Nonsence on stilts.
There's no coherent definition for woman and man that isn't based on adult human female/ adult human male.
Saying a 'thing' is something that 'identifies' as being that 'thing' just shows the person talking is a fool.
Caster Semenya could be forced to undertake hormone therapy for future Olympics
- Thread starter dowie
- Start date
Nonsence on stilts.
There's no coherent definition for woman and man that isn't based on adult human female/ adult human male.
Saying a 'thing' is something that 'identifies' as being that 'thing' just shows the person talking is a fool.
Caporegime
There isn't any information at all, just a claim by one man, which isn't backed up by evidence, that many have chosen to believe.
Pretty sad when you consider they're both allowed to compete under the IOC guidelines and it's overshadowing a genuine controversy.
Last edited:
There is no chance in hell the western world will return to the definition's of male=man and female=woman.
That battle is lost.
You're regurgitating nonsense, it's not just a claim by one man it's a claim by multiple people and decision made by a whole orgnaisation - the Taiwanese boxer even lost a bronze medal at the 2023 World Championships over their failed gender test.
Pretty sad when you consider that's already been covered a few times in here; the IOC guidelines just use legal sex/what's in the passport.
Last edited:
Yes the battle is lost when people are so twitter rotted that they start calling women male off the back of some questionable statement.
I’m wading into this thread having read absolutely nothing anyone else has written 
This boxing controversy thing is one of the best examples of ‘tribalism’ I’ve seen in recent memory.
The issue of males claiming to be females and entering into woman only spaces understandably causes alarm to many females. Females ought to be entitled to female only spaces, I think. This particularly applies if (hypothetically) someone that for all intents and purposes is male then later (in their adult life) decides to identify as a woman, claiming that this should entitle them to all female only spaces.
^^^ that really is a very, very different scenario to deciding ‘what to do’ with someone that had a legitimate sexual development disorder.
It seems very obvious to me that, in deciding what to do with people that have legitimate sexual development disorders, there ought to be an analysis of whether the genetic disorder conveys an actual unfair benefit or not. As in, you know… science.
I do get irked at the way certain groups leap towards the existence of a Y chromosome, or a Y chromosome development as ‘grounds by itself’ for a ban. Yes, in normal mammalian sexual development males have Y chromosomes and females do not. But this knowledge is an observation after the fact. What male and female means was established long before chromosomes were identified and that hasn’t changed whatsoever.
Hypothetically, if I produce male gametes that could fertilise a female eggs, I would still rightly be considered male… regardless of what chromosomes I had (even if I lacked a Y chromosome). I say hypothetically as this would be a totally bizarre sexual development disorder, so far unobserved to my knowledge (or very very very rare at best).
This isn’t as weird as it sounds outside of mammals as that’s actually what happened in birds - males have ZZ chromosomes and females are ZW.
If an observably female competitor does happen to have a sex disorder and a Y chromosome then the obvious question to answer is: does this confer an unfair advantage? If the answer is yes, or it’s on the fence, then they probably shouldnt be allowed to complete for the sake of ensuring fairness. But it’s not an absolute given.
Let’s follow the science, please, whatever the outcome.
Let’s also not adopt the position that ‘genuine sexual development disorder’ is the same thing as an adult male (without any sexual development disorder) deciding to identify and compete a woman. It’s a completely different circumstance and should be fairly treated as such.
This boxing controversy thing is one of the best examples of ‘tribalism’ I’ve seen in recent memory.
The issue of males claiming to be females and entering into woman only spaces understandably causes alarm to many females. Females ought to be entitled to female only spaces, I think. This particularly applies if (hypothetically) someone that for all intents and purposes is male then later (in their adult life) decides to identify as a woman, claiming that this should entitle them to all female only spaces.
^^^ that really is a very, very different scenario to deciding ‘what to do’ with someone that had a legitimate sexual development disorder.
It seems very obvious to me that, in deciding what to do with people that have legitimate sexual development disorders, there ought to be an analysis of whether the genetic disorder conveys an actual unfair benefit or not. As in, you know… science.
I do get irked at the way certain groups leap towards the existence of a Y chromosome, or a Y chromosome development as ‘grounds by itself’ for a ban. Yes, in normal mammalian sexual development males have Y chromosomes and females do not. But this knowledge is an observation after the fact. What male and female means was established long before chromosomes were identified and that hasn’t changed whatsoever.
Hypothetically, if I produce male gametes that could fertilise a female eggs, I would still rightly be considered male… regardless of what chromosomes I had (even if I lacked a Y chromosome). I say hypothetically as this would be a totally bizarre sexual development disorder, so far unobserved to my knowledge (or very very very rare at best).
This isn’t as weird as it sounds outside of mammals as that’s actually what happened in birds - males have ZZ chromosomes and females are ZW.
If an observably female competitor does happen to have a sex disorder and a Y chromosome then the obvious question to answer is: does this confer an unfair advantage? If the answer is yes, or it’s on the fence, then they probably shouldnt be allowed to complete for the sake of ensuring fairness. But it’s not an absolute given.
Let’s follow the science, please, whatever the outcome.
Let’s also not adopt the position that ‘genuine sexual development disorder’ is the same thing as an adult male (without any sexual development disorder) deciding to identify and compete a woman. It’s a completely different circumstance and should be fairly treated as such.
