Why is Lia Thomas on the front page of a running website?

RunRagged wrote:

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

I did not post that video to justify anything. I posted the video to show how hard it is to determine who is and is not a "woman" (or a "man"). Do you think sex is binary and it is easy to tell that at birth? Do you care to answer which of the three people (if any) you consider to be a woman?

Sex is not determined by outward appearance, though. It's a reproductive category. Especially today, there are many males who have had extensive plastic surgeries and cosmetic procedures who could pass for women based on their outward appearance, especially when they are shown sitting on TV or in still photos.

There are males with CAIS - complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, a male-only DSD - who from outward appearances look like they are female as the persons on that Oprah episode do. But they are not female because they have testes, prostates, male chromosomes, male genetics, male androgen receptors, male physiology and so on.

Female human beings are not males whose sex development went awry. We are not simply males minus the dick and balls, or males take away some testosterone. We have our own distinctive features and defining characteristics.

Persons with CAIS and other disorders of male sex development who are mistakenly thought to be female at birth and during childhood always find out the truth during the puberty of adolescence. The tipoff is their failure to menstruate. During the puberty of adolescence, all females start their periods. Menarche is a major milestone in girls' lives, and periods are a very big deal. When you spend one week out of every 4 bleeding from your vagina, and you have cramping in your uterus and other common symptoms such as PMDD or PMS, it's hard not to notice. Most girls start their periods between age 9 and 13. When people thought to be female reach 14, 15 or 16 without ever having a period, they and their families and friends all will be acutely aware of this - and they will worry that something is very wrong.

Yes, I think sex is binary. How is sex not binary? Sex describes the way all mammals and most complex species procreate. Two gametes - one male, one female - are needed to make offspring. Each and every time. There are only two kinds of gametes, no third, fourth, fifth, etc kind of gamete. Always two and only two = binary.

Male gametes, sperm, come from male gonads, testes. Female gametes, ova, come from female gonads, ovaries. There is no additional kind of gonad or gonadal tissue - just the two. So once again, binary.

People who have testes are male and have male anatomy and physiology. People who have ovaries are female and have female anatomy and physiology. In the case of humans, the female anatomy includes the internal organs necessary to gestate and give birth to live young (because unlike birds and fish, human females do not lay our eggs; we conceive and grow our offspring inside us). Some humans have medical conditions which mean their gonads do not make either viable sperm or viable ova. A very few persons have been born over the course of history with a combination of ovarian and testicular tissue. But no human being has ever had gonads that could make both ova and sperm. Humans either make one kind of gamete, or no kind of gamete. Again, that means sex is binary.

Yes, I believe that in 99.99% of human births, sex is easy to tell at birth based on the appearance of child's external genitals. In those very rare cases where there is ambiguity of the appearance of the genitals at birth, the sex of the child can easily be ascertained within days based on the results of diagnostic testing methods widely in use for many years - such as palpation of the groin, abdominal imaging, sex chromosome and genetic testing, and endocrine tests.

But the sex of humans isn't just easy to tell at birth - it's easy to tell long before birth. The NIPT, an easy and relatively cheap test using blood drawn from a pregnant woman's arm or finger in the standard ways, can determine the sex chromosomes and genes affecting sex development of a fetus at 8-9 weeks of pregnancy. This same kind of testing has been available by testing tissue taken from the chorionic villi of the placenta through more invasive means since the mid-1980s. This is called CVS, which stands for chorionic villi sampling.

The sex of human fetuses is also easy to tell long before birth through the kinds of prenatal scans that are now standard in the second trimester. Since the mid-late 1980s, it's been possible to tell the sex of fetuses with nearly 100% accuracy by visual assessment of prenatal sonograms from week 14 of pregnancy on - that's 26 weeks before a birth at full term.

For more than 30 years, getting a prenatal scan to look for fetal anomalies and determine the sex of gestating offspring in the second trimester has been part of essential standard prenatal care. All women who have medically monitored pregnancies get these scans.

