Instead of having men's and women's categories we should have "people with working testicles" and "people without them" categories. This would put Semenya and all the other DSD athletes in the right category.
This is basically what World Aquatics came up with two years ago.
"Defenders of women's sports" who initially supported this are now against it after realizing that some people with Y chromosome do not have functioning testes.
The only thing I find totally strange is for small countries like Algeria, the Olympics are their Superbowl, world Series and NBA championships rolled up into one. The Olympics and the World Cup are how these countries bring notoriety to themselves and the most important situation other rhan war.
So Olympics Heroes are treated like gods in many of these countries like Noureddine Morceli is in that country. Well if you are a man if you are a woman like Hassiba Boulmerka than you are treated with disdain and criticism. Maybe things have changed for women and that is why they support Khelif.
So why would a country that has in its law death to LGBTQ people have an intersex individual represent them. I mean this is a country that kills these people just like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and most other Muslim countries.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
It would be like the trans girl Dylan Mulvaney running for president. She was vilified by the right wing in this country just for supporting a product, something many celebrities have done since the dawn of time and some dude using a shot gun against that product I guess letting her know what he would do to her and that same right wing lunatic tried to destroy that entire company. Imagine if Dylan tried to run for some political office.
Well Algeria is way more bigoted toward LGBTQ people than the US and that's saying something, and that boxer isn't endorsing a product they are representing a whole country.
This just doesn't make sense to me at all.
Algeria is also one of the most LGBTQ phobic countries on earth.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) people in Algeria face legal challenges and discrimination not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. According to the International Lesbian and Gay Associatio...
Article 333 of the Algerian law (English translation) reads: "When the outrage to public decency has consisted of an act against nature with an individual of the same sex, the penalty is imprisonment of between 6 months and 3 years, and a fine of between 1,000 and 10,000 Algerian Dinars." — Article 333, ILGA May 2008 world laws report[3] Vigilante executions,[5] beatings,[6] and torture[7] are also allowed, with police frequently joining in on the attacks,[7] being complicit, or turning a blind eye.[6] The criminals laws originate from the prevailing mores in Algeria that view homosexuality and cross-dressing as against the Islamic faith.[8]
Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein · Follow FACTS: Khelif is NOT transgender or transsexual. Khelif is a biological woman. In Algeria, the country that Khelif represents, transgender identity is prohibited, as is changing sex or gender and medical or hormonal treatments to transition to another sex https://x.com/fairplaywomen/
Instead of having men's and women's categories we should have "people with working testicles" and "people without them" categories. This would put Semenya and all the other DSD athletes in the right category.
This is basically what World Aquatics came up with two years ago.
"Defenders of women's sports" who initially supported this are now against it after realizing that some people with Y chromosome do not have functioning testes.
That's why I said "working" testicles. By working I also meant people whose bodies respond to testosterone. Besides wouldn't it be the case that someone who doesn't have functioning testes wouldn't have high testosterone in which case there wouldn't be a problem?
Instead of having men's and women's categories we should have "people with working testicles" and "people without them" categories. This would put Semenya and all the other DSD athletes in the right category.
And what about the thousands upon thousands of women who underwent surgery to remove their testicles? Are you agreeing that they should compete with women?
This is basically the gender version of the racist “one-drop” rule in America. She doesn’t fit the reactionary fantasy of what a woman is supposed to be, and nuance is out of the question, so therefore they must be a dude.
Correct. My idea of what a woman includes having no testes.
It definitely should be a categorization factor for athletics. But that’s not what you said.
So if someone chops off your balls in the middle of the night, are you gonna wake up and be a woman - or are you still gonna know you’re a man that got his balls cut off? Almost like it’s your gender, not your sex.
I think the fact that shocks non-runners the most is that a boy at my daughter's school (two years ago) who barely trained, ate junk food, goofed around like a normal boy, and somehow ran 1:52 in the 800m.
