Women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome

[Tandora]

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/symptoms/#:~:text=Girls%20with%20CAIS%20do%20not,make%20some%20sexual%20acts%20difficult.
Inspired by the dumpster fire of a certain thread that filled up just now -
AIBU to share some information about girls and women with CAIS. Many of these women and girls won’t learn about their variation in sex characteristics until adulthood. Some might never know and not without the assistance of modern technologies (that can test , eg, karyotype). For cases of CAIS identified at birth, most individuals are assigned/ registered/ raised female. (Yes sex can be assigned).

Anyone who could know a girl/ woman with CAIS in the real world, and tell her she is , in fact , unambiguously a boy/ man, because gametes, - well you would deserve worse than to be called a sexual fascist.

The NHS recognises the existence of girls and women with CAIS , and provides medical interventions accordingly.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/symptoms/#:~:text=Girls%20with%20CAIS%20do%20not,make%20some%20sexual%20acts%20difficult.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1429/

Yes these conditions are rare, but the more we learn about the biology of sex development , the more complex the picture becomes, as with most areas of science/ biology/ medicine .

Oh,you again.

Absolutely it does - we shouldn’t pass ableist value judgements on disabled bodies either. No idea at all why you think that is a callous thing to say

I think it's callous to dismiss people's disabilities as just "natural variation". It affects people's lives. People with DSD have a medical condition which can impact them to a greater or lesser extent. Sex is a binary, human reproduction is dimorphic, and DSDs are atypical, because something has gone wrong in sex development.

I'm not passing value judgments on anyone, except for males taking advantage of lax standards competing in women's sports. I'm correctly stating that there are only two sexes, and some people of both sexes have disorders of sex development.

If they have gone through male puberty they have a male physiology and as such will have an advantage over women.

It's that simple.

Now clearly a fit 20 year old woman who trains is liable to beat a fat 50 year old man with heart disease, in a road race.
But that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about elite sportsmen competing against elite sports women or in this case punching an elite sports woman.
His punch strength incidentally will be 172% more than his female opponent. His female opponent will also have around half the neck and shoulder muscle strength with which to support her head and prevent her neck snapping when subjected to these punches.
So essentially a double advantage to the athlete who has gone through male puberty. ( Which is irreversible no matter what hormone suppressants are taken).

How far do you take this suggestion that there is no space for genetic differences in sport?

Eero Antero Mäntyrants, a Finnish cross country skier, had a congenital condition which increased red blood cell mass, increasing the ability of his blood to transport oxygen and therefore giving him an advantage over his competitors. Maybe he’s a bad example because he was also actually caught doping, but consider also Adam Peaty, who has hypermobility and double jointed ankles - both genetic advantages. Michael Phelps also has multiple double joints. Usain Bolt has a specific gene, ACTN3, which makes his muscles particularly effective at generating more power over short distances.

Jesus! That's desperate!

Actually, I'd love there to be research to investigate why lesbian girls are more likely than heterosexual girls to continue with sport as they grow. It's a much healthier way to be, both physically and mentally.

I'm guessing it's a social and community thing but you tell yourself it's in the genes if it makes you happy 😂

Your goady-ness is showing.

It’s a complex question and clearly there need to be diff sporting categories for diff groups- we have the paraolympics after al!

But perhaps it isn’t as simple as just division by sex, perhaps we need to look at a range of stratified categories?

Or perhaps the solution is that we do keep it men and women, but recognise that not all women are cis and endosex.

I don’t have all the answers here, but the solution doesn’t have to be banning trans people and people with variations in sex characteristics from sport- that isn’t right at all.

So why do we bother dividing sports by sex at all? Why do we have different weights in boxing? Why do we have the Paralympics? After all, some people are just genetically better.

In that case the proposal of having DSDs treated as a paralympic category so that a points system to measure the level of disadvantage someone has starts to gain merit.

In the current setup of a binary distinction where the sport has exactly two categories, and 99.9% of people firmly go in one category or the other, it's obviously difficult to decide where the 0.1% who are exceptions to typical rules go. However the context is everything. E.g. in the context of social activities - it's fine for someone to go where they feel comfortable.

When the context is olympic sport, where you are trying to identify the most talented 0.0000000001% of people at a particular activity, and one of the categories of people has a typically at least 20% advantage then it's obvious to me that exactly zero of the shades-of-grey people belong in the "disadvantaged" category. Because you have to make a choice, whether the reason for a second category is for the benefit of people who have advantages (to remove people with disadvantages from their radar) or for the benefit of people with disadvantages (to enable a level playing field). Someone who is disadvantaged but only by 5%, 10% or 15% compared to the advantaged category - as opposed to the 20% for the rest of the people in the second category - still has far too much advantage and it cannot be fair.

I’m being totally sincere. Just because women with VSC are overrepresented in women’s sport it doesn’t mean we conclude , they have an unfair advantage and must be excluded. There are lots of similar patterns with various demographic groups.