In many countries such as India, even women who don't have access to or can afford medical care routinely get fetal scans early on in the second trimester to find out the sex of the fetus for the purposes of sex-selective abortion. If the fetus is female, there's a two out of three chance in India that the pregnancy will be terminated.

The sex of human fetuses also can be determined from testing of fetal remains after miscarriage. It's fairly common for women who have had a series of miscarriages, or who have certain genetic mutations or family history, and have access to high quality medical care to be instructed on how to preserve the remains of miscarried fetuses so the tissue can be genetically tested.

When human blastocysts and embryos are created by combining sperm and egg in a lab, as in IVF, the sex can be and often is determined before the embryo is transferred into the the mother. This is called preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) - and it's done when an blastocyst or embryo is only a few days old.

When human conception occurs as it customarily does in a woman's body - in one of the Fallopian tubes, to be precise - the sex of the offspring can be determined by testing the first placental cells that begin to grow 5-6 days after fertilization when implantation in the uterine wall is occurring.

Sex is about having male or female gonads and male or female genetics, anatomy and physiology. It's not about whether a person appears outwardly feminine or masculine, or looks female-like or male-like. The guys on RuPaul's Drag Race routinely make themselves look outwardly far more feminine than a majority of the world's women, especially those who are middle-aged or older. But that doesn't make them women, it just creates an illusion - much like the facades in Potekim villages and the change in form that male cuttlefish undergo as part of their mating strategy.

I believe that all persons with DSDs deserve respect, fairness and kindness. But persons with disorders of male sex development are not female. I wish you could understand how insulting it is to girls and women and to persons with DSDs to suggest we are one and the same. So many of the same people who bang on about celebrating difference, accepting diversity and respecting people's "lived experience" sure seem intent on not applying those same principles to female people and all the male people with male DSDs you want to lump in with us and you keep trying to shoehorn into the female sex category.

Similarly, males who lower their testosterone, take estrogen, get facial feminization surgeries, experience breast tissue growth, grow their hair long, wear makeup and nail lacquer, have factory-made silicone sacs containing gel or saline solution surgically implanted into their chests, get ribs removed to shrink their waists, get butt implants and lip injections, and have genital surgeries to create cavities in their groins that they call vaginas are not magically transformed into women in the process. They are males who have altered their bodies to resemble women.

Let it Rupp wrote:

new low wrote:

Lol...you just don't know what the word means then. Thinking there is something wrong with gay marriage and wanting to deny the right to marriage to people because they are gay is the very definition of bigotry. It's not a debatable fact. That's what bigotry is. You are a bigot.

You not understanding the meaning of a word doesn't change that.

Yeah no, being a bigot requires prejudice and antagonism towards someone based on their group membership. You can absolutely be against gay marriage because it goes against your morals about what marriage should be without hating gay people, just like you can be against men competing against women in sports without hating trans people. I know you don't want to admit that because you're just looking for people to direct your anger at, but it's true and we all know it.

i guess im a terf? wrote:

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

I did not post that video to justify anything. I posted the video to show how hard it is to determine who is and is not a "woman" (or a "man"). Do you think sex is binary and it is easy to tell that at birth? Do you care to answer which of the three people (if any) you consider to be a woman?

And if "cis" is offensive, how do you prefer to be called? "Non-trans"? Do you also take offense at "heterosexual"? How about "non-disabled"?

Finally, I didn't bring up an example of 9 yr old to suggest that there is no male advantage at that age. My point is that parents who are obsessed with such advantage in youth sports are taking it too seriously. As to whether Jazz Jennings posed any threat to other girls in the locker room, I'd rather ask her former teammates. Oops, I forgot they won't tell you the truth because they are afraid of getting cancelled.

Yes, sex is binary and easy to tell at birth. There are RARE exceptions. These are exceptions that prove the rule, not nullify it.