberty suppression and, from mid-adolescence, hormone therapy with robust consent and psychosocial support.
– **Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) – Position Statement “An affirming approach to caring for transgender and gender-diverse youth”** (2022) – Advises pediatricians on offering puberty blockers and, when indicated, gender-affirming hormones within a family-centered, affirmative model.