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August 9, 2024 - 11:05pm
Imane Khelif just won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing in the super lightweight division, dominating China’s Yang Liu in three short rounds before a raucous pro-Algerian crowd. This victory makes Khelif the second Algerian to win gold in Paris.
Khelif was favoured to win gold after winning all of the lead up matches 5-0 in unanimous decisions. What is not unanimous is whether or not Khelif is actually a woman — genetically speaking, which is the only way to be an actual woman if we’re going to live in material reality.
The physical differences could not be more pronounced in a sport like boxing. Men have 90% increased bicep strength and 162% greater puncher power, which is why Olympic boxer, Angela Carini ended her bout with Khelif after just 46 seconds, declaring “non é giusto” (it’s not fair). If I were a betting woman, I’d bet on XY vs XX too.
Sex is the single biggest determinant of athletic performance. Nothing compares. Not steroids, blood doping, or tough training. None of it. Just being a male all but assures a win against a female in elite level competition. Yet for some reason, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stopped sex eligibility testing in 1999.
At the 2023 World Championships, Khelif did not pass the sex eligibility test. But it seems the IOC doesn’t care. According to IOC spokesperson Mark Adams, the organisation chooses to trust what an athlete’s passport says. Because, in the words of IOC President Thomas Brach, there is no reliable way to test for sex.
Even if we did have a reliable test (we do — as the International Boxing Association has already established) the IOC claims that to test would be “stigmatising” and an invasion of privacy.
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SubscribeThe only way to stop this is for all the actual women to refuse to compete against men. Force them to take their prizes by forfeit, and speak loudly and clearly about the injustice. Don’t participate in a rigged game.
Correct.
In fact it is not the only way. In any case there will always be women who want to demonstrate they are the best undoubted woman by taking part. The way to ensure the game is not rigged is to ensure the officials in charge of the sport are willing to ensure that only women who are clearly women no ifs and buts take part. Women’s Olympic sport needs to be headed up by a woman and a woman who will have no truck with special pleading. All participants should actively campaign for this.
It is ridiculous that Kier Starmer’s mate has anything to say about who is a woman. As a man I say let women’s sport be governed by women. If they are stupid enough to let those who should be classified as men participate so be it at least it will be up to women not men.
I have listened to loads of women who would happily take on the role. Sharon Davies, Martina Navratilova, Helen Joyce, Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull. Julie Bindell. Women who have refused to bow to the zealots of the LGBTQ blah blah blah brigade, and have faced up to the appalling men who feel entitled to tell them what they should do. Peter Tatchell springs to mind, and Mark Adams of the IOC isn’t looking too handy!!
It shouldn’t be the case that women must sacrifice their sporting dreams in order to force the sporting authorities to give them basic fairness and safety. But unfortunately I think it will probably come to that.
I don’t understand why biological women would want to box.
An opinion you are entitled to hold, but is irrelevant to the point that women who choose to box should have the right to do so without males in their category.
Do you mean ‘WITHOUT males in their category’?
She was born a girl, what is wrong with you bigotted clowns, I feel sure if she was born a boy someone would have noted she had a d**k
Imane was born with DSD. She was one of the tiny minority that was, assigbned sex at birth and in this case, it was female. Come puberty, nature decided that Imane should go through male puberty. Only those with XY chromosomes go through male puberty. A simple cheek swab is all that is needed. Surely instead of bleating, Imane should agree to that! Women boxers have all said they are happy to be swabbed bar two. Says it all!
“Imane was born with DSD”
That has yet to be credibly alleged, let alone demonstrated objectively.
Yes. Now edited.
You don’t understand it is not your call to make.
Objectively, that isn’t the only way this will stop. Other sports have introduced rules about sex eligibility which would exclude DSD athletes with male advantage. Sporting bodies can step up without female athletes needing to torpedo their careers and possibly personal lives.
Also, unlike with trans athletes, whether an athlete has a DSD isn’t always well known, partly because people with a DSD often were legitimately raised female, with the physical signs of their condition only presenting at puberty. Of course, there are usually obvious physical signs (the two athletes in this case to me both look pretty masculine), but still, other athletes can’t be expected to suss-out whether someone has internal testes just from looking at them and drop out on that basis. That’s madness.
Reintroduce sex screening by means of cheek swab.
Only needs to be done once in their life and then everyone can have confidence the competition is fair.
If they don’t have a uterus they’re not female.
So after hysterectomy, a woman ceases to be female?
They are both women, and why on earth people want to rant about things that happen in their mothers wombs and blame and exclude them is beyond me, it’s sick.
Right. And let the pretend women fight each other.
Many women are born without a uterus so don’t be ridiculous and did you look inside to see if she has one.
Actually, it depends on what gametes they have.
The mindset that brought us to this new weird reality did not suddenly materialize from thin air. It rests on a foundation of progressive dogma that itself overlies a deeper foundation of decades of aggregated extreme liberal philosophy and policy. The rails of reality were bent long ago and no one should be surprised that the train of history now delivers us to this bizarre station.
Love that turn of phrase…”the train of history now delivers us to this bizarre station…”
Yes, that’s a good one.
I don’t think “Liberalism” means the same thing to everyone. It’s an amorphous word. Progressivism is a better word because while liberalism acknowledges a need for tolerance, Progressivism implies a need for dramatic change.
