The article has some interesting technical detail about sex testing with regards to the female category in competitive sport.
It's a case study in the challenges of maintaining this category in the face of attempts to bypass the spirit of eligibility rules by looking for loopholes, and how to guard against this - so in that sense it's related to the hacker mindset.
Perhaps try reading the article with an open and curious mind. The most interesting part is the second half where the impact on female athletes and the biomedical aspect of testing is discussed.
When you look past the "culture war" presumption and let your curiosity explore the details, there's quite some depth to this case, and to the more general issue.
As I asked the other sceptical commenter: how exactly would you explain XY karyotype, testosterone levels in the male range, and male-typical physique - other than by the athletes being male?
Also, we know that these three were deemed ineligible for future events under the revised World Athletics DSD policy which was developed with the intent of excluding male physical advantage from women's competitions.
Semenya's DSD (5-alpha reductase deficiency) is public knowledge due to the Court of Arbitration for Sport publishing a ruling revealing this. This is a DSD that only affects male sexual development, not female.
This is a very misleading blog post. All evidence revealed so far indicates that Khelif is a male who was erroneously assumed to be female at birth due to having underdeveloped external genitalia.
In particular, a leaked medical report states that Khelif has a disorder of sexual development, specifically 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD), which is consistent with this.
This isn't that uncommon an occurrence: most famously, Caster Semenya - another male athlete who competed in women's sport - has this condition. In fact every medal winner in the women's 800m at the 2016 Olympics was male.
Genetics isn’t as tidy as you seem to think. Many people with 5-ARD are born with functional vaginas. Personally, I call someone born with a vagina, who was raised as a woman, who identifies as a woman, who presents herself to the world as a woman, a woman.
I have no knowledge, nor interest in having knowledge, of the shape of any of those athletes’ genitals. That also means I have zero reasons, even specious ones, to doubt their sex.
It turns out the world is a lot more complex than we thought, and a lot of stuff we use to take for granted isn’t actually true. “XY is male” was a reasonable guess when we only had information on a few test subjects. Now that genetic testing is widespread, we know that’s not a hard and fast rule.
It's worth taking a step back to consider why we have separate categories for male and female sporting competitions, which is: the significant physical advantage that male development confers on an individual. If sports were mixed-sex, males would dominate almost every competition. So we have women's and girls' sports separate from males, to recognize and celebrate female athletic excellence.
With that in mind, it should be obvious why exclusion of male athletes from the female category is necessary: for fairness, and in contact sports like boxing, also safety.
The reason that males with 5-ARD have testosterone levels in the normal male range is that they have testes which produce it. They go through male puberty and thus have bodies which, in a competitive sports context, have the physical advantages conferred by male development.
These males have no female organs. Some develop a perineal pouch which may be mistaken for a vagina, but it isn't a vagina in the female sense - not anatomically nor histologically - and certainly isn't functional, given that the function of an actual female vagina is copulation and childbirth.
Whether they're raised as if they're female or believe themselves to be women isn't relevant in the context of competitive sport. The reason they should be excluded from the female category is the same as any other male: the categorical advantage from male development.
This is why it's so controversial that every medal winner in the women's 800m at the 2016 Olympics was male, and that two males took gold in women's boxing in the 2024 Olympics.
This argument devolves to "we can't let women compete until we dissect them".
At what point in a woman's competitive career do we decide that she's sufficiently talented that we have to examine her body and approve of her gender expression? Is it reserved for Olympic athletes? Or do talented college women need approval? Skilled high school students? A surprisingly good tee ball player?
Down this path lies madness.
You keep saying they're males as though it were fact and not your personal opinion. That's not at all a factual statement. Every bit of public information about these women says that they're women. Misgendering them isn't transphobia because they're not trans. They're cis woman and have been their entire lives.
Athletes competing on an elite level should certainly have their sex verified. In almost all cases this will be less intrusive than the anti-doping tests they're required to do; a simple cheek swab is sufficient for screening via karyotype analysis. And the blood samples already taken for drug testing can be used to measure testosterone levels for this purpose.
Only if there is an anomaly might further investigation be done, with the athlete's permission. No dissection is needed - at most some imaging to determine internal anatomy may be done by medical experts.