What value judgement? It's a statement of fact that you cannot have CAIS unless you have XY chromosomes.

The gametes of XX people and XY people have to meet for the human race to reproduce, again just facts.

The phenotype of the majority of people is exactly as you would expect for their karyotype. DSD's can only be recognised as anomalies because we understand the reproductive process of the human race.

Natural variation exists but it does not mean that sex is a spectrum or that we should avoid making any generalisations in case someone's feelings are hurt. Categorising by sex may seem like a blunt tool if we accept natural variation exists but it's is reasonable and proportionate when safety and fairness are at stake.

Regardless of all that, people are who they are and they are born with the bodies they are born with.

I agree. It's funny how middle aged men can put on a dress and identify as the "woman" they've always been but teenage girls must medically and surgically alter their bodies to become the "men" they've always been.

Here's the thing. If they continue to allow competitors who have failed a gender test to compete at women's boxing at the Olympics what is the inevitable outcome from that?

Some nations will actively seek out competitors who have this advantage, which will edge out women, women will give up the sport out of fears for their safety and/or we will end up with an appalling outcome at the expense of the health and safety of a woman.

So however we deal with this, none of those outcomes are remotely desirable.

It is a medical condition which causes lifelong issues to some degree. We should not create stigma about it but it should be recognised as such and then competitors with that issue compete, in the spirit of fairness, with others with similar issues.

There isn't a way to avoid this. The IOC could have avoided this situation if they had just kept the previous bodies ruling instead of completely abolishing the government body and introducing their own crazy ruling on this.

I hope the other women in the same category refuse to compete. Their sport is at stake.

@OpizpuHeuvHiyo

If a person is totally unaffected by male hormones and their body doesn't respond to testosterone at all so they had no male puberty at all then I agree that their chromosomes are irrelevant and there is no harm done if they compete in the female category.

They still won't have to deal with hormone fluctuations, periods, and pregnancy so it would be very far from fair competition.

I’ve no doubt there is a huge social, community element. They may well also be some physiological/ hormonal factors at play. As with all differences it’s likely to be a complex mix of environmental, social, potentially physiological factors.

Participation in the Olympics is not a human right. Neither is competing in women's sports teams if you are not a woman.

People with XY chromosomes are not being excluded from sport, they are being denied entry in the wrong sex category.

What exactly is a “gender test”. Point me to the science that says there is an objective, valid and reliable method to test someone’s gender.

I just want to say thank you for this thread OP. There have been some truly awful things said by people on other threads. The hatred and fear of trans people is now spreading to anyone who even tangentially fits that category.

Only just been made aware of this thread and have not read any of it…freely admitting that.

Just wanted to say: Angela Carini.

What happened today was beyond disgusting and farcical (just like many of the other stuff that’s happened in the name of being kind and inclusive) and I only hope that because it happened on the world stage more people’s eyes will have been opened to the absolute grotesque nature of it all.

Anyone who doesn’t have a problem with what happened today needs their head examined.

And call me all the names you like, I don’t care.

The one which they carried out and found they weren't female.

This isn't hard.

You are deliberately trying to be anti-science.

Did you read the OP? Karyotype doesn’t necessarily define what sex category you are in.
And I do think it’s a human right not to be arbitrarily excluded from sporting competitions because of an identity characteristic

Please tell me what the test consists of, and the science that endorses it as an objective, valid and reliable method to test someone’s gender.

And you haven't addressed my previous point about nations actively seeking those with medical conditions to get an unfair advantage.

It started to happen in athletics until the rules changed to prevent this.

Now what if the body recognises testosterone a little, but not what is expected / typical for men (eg people with PAIS) ? Where is the cut off.

We see what you're doing OP with yourbwhatabouttery. Plus your sides of racism and homophobia. We've seen it all before. You're nothing new and have nothing new to say. You support males competing as females in sport. At least own it. Be honest with yourself.

The endocrinology of mammalian reproduction
David O. Norris PhD, James A. Carr PhD, in Vertebrate Endocrinology (Sixth Edition), 2021
4 Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome
A person with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome is a genetic male (46,XY) that lacks ARs. The testes are normal and secrete testosterone but do not descend from the body cavity. The testes may be removed, generally after puberty, to prevent testicular cancer in the undescended testes. Müllerian duct derivatives are absent because the embryonic testes also secreted AMH. However, the external appearance is that of a female because of the congenital absence of ARs in the tissues. This is an example of male pseudohermaphroditism.

If you have CAIS you are biologically male and your testes are internal but secrete testosterone. They may have female looking genitalia, they may choose to present as female but they are biologically male and will have the advantage of testosterone secretion.

The NHS link from the OP states that if you have CAIS you have XY chromosomes it then suggest you can be a girl with CAIS which is not genetically possible and makes no sense. It is talking about 'gender' rather than sex when it says 'girls' with CAIS I guess because it is totally captured in gender ideology.

Well said! 👏