Liberalism has merit because it implies adaptability. Adaptability requires natural meritocracy. Progressivism implies aggressive divestment in Meritocracy to rectify past wrongs through redistribution and system change. The problem with systematic redistribution is that it gets arbitrary fast. When governance gets arbitrary it gets stupid and Incompetent. That’s where we are now.
“When governance gets arbitrary it gets stupid and Incompetent…” equally true in reverse!
The progressives are only eight percent of the Democratic Party. Most Democrats are moderates.
The distinction between liberal and progressive is baked into my comment. The point I make and you elide is that the genealogy of modern progressivism clearly leads to liberalism. Progressivism certainly is no child of conservatism and obviously carries the genes of socialism and even Marxism, its liberal left cousins. The “adaptability” and “naturally meritocratic” aspects of liberalism are dead concepts to post-modern liberals. If you identify as liberal and cling to those ideas to justify your philosophy today you are like someone clinging to a piece of shattered decking from the Titanic, flotsam of a great vessel sunk beneath the waves.
My father was a paid up member of the communist party. He used to use the word ‘progressive’ about all his ‘comrades’ who visited my house when I was a kid to extol the virtues of Stalin and Mao. I learned as a very young lad that the term ‘progressive’ was the absolute antithesis of the true meaning of the word. My father was ‘a useful idiot’ who espoused the communist ideal. I could see through it when I was thirteen years of age and it taught me to ABSOLUTELY not follow a political doctrine. It always ends badly when you try to defend the indefensible.
I agree, Mark. Fascinating story btw.
Thank you. I read Alexei Sayle’s book, ‘Stalin Ate My Homework’ and the similarities between our upbringings are stark! The belief in communism is just the same as a religious faith, in my opinion.
The sooner this whole gender nonsense is eradicated the better. Arguing logically against it and the money behind it is useless. From the universities to sport the leaders are invested in it’s continuance. I support all genetic females in the pursuit of mating and reproduction should they wish, not these transvestites and rogues in high heeled brogues. The fight should be taken to the establishment everywhere.
The boxer is not a transvestite.
The boxer apparently has a development disorder. It is not the fault of the athlete, who has trained hard for success.
But surely the Paralympics are the place for people who have development disorders.
He has a developmental disorder. However he’s pretending to be a woman, so he’s a male transvestite.
The mind boggles!
She is a woman, she is not a transvestite or intersex or transgender, she is a damn woman.
on which criterion?
The paralympics is generally seen as the place for people who have conditions which set them at a disadvantage to other athletes. Not people who have an advantage.
Although, arguably, males with a DSD do have a disadvantage relative to their sex class (males). The question is whether they are advantaged ‘females’ or disadvantaged males.
Quite right.
The boxer has high testosterone levels, but is not as muscular as you might expect for a trained athlete with normal (for men) testosterone levels.
A fight against any decent male amateur boxer would be a mismatch,
Those with “developmental disorders” should box each other.
Now that is the most vile statement of all, get a grip and stop the hateful ignorant bigotry. the most obvious sign she is a women IS SHE HAS NO ADAM’S APPLE, ARE YOU STUPID.
He’s a rubbish male boxer with ‘normal for men’ testosterone levels. He has to fight women because he can’t compete against his biological sex without being battered!!
Well said.
I can’t remember the name now, but a little while back I heard an interview with a man who organises an Olympics type competition for “enhanced” athletes. These days all kinds of enhancements, not confined to performance enhancing drugs but including an expanding range of biotechnical enhancers… exist but are not allowed in conventional international sports life… This man is interested in what kinds of performance can be achieved if they are simply allowed…Maybe women athletes who are naturally genetically “enhanced”, but don’t want to enter the male category could have a go there.
The Paralympics is for people who are disabled in some way. XY DSD individuals are not disabled in ANY way! In fact, they carry less weight because they don’t have external male genitalia. An advantage; surely!!!
Exactly. But what the hell is a “development disorder”?
Why don’t you google and stop with the ignorance
The Paralympics is for people who are disabled in some way. XY DSD individuals are not disabled in ANY way! In fact, they carry less weight because they don’t have external male genitalia. An advantage; surely!!!
This actually has to do with sex, not gender. Gender is a social construct, and the only way gender figures in this discussion is that the IOC seems to be committed to the proposition that gender determines sex. It doesn’t; even though in the majority of cases they overlap, in substance sex and gender have very little to do with each other.
The issue here is that women’s sports, as a category, was designed to provide a level playing field for the close to 50% of humans where genetic sex is unambiguous and genetic sexual expression fully overlaps with biological/genetic sex. There are a number of individuals where this is not the case, and where the genetic expression moves closer to the male phenotype (and vice-versa).
Fundamentally, we need to decide whether to continue to have a category “women’s sports”, or simply have the categories “men’s sports” and “less-than-men’s sports”.
If this had happened a few decades ago, before any form of genetic testing was available and sex was simply based on the appearance of genitals, it would have just been accepted that Imane was female.
Presumably there are examples in the past where women’s competitions have been won by exceptionally muscular competitors but, as they met the available tests of being female at the time, no-one argued about it?
No it wouldn’t. Women aren’t defined by the lack of a p***s. We can all tell a body built by testosterone from one that isn’t.
And before people knew about testosterone?
People in the past were very much sexed on the basis of what genitals they had.
