olympic car crash

then there is no point is everyone arguing over is this a man or not, if the answer is actually irrelevant.

the argument should be over that top line of 1) what the point of the olympics are 2) what is the categorisation designed to achieve?

if inclusion is the point, then actually what is the point of any catergorisation at all. Why not just have 1 category for each sport? Do away with sex, weight, different swim strokes. Just have best at each sport

From what I gather, from the Nature article I keep posting on all the threads (but am on my phone so can’t access it to post) is that a campaign group successfully convinced the IOC in the late 90s to prioritise inclusion. Because of what they position was the human rights violation of these male athletes with DSDs suffering indignities during testing and the outcomes of that testing.

So in the late 90s they removed testing. 82% of female athletes wanted testing to remain.

Then in early 00s they allowed male people who surgically removed their testes to compete in female competition. Because once you allow one group of male people in, you must equally allow the other in or you are discriminating against transgender people.

Then in 2015, a campaign group including Ivy/Mckinnon and Harper, using Harper’s flawed study (see nequals8.com) convinces the IOC that it is unfair discrimination to exclude any male with a transgender identity describing themselves as a woman. The IOC changes the policy to allow them.

Then came the Rio trio in the female 800m and we start to see the testosterone suppression of the male people with DSDs come in. Semenya takes this to court in 2019. Appealed 2020. The evidence presented confirmed 5ARD and testosterone of 21 nmol/L.

2020 Tokyo games held in 2021 was the testosterone suppressed games. Hubbard, a late 40 something male in female event where next youngest was probably a decade and a half younger, shines light on the issue.

The IOC reacts by announcing a review. The new guidelines released Nov 2021 devolve responsibility for policy to each discipline’s international federation.

The announcement by Budgett from IOC was along the line of ‘we know it is unfair to include male people with pubertal advantage, but inclusion at all costs is our aim.’

That is where we are now.

And it is still discordant to see people refer to Semenya as ‘she’ when they even have admitted this.

Like Fallon Fox, gleefully breaking women's skulls.

If they don",t men will know that they can get away.with Self ID and they will swamp the women's sports until there is.no point in real women entering anything at all.

Sorry to be undiplomatic but I am astonished at the amount of people that faced with what has been published in the last week still say "she has a vagina, she is a woman, it's all Russian propaganda".

I agree. One of the IOC officials questioned today by journalists (who were asking for more information as to the certification/validity of the labs who carried out the sex testing on the two boxers in question) in his reply actually mentioned a rumour about the IBA only testing one of the boxers after a Russian opponent was beaten.

This particular rumour was disproven, with information from publicly available boxing tournament records, 2 days ago here on a couple of MN threads discussing this topic, and also on sites like Reduxx and Ovarit.

This rumour appears to have been generated and spread on social media and it worries me that an IOC official would be using info of this calibre to defend IOC policy.

No study that I know of. Someone did post a link in one of these threads to a study of elite female soldiers with levels of physical training similar to that of elite athletes - same T levels as other women.

Agree, Fibre. Alas.

I hear you, @EatMoreFibre and second it. 💐

I have a headache so my kindness level are zero at the moment. Here are my unedited opinions:

The IOC is a boys' club. They will double down and the cheats will celebrate and be cheered by the majority

Most journalists are spineless, ignorant and too gormless to even think of getting to the bottom of anything let alone holding the powerful to account. Honestly the calibre of journalism in the last decade or so is one of the biggest disappointments of my adult life.

Most people seem to be thick. Sorry to be undiplomatic but I am astonished at the amount of people that faced with what has been published in the last week still say "she has a vagina, she is a woman, it's all Russian propaganda". The public should be in uproar about this but most people are like "poor Imane, she is having such a hard time being picked on by the evil racist terfs".

My family will keep on calling me a bigot, laughing at my "hobby horse", being embarrassed at me and asking me why can't I accept the truth.

<eyes a second dose of paracetamol>

@LaeralSilverhand
I didn't mean that the rest of the Olympics haven't been fantastic - especially tonight.
This could well be a turning point though.

Ha...Great post. Guessing you're an Alan Partridge fan 😂 'We are batshit mentalists' indeed!

I agree - I think it's unlikely women boxers have higher than average testosterone levels, unless someone has actually done a study (and I'm sure we would have heard of that) or he means the male kind of women.

There was one study that showed that male elite athletes often have lower than normal levels of testosterone - I think the demands of training were cited as one possible reason so it's possible the same is true for women.

I agree they have done that but it makes no sense. The IoC should set the criteria at the top. Why should different sports have different rules? They should formally set the rules of engagement for the different catergories and why they have created those categories. E.g the purpose of catergorising by sex is to achieve XYZ, the purpose of us having weight catergories is to achieve XYZ. ( in effect they do this for he Paralympic’s in order to catergorise different impediments to compete against each other). If they want to swap to gender not sex they need to explain the purpose of the category and what it is trying to achieve. Only once you have that high level reasoning can you then devise the appropriate OBJECTIVE test to put people into the catergories. Nothing will change whatsoever until they do this. It will just be lots of name calling and arguing. Just terrible leadership quite frankly.

Other than the women’s boxing, this Olympics has been absolutely fantastic. I would rather remember it for Keely Hodgkinson’s spectacular gold in the 800 this evening, or Valerie Allman’s utter grace in the discus - and that’s just this evening. The venues and crowds have been absolutely amazing.

I think if all you have to look forward to is a life of poverty and obscurity (and possibly suffering prejudice due to your DSD) and someone comes along and offers you a shot at fame and fortune, an awful lot of people would take it, particularly if they tell you (correctly, I think, based on the rules in place at the time) that you meet the requirements of the female category and are not actually cheating.

It's wrong, obviously, but I can totally see why these athletes do it.

So are the boxers being tested for any kind of doping at all?

I know what you mean, but that last sentence is a really unfortunate way of describing someone's tragically young death.

ah feck it, I was just going to post 'what a pity you weren't in charge of the opening ceremony..'
Great minds, eh, Ereshkigalangcleg!

Well, funny you should say this, but they've threatened the whole sport of boxing, by saying that unless they get rid of the international boxing federation (the ones who banned our XY womanly competitors), then boxing WILL NOT FEATURE in the next olympics. The IOC are an amateur organisation and NOT specialists in Boxing yet they're deigning to rule over this.

Someone in the IOC got a trans kid. I'd bet my house on it.

My rough understanding is that the IOC has pushed the buck for eligibility onto individual sports organisations, who have been gradually introducing rules on sex/DSDs - see Semenya.

But because the IBA was given the boot the eligibility falls to the IOC. Who haven't really got a coherent response/stance/standards because their framework is based on 'gender identity'and doesn't mention sex.

When these games are over, I’d love to see some really high-level male athletes, gold medal winners and prospects, rhe sort that
fans come to see, have the marker in their passports changed to F so they are ineligible to take part in headline men’s events at the next games …. And watch the IOC’s stance change before the deadline

are there any male athletes sporting enough to do that for us?

And I really think they need to drop the testosterone argument (not talking about Khelif, but more generally). If you're a man, you compete with men, regardless of testosterone levels. As we know, there are other male advantages than testosterone, but in any case, I don't think we should be encouraging athletes - or anyone else - to drug themselves for financial gain.

exactly - then what is the point about sex segregation? I always believed the question is ‘what makes an objectively fair competition to all’ but this has moved to ‘what is subjective fair competition to an individual?’. This needs to be discussed and formalised at high level. The other arguments all stem from which side of this coin you are arguing from which is why no one is right as no one knows what the actual question is .