This is already the policy adopted by some sporting bodies, and was essentially the process used with the athletes I mentioned in my earlier comments to observe that the sex of each is male.
Ideally this would be done as early on in an athlete's career as is practical. It only needs to be done once, as a person's sex cannot change, and for most will be a straightforward confirmation of what is already known. Otherwise, it's better for the athlete too, to know sooner rather than later if there has been any anomalous development.
I would suggest you examine the public information on the aforementioned male athletes more closely. In particular, 5-ARD is an indisputably male condition; the mutations in the SRD5A2 gene that cause this have no effect on female sexual development. This is fact, not opinion.
No he isn't, here's a recent tweet of his that explains his position:
"This also highlights the huge difference between the "LGB" and the "T''. The gay rights movement just asked society to leave them alone and let them get married. No impositions on my life. The trans movement demands that I adopt their new dialect (or I'm a bigot) and allow males to play in girls sports (or I'm a bigot). Big impositions."
This is extremely similar what anti LGB people were also saying in how they were contrasting it to the civil rights movement.
Also similar to what the anti-civil rights movement were saying when contrasting it to the end of slavery.
Here, let me show it:
"This also highlights the huge difference between the "Abolitionist Movement" and "Civil Rights". The abolitionist movement just asked society to leave them alone. No impositions on my life. The "civil Rights" movement demands that I accept they can share spaces with me (or I'm a bigot) and allow blacks to have access to the same systems in society (or I'm a bigot)."
The only thing that has changed between these is that once these movements get set in stone, and legislation catches up - reactionary people such as Coleman stop attacking and othering it. This is why history is important. You get to see these patterns and realize its just the same shit happening all over again.
Please could you explain in more detail why you think this is analogous? I'm not seeing it.
All you've done is slot some different words into his tweet and asserted that the meaning is similar. How, exactly?
Also, your original claim was that Hughes is "against trans people being able to exist in this world" which you haven't provided any proof of. That tweet I quoted shows his actual expressed views, which refutes this.
Dictating to trans people about _how they get to live_ is the process of saying they can't co-exist in this world. It is the insinuation that they are _separate but equal_.
We've been through this ride before. We're going through this ride again. Bigots, like that author, will lose and history will not look kindly upon them.
However, for now, they get to act as an "enlightened rationalist", and sell books to people so people can justify their discomfort against trans folks.
These enlightened rationalists aren't new. Again, I'm saying that what history provides us is seeing the patterns of behavior and speech.
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Let me more specifically target that tweet you've sent. Trans people make up such a small number of people, and an even smaller percentage of those would be interested in professional sports. Spending this much time having a moral freakout over this, when there's practically no "unfairness" happening in any mainstream sports is telling.
This moral outrage has now led to invasive "tests" women have to go through before they participate in multiple sports at an international level. This outrage has caused a proliferation of false claims lodged against women who just, simply do well in sports and don't fall within the very subjectively defined "gender identity".
For example, what Imane Khelif went through is a damned outrage. Has this author taken responsibility of what their rhetoric might mean to so called "real women" that he's claiming to be so supportive of?
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Now as for the language. As society shifts, and attitudes towards culture changes, our language also changes. It wasn't that far ago where words like the n-word were very common place in American culture. Now, if you're using that you will be considered a bigot. If I'm to take this author at face value, that's somehow supposedly a bad thing?
This is similar to actively, and maliciously, misgendering someone. It's just not reached that level of understanding in society yet.
Language is a living and breathing thing. The meanings of words change over time. How acceptable a phrase is changes over time. Folks crying about this are, at best just scared of change, at worst trying to monetize other folks' fear of change. I believe this author falls into the latter here.
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It's not just his tweets, he's set his career around this issue (https://youtu.be/WDFXPlv-R_s). For someone who wants to be less _social justice_, he sure spends a lot of time talking about issues that ultimately are not relevant for 99% of the population, and is just part of the culture war himself.
"Dictating to trans people about _how they get to live_ is the process of saying they can't co-exist in this world. It is the insinuation that they are _separate but equal_."
