Transgender man wins women's 100 yd and 400 yd freestyle races.

Vote4Squirrels

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456027#Comment_122456027

Perhaps Amy is being circumspect and using female pronouns rather than face a social media pile on ?

The Hollywood Reporter showed it really understood the issue:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/jk-rowling-paris-boxing-controversy-1235964201/

astrofool

Factually, they are unsure if the IBA testing method was valid or correct (or even politically motivated) so there is still doubts over the XY chromosome.

The IOC is loathe to bring in a proper scientifically accurate gender test.

The likely outcome is a proper testing procedure (I mean, they already have very invasive drug testing regimes with samples in cold storage for future tests) but there will be lots of worrying about "feelings" (on behalf of others) to work through first.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456066#Comment_122456066

Perhaps you missed the discussions around the gender self identification laws for the Tokyo Olympics, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. There were a lot of objections. It seems many people did not know specifically about Khelif who was an unknown at the time, compared to some of the more high profile athletes like Caster Semenya.

But male DSD athletes competing in women's sports has been controversial for years if not decades.

super_furry

More evidence that the Russian-led IBA are playing everyone like a fiddle.

https://taiwannews.com.tw/news/5912516

https://taiwannews.com.tw/news/5912516

During the 2023 New Delhi championships, Lin was asked to sign a document admitting to unspecified violations, a move she resisted, Lin said in an interview with Taiwan's Public Television Service. She was told that she would be stripped of her medal whether or not she signed her name.

Taiwan’s Sports Administration conducted additional tests that confirmed Lin's eligibility for international competition. The IBA denied her an opportunity to appeal the disqualification.

Sports Administration Director-General Cheng Shih-Chung (鄭世忠) said Wednesday (July 31) the Olympic Council of Asia Medical Commission conducted a thorough examination of Lin during her stay in Hangzhou, per Taiwan's Sports Administration.

The tests confirmed that she is fully eligible to compete. 

Hamsterchops

JKR has her finger on the pulse…..

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13701313/JK-Rowling-Olympic-boxing-match-biologically-male-opponent.html

Strazdas

There does seem to be a lot of performative hysteria around this issue in the last 24 hours, whatever one thinks of the topic. Khelif has been boxing for years, has lost nine fights to female boxers (including to Kellie Harrington and Amy Broadhurst) and has never injured anyone in the ring to the best of our knowledge.

Kellie Harrington didn't note anything about her in the 2021 Olympics in the post fight interview, just that Khelif was awkward to box because of her height and long arms. It was a long way from being Harrington's toughest fight of her career - she almost strolled through the three rounds.

2smiggy

has jk rowling submitted any proof that she is not transsexual ? until then we have to assume she is

super_furry

I do think it's funny how suddenly, the usual suspects insists that a man CAN have a vagina.

Hamsterchops

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456501#Comment_122456501

Who, JK?

Eoinbmw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456424#Comment_122456424

IOC could easily put this to bed with a simple swab test so why not?

plodder

On the history of sex testing in sport, I found the article linked at the end of the post, and which was written in 2010.

It does a good job of deconstructing some aspects of the history. For example, a lot of the Cold War fears in the West that the Russians were deliberately putting male competitors forward as females, turned out not to be true. In some cases at least, there was genuine confusion over the person’s sex. Also, the depictions of the “naked parades” and “groping” physical examinations are fairly gruesome. Nobody wants to bring those back.

Also it’s interesting to learn that the IAAF (forerunner to World Athletics) stopped sex testing as far back as 1992, for reasons including “that modern sportswear was now so revealing that it seemed unfeasible that a man could masquerade as a woman”. I guess the concerns have developed a bit from that… Also that the IOC was initially resistant to change and persisted with genetic testing for 8 years longer.

The article goes astray in a few places though imo. Look at this passage.

Sex testing, after all, is a tautological (or at least circular) process: the activities which we recognise as sports are overwhelmingly those which favour a physiology which we consider ‘masculine’.

Hmm. Where are we going with this?

As a general rule, the competitor who is taller, has a higher muscle-to-fat ratio, and the larger heart and lungs (plus some other cardio-respiratory factors) will have the sporting advantage. It is therefore inevitable that any woman who is good at sport will tend to demonstrate a more ‘masculine’ physique than women who are not good at sport.

