To be glad that #IStandWithAngelaCarini is trending no.1 in the UK on X (Twitter)

[AngeloMysterioso]

Angela Carini is the incredibly brave Italian boxer who had her Olympic dream shattered in less than a minute after being punched in the face by Imane Khelif, a male competitor who was disqualified from the women’s World Championships last year because his testosterone levels were too high.
Everyone should be saying her name. Over and over and over again.

whole load of cognitive dissonance in this...
"To be clear, that's a woman who happens to have XY chromosomes, not a man who was born with a womb of sorts."
"This isn't about kindness, compassion, understanding, and rebuilding the world through the magic of friendship and rainbows - it's about a fcuking bloke who thinks that just because he shit out in the genetics department that the world owes him the right to take part in unfair, dangerous fights"

i agree that there needs to be much clearer rules and safeguarding for women's sport to cover sex chromosome abnormalities, and this would almost certainly mean she couldn't box again in a women's division, so i was totally with you until that last paragraph...

Khelif was born with Swyer Syndrome. That's a person born with XY - as in male - chromosomes, but with a vagina and much smaller than usual uterus, rather than a penis and testes.

Wrong. So wrong. You’re just guessing. It’s pretty evident he doesn’t have Swyer syndrome. Why are you so desperate to find an excuse for a man beating up a woman?

The Mail has an article about her childhood (for those speculating).

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13700783/Inside-tough-childhood-biologically-male-boxer-Imane-Khelif.html

CAIS is a disorder of the male sexual pathway. Just because they develop a female phenotype does not make them female. There ARE no females with CAIS. Just as in Klinefelters, another male DSD, where they can develop breasts and larger hips, the phenotype does not suddenly make them female. And to answer a previous incredulous question, no, testosterone can never change your chromosome makeup. Chromosomes are baked in, they cannot change regardless of hormones or hormonal levels. If they could be, sex change would actually be possible. No woman with high testosterone has XY Chromosomes because they are female.
Something went wrong in CAIS with the sexual pathway, but the chromosome "box" the embryo came from was the male one. It didn't develop in a traditional male way, but that doesn't make it female. A Y chromosome is male, whether it is expressed or not, or whether it works or not.

Klinefelter Syndrome is not a DSD. It is a chromosomal aneuploidy that just happens to affect the sex chromosomes. There is no disorder of sexual development in boys or men with Klinefelter, they are unequivocally boys, then men.

This really doesn’t sound correct. If Swyers have streak testes, they don’t produce testosterone ? No testosterone would surely mean that the IBA’s second claim about physical advantage would be false.

Please link us up to the official announcement, because something doesn’t seem correct here.

That certainly adds more weight to the DSD side instead of the trans side, which until now was an unknown.

Thatcat · Today 01:48

I said I was open to reading evidence of what the committee said.

They talk shite, unscientific, ideological mince. They ignore solid scientific evidence and safety rules, introduced by other bodies.

They're not interested in facts.

Can someone explain the following to me:

Khelif's participation in the event has been a source of controversy after she was disqualified from the Women's World Boxing Championships last year.

The Olympics website noted that Khelif had been disqualified hours before a gold medal bout against China's Yang Liu in New Delhi after her elevated levels of testosterone failed to meet the eligibility criteria.

The Algerian Olympic Committee (COA) hit back by claiming the disqualification was part of a 'conspiracy' to stop them from winning a gold medal and said 'medical reasons' were behind high testosterone levels.

If a woman was found with elevated testosterone levels she'd be banned for doping. For good reason. Not just to make competition fairer but also for the protection and health of athletes.

Women who take testosterone risk harms too because their genetic makeup makes them have side effects like vaginal atrophy and weakened bones.

If it's a medical condition that doesn't increase testosterone, how come they've been banned before for elevated testosterone levels?

Why is a medical condition allowable in this situation, when we know it has an impact on performance? And this puts women (who don't have raised levels of testosterone) at actual increased risk of harm.

If you are XY you don't have a vagina. You may have a developmental anomaly but you don't have a vagina. So you can't have the same side effects. You may have medical issues but those chromosomes mean your biological makeup behaves differently.

Time and time again I see comments about how these male boxers have a condition which means they don't have normal male levels of testosterone so they aren't male and can't compete in male competition and how they must be included otherwise it's unfair.

Yet no one is even considering why it's for women to fix this problem and to accomodate males with a medical issue. How is that fair? Women cant legally have similar levels of a known performance enhancing drug.

Why are the feelings of males put before the feelings, safety and fairness to women? How does that work? How is that inclusive? It's pushing women out the sport - there's a woman who isn't at the Olympics because there's a male there, there's a woman who refused to fight for safety concerns, there's women who will drop out the sport as a result. How is that fair?

It's sexism. Pure and simple.