This isn't about "how they get to live". For instance, if a male wants to dress in clothing designed for female wearers and adopt a name more commonly used by women and girls then the vast majority of people will live and let live, and happily co-exist. It's not a problem.
However it becomes a problem when encroaching on the rights of others. The female category in sports is a great example because exclusion of males is the entire rationale, as this provides women and girls with a competitive space that is fairer and safer than if it is mixed-sex. Allowing males into the category - which effectively destroys it - has a negative impact on female athletes. So of course there is going to be opposition to this.
"This moral outrage has now led to invasive 'tests' women have to go through before they participate in multiple sports at an international level. This outrage has caused a proliferation of false claims lodged against women who just, simply do well in sports and don't fall within the very subjectively defined 'gender identity'."
Screening for sex can be done with a cheek swab. This is vastly less invasive than the anti-doping tests athletes must take, which involves having blood taken and urinating in a cup while someone watches.
"For example, what Imane Khelif went through is a damned outrage. Has this author taken responsibility of what their rhetoric might mean to so called 'real women' that he's claiming to be so supportive of?"
There's a significant amount of evidence that indicates Imane Khelif is actually male, with the athletic advantage that brings.
"Language is a living and breathing thing. The meanings of words change over time."
Right, but going back to the above point, if we can't use words like "man", "boy" or "male" to describe the category of people who are definitionally excluded from the female category of sports without being shut down and complained at, then how can anyone make the case for women's sports to those who disagree? Or indeed any aspect of anything relating to women.
Perhaps that's the point - attempting to make it "bigoted" and "transphobic" to argue in favor of women's and girls' sex-based rights, rather than presenting any rational argument for taking them away.
Anyway I think this shows quite clearly that your analogy doesn't fit when one digs into the detail. None of the above is anything like the struggle for racial equality.
As I understand it, these are the major pieces of evidence:
- Karotype testing of Khelif (and the other disqualified boxer, Lin) showing XY chromosomes, reported by sports journalist Alan Abrahamson who's seen the lab reports and covering letter that was received by the IOC from the IBA: https://www.3wiresports.com/articles/2024/8/5/fa9lt6ypbwx5su...
- A member of Khelif's training team, Georges Cazorla, revealing in interview that Khelif has problems with chromosomes and hormones, and has been under testosterone suppression to bring levels into the female range: https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/2024-olympics-imane-khelif-was-...
- Extracts from a medical report leaked to French journalist Djaffer Ait Aoudia, which state that Khelif has a disorder of sex development, 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which exists only in males: https://lecorrespondant.net/imane-khelif-ni-ovaires-ni-uteru...
There are other oddities as well, like Khelif choosing not to pursue a case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport after being deemed ineligible to compete in IBA events. And the head of the Spanish national team, Rafael Lozano, saying that when the Algerian team visited to train, they ended up matching Khelif with a male boxer to spar, as the upper body strength and punching power was too much for the female boxers.
Worth noting also that all this is consistent with Khelif competing at the Olympics in the women's boxing category, as they only ask for identity documentation and do not verify sex, unlike weight classes which are strictly controlled.
Everything is the same as everything else if you rewrite all the words to different words. Regardless, "right to exist in the world" is a patently disingenuous description of the rights in question.
Other people are similarly reading and reacting to your rhetoric. Lying about what your opponents say, regardless of what you think it might evolve into, does not reflect well on you.
No, it's not. "Ms" was absolutely a new dialect, and was similarly scorned by many as it gained popularity, and those who chose to use it where often derided as lesbian, feminist, or otherwise.
You're going to be called bigoted because that's simply where culture is heading. You either own up to that judgement others have of you, or you realize you live in a society and certain behaviors are _not okay_.
You have the freedom to be _subjectively_ a bigot.
It's a case study in the challenges of maintaining this category in the face of attempts to bypass the spirit of eligibility rules by looking for loopholes, and how to guard against this - so in that sense it's related to the hacker mindset.
Perhaps try reading the article with an open and curious mind. The most interesting part is the second half where the impact on female athletes and the biomedical aspect of testing is discussed.
When you look past the "culture war" presumption and let your curiosity explore the details, there's quite some depth to this case, and to the more general issue.