Women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome

Yep I hate these threads as people state opinions as if they were facts.

my phd is not in this area but I did a year of embryology, so I prefer to believe what I learned there than mumsnetters stating FACTS.

athletes with dsd are not my area of expertise, and I would therefore not offer an opinion. I believe generally though those who rise to the top probably do have an unfair advantage. I also believe we don’t have access to their full medical records and unless you do again you can’t have an informed opinion.

from a general population view though I think those with dsd have a right to live how they choose. Nobody should be pointing and shouting MAN. It’s a very different conversation to the trans argument which is biological males behaving like women.

imagine if you had a daughter. Physically she looks like a girl in every respect. You take her to the doctor at 16 because her periods haven’t started, and find out she has a dsd, has xy chromosomes, internal testes etc.

nobody should be telling that child YOU’RE A MAN. Have some empathy.

there used to be a lady with dsd on here. She left because of all the “you’re xy you’re a man” comments. She was born a girl, brought up female, had a blind vagina, and only found out as a teen she had a dsd.

Someone with CAIS is male. They may present as female but genetically they are male. If a way was found to induce androgen sensitivity they would go through male puberty not female.

But they’re not women. They’re described in medical literature as under masculinised, or feminised, men, due to their genitalia failing to develop normally.

One of the key tests for checking for the presence of an androgen sensitivity disorder is the presence of a Y chromosome. This is how they rule out other DSDs such as MRKH where the woman will present with XX chromosomes.

There isn’t a mismatch, as you put it. DSDs are medical conditions. There are a variety of DSDs, all defined. The tests identify which DSD a person has Knowing the DSD - ie what has gone wrong in their sexual development in the uterus - allows the specialists to correctly sex the person.

They don’t go, “Well, this person has A, B and C, so that equals Klinefelters. Now, are they male or female?” 🤔 All people with Klinefelters are male. (I’m just using Klinefelters as an example.)

As for the question, how do we know if someone has gone through male puberty? It’s obvious physically, and hormone tests can confirm it.

YABU to suggest that the man who beat up a woman is anything other than a man beating up a woman.

If she had been brain damaged would you be posting this today to build awareness?

Yeah I don't think we can rely on an organisation which believes in the female penis as a sensible authority.

can mean that some people [with PAIS] are male and others are female

Coming from the gender-captured NHS, @Tandora, I'd read that as more of an ideological statement than a medical one. They have - at least twice - insisted that female patients in women's wards could not have been raped as no males were present on the wards.

No. Just no.

You're doing the old, and now very tired, transactivist spiel of Oooh, DSDs are sooo complicated! How can any of us know what sex we really are, never mind anyone else, when there's all these mystical medical acronyms to consider?!

It's bollocks (even if the testes are internal for some).

Your title mentions COMPLETE androgen insensitivity, an unusual situation in which a male foetus fails to respond to masculinising hormones, so develops as physically female. They obviously have no testosterone advantage because their bodies are immune to it.

The NHS link you posted also covers PARTIAL androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which male hormones do affect development and do kick in stronger at puberty.

There are multiple DSDs that can make a boy baby appear a bit like a girl, but give that child the physical advantages of male hormones as he grows. If you want to discuss them, please be specific and drop the faux wonderment. Plenty of well-informed MN regulars will be able to provide clarity.

Keep in mind that bigger women would be in a different weight class in boxing. Again for safety reasons.

So many of those physical differences you mention are actually taken into consideration in this particular sport. For safety.

Did I say safety reasons enough in this post. Nope.

There is consideration given to the safety of all competitors when boxing, to ensure the risk of serious harm is reduced as much as possible.

As soon as this disadvantages males versus females we get butterflies and poof this concept disappears.

Except a woman with elevated levels of a known performance enhancing drug called testosterone would be banned from the same event for doping... The same levels these males are presenting with. But they are given a pass for it, because 'medical reasons'. And without regard for the safety related implications of this to female athletes.

So I think it does actually matter. And isn't really fair. Or safe.

I find this rather ridiculous bc all kinds of physical advantages exist for athletes that allow them to excel in the first place. The examples are too numerous to exist, however posters like yourselves aren't policing those. Swimmers are taller, so are able to essentially have a shorter distance to cover with every length of the pool, as well as having longer reach. Someone could be just as fast as someone taller but bc they're a foot shorter they won't get to the finish as quickly. Many other advantages exist for power, speed, lung and heart capacity, etc.

About a previous incident.

The Olympics website noted that Khelif had been disqualified hours before a gold medal bout against China's Yang Liu in New Delhi after her elevated levels of testosterone failed to meet the eligibility criteria.

The Algerian Olympic Committee (COA) hit back by claiming the disqualification was part of a 'conspiracy' to stop them from winning a gold medal and said 'medical reasons' were behind high testosterone levels.

If they were a female they would have received a ban for doping. How is this fair?

We keep talking about how it's not fair to exclude. But it's certainly not fair to include either.

The IOC are screaming about prejudice. This is boxing. It should be about safety and fairness first, not identity politics.

So...... are you still going to be posting the same 'scientific evidence' when a woman is permanently disabled or worse by your policy of inclusion for all?

She's still ignoring her husband and baby on a different thread about this.

But as you've created a thread about a thread, we can't know which claims you believe to be troubling? Why couldn't you respond to posters on that thread?

You then say you don't know if the athletes from the other thread have CAIS , so why is your thread about CAIS?

This is all quite vague. What's your agenda?

Absolutely.

We shouldn't need category of women's sports in the first place. Women just need to train harder, get with the times and believe better in their equality. And don't get me started about the exclusionary Paralympics!

How often is there a mismatch?

Women are perfectly capable of hating other women.

I hope they were aware tbh, because having internal testes or streak gonads isn't a benign thing for the person with the dsd. They're at increased risk of cancer and either need their gonadal tissue removed or regularly monitored, just like any man with undescended testes.

I am quite happy to call them (or other DSD people in similar situations) women in this case...It is hugely complex and they initially thought they were fully female/have female passports. This does not mean they should be ever allowed to compete in women's sports. It must be sad for them. But their disappointment cannot override safety and fairness.

The same does not go for sex.

@@ditalini at 20:31 gave a reasonable set of criteria.

I have already acknowledged there are people who have a Y chromosome and yet have some significant disadvantage due to some kind of chromosomal abnormality. Except in the case to absolute total insensitivity to testosterone, the appropriate category would be in the paralympics with a set of scaled points to quantify their disadvantage, as with all the other situations where a disadvantage can have many different levels of effect.

The women's category is for women, it's not a category for "people who wouldn't stand a chance in the men's category because due to one of a myriad of potential diversities they are not a peak physical specimen among the males of the species" in a context where the whole point of the activity is to find the peak specimens - male and female who are strongest/fastest/most skilled at each sport.

There are billions of people on this planet who don't stand a chance of getting an olympic medal due to some accident of birth. Everyone else just accepts that and participates in the sports they enjoy at the level they are able to access.