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If it’s a small number, then presumably it’s not worth fighting over and sport can just have Open and Female categories?
But what is "female"? The Algerian boxer was born female, but has high testosterone due to whatever medical condition, which ruled her out of some previous competitions that had conditions around that. Do you want sports governing bodies to inspect genitalia? Do blood tests? Especially when it gets into kids' sports territory, this gets very iffy very fast.
Cases of genuinely ambiguous sex are vanishingly rare, and are nothing to do with trans identities which are differences of social gender that do not change the underlying biology.
This implies that Khelif is not female but is male, and went through male puberty, therefore having the male physical advantage in sport caused by male sexual development.
Same as has happened previously with other male athletes in women's sports, such as Caster Semenya who also has 5-ARD and also competed in the Olympics, back in 2016 in the women's 800m track event, winning gold. The silver and bronze medals were taken by males too.
Khelif does not identify as trans, and described such accusations as "a big shame for my family, for the honor of my family, for the honor of Algeria, for the women of Algeria and especially the Arab world."
Imane Khelif has an X and a Y chromosome. She has 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which leads to the development of a pseudo-vagina and internal testicles. Crucially, though, the hormone levels are the same as typical males. In terms of upper body strength, red blood cell count, bone density, etc. Khelif is the same as other males.
She wasn't disqualified due to hormone levels. She was disqualified because the International Boxing Association's criteria for participating in the women's category is having a female karyotype (no Y chromosome).
> Do you want sports governing bodies to inspect genitalia? Do blood tests?
Chromosomes can be checked with just a mouth swab.
There are trans-identifying female athletes who don't take testosterone and compete in women's sports, recent example in the last Olympics being Hergie Bacyadan in women's boxing. There's no exclusion on participation as long as the same rules as for everyone else are followed.
Actually, most of those "potential" trans turn out to be actual trans. That college volleyball athlete has even been sued by her own teammate.
> It's a "problem" way overblown by anti-trans activists.
I get that there are many loud voices on this topic right now. But I rather having this right now then later down the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong has become right.
And there has never been a shred of proof of her being trans. Exactly my point.
> et that there are many loud voices on this topic right now. But I rather having this right now then later down the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong has become right.
Yes, better for women with high testosterone to get death threats now for winning in the Olympics instead of thinking if this is really a problem.
Examples like Judit Polgar (who was around the top 10 players in the world at her peak) do indeed prove that chess is nothing like (physical) sports in this way. In physical sports like basketball, soccer, etc. the best women in the world can’t compete against even moderately athletic amateur men. A famous example is the fact that the US women’s national soccer team practices against young teenage boys (and routinely loses). In chess it would be like if the best woman was rated 1800 or something.
This isn’t meant to disparage women in sports — they really do have a categorically different kind of body from men, and pushing those bodies to their limits is just as impressive as it is for men. But they don’t appear to have categorically different kinds of brain, at least insofar as it matters for chess skill.