Women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome

Here's the thing. If they continue to allow competitors who have failed a gender test to compete at women's boxing at the Olympics what is the inevitable outcome from that?

Some nations will actively seek out competitors who have this advantage, which will edge out women, women will give up the sport out of fears for their safety and/or we will end up with an appalling outcome at the expense of the health and safety of a woman.

So however we deal with this, none of those outcomes are remotely desirable.

It is a medical condition which causes lifelong issues to some degree. We should not create stigma about it but it should be recognised as such and then competitors with that issue compete, in the spirit of fairness, with others with similar issues.

There isn't a way to avoid this. The IOC could have avoided this situation if they had just kept the previous bodies ruling instead of completely abolishing the government body and introducing their own crazy ruling on this.

I hope the other women in the same category refuse to compete. Their sport is at stake.

What value judgement? It's a statement of fact that you cannot have CAIS unless you have XY chromosomes.

The gametes of XX people and XY people have to meet for the human race to reproduce, again just facts.

The phenotype of the majority of people is exactly as you would expect for their karyotype. DSD's can only be recognised as anomalies because we understand the reproductive process of the human race.

Natural variation exists but it does not mean that sex is a spectrum or that we should avoid making any generalisations in case someone's feelings are hurt. Categorising by sex may seem like a blunt tool if we accept natural variation exists but it's is reasonable and proportionate when safety and fairness are at stake.

Regardless of all that, people are who they are and they are born with the bodies they are born with.

I agree. It's funny how middle aged men can put on a dress and identify as the "woman" they've always been but teenage girls must medically and surgically alter their bodies to become the "men" they've always been.

In that case the proposal of having DSDs treated as a paralympic category so that a points system to measure the level of disadvantage someone has starts to gain merit.

In the current setup of a binary distinction where the sport has exactly two categories, and 99.9% of people firmly go in one category or the other, it's obviously difficult to decide where the 0.1% who are exceptions to typical rules go. However the context is everything. E.g. in the context of social activities - it's fine for someone to go where they feel comfortable.

When the context is olympic sport, where you are trying to identify the most talented 0.0000000001% of people at a particular activity, and one of the categories of people has a typically at least 20% advantage then it's obvious to me that exactly zero of the shades-of-grey people belong in the "disadvantaged" category. Because you have to make a choice, whether the reason for a second category is for the benefit of people who have advantages (to remove people with disadvantages from their radar) or for the benefit of people with disadvantages (to enable a level playing field). Someone who is disadvantaged but only by 5%, 10% or 15% compared to the advantaged category - as opposed to the 20% for the rest of the people in the second category - still has far too much advantage and it cannot be fair.

So why do we bother dividing sports by sex at all? Why do we have different weights in boxing? Why do we have the Paralympics? After all, some people are just genetically better.

Your goady-ness is showing.

Jesus! That's desperate!

Actually, I'd love there to be research to investigate why lesbian girls are more likely than heterosexual girls to continue with sport as they grow. It's a much healthier way to be, both physically and mentally.

I'm guessing it's a social and community thing but you tell yourself it's in the genes if it makes you happy 😂

How far do you take this suggestion that there is no space for genetic differences in sport?

Eero Antero Mäntyrants, a Finnish cross country skier, had a congenital condition which increased red blood cell mass, increasing the ability of his blood to transport oxygen and therefore giving him an advantage over his competitors. Maybe he’s a bad example because he was also actually caught doping, but consider also Adam Peaty, who has hypermobility and double jointed ankles - both genetic advantages. Michael Phelps also has multiple double joints. Usain Bolt has a specific gene, ACTN3, which makes his muscles particularly effective at generating more power over short distances.

If they have gone through male puberty they have a male physiology and as such will have an advantage over women.

It's that simple.

Now clearly a fit 20 year old woman who trains is liable to beat a fat 50 year old man with heart disease, in a road race.
But that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about elite sportsmen competing against elite sports women or in this case punching an elite sports woman.
His punch strength incidentally will be 172% more than his female opponent. His female opponent will also have around half the neck and shoulder muscle strength with which to support her head and prevent her neck snapping when subjected to these punches.
So essentially a double advantage to the athlete who has gone through male puberty. ( Which is irreversible no matter what hormone suppressants are taken).

Absolutely it does - we shouldn’t pass ableist value judgements on disabled bodies either. No idea at all why you think that is a callous thing to say

I think it's callous to dismiss people's disabilities as just "natural variation". It affects people's lives. People with DSD have a medical condition which can impact them to a greater or lesser extent. Sex is a binary, human reproduction is dimorphic, and DSDs are atypical, because something has gone wrong in sex development.

I'm not passing value judgments on anyone, except for males taking advantage of lax standards competing in women's sports. I'm correctly stating that there are only two sexes, and some people of both sexes have disorders of sex development.

Oh,you again.

Wow, you really jumped the shark there 😂

But well done for demonstrating your true motivation.

Not to anything like the same degree.

And if we say that the male advantage is just the same as someone like Michael Phelps having long arms and big feet, then the logical conclusion of that isn't DSD athletes in women's sport - it's the end of women's sports. They are not needed, because there is no categorical male advantage. The very best female athletes can try their luck against males, maybe one could break into a world championship one day, but there would be virtually no household name sportswomen. In that world you'd probably never have even heard of the Williams sisters.

None of Michael Phelps's records still stand so he wasn't as extraordinary as all that it turned out.

Now take his records and consider what would happen if he'd transitioned to female before competing?

Some DSDs confer a similar advantage to that of M2F transition. It's important for fairness and, certainly in boxing, safety.

Oh dear, bit desperate

No.

I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of male boxers who want to hit women turned out to be lesbians.

Oh ffs. You do realize the AUTHOR of this article has personally debunked the misleading title?

What have lesbians got to do with it?

Also, the disproportionate number of people, with XY chromosomes + some degree of androgen insensitivity /DSD at women’s Olympic level of capability, suggests an unfair advantage, whatever way you look at it.

I was listening to something about the olympic boxers on the radio earlier. I do have sympathy for anyone living with this condition and they are not trying to gain an unfair advantage by assuming a different gender. However, if they have physiological traits which give them an unfair advantage, particularly in a sport like boxing where physical harm could be done to an opponent, then it just cannot be allowed.

It's a really difficult question to answer, because pretty much all professional athletes have physiological traits that give them an advantage. Typical example would be Michael Phelps's wingspan. How do we decide which advantages are allowed and which aren't.

It's not a black and white subject. I feel very sorry for the women at the centre of this, having their anatomy scrutinised like this.

Isn’t it coincidental how many people with DSD end up being elite athletes in women’s sports.

What are the chances?