I doubt Khelif has a vagina.
But in sport in recent history, athletes were all tested for dope. The dope being testosterone which many women were forced to take in Eastern Bloc countries so they would have a physical advantage over their fellow female athletes. This is well documented. The IOC still do dope testing so why not selection testing? It is not like the IOC’s history is squeaky clean …
People with 5-ARD like Imane Khelif don’t have penises.
But they have testes that did not descend.
A fair point
Chromosmal sex was discovered at the very beginning of the 20th century. Just after the first modern Olympics. Before women were allowed to compete in serious athletics (only tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism and golf were permitted). When sports were limited to wealthy amateurs.
However, female anatomical science is millenia old. He doesn’t have a vagina. He doesn’t present himself as a woman. He competes as a woman because a third world healthcare system and theocratic thinking determined him to be female at birth.
So what if chromosomal sex was discovered at the start if the 20th C – routine testing wasn’t available.
Can you explain how you know they don’t have a vagina? When did you examine them? ASFIA they do present as female and always have.
I very much doubt he has a vagina by the way he looks and by the way he boxes.
You obviously have a point here. Defining someone’s sex in terms of their genetics or hormones obviously cannot predate the awareness of genetics and hormones. Not sure why you are getting downvotes. nor why people are claiming knowledge of Khelifs anatomy which one can only presume they don’t have.
Khelif explained this to the IBC. His own words. It’s why the IBC stopped him boxing against women. He didn’t appeal their decision.
Exactly.
You have the medicine wrong. Imane Khelif is thought to have 5-ARD. It’s a condition where the body cannot convert testosterone into DHT. That means the person with the condition develops as a female until puberty, with all the female parts. At puberty, they may start to develop more as a male, but it doesn’t get very far.
Imane Khelif has always claimed to be a woman and biologically has some women parts and some male parts.
It absolutely goes all the way once male puberty starts. The ONLY characteristic that is missing from the male form is external genitalia. These should be formed in utero, and continue to develop into adult male genitalia during puberty, but the mutant gene which should convert androgens to DHT is ineffective. All other male characteristics develop normally; notably all the strength, and other benefits, which adult males have over adult females.
Caster Semenya has the testosterone levels about half of the lowest levels for males, although more than double the highest levels for women. And she does not have the physique of a male.
These women are rare, so we don’t know much about them. And as you say, the main genetic abnormality is the inability to convert testosterone to DHT. But to say they develop all the strength and other benefits of going through male puberty does not seem supported by the evidence.
Biology is not a science in the sense that physics and chemistry are. Reductionism does not work well in biology. It never has and never will. The human body is the most complex thing we know of in the universe, and a complex adaptive system like it must be studied carefully in the real world rather than making judgments based on simplistic models.
That is absolute rubbish!! Caster Semenya had testosterone levels in the normal adult male range. HE absolutely does have the physique of a male, unless you don’t believe your own eyes, and HIS wife happens to be a female which means that the androgens which were formative in utero gave HIM the sexual proclivity to be attracted to the opposite sex which happens in the majority, buy not all, cases.
Female participation in some sports is only relatively recent – female boxing was only added in 2012. Others were added in drips and drabs in the late 20th century.
You do have the scandals involving Soviet and East German female athletes doping with testosterone in 1980s. Which in effect is similar to those athletes having an ‘artificial’ DSD. If you google pictures they do look noticeably masculine and people did notice.
More broadly though, DSDs are rare enough that sports probably need to have a certain level of profile and mass participation before you’re likely to see athletes come through. There are literally only 434 identified cases of 5-ARD (Caster Semenya’s condition) in the world.
I was literally thinking of the East European 80s shot putters etc as I wrote. Maybe some of them didn’t need to dope?
The problem with elite sports is it only needs a small number to have a significant advantage and, given the resource and desire to seek them out, they will come to dominate.
Good points. Trouble is there are lots of other factors too that can make some women more masculine and so better able to compete. When you start screening out for one condition, where do you draw the line?
In women’s wrestling, for example, it’s obvious that Amit Elor has musculature that is more typical of a male. A lot of that is probably due to training, but most women cannot develop that much muscle mass no matter how hard they train. She undoubtedly has a genetic advantage, and it probably has something to do with sex hormones. She’s that dominant.
The issue of who is a woman in elite women’s sports is a contentious one that has been boiling and bubbling for 100 years now. There is no easy solution or we would have found it by now.
One thing is clear to me — any person who has competed as a man in elite sports should not be able to compete as a woman. Apart from that, it’s less clear.
Whatever we decide, people need to lower the temperature and make sure the process for deciding on rules and doing testing is fair and transparent. What the IBA did in Imane Khelif’s case is inexcusable.
Nah. Amit Elor looks female to me – just a female with a strong, stocky but unlike Khelif not a lankily masculine frame who has done a lot of training. I wonder what the international wrestling rules and policy are…perhaps different from boxing?
That’s why MEN robbed women of medals. We have a definitive test for biological sex which is unequivocal and has been around for a long time. The IOC needs to use it!
“According to IOC spokesperson Mark Adams, the organisation chooses to trust what an athlete’s passport says.”
Mark Adams was two-tier Keir’s Best Man at his wedding. Neither of them seem to know what a woman is.
Must have been one Hell of a stag do!
Australians can now declare themselves as the opposite sex with no medical intervention. How many second rate male athletes will use this as their bid for stardom?
