to say women don't have XY chromosomes?

[taylorswift1989]

Seeing a lot of posts on social media with people admitting they were "wrong" to call Imane Khelif a man, and that they now understand "she's a woman with XY chromosomes."

Am I going insane? A person with XY chromosomes is male! (Regardless of how they identify, of course.) Why are people saying stuff that is obviously nonsensical? Are people really that ignorant of basic biological facts?

Emma Hilton says male = XY and an androgen response.

Well there we go. @HughsMermaid even the expert you specifically cited acknowledges it’s not as simple as xy=male. There are more factors to take into account .

But Khelif is a man. There’s no ambiguity he looks like a man. He certainly doesn’t look female and has XY chromosomes and producing testosterone.

Bit of a tangent, but how does eligibility work in the paralympics? I ask because nobody’s disability is exactly the same. Maybe some of the same principles need to be applied to the Olympics?

After all most athletes have bodies that bestow an advantage of some sort, be that extra flexibility, longer limbs, strength, whatever. If that competitive edge comes from naturally occurring hormones, I can’t personally see that it matters much. They’re still a person. Still talented. Still deserve to be recognised.

If we were in a survival situation and needed the strongest / fastest / most skilled people on our side, we’d value their ability and accept them, wouldn’t we? We should do the same at the Olympics.

Yes. That poster was mostly writing to ask TRAs to stop dragging people with DSDs into the trans debate. In those days FWR was more RadFem than it is now and a lot of posters tended to view male vs female socialisation as being key to whether you called someone a “man” or a “woman”. Most in those days were of the view that someone with a female phenotype who only found out that they had XY chromosomes in their teens was a woman, with completely different lived experience to someone who was trans. The poster I talked about was a regular GC poster on FWR, despite having a DSD.

Agree.

As I said I am very confused. We have established that are some cases where someone with XY syndrome can have a womb, give birth and they do NOT go to through male puberty.
We have established that Khalif’s testosterone level was not the reason they were disbarred, it was their chromosomal test.

So let’s go back to designing a genetic test that would be applied right from say age 10/11 when sport gets serious. Is it simply a chromosome issue and MOST people would be one or the other and we say ‘tough shit choose another profession’ to those whose cases are more complicated.

They really are clueless but in their defence, I didn't really get taught chromosomal disorders until university, never mind basic biology or even general science.
It is too complex for this level so unfortunately it is just an area that should be left to experts in thd field.

Their talent can be recognized by competing against people with XY chromosomes can't it?

If that competitive edge comes from naturally occurring hormones, I can’t personally see that it matters much.

Right, so no women's category at all then, as men's hormones are naturally different and give them an advantage? That's bonkers.

And there are very carefully defined classes for competition in the Paralympics, yes. Did you think they all got lumped in together?

Sex is not ‘assigned’ at birth. It’s observed.

someone with XY syndrome can have a womb, give birth and they do NOT go to through male puberty.

What is XY syndrome, please?

It's unfortunate, but even if you were raised as a woman and live as a woman, if you have a Y chromosome, I don't see how you can fairly compete against women with the typical XX chromosomes.

Not everyone will be able to compete as, where, and how they'd prefer, but if we don't have some sort of basic rules about who qualifies as female and who does not, there's no point in competing at all.

There used to be, using a simple cheek swab. In 1999 the IOC ended it despite polling female athletes 82% of whom said yes we want to keep it.

Ending it was a deliberate policy decision and since then we've seen an ever increasing number of males in female sport who are able to win big (see the 800m at Rio 2016 where the podium was entirely male).

They take medals, records, prize money and sponsorship away from women. In the countries where they are purposely sought out girls lose out on grassroots funding and opportunities because it's going into these male's who have a DSD.

Women and girls lose from every conceivable angle and the IOC chose this deliberately. They let it happen and at this point I have to assume it was what they wanted to happen.

Why? I can't be certain of why - it could be multi-faceted but I would guess money and back room lobbying from interested parties have played a part.

No woman can have XY chromosomes. This is basic biology.

Any male born with malformed penis, undescended balls, does not have a vagina, only women have a vagina.

A simple Karyotype screening could be used for the vast majority of athletes. Any complication after that could mean testing of the athletes genotypes which would pick up genetic mutations eg. SRY translocation.

To answer the question about Paralympic classification it is HUGELY controversial. Olivia Breen’s dad accused a fellow athlete of not having CP.
Then there’s the case of Victoria Arlen. All the details escape me but a leaked training video showed her doing things that swimmers in her classification could not be able to. Now I believe she isn’t eligible to compete at Paralympic level because she has made enough recovery.

Funnily enough I have a child with lower limb disabilities and motor coordination difficulties but it is not significant enough for it to be within Paralympic classification. So in his case it’s really a case of ‘tough shit’ because he can’t compete against the able bodied.

Let this be part of the XY category debate that men should be having. It’s nothing to do with XX women. If you’re XY then you compete against XY. If this sounds unreasonable then a new category of identifying as could be created.

I mean XY chromosome and Swyer syndrome. I have posted the links above a few times.

Not exactly sure of khelifs exact medical records. But could very possibly be xxy which is kleinfelters.

I have a feeling that these complexities are going to be kicked into the long grass until a XX woman forced into competing in combat type sports against a XY woman is either severely injured or killed as a result.

Oh the irony!

Yes. Otherwise XX women risk being gradually excluded from competitive sport all together. People with XY DSDs can still compete with other XY people.

Sometimes the “observation” results in ambiguity. Sometimes there are factors (eg chromosomes) that are not “observed” which affect sex.
Sex is still determined / designated in these cases but it is not determined simply through observation. Hence the terminology of “assigned”.

We don't have to design a test! We have the tests and these atheletes, their coaches and the sporting bodies will know what the results are, with the caveats that since this is sensitive personal information they'll be restricted on what can be shared, quite rightly, without the person's permission.

Does the athelete have xy chromosomes?

If yes, do they have an sry gene? (If yes then not Swyer)

If yes, is their body sensitive to testosterone? (If yes then not CAIS)

If yes to all of these then they will have benefitted from male puberty and shouldn't be competing in female categories.

As I said classification is tough. My kid falls in between. He’s too ‘well’ to compete against disabled athletes but he has a named disability, clear coordination difficulties (as a result of a brain injury) that makes it impossible for him to compete against able bodied athletes in a meaningful way. So it’s a ‘sorry go do something else’ situation for him. It is possible that is what we say to people with complicated chromosomal issues.
But we have to first at least accept that it isn’t so straightforward.