Halleluha: Lia Thomas' case against World Aquatics is tossed out

Please stop using this intersexphobic language.

IOC stopped chromosome test nearly three decades ago, and no credible sports organization defines human sex by chromosome. And CAS does not agree with your intesexphobia.

Any law that defines human sex by chromosome (like that HR734) will be challenged and defeated in the court.

I thought you were a reasonable person. I don't understand why you have to advocate this chromosome fundamentalism.

The big news here must be that Rojo does not know how to spell 'halleluha'.

Removing internal testes does not affect a person's athletic ability if that person is insensitive to androgen, except it could negatively affect her bone density. It is also medically unnecessary in most cases. If someone wants to get her internal testes removed, she should be allowed to do so as an adult.

Semenya is different because she is not androgen insensitive. But someone like Semenya (a person with 5-ard) is likely to be raised as a boy in the US, and in other developed countries.

Also: for the umpteenth time, I really wish you guys would please stop bringing up people with rare DSDs on threads about normally-developed blokes like Lia Thomas using gender identity claims to muscle in on female sports.

The way some posters - and gender identity ideologues generally - habitually use people with a handful of extremely unusual and rare medical conditions as a “gotcha” and weapon in their crusade to undermine the legitimacy of the female category of sport, and put an end to sex-based distinctions and divisions generally, is exploitative and tiresome.

JAHJ and the bloke who goes by fickle/prickle/quickle in particular have long used these threads to try to smear, shame and silence me and others who are in favor of having a female category of sports that's ring-fenced against the incursion of male athletes like Lia Thomas by painting us all as heartless, reactionary bigots - and by claiming that we either a) haven't taken into account people with rare DSDs like CAIS because we're too dim-witted or ill-informed to know abou themt; b) we are "denying the existence of" people with DSDs like CAIS, PAIS and XY 5-ARD2; or c) that our real agenda is to expose, pick on, marginalize, exclude and otherwise persecute people with DSDs.

Those tiresome tactics might have worked once - but my impression is that they don’t work any more. Most people can recognize the BS and are sick of it.

As for the claim that determining a person's sex for the purpose of sports classification "is complicated - considerably more complicated than you can imagine" - that's hooey. The conditions that result in atypical sex development and ambiguous sex in humans are pretty well described and documented in medical literature, and there are well-established protocols for diagnosing them.

Also, the argument that sex classification is complicated, and that many people's true sex is a mystery and "not what it appears to be," is fast becoming moot due to the surging popularity of fetal genetic testing early in pregnancy using the NIPT, which can accurately ascertain the genetic sex of a fetus from 8-9 weeks on by testing a sample of the mother's blood drawn from her arm in the standard way. The only cases where the NIPT isn't accurate are pregnancies with three or more fetuses.

Now that the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommends the NIPT in all pregnancies, and nearly all US health insurers cover it, the uptake amongst pregnant women in the US is already around 50%. In another 10 years, getting the NIPT will be as much a part of routine prenatal care in the USA and many other wealthy countries as weight and blood pressure checks and second-trimester sonograms already are. This means that before long, most kids born in the US and other wealthy countries will have had their genetic sex ascertained and recorded in medical records 6-7 months before they were. born. This will result in virtually all children who have DSDs where there's a mismatch between genetic sex and the appearance of the genitals, or where the gentials are ambiguous looking, being flagged at birth and undergoing investigations to diagnose their specific DSD soon after.

He can go back to competing & losing against dudes.

And when they are asked what "biological sex at birth" means, they give all kinds of different answers.

Zooey Zephyr (a Montana state representative) got three different answers from her Republican colleagues, each one of which would exclude certain individuals from "biological females." And when that was pointed out, they refused to answer further questions.

So either they don't know what "biological sex at birth" means, or they are trying to hide their intention of excluding some people with 46XY DSD.

Then why do people keeping using chromosome or reproductive organs as determinants of "sex" in sports competition? Are they ignorant of what is already well-documented? Are they trying to smear people with certain DSD?

And it is irrelevant whether the chromosome of fetus is known before birth. If a baby is born with CAIS or Swyer Syndrome, she will be raised as a girl. Alicia Roth Wiegel's mother knew her baby had XY chromosome before her baby was born. (She had a traffic accident while being pregnant, and had to be tested at a hospital.) There is no way Alicia would have been raised as a boy. That would make absolutely no sense to anyone.

Zooey Zephyr? That's your go-to source? Good grief.

Zephyr isn't just a Montana state representative. Zephyr is a trans-identified male activist who's pushing an extreme - and extremely misogynistic - agenda under the banner of "trans rights."

Zephyr is infamous for the hyperbolic, over-dramatic ways that Zephyr has expressed objection to hearings and proposed bills aimed at protecting girls and women's sports from the incursion of males who believe that their special gender identity claims entitle them to new kinds of male privilege - and at protecting deeply distressed, mentally unwell minors (particularly girls) from getting irreversible medical treatments such as GnRHa drugs aka "puberty blockers," high-dose Big Pharma tesosterone and double mastectomies under the guise that this is "gender affirming care" that will solve all their problems.

I wouldn't trust a single thing that Zephyr says. Same goes for Zephyr's spouse, Erin Reed.