Probably none. However, it is not a tenable policy. Over time, the IOC will be forced to readopt it’s prior policy of requiring 2 years of effective HRT prior to competing in women’s event for athletes found to have above typical levels.
Always good to see people advocating the administration of experimental drugs in sport in the name of ‘inclusivity’. You can’t make it up!
There’s a women’s soccer team in Australia, the Flying Bats, with five men on the team. A number of women have been injured by them. Also, they are 12-0. The all women’s teams failed to make one score against the Bats. Gosh, I wonder why.
What has been astounding to me has been just how heavy handed mainstream and social media have been in both declaring Khelif to be a woman and then celebrating the gold medal, as if they realize the absurdity and yet still feel compelled to do this as a last ditch effort to keep gender ideology going. Which makes me both hopeful that we’re at peak gender woowoo and will finally get the backlash that brings common sense back to women’s sports, and terrified at just how much more disinformation and the word ‘bigot’ is going to be thrown around to maintain the fiction that these men are women.
I think it’s a fairly well established psychological phenomenon that people who have bought into something fantastical will cheer even louder the more absurd it gets.
The alternative is to face the consequences of their delusion which is too painful.
Exactly, like followers in a cult.
Which is why the otherwise astute folk tale about the emperors new clothes had a bad ending. The child telling the truth would have been tortured (or at least shunned) until he told a lie. Why? Because the emperor’s reputation depended on him being clothed as did the supposed sanity (and morality) of his subject population.
That’s a spot on comment. The psychology of the individual means that the further you buy in to a doctrine, the harder it is to rein back and admit that you are wrong. It’s so much easier to plough on regardless instead of facing up to the fact that you have been a mug. Susie Green, formally of ‘Mermaids’ took her son to be castrated overseas at the age of 16. Once you have mutilated your own offspring, how can you come to terms with that?!! So much easier to try to convince others to do the same in order to justify the abuse of your own child.
Yes, I too was, astonished to hear them declare Khelif was a woman, like we’re all supposed to go along with the deception.
She is a woman, why are you still ranting
No-one is ranting; they are seeing things with their own eyes and simply denying a ridiculous doctrine.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
George Orwell, 1984
She is a woman, she cannot be blamed for a glitch that happened in her mothers womb, how cruel ugly and bigotted you are.
Once again in our societies, the elevation of the manipulator whose moral standing is relative to his appeal to victimhood.
Slowly and progressively the new foundation of human rights lent to our ethical order reveals itself to be a baseless circle that latches identity politics onto this same appeal to the now elevated societal status of the victimised group.
Women did not participate in the Ancient Greek Olympic Games and indeed they did not participate in the first revived Olympic Games that took place under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee in Greece in 1896.
If the purpose of the Games is to identify and celebrate the best in a particular sporting category where all participate equally then there should be no separate men and women’s categories. If as is likely in most sports the best are male so be it. That is the facts of life.
However, if a special category is to be created in which only women can participate so that the best woman can be identified then this should be limited to those that are biologically women.
Transgender women are clearly not women in this sense. However, there is some wriggle room in the case of those with an abnormal sexual development whose external sexual organs are female although their chromosomes indicate they are male and they have gone through male puberty.
The current Olympic Committee seems to have sidestepped the issue by accepting those classified by their passports as women. However, if the purpose is to identify the best undoubted woman in each category then they should exclude those who are likely to have a physical advantage because they have undergone male puberty whatever their passport says because they are not undoubted women. If invasive tests are involved these are simply the extension of drug testing.
Unfortunately, ideological actors determined to subvert the category of what a women is have prevailed.
A cheek swab isn’t at all invasive.
Exactly.
This is an utter disgrace for sport but the truly terrifying aspect of this is the blithe assertion by the IOC that a definition of “woman” is impossible.
If there is no definition of what a woman is then anyone can be one and women’s sport will eventually disappear. The rewards available to mediocre male athletes to declare themselves women will be too enticing.
A male sprinter who can run 10.4 seconds for the 100m would not even be competitive in top level college competition in the US. But they would break the women’s world record. It is beyond absurd to imagine that if we continue down this path we won’t reach a point where someone does it.
And that’s just sports. The consequences for women’s spaces like prisons and refuges are terrifying.
It is indeed terrifying and the fact that Khelif got away with deception pulling off a win, is horrifying.
There is a photo of him from the side showing a very, very prominent Adam’s apple.
Woman?? Hahaha IOC!
And very prominent dangly bits when it forgets itself & jumps around in its shorts after beating up a woman
Prove it.
No problem: DNA test. If the chromosomes are XY, it’s a man.
You should quit now. You’ve lost.
And very prominent other bits too !!!! The IOC obvs deaf mad & blind
Prove it.
Prove it.
What deception? She was assigned female at birth, and no one has ever had any demonstrated to claim other wise.
He has an XY karyotype and is therefore a male. I’ll bet you £1,000 that if a simple cheek swab was taken from HIM by the IOC to ascertain his biological sex, and all the physical advantages that would be conferred by that, it would confirm what every reasonable person can see with their own eyes.
If Imane Khelif has the 5-ARD sex disorder, she doesn’t have a p***s, she has a vagina, and always has. Still a man?