If you have a medical condition, toddle off and have your own category to compete in fairly. Don't destroy women's sport. That's fair.

That’s a very interesting paper on the IOC testing (lancet). It’s a sad outcome.

Looking at the types of DSD they mentioned, it would be difficult to create an exclusion criteria based on CAIS/PAIS positivity, given it’s not entirely sex dependant and can be carried silently in XX, and mostly manifestly in XY. But still possibly in XX.

@FelineGood76 I was curious about the same thing, but apparently 46,XX heterozygous for CAIS can actually lead to manifestations of characteristics in XX. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1429/

If testing was to be reinstated to ensure fair competition, it really then opens Pandora’s box on exclusion criteria for geno vs phenotype and also for other genetic conditions which may confer physical advantage. That said, that’s no less an ethical quandary than a male physique competing equally with a female - if that is the case here.

I dont agree with male physique competing against female.

But in the context of CAIS it’s tricky.
also honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I was told tomorrow that I was in fact a male, having grown up as female, presenting as a female and with female genitalia my whole life. And on that basis, I could no longer do my job which I’ve spent my life in training for and felt able to do.

If any modicum of the backstory is true, Khelif might have stood out as a strong looking girl as a kid, and maybe that’s what got them noticed by a trainer. Given the rural Algerian background, I doubt there would have been much genetic testing. Or there could be things like coaching or sponsoring pressures. And then the big competitions arrive and then suddenly they’re failing gender criteria…

Then the same goes for Carini, a life long graft of making space in a male-dominated sport just ruined by lack of consensus on what is a male in sport.

It’s a sad set of circumstances.

I’m going to uk in watch this thread now, it’s sent me down the biggest worm hole 🕳️. I’ve learned at lot though.

Yes, I think it is massively unlikely that an Algerian couple (and a conservative one, apparently) would raise a male-bodied child as a girl, given how anti-LGBT the country is.

Regardless of whether she should be competing, I feel for her. In those photos of her as a child she looks very much a typical girl, and overcame a lot of prejudice and other obstacles to get where she is, only to then (seemingly) find out she has a DSD.

In the absence of further information regarding her medical history, and regardless of whether or not she should be competing, the pile on could prove to be very harsh.

And I must admit I had no idea, before today, that anybody could have XY chromosomes but also have a uterus and be capable of (with implanted embryos) giving birth.

lots of contributions here have been genuinely thought provoking and considered, but this is just nonsense

"Women cant legally have similar levels of a known performance enhancing drug"
it takes a cursory google search to find graphs of elite athletes showing an overlap in testosterone. and that's not even the issue here, because the IOC explicitly said it wasnt a testosterone test! that's not even the issue....

also - "If you are XY you don't have a vagina. You may have a developmental anomaly but you don't have a vagina." Wonderfully empathetic to the very many DSD non athletes here who are small in number but do exist, who may have a myriad of differently presenting genitalia but have now been told they cant use basic vocab for their own body.

Yeah as a male, I felt for that poor woman being beat up by that man!

How unjust! What's up with the IOC allowing this!

YANBU

around 1-3% of babies are born with DSD - and in many cases it might not be picked up until later on (ie puberty or afterwards). I went to an all girls school and there was one girl in my year who probably had DSD - I know she never started her periods and was told her uterus and ovaries weren’t properly formed. I don’t think she had genetic testing because this was the 90s.

anyway, my point is that she still attended our all girls school and remains a friend to this day. She’s not trans, she’s always been female. I wouldn’t be so rude as to ask her now if she’s had genetic testing. But some of the language used on this thread is really awful.

Mumsnet users seem to want to put everyone in two simple boxes ‘man’ or ‘woman’ - and unless you were born XX with no variation at all, you’re a man. But statistically, with 8 million users on here there are quite a few people who have DSD. I’m not sure they would be happy being spoken of as ‘men’ in these circumstances.

Also, unless you have been genetically tested, if you’ve not had your own child yet, you can’t be 100% sure you are XX. I recall at university I did a biology course and the tutors discussed how they never let us do testing on our own chromosomes because, given the size of the course, every few years someone would discover that they weren’t the genetic sex they thought they were. It was felt that it was not appropriate to find out in this way!

my point behind this is that it’s perfectly possible for someone to get to a very high level in sport and not know they have different chromosomes. Depending on androgen sensitivity, the boxer may or may not be at an advantage - as others have mentioned, she has lost plenty of fights in the past. I don’t know how the IOC should go about assessing what is fair - there is much overlap between normal levels of response to testosterone in men and women.

i just think the language used towards this athlete and calling her a man has been quite hateful on this thread. It’s not a simple situation and requires nuance, not just hatred and disgust, as shown by some people.

around 1-3% of babies are born with DSD

I suspect that’s based on a very wide definition, and that the differences relevant in this situation are far more rare.

