Good grief. Now they’re saying that not all xx are female and not all xy are male. And that xy ‘generally' means male.

Semenya is a man, not a woman. The DSD he has affects only men.

So not a good example at all, really.

It's perfectly possibly to have female parts, go through female puberty and love and be raised as a female and have DSD disorder. Caster Semenya was a good example and athletics had to deal with this issue.

Caster Semenya is a male with male parts - he has fathered a child with his own sperm - who went through male puberty. He had a DSD condition where he had an under developed penis at birth and undescended testicules so didn’t look obviously like a boy at birth and without high quality obstetric care his DSD was missed so he was recorded as a girl. By puberty his sex was clear.

Nope. Not true

It's perfectly possibly to have female parts, go through female puberty and love and be raised as a female and have DSD disorder. Caster Semenya was a good example and athletics had to deal with this issue.

Boxing will have to do the same.

However, it's is NOT the athlete's fault that their genetics is complex. As far as she knows and has been aware all her life, she's female.

There's I need for this level of vitriol and nastiness. Handling this situation requires cool heads and sensitivity to those who's gender is more biologically complex.

For those of us without a biology background

Gamates turns out to be the eggs or sperm cells

So if you make eggs you are female and if you make sperm you are male

People with DSD can have one type of cell and not physically appear that way due to the disorder that they have

The rarest dsd - about 500 people - they can make eggs and sperm potentially ( although these people tend to be infertile )

Other DSDs are far more complicated and people do not fall into simple male/female categories.

All DSDs are either male or female.

No, there are not. There are no XX males. Anyone with a Y is male.

do we start genotyping everyone at birth so we can identify those who’s phenotype doesn’t meet their genotype to avoid this issue and identify “real” sex?

No ones phenotype fails to match their genotype.

I'm sorry if you think it's unkind to say this but people with CAIS are not female. It's factual that they are male, even though they appear female and likely view themselves as female.

Except in this case you are wrong.

It's unusual but biology isn't as simple as XX/XY binary.

There are male XX and female XY and XXY etc chromosomes.

It's a can of worms which sport needs to untangle but it actually really isn't as simple as you'd like to think, and that isn't the fault of the poor athletes, whose identity and bodies are scrutinised to the nth degree.

People have been spreading misinformation about DSDs for years. Usually if someone uses the word 'intersex' it's worth looking at what they say with caution.

There was a deliberately misleading statement that went around claiming that being 'intersex' was a common as having red hair. The reality is that DSDs are incredibly rare.

So the question is, how do so many men born with 46 XY 5 ARD end up in the Olympics? We need more investigative journalism into the corrupt talent scouts who go round actively searching for boys with this condition so that they can exploit an IOC loophole.

Some of these posts are ignorant and unkind. I work with people with differences/variations of sex development (DSDs) and it is not as simple as people are asserting.

If you have complete androgen insensitivity (CAIS), for example, you are genetically XY (male). However, at birth you phenotypically appear female, with female external genitalia. Often women with CAIS and their families only discover the condition when they go through puberty without their periods starting. In simple terms, they are genetically male but their body does not respond to testosterone at all. Even if testosterone is high in their blood stream, it makes no difference, as their body is completely unresponsive to it. They are female, look female but have this difference. They are infertile and do not have a uterus. They are likely to have undescended tested which may cause health issues. They would have no advantage in female sport. You would have no idea when you meet someone with CAIS that they have this condition, as they have breasts and a female appearance. It is rare.

Other DSDs are far more complicated and people do not fall into simple male/female categories. Sex is often determined based on analysis of external sexual characteristics/hormones/genetics/personal identity but it is not straightforward.

The transgender lobby has complicated matters for people with DSDs and people asserting that XX = always female and XY = always male are wrong. While this is the case for the vast majority of people, there are many variations that means it is simply not true for everybody.

It's not true. All XXs are female. Anyone with a Y is male. That's factual.

No vagina on apple trees, cannabis plants or courgettes but the definition of male and female still holds:
Male = small mobile gametes
Female = Large immobile gametes

There is no such thing as the "wrong" pathway, I'm not even sure what you're talking about.

There isn't a destination on either pathway thay would produce no gametes, but in the case of, say, Swyer Syndrome that we've all been talking a lot about, the male sex determining gene does not activate so I'd be happy to consider them female, in line with current scientific practice, but note that Swyer himself considered them male.

There is no third sex.

Dear Lord. It's amazing how much over engineering goes on to try and ensure something that the vast majority of the population object to happens.

At least 99% of athletes could be correctly classed as male or female by reintroducing the cheek swab text that was used for around 30 years.

If someone had a very rare DSD that meant they had XY chromosomes, did not have internal testosterone producing testes and had not gone through male puberty, individual ruling could be made. It's not rocket science and this would only need to take place once in an athletes career.