I think non-runners don't realize how easy it was for this kid compared to how hard all the women on Earth have trained, sacrificed, and worked. Yet all the women (even the doped ones) were never faster than that Big Mac eating 11th grader...
Testosterone is the king of the PEDs. To allow it (at male levels) into women's sports is to ruin women's competition (as we saw during the Caster/Niyonsaba years).
It's this - they don't. And it's a frustrating education gap/void.
My wife and her friends don't get it and why/how would they? Even when I explain to them that the fastest woman on the planet wouldn't get out of the first round in the 100m at the Texas state HS boys meet they don't, nor even want to attempt to, understand the gravity of this. I tell them that by the age of 14 I was good enough to win the Olympic womens 800m title and by 15 was a second inside the womens WR - again it's still meaningless to them.
Even when you explain that this is about women's rights and female equality they don't get that either - it's just lost in sea of emotional ideology that has nothing to do with facts or reality. But end of the day this isn't really about that is it? It's really about soundingbeing compassionate, empathetic and reasonable.
Also one thing I might add to this - the person at the center of this issue isn't transgender right? (I'm responding here to other comments about transgender people in competitive sport) If we want to be bastions of facts and science we need to be consistent. This is a biologically intersex athlete that hasn't unethically been identifying as a female their entire life. This is very different to a Lia Thomas situation even if the physiological scenario is the same and the danger to the health and safety of this athletes competitors very really real and present due to the nature of the sport. This is also doesn't mean I believe they should be allowed to compete against XX chromosome athletes, because I don't.
I sympathize if you feel your wife and friends are that dumb that they can’t understand how amazing a runner you used to be, bravo!
I suspect she isn’t dumb and understands the core of the issue better than you do. It’s a good tell when the group you are trying to save doesn’t understand why you are outraged on their behalf.
PS: edited your post slightly so you can better understand your spouse.
Instead of having men's and women's categories we should have "people with working testicles" and "people without them" categories. This would put Semenya and all the other DSD athletes in the right category.
And what about the thousands upon thousands of women who underwent surgery to remove their testicles? Are you agreeing that they should compete with women?
Yeah my initial definitions weren't precise enough. Even defining the female category as "people who went through puberty with working testicles" isn't correct since there has been research that indicates even pre-puberty boys have an advantage over girls. So the female category could be "people who were born without testicles". Still I don't know if that would include absolutely everything. However I've never heard of a case where someone born without testicles that was identified as female at birth but was XYsomething and had some kind of advantage.
This kind of argumentation makes us (on the Left) seem so dumb and out of touch with reality. Trump supporters and "normal people" shake their heads when we struggle to come up with a "definition of what a man is."
Can we do it, or not? I think I can. I also think I can admit that people with pronounced DSD conditions are not easily put in the male or female categories (but this doesn't mean that they can just "choose" to compete against women).
Speak for yourself: I neither identify as left nor struggle to define a man. Neither does World Athletics that doesn’t allow athletes to simply “choose”. IBA has other problems going on.
The only thing I find totally strange is for small countries like Algeria, the Olympics are their Superbowl, world Series and NBA championships rolled up into one. The Olympics and the World Cup are how these countries bring notoriety to themselves and the most important situation other rhan war.
So why would a country that has in its law death to LGBTQ people have an intersex individual represent them. I mean this is a country that kills these people just like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and most other Muslim countries.
Terrible take
First off the Olympics are not their SuperBowl. The World Cup is much larger than the Olympics in Algeria
Secondly most Algerians including the sports officials don't even know what Intersex is. So they have no reason to forbid Khelif from representing them. As far as the leaders know, Khelif is a woman. Her medical results are not known to the Algerian public.
The "nuance" is that women have XX chromosomes and anyone with a Y is a biological male and shouldn't be boxing in the women's division.
Y Chromosome is literally just an X Chromosome with some pieces missing.