Both white males in their early 30s, neither Zephyr nor Reed have kids themselves - and neither one seems to have a clue about child and adolescent development, particularly female development. Yet they are amongst the USA's most powerful, prominent "trans rights" activists with huge followings and enormous clout. Like US Asst Secretary of Health Richard "Rachel" Levine, Zephyr and Reed are forceful male figureheads using their massive public platforms and political clout to advocate that pre-teen and teenage kids who are suffering from sex/gender distress and confusion - along with the usual adolescent angst - should be encouraged to believe they were "born in the wrong body" and told they must "fix" their supposedly wrong bodies by undergoing extreme and experimental medical interventions that will leave them permanently harmed. I believe Zephyr and Reed pose a real danger to kids -especially girls, since nowadays girls make up the vast majority of minors being subjected to so-called "gender affirming care."

Learn to express thoughts into words more precisely. Whatever the motivations of trans women might be, misogyny isn’t one of them. They identify as women and want to be and be treated like any other woman, which is fundamentally inconsistent with misogyny. There are far more efficient and effective ways to hate on or to discriminate against women than to turn your life upside down to be one of them.

So you don't have any response to what Zephyr said? How is "biological sex at birth" defined by Republicans who are pushing those anti-trans laws?

The bill at the US Congress says it is determined by "reproductive biology." NAIA policy says the sex assigned at birth can be different from the biological sex.

So what is it? Do you agree with their definition (if they have one)?

Nothing gets him more excited than some casual racism or a transperson in sports debate

If you have to ask, then it's sad. Go ask the person in whose womb you spent 9 months or so.

I recognize that gender is a manmade construct. The issue of participation in sports should not be about gender or gender identity.

We need a shorthand, that is not gender, to make the case that there generally are two sexes and we created playing spaces for both, separately, for very good reasons.

XX and XY conservatively includes over 98% of the world's population. We can find ways to place the remaining less than 2% within appropriate sporting contexts on a case-by-case basis.

Amen

World Aquatics, World Athletics and other sports organizations have already spent enormous time and efforts to figure this out.

There is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel. Your desire for simplicity should not take priority over biological reality.

Oh stop with the ridiculous charges of "phobia." A phobia is an extreme or irrational fear of, or aversion to, something. From what I've seen, a lot of men who post on LRC could accurately be described as afflicted with homophobia - especially as regards male homosexuality. But "intersexphobia"? Nah.

Even amongst the motlely crew who post on LRC, I think you're unilkely to find anyone who feels horror, terror and hatred towards people with DSDs simply because they have DSDs.

Some LRC posters might dislike some big-name sports stars with DSDs like Caster Semenya coz of their individual personalities and behaviors. After all, people with DSDs can be grating or jerks just like anyone else. But if any of us were to find outselves in the vicinity of Semenya and other famous people known to have DSDs - like Francine Niyonsaba, Erick Schinnegger or Barbra Banda - I doubt that a single soul even from LRC would react by having an impulse to scream "Eek!" and run the other way as fast as we could coz we're gripped with an overwhelming, irrational fear and/or aversion. I similarly doubt anyone would feel an urge to be abusive or mean to the individual simply for having a DSD.

I personally have never felt fear or aversion when I've met people with DSDs. I've been friendly with someone with CAIS since my college days, and once I dated someone who turned out to have very unsual gentials due to the same DSD condition that Caster Semenya has.

When I found out through CVS that I was pregnant with a fetus with a condition considered a DSD, Turner syndrome, I didn't feel fear or aversion, nor did my partner or the other family members we shared that information with. All of us were very sad when I miscarried that baby.

BTW, your posts are starting to sound eerily similar to fickle's. Are you the same guy? Are fickle, pickle, quickle etc all sock puppets of yours?

I don't think removing the testes of individuals with CAIS or other DSDs when they are babies or children is standard operating procedure anymore. At least I hope it's not.

A much more "hands off" approach has been requested by DSD activists, and is now recommended by pediatricians. Surgeries that involve removing the gonads or reconfiguring the genitals of children born with DSDs - and other kids who develop medical problems affecting their reproductive organs growing up - should only be done when there is really compelling medical justification.

One or both testes or ovaries of a minor should only be removed for a serious reason, such if a testis is cancerous or torsion or rupture of an ovary has damaged it to the point there there's no hope of repair or healing.

Some surgeries like repair of hypospadias or fistulas are justified. But removing a baby's or minor child's healthy gonads coz they're in a unusual location or don't match their other parts - no way.

Also, just for the record: in the case of male DSDs like CAIS, PAIS and XY 5-ARD2, the testes are not always "internal." The testes are usually not in the scrotum, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily fully inside the abdomen in or near the location they originally were when they first developed. Often, one or both testes are descended pretty far down the inginual canal so that they're palpable and visible as unsual lumps/swellings in the skin folds in the groin - either at birth or during the first months.

During the mini puberty of infancy that starts in all male babies about four weeks after birth and continues for 4-7 months, the undescended or partially descended testes of those with cryptorchidism (due to DSDs or other reasons like premature birth) often naturally move further down the normal path of descent - and they grow in size, too. In the case of male DSD babies whose genitals looked ambiguous or female at birth, these changes will makes the babies' testes much more evident to whomeover is diapering, cleansing and bathing them.

The noticeable changes that often occur to the testes/genitals of male babies with DSDs in the first 6-7 months after birth is, I suspect, a main reason that in poor parts of the world like rural South Africa, babies born with male DSDs that are initially undetected and who later undergo medical evaluation are usually at least 8 months or older when they're taken to a clinic/doctor for the first time.

Sex-determining Region Y gene = man and no Sex-determining Region Y gene = woman. Doesn't get much simpler than that.

Not disagreeing, but “biological reality” is an overrated term, usually used much more by the transphobic. Everything human is biological and real, so it’s meaningless. Literally no one is claiming they have organs or chromosomes or any other biologics that they don’t.