London Review of Books’ contribution to sex & boxing furore

The whole idea is putting men back on top.

It's completely unsurprising to me that this was in the LRB. In the past they've had stuff on GIDS/Tavistock which was down-the-line genderist, plus the John Lanchester article @DeanElderberry mentioned. As far as I can see they reproduce in sentences of paragraph length a complete set of conventional liberal ideas. It's a highbrow echo-chamber.

I'm surprised the body of science on Güevedoce boys hasn't been mentioned. Dr Michael Moseley covered the story for the BBC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34290981
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCevedoce

According to a quick Google 5ARD is an Autosomal Recessive condition so if both parents carry the gene fault approx 1 in 4 of their children will have the disorder.

https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Autosomal-Recessive-Disorder

https://medlineplus.gov/download/genetics/condition/5-alpha-reductase-deficiency.pdf

I was once asked by a doctor if my ex husband and were related because they were investigating my DC for an autosomal recessive condition but that was for an ultra rare condition so ‘carriers’ are unlikely to find each other and make babies (we aren’t related and now have the genomic sequencing to show it!)
In areas where there are lots of carriers (who will be healthy and symptom free) more babies will be born with the disorder and even more carriers will be amongst the 5ARD person’s siblings.
Bigger families/multiple children will mean more potential for carriers/DSD babies. The family link must play a part in how unscrupulous coaches locate these athletes young enough to coach them).
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I think I’ve read that some Ashkenazi Jewish communities now habitually have pre-marriage genetic screening due to the relatively small population of potential suitors and the recognised elevated risk of that population carrying particular gene mutations - I would have to Google that to fact check though and when I’ve written a long post with multiple links there is always a chance it will page reloaded and get wiped while I’m off looking for another link!

Presumably similar happens in other communities who aren’t yet able to avail themselves of genetic screening prior to starting families (seeing as it’s a new and expensive tech that will only work for conditions that are already well-studied)?

There does appear to be a familial link, there is definitely clusters of 5 -ARD in the Dominican Republic, Turkey and Papua NG
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981.amp

The sensible argument (via Dr Emma Hilton) is that these DSDs appear to cluster in certain countries/races/ethnicities because the medical systems in those countries are not so universal, and are doing basic stuff to keep populations alive.

Could there also be a genetic factor? I've no idea whether DSDs run in families, but it would explain why they might tend to 'cluster'.

In any case, we have Olympic categories for athletes with conditions that make them unable to compete with the general population.

I think there’s also an undercurrent here - if males with DSD’s were forced to compete with men, then they wouldn’t be competitive, and it’s not ‘fair’ to force a whole (tiny!) group out of competition. I do think the same applies to transwomen.

Of course, the argument is ridiculous. The vast majority of people were born with a body which is never going to achieve elite athleticism, no matter how hard they train. Women’s sport is not a consolation prize for non-elite men

John Lanchester had an explainey 'short cut' piece about Caster Semenya in the LRB fifteen years ago, and even then all the confusions and misleading stories were getting set in, reference to 'gender testing' not 'sex testing' and a final respectful reference to 'Ms Semenya'.

That case was a significant place-marker for the genderist campaign.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n19/john-lanchester/short-cuts

The sensible argument (via Dr Emma Hilton) is that these DSDs appear to cluster in certain countries/races/ethnicities because the medical systems in those countries are not so universal, and are doing basic stuff to keep populations alive.

She also points out that in some cultures, women/girls are seen as lesser or imperfect boys/men, and so an apparently imperfect male baby might well be re-assigned as a girl, because he is an imperfect male.

It's worth listening/watching Dr Hilton on Andrew Gold's show, Heretics. She's really clear, sensible and extremely compassionate about people such as Khalif and Semenya.

When I've spoken to people about this, they seem to be entirely unaware that is the case.

That's interesting, were they being doped (knowingly or not) with testosterone, or DSD?

I think what we're seeing is a kind of oppositional defiance from many "right thinking" organisations that is aimed at the political right. Musk says the boxers are men and have an unfair advantage. And as Musk says it, it must be wrong and therefore must be vocally opposed... because that's how facts work now.

US and UK politics has got caught up in this viscious circle where populists on the fringes on both sides have turned their political opposites into existential threats that must be countered at all costs. Sensible positions like "we want to eliminate toxic car pollutants from housing estates" or "men shouldn't be fighting women in the boxing ring" become test cases for political purity. Are you on the good side or the bad side? The thought that huge swathes of daily life should be fairly apolitical and don't need to be part of a political ideology never seems to occur to them. Possibly on purpose.

And because social media is such a shit-show, those in the middle (e.g. the BBC), those who rely on clicks from over-emotional progressives (e.g. the Guardian) and those whose natural readership are already right-wing fruit loops (e.g. the Telegraph) get dragged along in the wake of the various Twitter storms. And to stay relevant they contribute to the mess.

And the author even makes that point, without seeming to notice that she's contradicted herself...

The first athletes to disappear after sex testing was introduced for female athletes in 1966 were white Russian athletes.

If the complaints are motivated by racism, how come all the other black or brown female athletes went unchallenged?

It always strikes me that this 'black and brown women don't look like women' is the most racist thing of all. Also something I have never heard, probably because I don't live in the USA.

It's unlikely tbh. In my experience, very few genitalia are truly ambiguous to the point where you can't tell, most just 'don't look right'. If there was even the tiniest doubt chromosomes are tested.
But a bifid (split in two down the seam) scrotum with no testes present with a buried micropenis could be assumed to be female if the observer hadn't come across ambiguous genitalia before and there's also a social and cultural bias where it's considered better for them to be assumed female because that's not as bad as being a male without a functioning penis.

Can anyone salvage anything from the wreckage?

Sorry Sarky, I tried in vain. It’s just left me wondering the writer got commissioned by the London Review of Books.

If we eventually see an XY-5ARD white Western athlete competing against WOC they'll have to come up with new talking points.

They could have found a picture without razor burn, surely.

It is also known that these specific types of DSD's are more prevalent in African and Asian populations.

It is so mental to me that people are pretending this isn't the case, that I am fairly sure they are, in some way that I can't quite understand, deliberately overlooking it.

@maltravers I could not agree more.

It is in fact observably true that a majority of men and women of particular ethnic origins actually excel in particular sports, and I've never seen anyone class that as an 'unfair' advantage. Because it isn't 'unfair', The attempt to sandwich actual unfair advantage with racial difference is in fact the only racially-motivated commentary I can see here.

To suggest women’s issue with IK is racism is untrue but in any event ignores the large number of black and non-white athletes pursuing their sport fairly in their correct sex class. These black and non- white sportswomen also lose out when men compete as women in their sport. It’s the XY chromosomes we object to in our sports. Skin colour is irrelevant. Male chromosomes and advantage are not.