[0] https://www.gyford.com/phil/about/
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/anildash.com/post/3lhkkre2h422z
Can we draw a hard line between transphobia and misogyny? (Or is that a wrong question?)
Feel free to break it down for me though if you want since I can’t understand the issue, maybe it’s my learning disability.
With that said, what Anil and the poster above seem to say is that Maciej is transphobic. The link above then quotes Maciej’s posts about some female boxer from Algeria, something else I know nothing about and am unqualified to speak on. These are presented with posts from some IOC boxing official that come across as entirely reasonable. In contrast, this post of Maciej’s works via insinuation:
“Watching male competitors in women’s sports is a lot like the Biden debate thing. Everyone can see with their own eyes what’s going on”
This might as well have been written by moldbug. It doesn’t come right out and say “hey this boxer is a man and shouldn’t be allowed to compete”; it says anyone can see with their own eyes. But the posts from the IOC official directly contradict this boxer is a man or trans. I don’t care enough to research this topic, so maybe I’m wrong, but I’m making a judgment based on pattern recognition and I’m free to do so.
I love many of Maciej’s blog posts. He feels to me like a fellow cynic, especially about the current tech industry. I have no idea what has compelled him to post about women’s Olympics boxing specifically, or transgender issues generally, but that he seems to be doing so changes my opinion of him, shifting him a bit more from “personally beloved Internet personality, of about the same age and perspective of my own” to “terminally online Internet commentator who can’t keep himself from posting tired perspectives about overdone topics that don’t benefit from his commentary, a la David Brooks.”
Having now compared him to moldbug and David Brooks, I fully expect him to roast me into eternity. In no way would I advocate any silencing of Maciej, nor does anyone else in this thread. There’s no fascism to be found. What I am trying to lay out for you, earnestly, are my own heuristics for deciding who and what I should spend my precious attention on. I will pay less attention to him now that I’ve seen examples of this style of argumentation from him about topics that are far-removed from importance. This is not fascism, but personal liberty.
This is a very misleading blog post. All evidence revealed so far indicates that Khelif is a male who was erroneously assumed to be female at birth due to having underdeveloped external genitalia.
In particular, a leaked medical report states that Khelif has a disorder of sexual development, specifically 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD), which is consistent with this.
This isn't that uncommon an occurrence: most famously, Caster Semenya - another male athlete who competed in women's sport - has this condition. In fact every medal winner in the women's 800m at the 2016 Olympics was male.
Proof or take it back. I don't believe that for one second.
> World Athletics testing found that Semenya, Niyonsaba and Wambui all had the 46,XY karyotype and produce levels of testosterone in the male range.
https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/rio-2016/results/a...
Keeping in mind that we know for a fact Semenya has 5-ARD, because this was revealed in a ruling published by the CAS.
I have no knowledge, nor interest in having knowledge, of the shape of any of those athletes’ genitals. That also means I have zero reasons, even specious ones, to doubt their sex.
It turns out the world is a lot more complex than we thought, and a lot of stuff we use to take for granted isn’t actually true. “XY is male” was a reasonable guess when we only had information on a few test subjects. Now that genetic testing is widespread, we know that’s not a hard and fast rule.
With that in mind, it should be obvious why exclusion of male athletes from the female category is necessary: for fairness, and in contact sports like boxing, also safety.
The reason that males with 5-ARD have testosterone levels in the normal male range is that they have testes which produce it. They go through male puberty and thus have bodies which, in a competitive sports context, have the physical advantages conferred by male development.
These males have no female organs. Some develop a perineal pouch which may be mistaken for a vagina, but it isn't a vagina in the female sense - not anatomically nor histologically - and certainly isn't functional, given that the function of an actual female vagina is copulation and childbirth.
Whether they're raised as if they're female or believe themselves to be women isn't relevant in the context of competitive sport. The reason they should be excluded from the female category is the same as any other male: the categorical advantage from male development.
This is why it's so controversial that every medal winner in the women's 800m at the 2016 Olympics was male, and that two males took gold in women's boxing in the 2024 Olympics.
At what point in a woman's competitive career do we decide that she's sufficiently talented that we have to examine her body and approve of her gender expression? Is it reserved for Olympic athletes? Or do talented college women need approval? Skilled high school students? A surprisingly good tee ball player?
Down this path lies madness.
You keep saying they're males as though it were fact and not your personal opinion. That's not at all a factual statement. Every bit of public information about these women says that they're women. Misgendering them isn't transphobia because they're not trans. They're cis woman and have been their entire lives.
Only if there is an anomaly might further investigation be done, with the athlete's permission. No dissection is needed - at most some imaging to determine internal anatomy may be done by medical experts.
This is already the policy adopted by some sporting bodies, and was essentially the process used with the athletes I mentioned in my earlier comments to observe that the sex of each is male.
Ideally this would be done as early on in an athlete's career as is practical. It only needs to be done once, as a person's sex cannot change, and for most will be a straightforward confirmation of what is already known. Otherwise, it's better for the athlete too, to know sooner rather than later if there has been any anomalous development.
I would suggest you examine the public information on the aforementioned male athletes more closely. In particular, 5-ARD is an indisputably male condition; the mutations in the SRD5A2 gene that cause this have no effect on female sexual development. This is fact, not opinion.
"There's still some good onion but when it's cringe it's so cringe
I want the old onion back"
That's it. That's my alleged rightward shift.
Singal is considered a suppressive person on Bluesky and agreeing with him on anything is prima facie evidence of fascism. But I think this attitude says more about Anil and Bluesky than about me.
This is very disingenuous, and you seem to think you can bullshit people.
(Don't know where the "age"ist is doing there?)
See this thread for further detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43025035
were "male" is redefined as "the 46,XY karyotype".
What's next, are we going to screen all basketball players for genes that makes one too tall?
But congratulations on Algeria, apparently a "woke" country were it is easy for men to pass as women for decades.
https://www.alamy.com/silver-medalist-francine-niyonsaba-of-...
Also, we know that these three were deemed ineligible for future events under the revised World Athletics DSD policy which was developed with the intent of excluding male physical advantage from women's competitions.
Semenya's DSD (5-alpha reductase deficiency) is public knowledge due to the Court of Arbitration for Sport publishing a ruling revealing this. This is a DSD that only affects male sexual development, not female.
To answer your second question, I don't think any male athlete should compete in women's sports, since it negates the purpose of having sex-segregated categories. I believe it's possible to preserve these categories without excluding or vilifying transgender athletes. And I think this sentiment is in line with the vast majority of people who understand there is a tension between affirming people's gender identity and being fair to female athletes.
("Ageist" is a joke about the non-sequitur accusations of transphobia I got in response to my tweet.)