The issue of how to fairly decide who is a woman for the purposes of women’s sports has been debated for 100 years, and various tests have tried. Up until the 1960s at the Olympics and other elite events women were examined naked and things like being flat-chested or lacking pubic hair were examined, as well as probing their genitals like a gynecological exam. It was demeaning and mean.
It turns out to be a very difficult issue and a simple cheek swab has been determined not to be a fair solution. Things like CAIS, XY mosaicism, and 5-ARD complicate things. There’s no reason to insist that women with these conditions are biologically males when they are a lot closer to being women than being men.
Some people say that Imane Khelif has an advantage because she can punch 1.67 times harder than other women. How would they know? Has her punching power ever been measured? And if anyone knows boxing, they will know that punching power is far from the only factor. Muhammad Ali consistently beat boxers who punched much harder than he did. Timing, footwork, conditioning, and strategy matter a lot. And that was in the heavyweight class. In the lighter weights like these women box in punching power is not as critical.
If the IBA had decided on clear rules and done fair testing there would not be much of a problem. They didn’t. In Istanbul in 2022 they sprung this sex qualification on the boxers, and who knows what tests they performed. But they conceded they tested only 4 boxers out of hundreds, and found that all four did not meet the qualification (though they did not disqualify anyone).
The next year in 2023 they again did some sort of undisclosed testing, but again it was limited, apparently only to Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting. And at least as to Imane Khelif, the testing was only done after she had won all the way up through the semifinals and just before she fought for the championship, based on someone who just then filed a complaint.
Those who worry about safety of the women who had to box Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting don’t really have any evidence that they pose a threat to anyone beyond the Italian boxer Angela Carini, who claimed that Imane Khelif threw a punch that felt very powerful. Pretty subjective evidence. I’d like to see some better evidence, but the evidence seems to be that these two boxers have boxed in hundreds of bouts without a single opponent being injured.
And for those who worry about fairness, where’s your evidence that they have an unfair advantage? Scientists have looked for evidence that women with 5-ARD and have found it hard to come by. Is it fair to base a rule on belief rather than fact?
And is it fair to call women cheats who have obeyed the rules that are in place? Who have considered themselves female since the day they were born? Who have never once competed as a male?
For the purposes of eligibility to compete in the female category in sports, yes.
The issue here is male performance advantage. That’s why the female category exists at all.
Male performance advantage comes from the male body having testes which produce useable testosterone in the normal male range and thus going through male puberty.
An individual with 5-AR deficiency is a male with a DSD. They have testes, albeit internal, produce normal male levels of useable testosterone and go through male puberty. They can and do produce sperm and father children.
The fact they don’t have a p***s due to the lack of the enzyme which triggers growth of male external genitalia doesn’t change the fact that they go through male puberty and should therefore be excluded from the female category.
Yes to your last questions, although rather than wishing to accuse such women of “cheating” I would sympathise with them on a human level…
So – my first question to you would be – do you agree with sporting segregation by sex? I rather assume that you do, in a general way, and if so how do you justify that segregation at all?
Let’s say you justify it on the grounds that while not every man can beat every woman in every sport where muscle power counts, men do have a consistent very substantial advantage by reason of their different biology. Again, I’m assuming your attitude here and apologise if I have assumed wrong, but bear with me. If you take this pretty usual line, then you will agree that there must be some consistent criteria for deciding who is or is not a woman FOR THE SPECIFIC PURPOSES of segregation in sport. Sex as given on passport, for example, cannot be such a criterion, because a passport cannot confer a biological advantage. Subjective identification as a woman (including even such identification as encouraged by upbringing and social milieu) cannot be, because again it does not confer a biological advantage or disadvantage relevant to sport. Finally, inability to defeat every female rival cannot be, because we have established that the nature of male biological advantage in sport, while it varies in degree from sport to sport, is not absolute (we recognise weight categories within boxing, but it is hardly true that no boxer in a higher weight category could ever be defeated by a boxer in a lower one, and it would be ridiculous if defeat by a lower-weight category boxer conferred on the higher-weight boxer the right to compete at will in the lower category!).
Okay…what is it about men that gives them a biological advantage in sports? Well, they don’t have much of one before puberty. So it’s something they acquire through different physiological development during puberty. Nothing subsequently, as we have seen in the case of transwomen – reducing levels of hormones, for example, – makes very much of a dent in the advantage. So – following several sports federations new rules today – it’s hard to argue with the principle that a male (for the purpose of segregation in sports) is someone who has undergone male puberty, and that regardless of their subjective, social or legal status for other purposes.
Everything about these Olympic boxers suggests that they failed previous eligibility cases because they were found to have XY chromosomes. XY chromosomes mean male puberty, unless the individual concerned has an additional even rarer feature of genetic make-up that means that his/her body is disabled from responding to the XY puberty development programme, which starts up but has no effect. So this makes XY chromosomes a very good marker of someone who even if presenting as female socially and subjectively, has gone through male puberty and hence acquired the male biological advantage that is central to criteria of segregation for fairness in sport.
Assuming that the Khelif’s test showed her to have an XY chromosome (and no genetic factor preventing her male puberty from taking effect), then she cannot be regarded as eligible to box in women’s boxing because to insist on this is logically to undermine the whole raison d’etre of sex segregation in boxing.
Yes, we are all quite certain that the only reason he won the womens’s gold medal was due to timing, strategy and fancy footwork. And I’m a pink unicorn on weekends.