That might be partly true in some (maybe most) sports. But, it doesn’t diminish their essential femininity, unless of course you don’t believe that there is a biological essence of femininity. Like, who is saying that women runners with narrow hips and low fat to muscle ratios are “less” women because of it? Literally nobody. Who even decreed that characteristics like height are intrinsically male? Surely, there are just tall men, and tall women? The average height of a centre in the WNBA is 6’4”. Does that make them more male than the average Irish man?

What the sex test effectively does, therefore, is provide an upper limit for women's sporting performance; there is a point at which your masculine-style body is declared ‘too masculine’, and you are disqualified, regardless of your personal gender identity. For men there is no equivalent upper physiological limit – no kind of genetic, or hormonal, or physiological advantage is tested for, even if these would give a ‘super masculine’ athlete a distinct advantage over the merely very athletic ‘normal’ male.

This is completely mad. But, it’s where the logic leads you when you downplay the biological differences between male and female. The lack of an objective sex test is the cause of hurtful speculation around the sex of female competitors, not the other way around. An objective test would sweep all that away.

There’s more then about the significance of DSDs where the person has chromosome patterns other than XX and XY. This is what probably launched the sex as a spectrum mytgh, which only recently has been put to bed. Most unusual DSD chromosome “abnormalities” are still unambiguous in terms of sex/gender.

This paragraph is really what comes closest to the nub of the issue imo.

In the mid-1980s the high profile case of Spanish hurdler Maria Martinez-Patino, who fought a three-year campaign for reinstatement after being disqualified, was used to pressure the IOC and other organisations into changing (or eliminating) their sex tests. Patino failed a Barr Body test at the World University Games held in Kobe, Japan, in 1985, and was instructed by her coach to retire from sport with an ‘injury’; she refused to do so, and when she started competing in Spain again she was formally disqualified and had her medals and records revoked.25 Patino eventually succeeded in overturning the ruling, based on the principle that a specific medical condition (androgen insensitivity syndrome) meant that she ‘failed’ a Barr body test, while gaining no physiological sporting advantage – so the argument was not that testing for sex was problematic in and of itself, but rather than this specific test, using chromosomes as a proxy for sporting ability, was inappropriate. This successful appeal was almost certainly due to the fact that human rights activists and geneticists who did not believe the test was fair took up her cause as a test case through which they could make their points about equality, scientific objectivity, and the complexity of human gender identity

“using chromosomes as a proxy for sporting ability”

See how “sporting ability” was switched in there in place of “sex”. Women aren’t a category of their own who don't have to justify themselves. They are basically regarded as lower performing men.

Maria Martinez-Patino is probably one of the hardest of the hard cases, but I wonder how they determined that she had no "physiological sporting advantage", as opposed to just a quite small one that was enough to propel her into international level athletics.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3007680/

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456477#Comment_122456477

Not to mention that Carini said she's never been hit in the face that hard before (she's been knocked out 20+ times in her career), she got hit in the face about 10 seconds into the fight because she clearly dropped her guard, and she's previously been accused of faking an ankle injury because she was losing a fight.

https://twitter.com/THETurtleToad/status/1819232459554185709

I mean they can talk about how being up against Khelif ruined her Olympic dream, and she was doing it in memory of her father etc…. maybe the truth of it is she's just not that good and took the easy way out.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456628#Comment_122456628

Also, amateur female boxers wear lightweight gloves, wear helmets and box for only nine minutes. The idea that one of them is going to be stretchered out of the ring covered in blood and unconscious after boxing a 'biological male' is really stretching things.

Hamsterchops

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456618#Comment_122456618

Well said, and THAT is the elephant in the room as Sharon Davies keeps saying, I mean why not reintroduce the DNA cheek swab? Its foolproof, uninvasive, quick, and guaranteed to put an end to any question of the wrong people being in the wrong category! Womens sports it seems need more protecting now, than ever before.

normanoffside

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456066#Comment_122456066

it has flared up now because the IBA did a gender test which hadn’t been done previously. The IOC hasn’t done them since 1996.

normanoffside

Both boxers had the option to appeal the IBA ruling to CAS. Both accepted the ruling and didn’t appeal it, losing world championship medals in the process.

Augme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456757#Comment_122456757

The IBA have never stated they did a gender test.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456628#Comment_122456628

Previously been accused of faking an injury? By previously, I presume you mean earlier this morning, after all that happened yesterday. Looks like that guy stayed up all night looking for dirt, and that was the best he could find by 5:43 am today.