A person's social history and identity should have nothing to do with how they are sex classified for sport. Competing in elite sport in a category that you mistakenly thought you belonged to is not a 'right'. I imagine the experience of discovering being mis-sexed at birth is traumatic, if you also had aspirations to compete on the international stage and this precluded this, this would be even worse. However, it is not the role of elite athletes to compensate for this.

It is possible to have compassion and empathy for these athletes but still hold the line about sex segregated sports.

Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone who is just venturing into this topic.

https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/read/what-are-sexes

'Universal Biological Definition

In biology, the two sexes are defined this way:

Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.

Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems.

Lehtonen & Parker (2014). Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of two sexes. Molecular Human Reproduction, 20(12).'

https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/read/sex-development-charts

'Scientific Background

First, some basics: There are only two sexes, male and female. The male sex is the phenotype that produces small gametes, and the female sex is the phenotype that produces large gametes. This biological definition of male and female applies universally to all species that reproduce through two gametes of differing size (this includes us!). In humans and most other animals, male and female have specific reproductive structures that function to produce either gamete type (the gonads) and release it (the internal and external genitalia). Thus, sex development is the process through which a fetus develops these reproductive structures, and therefore, becomes a male or female.

Sex development occurs in two steps:

Determination: the development decision that directs the bipotential gonads to differentiate into ovaries (the egg-making factories) or testes (the sperm-making factories).

Differentiation: direction of the internal and external genitalia (the gamete transportation systems) down the male or female pathway once the gonad has been established.

To visually illustrate this process, I have created a series of flow charts, inspired by a paper on sex determination and congenital conditions of sex development (DSDs). The information on the flow charts is directly from peer-reviewed developmental biology papers and textbooks on human sex differentiation.

The mechanisms that regulate sex differentiation are so complex and time contingent that, occasionally, atypical variations and genetic mutations can occur in the system. Because of this, I show two things: 1) the sex development process for typical males and females, and 2) the sex development process for DSDs: congenital conditions which can result in atypical development of the gonads, the internal genitalia, and the external genitalia.

This complexity has gained attention of activists who wish to deconstruct the two sexes, claiming that people with DSDs are not male or female. But humans are a gonochoric species: individuals are either male or female throughout their entire life cycle. People with DSDs are not new sexes (this would require a third gamete type), and they are not both sexes (this would require the full development of both male and female gonads and genitalia in a single individual. A hermaphrodite has never existed in humans).

In reality, people with DSDs are males and females like everyone else. They have sex development disorders that can cause infertility and a host of other physical and psychological problems, some of which are life-threatening. Understanding the basic development process for these conditions can help fight against misinformation regarding human sex development while illuminating the complex processes that form these congenital conditions.'

We've clearly established in recent years that people don't believe biology or evolution. They probably think the earth is flat.

I have to admit, the recent discussions on DSD have been the first to make me think that things aren't perhaps as binary as I'd previously believed and I am willing to conceed that some of my previously held opinions were based on an over simplified version of science. For a tiny minority of humans, they don't fall neatly into the male / female categories that my previous understanding of biology/ genetics led me to believe there were. We are deliberately taught a simplified version of biology (same goes for chemistry and physics!) as the actual complexity is too mind-blowing and vast for gcse/a level courses.

This is completely seperate to any trans issues and I remain firmly GC, a male does not becomes a female, but reading about conditions such as Swyer syndrome (no testes or ovaries, female genitals and most internal organs and can carry a baby to term (donated eggs) but XY chromosomes - missing the part of the chromosome that switches on male sexual development so the foetus never becomes 'male')... I am willing to say that chromosomes alone, for some people, aren't the only thing that should be considered. Not all DSD are this extreme but it's what changed my thinking.

A person with Swyer syndrome certainly isn't a man, they have never had a penis or testes, didn't go through a puberty and would have been raised as female and could carry a child. I believe I am female, it's all Ive ever known, but if I had a blood test that showed I had this would it instantly make me a 'man'? Would that make my partner a gay man?

How best to fit people with DSD into our existing categories of male / female in society and sport is a really interesting discussion.

Very tough for the kid, but doesn’t mean he gets a place in women’s sport.

do we start genotyping everyone at birth so we can identify those who’s phenotype doesn’t meet their genotype to avoid this issue and identify “real” sex?
That could be easily done using the sample from the heel prick test.

How does that take into account those who really are on the wrong pathway and are therefore infertile? People who don’t produce any gametes? Where do they fit?

Do we go full mumsnet, point and shout “MAN”, and give no thought to how the child feels?

No, that would be cruel.

But the child in your example is male and will need help to come to terms with that.