dispin

It's a case study in the challenges of maintaining this category in the face of attempts to bypass the spirit of eligibility rules by looking for loopholes, and how to guard against this - so in that sense it's related to the hacker mindset.

Perhaps try reading the article with an open and curious mind. The most interesting part is the second half where the impact on female athletes and the biomedical aspect of testing is discussed.

When you look past the "culture war" presumption and let your curiosity explore the details, there's quite some depth to this case, and to the more general issue.

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.

See this thread for further detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43025035

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.

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.

Keeping in mind that we know for a fact Semenya has 5-ARD, because this was revealed in a ruling published by the CAS.

> 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...

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.

- Karotype testing of Khelif (and the other disqualified boxer, Lin) showing XY chromosomes, reported by sports journalist Alan Abrahamson who's seen the lab reports and covering letter that was received by the IOC from the IBA: https://www.3wiresports.com/articles/2024/8/5/fa9lt6ypbwx5su...

- A member of Khelif's training team, Georges Cazorla, revealing in interview that Khelif has problems with chromosomes and hormones, and has been under testosterone suppression to bring levels into the female range: https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/2024-olympics-imane-khelif-was-...

- Extracts from a medical report leaked to French journalist Djaffer Ait Aoudia, which state that Khelif has a disorder of sex development, 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which exists only in males: https://lecorrespondant.net/imane-khelif-ni-ovaires-ni-uteru...

There are other oddities as well, like Khelif choosing not to pursue a case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport after being deemed ineligible to compete in IBA events. And the head of the Spanish national team, Rafael Lozano, saying that when the Algerian team visited to train, they ended up matching Khelif with a male boxer to spar, as the upper body strength and punching power was too much for the female boxers.

Worth noting also that all this is consistent with Khelif competing at the Olympics in the women's boxing category, as they only ask for identity documentation and do not verify sex, unlike weight classes which are strictly controlled.

This isn't about "how they get to live". For instance, if a male wants to dress in clothing designed for female wearers and adopt a name more commonly used by women and girls then the vast majority of people will live and let live, and happily co-exist. It's not a problem.

However it becomes a problem when encroaching on the rights of others. The female category in sports is a great example because exclusion of males is the entire rationale, as this provides women and girls with a competitive space that is fairer and safer than if it is mixed-sex. Allowing males into the category - which effectively destroys it - has a negative impact on female athletes. So of course there is going to be opposition to this.

"This moral outrage has now led to invasive 'tests' women have to go through before they participate in multiple sports at an international level. This outrage has caused a proliferation of false claims lodged against women who just, simply do well in sports and don't fall within the very subjectively defined 'gender identity'."

Screening for sex can be done with a cheek swab. This is vastly less invasive than the anti-doping tests athletes must take, which involves having blood taken and urinating in a cup while someone watches.

"For example, what Imane Khelif went through is a damned outrage. Has this author taken responsibility of what their rhetoric might mean to so called 'real women' that he's claiming to be so supportive of?"

There's a significant amount of evidence that indicates Imane Khelif is actually male, with the athletic advantage that brings.

"Language is a living and breathing thing. The meanings of words change over time."

Right, but going back to the above point, if we can't use words like "man", "boy" or "male" to describe the category of people who are definitionally excluded from the female category of sports without being shut down and complained at, then how can anyone make the case for women's sports to those who disagree? Or indeed any aspect of anything relating to women.

Perhaps that's the point - attempting to make it "bigoted" and "transphobic" to argue in favor of women's and girls' sex-based rights, rather than presenting any rational argument for taking them away.

Anyway I think this shows quite clearly that your analogy doesn't fit when one digs into the detail. None of the above is anything like the struggle for racial equality.

All you've done is slot some different words into his tweet and asserted that the meaning is similar. How, exactly?

Also, your original claim was that Hughes is "against trans people being able to exist in this world" which you haven't provided any proof of. That tweet I quoted shows his actual expressed views, which refutes this.

"This also highlights the huge difference between the "LGB" and the "T''. The gay rights movement just asked society to leave them alone and let them get married. No impositions on my life. The trans movement demands that I adopt their new dialect (or I'm a bigot) and allow males to play in girls sports (or I'm a bigot). Big impositions."

https://x.com/coldxman/status/1855303418975539394