BlitzKrieg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456618#Comment_122456618

They dont know what test the IBA did, so unless they do the same test (and there are a lot of tests available) then the IBA will continue the drama by pushing that the IOC did the wrong test.

I will also point out the IBA themselves claim she failed the same test in 2022 at the same competition she took home silver, but they did nothing about it. They said they got the results after the final and did nothing.

In contrast to 2023 where they retroactively voided all her matches in the 2023 competition.

So there is a game of silly buggers going on in terms of what standards they are keeping to.

the difference between 2022 and 2023 is the organization 'World Boxing' which in 2023 was gunning to replace the IBA in the Olympics.

World Boxing allowed Khalif play in all their events without issue and she won one of them.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456763#Comment_122456763

Khalif actually did appeal, but between the event in march 2023 and confirmation in december 2023 that she withdrew her appeal the Olympics officially cut ties with the IBA in all manner in June 2023 and World Boxing started running events and made it clear they intended to replace the IBA in the Olympics. As far as she was concerned the IBA was finished. Why appeal to an organization that was clearly not going to be involved with Olympics or boxing events in general going forward.

And considering the IBA have run no women's boxing events since that 2023 event (at least according to their website) it does look like prior to this drama it was finished.

This whole thing is partly driven by the fight the IBA is having with the IOC and World Boxing, they are the ones intentionally setting this fight off to create bad press for both the IOC and World Boxing, their latest statement is very much mask off for them because they spend half of it attacking World Boxing their direct rival.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456717#Comment_122456717

It's not foolproof (life would be easier if it were). There will be a number of female athletes for example with XY chromosomes who ultimately can not process androgens (i.e. testosterone). There are multiple elements that need to be in place with someone with a DSD before they attain the benefits of male puberty, which is really the big factor in all of this.

https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1819332741105606960

BlitzKrieg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456885#Comment_122456885

He's referring to the 2022 match against Busenaz Surmeneli

Didnt hear anyone accuse her of faking but yes she did have another awful match in 2022. It happens, just that one didnt have Nike using the event as an excuse to try and get Adidas into a pr nightmare for poor footwear.

https://streamable.com/waiqbw

2smiggy

https://twitter.com/PoliticoForYou/status/1819287469671559596

..

Eoinbmw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122457076#Comment_122457076

That an attempt at humour?

2smiggy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122457121#Comment_122457121

are you unable to make up your own mind ?

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456763#Comment_122456763

The IBA ruling has become meaningless. They were kicked out of Olympic involvement for corruption, financial irregularities and their links to Vladimir Putin - the IOC can hardly be bound by something a corrupt organisation claims to have found (without the IBA offering any real evidence).

Hamsterchops

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122456903#Comment_122456903

You say…."There will be a number of female athletes for example with XY chromosomes"

Surely if they have XY chromosomes they are male.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122457139#Comment_122457139

I think when you are talking about the very edge cases of people with DSDs it is not that straightforward.

If someone has external female genitalia, internal testes (quite common with DSDs) but those testes do not produce, or the body does not process, testosterone than what is making them functionally male?

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122457071#Comment_122457071

Yes, but the "accusation" was made today not "previously", which makes a big difference. And by a Twitter account, that has made four posts in as many years and whose profile says "Doing my part to make the internet worse". So, to say it lacks credibility is an understatement. It's more notable that it shows people are out there looking for dirt on Carini.

Eoinbmw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122457128#Comment_122457128

I'm sure it's racist anyway!

DeanAustin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122455904#Comment_122455904

How do you know they have XY chromosomes? The test that disqualified them has been held back both in terms of the type of testing performed and the actual results. I've not seen anything factual or conclusive on this.

There is a human being at the end of this who is having some very, very nasty accusations and comments thrown at her. And it's based on very little fact and what seems like a lot of prejudice. Having your gender questioned like this in front of the whole world is very unpleasant. If, God forbid, anything happened to her, we'd have the usual hand-wringing of "the media are terrible, why can't we be more compassionate". Now is the time to be compassionate and ask questions rather than rushing to judgements.

If Khelif has an unfair advantage because of biology, she shouldn't be in the ring with other women because safety should come first in combat sports. But it's up to the authorities to prove that's the case or explain why they aren't testing properly if that's the case. It is absolutely wrong for the two boxers to get publicly shamed the way they have been based on speculation.