Absolutely still a man. The starting point for ascertaining biological sex is to establish the XX or XY karyotype. Anything else is secondary.
its funny how the west sinked to debating what masculinity is in presidential elections. the world is laughing at you
I have no idea what that statement means with regard to my posting.
me: she has a uterus
you: but russian chromosomes tests
me: walking away
cry more
Woman: a sexually-mature human female.
Female: possessing the genetic machinery for oogenesis, usually expressed in humans as two X-chromosomes and no Y-chromosomes.
Human: a featherless biped.
With broad flat nails.
Yes, but notice the ‘usually’
And no, none of those are actual workable definitions of universal applicability. In fact, throughout all of human history, variance from what you claim have been — and even in Western society — accorded the status of woman. Even now obviously so such drastic variances as CAIS.
The sole most workable universal definition is anyone whose gender has develop more than 50% in a female typical manner. That definition is apparently correct 44,999 times out of 45,000 at least.
For eligibility in athletic competitions, only that their blood testosterone levels have been at female typical levels for two contiguous years prior to competing in women’s events is needful — as no net advantage to prior high testosterone persists for more long than that.
No, Talia, all that matters is male puberty. Both he and the other male boxer no doubt have a DSD. The point is they went through a male puberty. Both men have prominent Adam’s apples. They have not even tried to look like women. Take a look at their competitors. They look like women.
The starting point for biological sex is the XY or XX karyotype. DSD’s, and other abnormalities, are secondary in determining male and female athletes.
Try again please. That comment is unintelligible.
In the United States, hundreds of teenage boys break the female Olympic records for track races every year.
Indeed. That’s the point. There are in fact many thousands of males worldwide who post 100 metre times below 10.5 seconds every year.
If the rules the IOC have used for boxing at these games were appied generally, it would only take one of them to attain a passport which says “female” – which is increasingly a matter of self-declaration in some countries – and the entire history of women’s sprinting would be overturned.
Fortunately World Athletics is one of those sports holding the line on protecting the female category at present. But there’s a Hemingway quote I often refer to:
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Gradually. Then suddenly.”
We are in the “gradually” phase with regards to the erosion of women’s fair and safe sports. If we tip into the “suddenly” phase, it will be too late to save them.
Your country is on fire, you live under foreign occupation, and the most single important cause you want to advocate about sex of
angelsfemale intergender athletes“considered the single most important cause” by whom?
People who decide to use their column space to talk about it, for example.
Is this men taken on average, across all weights? Or is the author saying that even at the same weight men have this advantage. That is, when, in a lean and highly trained individual, the musculature is similar? Is the author saying that male muscles, even at similar size, are massively more efficient?
There is an open-access paper called ‘A Comparison between Male and Female Athletes in Relative Strength and Power Performances’, which addresses this question.
The short answer is yes, even if you adjust for lean body mass (which itself is a product of sex advantage, given men are generally larger with lower body fact percentages, but whatever), there is a male performance advantage. Particularly when it comes to upper body strength.
This is particularly relevant in elite sports, given the razor-thin margins between athletes in terms of performance (i.e. a 5% absolute difference might not matter in real life in practical terms, but in elite competition it can be crucial)
The latter. Men are much stronger at the same weight and size.
Weightlifting records are good for comparison. The lowest mens category is 55kg. The world record – calculated as a total of snatch and clean and jerk lifts – at this category is 294kg. The women’s 55kg record is 234kg.
So the men’s record at the same weight is 25% more than the women’s.
And the gap gets bigger as competitors weight increases. The 81kg records are 378kg and 284kg. A difference of 33%.
Thanks for this. These figures sound more plausible. The ones given by the author were more extreme, so assume are average figures which do not take weight into account.
“These governing bodies seem to have no problem testing for drugs.”
Bit off topic but, weirdly to me, you are allowed to take drugs to counter a health issue such as asthma. Surely that is performance enhancing.
No, it’s not it just allows you to breathe normally.
Wouod there n9t be legal recourse here under women’s rights? IOC discreduted
Why are people such ignorant bigots, she is a woman, whatever happened at the time of her conception is not on her so leave her alone.
As you write, what happened at conception is not her fault. However, she has to live with it.
You seem to enjoy calling people silly names without evidence. You are 100% correct that none of us are responsible for what took place at conception, but that doesn’t provide a reason to extol special rights to anyone. A blind person cannot cut diamonds, fly a plane or perform heart bypass surgery, regardless of their level of intelligence. Just like a woman who benefited from male puberty should not box biological women.
See, I didn’t have to call you names.
Worth remembering this is a deliberate policy of the IOC.
They have deferred the question of eligibility to the female category to each recognised sport governing body. But in the case of boxing they barred the IBA, setting up their own IOC-run governing body instead.
They then imported the IBA rulebook wholesale EXCEPT the rule on eligibility for the female category.
This wasn’t some unexpected turn of events which caught them out. They actually made a specfic effort to make boxing less fair and less safe for women athletes.
Who is driving this policy and why?
There is no such policy, nitwit.
‘Nitwit’ is a slur which I haven’t heard in a long time!
As always, ask who stands to gain?
– Drug companies and clinics
– Gender grifters and their entourage
– Ideologues and those too scared for their own comfort to challenge them
– Misguided “be kind” progressives
– Grotesque misogynists who enjoy watching men humiliate women in real time
Precious little of what you have claimed is true, and none is in evidence — still less so by you.