Male-he/him

Male pretending to be female-he/him.

@FrenchFancie that figure of DSD prevalence has been debunked.

The true figure is 0.018% as Sax set out in his 2002 paper critiquing Fausto-Sterling’s claim of 1.7%

www.leonardsax.com/how-common-is-intersex-a-response-to-anne-fausto-sterling/

around 1-3% of babies are born with DSD

This just isn’t true. This is a false statistic based on corralling a whole load of conditions that aren’t DSDs and claiming they are. Conditions like Turner Syndrome, Klinefelter etc.

True ambiguity at birth is incredibly rare.

Mumsnet users seem to want to put everyone in two simple boxes ‘man’ or ‘woman’

Because practically every human being on the planet falls into these two categories, and incredibly rare conditions like Swyer syndrome don’t negate that, just like someone born with one leg isn’t indicative that humans aren’t a bipedal species.

Most importantly, for sport we have to have just two categories because of male advantage. Male advantage is the reason women’s categories exist. So everyone on Mumsnet who cares about women wants to protect the women’s categories.

my point behind this is that it’s perfectly possible for someone to get to a very high level in sport and not know they have different chromosomes

Only if they ignore their own biology. Going through male puberty? How strange! No need to question that though. Still no periods in their 20s? That’s odd! Never mind, just ignore it, probably nothing🙄.

Depending on androgen sensitivity, the boxer may or may not be at an advantage - as others have mentioned, she has lost plenty of fights in the past

He is clearly androgen sensitive because you can see his penis. It’s not difficult. He has lost bouts because he is a mediocre male boxer up against elite female boxers.

i just think the language used towards this athlete and calling her a man has been quite hateful on this thread.

Pronouns are sex based. He is of the male sex, therefore he gets male pronouns. Science and accuracy of the English language is not hateful.

Not a single consideration to the woman he punched in the face in your post though. Why do her feelings not matter? Why do the feelings of a man matter more than the woman he punched? Can you justify your priorities?

That 1-2% incidence was based on dodgy conflation of congenital issues with genitalia, not the true meaning of DSDs which are much rarer. Things like hypospadius (only affecting obvious boy babies) were added 🤷‍♀️ for some reason.

If you only include conditions where sex is ambiguous or incongruous with chromosomes it’s about 0.018%. This doesn’t include sex chromosome differences like Turner syndrome (no genital ambiguity, only affects girls) and Klinefelter’s in boys

He is clearly androgen sensitive because you can see his penis. It’s not difficult

😆

If your friend was born with an incomplete uterus then she most likely has MRKH syndrome. This is a DSD which exclusively affects female people, i.e. people with an XX genetic karyotype. You went to school with her so you will know what kind of puberty she went through. I imagine she grew breasts, rather than an Adam's apple, and she does not have a deep voice or hair on her face and chest. Obviously she's female. Having an incomplete uterus means you are a female person with a medical condition. A male person does not have a uterus at all and this is completely normal and not a medical condition.

As for the male boxers in the Olympics, it is quite obvious clear from looking at them that they have been through male puberty. There's absolutely no way on earth that they had no idea they weren't female until a random swab test run by a now discredited organisation in 2023 confirmed it. If they were male but not androgen sensitive they simply would not look the way they do.

However, all of this is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they are not female and they have been found to have a competitive advantage over female boxers. It doesn't matter whether they have known this for ten years or two weeks. It doesn't matter how sad they will be if they are disqualified. People's sporting dreams are dashed for medical reasons all the time. Their sadness is not a good reason to deny the female boxers a safe and fair competition. Suggesting that making a biologically male person sad by saying they can't compete in women's categories is unacceptable so instead we will make biologically female people sad (or injured, or dead) by turning the competition they've been training their entire lives for into an unsafe, unfair fiasco is misogyny of the highest order.

Female people are not male people's support humans.

We are not put on this earth to make men happy.

Our rights, our feelings, our opportunities, our achievements, our safety and our dignity are every bit as important as theirs are.

Well said @MissScarletInTheBallroom

No, just no.
Back to old fashioned XX and XY.

Men have been trying to enter women's sports forever. This isn't just about Boxing its all sports.
From the 1924-1960 questionable individuals were expected to get a doctors note.
1964 was the nude parade in front of a panel
1968-1996 XX / XY testing. The only fair was
2000 onwards they went to testosterone testing.

2024 we are in a worse position than in 1924. Back then women definitely didn't do Boxing and I doubt weight lifting was lady like enough either.

How the fuck did they manage to turn the clock back and be no further forward than 1924???

Well theres no law against not trying very hard to win.

I can 100% guarantee, Khelif didnt try. Because we all, all of us, every single adult on the planet know that men are on average stronger than women. So to get to the Olympics you must be strong.