Also, I’ve seen some people online say things along the lines of “well, Michael Phelps the swimmer has a big genetic advantage, so why is having a Y chromosome in female boxing any different…?” - which just shows how some people have lost all common sense and proportionality on this issue.
What an incredibly silly position to take.
What an incredibly silly position to take.
It's already been answered as the IBA mentioned male advantage too and the Algerian is XY + observable rather masculine.
It's also just common sense, XY conditions like swyer not only doesn't give any advantage but also probably gives a disadvantage vs normal females as even normal females can make use of testosterone a bit. That's not to say there won't be any, it's rare but possible (there has been one Olympian with it AFAIK) and it's not really an issue if they compete as not only do they not have any male advantage, they're typically considered to be female (though they're infertile/don't produce either eggs or sperm).
They're also not likely to look super masculine like that Algerian boxer though for what ought to again be obvious reasons.
The big differences are that the decision was made for them to identify as the opposite gender from birth rather than them deciding to do so later in life and that they have a physical motivation for doing so.
It's not surprising that Semenya, for example, a biological male, is married to a woman/is a "lesbian" as most biological males are attracted to women.
But this isn't some mysterious thing either, they'll have known since puberty, in the case of the Algerian there is some extra dubious issue of why her birth certificate was issued in 2019 (IIRC) - did someone there scout for XY/Male DSD people?
The bottom line is that they know they're biological males and they're still choosing to compete in the women's event knowing they've been disqualified from the world championship and knowing how dubious this is, I'm not really all that sympathetic to it turning into a media storm as it's one they've created by their own choices.
If your point is that the western world is beset by all sorts of really stupid ideas, of which this is one, then you might have a point.
However its hard not to notice, that when it matters to people personally, that suddenly they seem to know exactly what a woman and a man is... even the most fervent of supporters of what's described in your post....
I've seen a lot of these sorts of posts and some people clearly need the idea of 'categories' explained to them.
Most elite international athletes, by virtue of that postion necessarily have to be extreme outliers, 'freaks', to be where they are.
No amount of training and effort would ever of had me run as fast as Bolt or swim as fast as Phelps and the same is true for almost every single man on the planet.
Of course sport isn't 'fair' and only a few people born as a % have a realistic chance to excel at something before they even start to train these days.
But we've introduce categories to allow more people to excel inside of thoose categories because otherwise the difference between them is so great at the top end that none in the lower group would get a look in.
But thoose categories have to be enforced and it's irrelevant if they overlap. A slow 16 years old doesn't get to complete in a 10 year olds race because they don't stand a chance of winning in their own age group.
Sports are segregated by sex because of the considerable differences in strength speed etc between human males and females.
We know what sex is, ultimately it's down to gametes or at least having bodies arranged around the production of one of the two types that exist.
As the title of this thread shows we've been through this all before with Caster where all the usual allegations were troted out around supposed racism of misogyny over female beauty standards for what turned out to be a man who it appears was deliberately and cynically recruited, along with others to go into the women's game.
I very strongly suspect we're dealing with a similar scenario here and the IOC talking about not doing sex testing and talking about 'passport sex' as being good enough for them has really shown them as a bunch of incompetent clowns.
Last edited:
People are gaming the system now, it's the new doping. Men competing against women for easier wins.
A birth certificate issued only 5 years ago... it's pretty obvious that has been fiddled for sport purposes.
Last edited:
It's certainly very suspect, whether there is some reasonable excuse or not they know full well what they are and why they've been banned from the World Championship.
The Algerian side basically seemed to acknowledge on twitter that their boxer had the same condition as Semenya too.
Soldato
I suspect that is why they pulled their appeal to the CAS. They knew that the DSD details would become a matter of record and that it's widely recognised now that Caster is actually male.
Ironically one of the best ways to tell if an athlete should be allowed to compete in the female competition is their theoretical ability to have children. If you can get pregnant and give birth then you are female and if you can't then you are not. Caster Semenya for example cannot get pregnant no matter what, so it's a man
Soldato
Soldato
- Joined
- 16 Aug 2009
- Posts
- 7,908
It all boils down to one simple thing: testosterone. If you have elevated levels due to a developmental and/or chromosomal abnormality then you have an unfair advantage because testosterone conveys added muscle mass stamina etc etc. This cuts through the "debate" about men identifying as women and vice versa and all the other gender identity politics that has proliferated in recent years. How you actually measure/test for this is another matter entirely but as far as the IOC is concerned if your passport states you're female thats all the validation they require currently.
Soldato
Quillette has a pretty solid article about this on their website:
XY Athletes in Women’s Olympic Boxing: The Paris 2024 Controversy Explained
The historical, political, and medical context of the Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting cases.
quillette.com
She may well have fathered some children though, at least her second child was via artificial insemination but it's not been made public whether it was sperm from her.
Soldato
You keep using this phrase rather than just explicitly stating what they are so go on, humour me - What are the "obvious reasons" you keep hinting at?
Last edited:
Soldato
You keep using this phrase rather than just explicitly stating what they are so go on, humour me - What are the "obvious reasons" you keep hinting at?
That the appeal would have failed....?