The fact is the IBA “missed” any “male” attributes of Imane Khelif the first several years and only “found” any after she beat a favored Russian — and the IBA is a wholly owned subsidiary now of Putin Inc.
Prove it.
The issue goes to why we have women’s sports in the first place.
Khelif may or may not “be” a woman. That is irrelevant for the issue. The issue is whether Khelif has a genetic predisposition that gives Khelif an unfair advantage over the “standard” competitor in women’s sports. If Khelif does, then Khelif does not belong in the competition. End of story.
XY may be at the bottom of it, but there is an amazing number of things that can go “wrong” in the process of development from pure chromosomal arrangement to full expression of sexual dimorphism, with many other elements capable of pushing it to the male side. The conceit is to claim the right to inflict such advantages on co-competitors.
The issue of who is a woman is not new with Imane Khelif. Women’s sports has been struggling with this issue for 100 years. There is no easy answer.
Take the woman wrestler Amit Elor, for example. She is dominating women’s wrestling at age 20. She has musculature that few women can develop no matter how hard they train. Genetics probably have something to do with it. Should we test to make sure?
As you say – it’s not a new issue. And absolutely do I believe testing is in order. As the author says, until 1999, testing was routine.
As an aside, this produced a good pub quiz trivia question – who was the only female athlete at the 1976 Munich Olympics not tested? (Princess Anne)
I don’t think the answer is that difficult if you return to the first principles of why we have a category “women’s sports”. Otherwise, all we’d need is the categories “men” and “less-than-men”.
Equestrianism is unisex.
There was no struggle until 2000 when the Olympics eliminated the simple, uncontroversial cheek swab test, even though the overwhelming majority of female athletes wanted to keep it. Of course, women’s views didn’t matter.
Yes. Simple cheek swab sex test for all athletes participating in the female category of any sport.
Only needs to be done once in their lifetime so considerably less invasive than drug testing and less onerous than some of the rules about equipment in some sports. Eg the length of socks in cycling.
Do it on a screening basis. The vast majority of cases will pass without fuss. Those who don’t can then be looked into further.
The only reasons there are sex divisions in sport is physical, biological. It is obvious to any human being that Imane has all the attributes of a male and for Imane to compete in a contact sport is cheating and dangerous.
Being a woman is not a feeling or a belief system it involves different chromosomes, hormones, different bone and muscular system. Women and men compete separately to put them in an equal playing field as far as possible.
What has happened is disrespectful to women and shameful to men.
You do realise that men can have xx chromosomes too and we never bag them out, I met a 6 years old girl in 1978 who was a complete hermaphrodite, should she be blamed? WE cannot blame people for things that happen in nature in their mothers wombs,
But just as we cannot blame someone born blind for their loss of sight, neither can we attribute to them skills for which sight is necessary. Sometimes we don’t get what we want no matter how much we want it!
The majority of people with DSD are not wanting to compete in boxing on the world stage. If they do want to, the simple way to ensure they fight in tbe correct category is a selection swab. Women are all for it, so why not Imane? Explain please…
A ‘true hermaphrodite’ has a testis and an ovary, but they can’t display both genitalia. This condition is so rare as to be extreme. I’m not sure why you would have access to a six year old ‘girl’ who was hermaphrodite; surely a contradiction in terms.
Men CANNOT have XX chromosomes; ever. It’s not good enough to make unscientific statements and expect to garner respect for your opinions.
I was surprised to see one of the men’s finals, featured two male boxers. Aren’t females meant to box in men’s finals while males box in women’s?
We don’t have all the details, but it looks like the Algerian is an XY male with a birth defect in the genitals. This is a rare case of a “gender” being assigned at birth. Perhaps raised as a girl, but maybe even a case where “she “ is appropriate. But the Algerian has no place in women’s sport. Do we disappoint one individual with a birth defect by exclusion or disappoint the numerous women who have no chance in a bout?
Sooner or later, and possibly in the heavy weight class, a man will seriously hurt a woman and this farçe will be over. Reality always triumph over ideology.
Unfortunately I don’t think a serious injury is in itself going to make any difference. The people pushing for this – and their fellow travellers – are impervious to logic or even basic decency towards women and girls.
The only way this stops is if enough people peak and say no. A serious injury might help bring such a tipping point closer, but I hope it doesn’t have to come to that.
Incidentally women and girls are already being injured. There’s a girl in the US with serious injuries after being spiked with a volleyball by a boy who identifies as a girl. The trans ideologues don’t give a crap.
What is most shocking about Khelif’s victory is that it happened at all.
I’ve been watching TV and movies for decades now and they’ve shown me conclusively that women can beat up men, even men much bigger and more muscular than they are.
Why would so many programs show that if it isn’t true?
The next thing I’m afraid I’ll find out is that Muslims aren’t all peaceful and that blacks aren’t all good family men.
Why, when Alegeria is a Muslim country, where women are regularly arrested for no dressing modestly and covering their hair in public and co being in public with men who are not related, do we see pictures of Imane training with men, out running in public in a vest and shorts, snd not covering their hair except occasionally with a baseball cap? Special dispensation?
I genuinely wonder what is IOC justification of women’s sport?
Only for misandrists who want to control the definition of woman in a frankly misogynistic way.
