BBC finally acknowledges something may be amiss in Olympics women's boxing

And I disagree.

Because specific DSDs have their own collective categories and needs based on those categories. Are you melding all DSDs into one group?

What part of male people with testes who may have advantage because they will never menstruate is unclear though?

They have a body that can never be categorised as one that had the potential to menstruate. They wouldn't have ovaries or ovary tissue. At this stage, menstruation is poorly researched. If in the future this has been found to be an advantage that is not attainable to the collective category of female people (as a collective) it will be discussion that should be had.

“The article also jumps about all over the place, never really gets to grips with what makes someone male or female, and quotes experts without establishing their credentials.“

That was something I noticed with one or two of the persons quoted.

@Snowypeaks Very informative, thank you. Your final paragraph is spot on.

(Edited to say that I didn’t mean to quote you quantumbutterfly but yes, what will these people do?!)

There'll be a lot of people looking for jobs if the genderwoo scam collapses.

IMO to ban them from women's sport would be to open the door to discriminating on height and fertility grounds against all women

What utter rot. They would be banned from women's sport because they are male.

Thank you for this. I’m squirming at Letizia’s “Gender and Identity Correspondent” job title.

I disagree, I'm not sure DSDs can be judged as a group as phenotypes vary so much.

It's a body, including hormones etc, that provide advantage, not a person's genetic material.

Usually the latter dictates the former, but not always and not to the same degree. There can be huge variability even among people with the same basic diagnosis too.

Nothings amiss, but male on female violence is now an Olympic sport.

nothing to see here move along.

Interesting question above about height and no detrimental effect of periods, pregnancy on atheletes who might externally appear female and not have testosterone-derived male advantage, but IMO to ban them from women's sport would be to open the door to discriminating on height and fertility grounds against all women and no doubt people with that DSD have competed in women's sport for decades, having been raised female and not known any different

It would not open the door to discriminating against women on height and fertility fertility grounds. CAIS males are taller because their male-specific DSD means they are not responsive to the testosterone which puts a brake on growth. The reason they do not have periods is because they are male - they're not supposed to have periods. Their AIS is irrelevant to that - women are carriers of the genetic mutation that causes AIS and are unaffected.
From the NHS site:
The AIS gene is found on the mother's X chromosome. As the mother has 2 X chromosomes, the normal chromosome is able to make up for the faulty one. This means she's a carrier of the AIS gene, but does not have AIS and is able to have children.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/causes/#:~:text=The%20AIS%20gene%20is%20found,is%20able%20to%20have%20children.

The CAIS males' advantage of height and lack of periods is because they are male. Women's competition was created to exclude male advantage. External appearance doesn't matter. Healthy women do respond to testosterone. Our ovaries make more testosterone than oestrogen. Zero response to testosterone is as abnormal for women as it is for men.
We (including the scientists) have to stop defining women as people who look like women. We are not ushering the many masculine-looking sportswomen into male sport because they could pass, are we? Women are female human beings, of the sex which has the function (even if impaired) of producing large gametes.

and no doubt people with that DSD have competed in women's sport for decades, having been raised female and not known any different
For decades? And not known any different? Unlikely, and in any case irrelevant to eligibility for the female category in sport.

I understand the compassion for male athletes with a DSD but the answer is not to make women and women's sport compensate them for it.

you've not been following these threads closely have you.

XY, female phenotype, no uterus suggests CAIS I think.

Someone put up a very helpful flow diagram of dsd's on one of these many threads, I meant to save it as it was very comprehensive.

It is about collective group descriptions.

If one group of people, have XY chromosomes which leads them to have advantages that may be proven to deliver advantages that other groups of female people don't have access to, then it is can be argued that that collective group has an advantage. At the moment, this group has not been proven to have advantages although there is plenty of discussion.

I would say that not ever having the potential to have a menstrual cycle is different to having the potential but those ovaries not working as expected.

However, as I say, at this time the group is not considered to have advantage and I look forward to this being shown so they can continue to compete.

yes. It has been handled poorly by the IOC and the IBA has not been a shining light of clarity.

If the IOC showed leadership in November 2021 and took the position of excluding all males with pubertal advantage, that would have been the fairest thing they could do at that point. It would not have made up for all the harm for the previous 20+ years that they allowed after dropping sex testing, but it would have signified that they understood that they made a mistake and that they were now going to address it with the evidence that has been published.

Ross Tucker's comments/interview on the Sports Agents podcast were very clear, not at all like this article. Cheek swab should be a screening process (done very early on in a sporting career) and then further tests done if the swab result is unclear. The question is does this person have male advantage - can they produce and benefit from testosterone, have they benefitted from a male skeleton, heart size etc?

Interesting question above about height and no detrimental effect of periods, pregnancy on atheletes who might externally appear female and not have testosterone-derived male advantage, but IMO to ban them from women's sport would be to open the door to discriminating on height and fertility grounds against all women and no doubt people with that DSD have competed in women's sport for decades, having been raised female and not known any different. DSDs have always been the edge cases and it is the trans stuff which has stirred this up more recently.

There are conditions where people can have XY in some cells and XX (or just X) in others....so it is complicated. Maybe that's what was being referred to?

However, I'd still describe sex as being binary in humans, just as I'd describe humans as a bipedal species, even though some individuals are born without functioning legs. Descriptions at a population level are different to descriptions of an individual.

All this has been handled terribly badly. So unfair on everyone involved.

We need to get back to some basic questions.

Given the fact that we know men will compete in women's sports events why do organisations like the IOC not demand sex tests.

Given the fact that Athlethics and Swimming bans males in women's competitions why did the IOC not do the same for boxing.

The IOC stated this games was all about equality of the sexes. Male and Female. Why has no journalist called them up on their stated aims of increasing female representation, but ignoring sex tests for cheating males.

When sex verification was in place, it still found several males in women’s sport prior to the Sydney Olympics.

I suspect if we reinstated the cheek swab for sex testing, the side issue of enormously rare DSDs (which could be further tested for) would almost entirely disappear.

I agree with this. A simple swab from inside of cheek for XY/XX test so not invasive or embarrassing. It should be done at grass roots level of competition so sorted out quicker and doesn't get to Olympic level to find out.

I can't agree that the article is "excellent". It is scientifically wishy-washy - for example, it states that "These people [people with XY chromosomes and the SRY gene] usually have testicles which are often inside the body." It is actually extremely rare for testicles to be inside the body. She presumably means people with 5ARD, an enzyme deficiency.

The article also jumps about all over the place, never really gets to grips with what makes someone male or female, and quotes experts without establishing their credentials. It's a great example of someone having picked up a lot of facts, but being unable to present them as a coherent whole because the framework of real understanding is missing. She may get there yet, but at the moment her thinking is too jumbled to be very helpful to people who also lack a clear understanding of the issues.

Read the second line this woman was diagnosed with XY chromosomes. This person was biologically male, and because of that had no womb. It's sad because she was raised as female but if a female doesn't menstruate they should go to GP for investigation.

It was an interesting listen, and is the first thing on today's episode: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021qwk

Exactly it's not like any athletes are competing for a gold medal in Pregnancy.

Did you even bother to read the entire quote that you were responding to? Or even the the very first sentence?

It is obfuscation. It would have been a much better target arficle
without the side story about the infertility story.