And because of that there are a massive number of variations of types of Y
AND some "men" lose their Y Chromosome entirely as they age
Are they now women by your definition?
If you go around insisting the world is just black and white, A or B, with nothing in-between well life is going to really wake you up someday, absolutely nothing is like that, nothing.
Speak for yourself: I neither identify as left nor struggle to define a man. Neither does World Athletics that doesn’t allow athletes to simply “choose”. IBA has other problems going on.
how do you define a man?
I will give the same answer that anyone with any form of complex understanding of gender would give. A man is a person who identifies as a man and truly believes he is a man. A woman is a person who identifies as a woman and truly believes she is a woman. For example, you. You are either a man or a woman or gender expansive (anyone who does not conform to the gender binary). Why? Because you say you are and you believe you are. It's as simple as that.
The argument that being a man or woman is decided on chromosomes or genitals cannot possibly work. Yes, it makes up the vast majority of people. However using these classical definitions completely isolates anyone with any conditions that make it ambiguous. In every transgender related thread I have seen, those who opposes trans always say "It's just a case by case basis" or "There's so few of them it doesn't matter." It seems to me that they are saying you don't have a gender because you don't fit the biological gender most people fit, or there are so few of you that you do not matter and it isn't a good idea to make you equal because there are so few of you. As mentioned, there are people who lose their Y chromosomes. There are people who are not as receptive to testosterone. There are people born with ambiguous genitalia. There are many other conditions that would cause someone to not align with a single gender on the basis of genitalia, chromosomes, and hormones.
Even if we ignore the issue of trans and gender expansive people, this is a big problem within our society. You are doing these people a massive injustice. Even if it is true that very few people like this would want to compete in sports, what do you do when one does? Do we say "You cannot compete as anything because you do not conform to our standards of male or female?" I should hope not.
[...] there are some physiological attributes on the basis of which we filter and others on which we don’t in sport. Long feet and torso offer a much more direct advantage compared to karyotype, your favorite filtering attribute, that correlate with a population-level statistical advantage.
Great post.
All of these twits saying 'but but but XY! testicles! XY!' seem to have no idea that a person can have an XY karyotype, and testicles, and complete feminization (possible due to a number of causes).
This includes but is not limited to 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which essentially prevents the 'male' effects of testosterone, with many patients being 'female' by any rational assessment, including that of their parents, doctors, and eventually their male sexual partners.
When will we see the first lawsuit filed by someone who has been prevented from winning a a medal? Will the athlete be sued? Will the IOC be sued? Both?
We all have been harmed in not having a fair fight to watch? The fights were not as advertised? This sounds as though we all have a class action case, not to mention I have also suffered emotional trauma of the brutality of now realized male versus female violence.
This is a p#ss take surely ? I hope so.
Harmed and emotional trauma to viewers ? unless the viewer is triggered by this because of unsolved past traumas then I'm just not buying this douchism.
When will we see the first lawsuit filed by someone who has been prevented from winning a a medal? Will the athlete be sued? Will the IOC be sued? Both?
We all have been harmed in not having a fair fight to watch? The fights were not as advertised? This sounds as though we all have a class action case, not to mention I have also suffered emotional trauma of the brutality of now realized male versus female violence.
This is a p#ss take surely ? I hope so.
Harmed and emotional trauma to viewers ? unless the viewer is triggered by this because of unsolved past traumas then I'm just not buying this douchism.
What it is is that the folks moping around here are the ultimate queens, drama queens that is.
Speak for yourself: I neither identify as left nor struggle to define a man. Neither does World Athletics that doesn’t allow athletes to simply “choose”. IBA has other problems going on.
how do you define a man?
You can’t be asking me that out of genuine curiosity, but the answer is easy: anyone who consistently identifies as such.
The “as such” technically makes it a recursive definition, but it’s still simple enough for Everyman to understand its spirit. The qualifier “consistently” does not mean cis but exists to distinguish them from nonbinaries.
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