There is no evidence at all Imane Khelif is in any way a “man” — and the allegations absent documentation of Russian enterprises which “missed” their alleged facts before hand are not persuasive.
“Yet for some reason, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stopped sex eligibility testing in 1999.” <– A lie, they tested for testosterone.
Testosterone is not a test to determine the sex of a person.
Does Khelif have a lot of testosterone?
Testing for testosterone is not a test for biological sex. Both males and females produce testosterone, for various reasons; bone growth, sex drive, aggression, etc. The normal range for males and females is vastly different.
There are tumours which can form on any glandular tissue which can elevate hormone levels drastically and lead to unwanted, or even dire consequences for individuals, both male and female.
Only men have an XY karyotype.
There are lots of factors that can make some women more masculine and so better able to compete. When you start screening out for one condition, where do you draw the line?
In women’s wrestling, for example, it’s obvious that Amit Elor has musculature that is more typical of a male. A lot of that is probably due to training, but most women cannot develop that much muscle mass no matter how hard they train. She undoubtedly has a genetic advantage, and it probably has something to do with sex hormones. She’s that dominant.
Jennifer Sey writes as though this issue with Imane Khelif is a new one that has an easy solution. But the issue of who is a woman in elite women’s sports is a contentious one that has been boiling and bubbling for 100 years now. There is no easy solution or we would have found it by now.
One thing is clear to me — any person who has competed as a man in elite sports should not be able to compete as a woman. Apart from that, it’s less clear.
Whatever we decide, people need to lower the temperature and make sure the process for deciding on rules and doing testing is fair and transparent. What the IBA did in Imane Khelif’s case is inexcusable.
Difficult I know but all XX women should have refused to compete with this individual, but I suspect that the power the IOC wields would end their career
Both men also failed sex tests in a competition in Turkey. So two tests have confirmed they are XY. What till the “trans women “ and male non-binaries, who always choose to compete with women, realize they, too, can win an Olympic gold medal. It makes me sick. The IOC is misogynistic.
I don’t want to turn this into a silly culture-war gender-politics competition, but it’s also a loss for men. Not in the same way that it is for women, obviously, but in a totally different way that represents an insult to the generations of men who have recognised that different sex-based rights must exist in any civilised society and who have, along with women, upheld this principle as best they can.
Since it is also a grievous loss for women, as the article it says, and because there are of course in reality only two sexes and people can only be one or the other, it’s a loss for humanity as a whole.
Could you please stop using the term ‘Culture Wars’. I’ve never understood the term and I refuse to acknowledge it. It’s a term which is bandied around in order to diminish serious issues. Take Lisa Nandy who says, ‘The Culture War is Over’, then leaves it up to individual sporting bodies to decide their own policies about who can compete in women’s sport! She has absolutely abdicated her responsibility and is a coward, or an idiot, or both.
Then I suggest you try to understand the term. The point I was making above could easily have been reacted-to adversely by feminists in culture war terms, by mistakenly assuming I was trying to engage men in the debate in the competitive grievance stakes. I was doing the opposite, namely pointing out that men, too, are damaged by permitting this sort of nonsense to carry on.
Could you please define the term ‘Culture Wars’ for me please. I’m a bit thick but I’ve yet to hear anyone explain what it actually means!! Knock yourself out by enlightening me.
I think the problem is that with many,
‘Men’ and ‘non men’ is the reality.
So if at birth Imane’s genitals were not judged as fully male (eg un-descended testicles ) they were declared as female as they have no other category.
It’s like new lavatories being for ‘gents’ and ‘everyone else’ as seen in progressive venues.
And women are fed up with it. We are not non-men.
If we assume Imane was an undeveloped male at birth then he shouldn’t have been categorised as a female. But he was and he has capitalised on it encouraged by his countrymen who seem delighted. A gold is a gold but it raises so many questions. Who knows maybe Algerian women will be liberated? Allowed to touch men in public? Be like Imane? Who knows? That would be so good for women.
Sooner or later one of these alleged females will seriously hurt their female opponent and then this problem will go away. Sad but true. But thankfully reality always wins out in the end.
You all are playing into the hands of the transgender extremists by equating intersex people with trans-women. The trans lobby has worked tirelessly to conflate autogynephilia and intersex conditions with the laughable claim that their brains are intersex.
These are very different situations and I have sympathy for these two boxers, who were maliciously targeted by the IBA, which has offered no evidence for their claims, or even revealed the supposed tests they used. These are not kinky men who get a thrill out of undressing in women’s locker rooms, these are people who were raised as women and may or may not have an intersex condition.
It’s fine to lobby the IOC to change their qualifications but this whole outcry really is in poor taste and athletes with intersex conditions should be treated with respect.
its a huge win for arab women..
..and we dont give a flying fig about your pathetic culture wars. this could’ve become a major support wave for arab women emancipation in sports.. instead your lame politics made it about an arab woman sex.
rest assured we only have 2 genders.. and we will always do.
also the olympics are about cultural exchanges and your eurocentricity is killing you slowly as a group. you literally refuse to see things from the other point of view.
truth is as the cia topples democracies in the middle east, while saying with a straight face they want to bring democracies (since iran and syria in the 40s till today).. the west wants arab women to stay oppressed.. you say you want to free women, then all you do is publicly shame them..
the hypocrisy is beyond comprehension