To ask if you think the Olympic boxers are male?

[ArabellaScott]

The finals for both boxers are tonight and tomorrow.

I'm curious to hear whether people think they are females with a DSD, or males with a DSD.

YABU - they're female
YANBU - they're male

Compeltely agree

Thanks for some reason I thought last night as that’s when the men’s were on.

The IBA tests were chromosomal tests. They were as.clear as they are able to be that these athletes are male, while not sharing private medical information, and while the Algerian and Taiwanese government had threatened legal action.

The only way we would ever get more information on the tests is if the athletes appealed, as Semenya did. That's how we know Semenya has 5ARD.

They didn't appeal.

What I want to know, is how did they know they wouldn't be banned from the Olympics and thus enter in time to qualify?

@ArabellaScott

They didn't appeal.

I, too, think this is odd - but not for the same reasons you do. I assume you think it's because they're male. My thoughts are it's not as simple as that, but much more bureaucratic and murky (as things often are).

Yes.

A cross between turtles and groundhogs.

And then tumbleweed for when questions are asked and the dissonance is realised for some.

Some people are talking about how they believed Semenya was female for years and that suggestions he was male were cruel bigotry.

There's no shame in being hoodwinked by an all consuming narrative. Who would credit that the IOC would lie so badly, and allow the fairness of the OG to be undermined? Or that journalists would stay silent in the face of a scandal?

Unfortunately it seems that media and institutions are pretty adept at both lying and covering things up. It's quite depressing and not a nice thing to realise. We'd all prefer a body founded on such positive and laudable ambitions to be true to its founding principles.

Because the IOC policy is F in passport?
Because the IOC has form for letting men into the female category?

And do you think that male athletes with pubertal advantage should be competing in female boxing?

And do you think that if those male athletes know they are male and have advantage that they should ultimately bear the responsibility for not putting female athletes in increased risk?

Because no one can trust the IOC to exclude them because it is against their current policy. You don’t trust the IBA testing protocol. So knowing the story of Caster Semenya, do you trust these athletes to do the right thing?

Or is it more that you also don’t believe that male athletes who have gone through male puberty have that advantage and you don’t trust the studies that have been done either?

I am constantly agog at the unrelenting description of Semenya in the media. Those media agencies have to take part of the responsibility for spreading and building this deep misinformation.

But then, apparently when people see actual explanations of how the distinctions in categories and particular DSDs impact bodies, they call it pseudoscience, as has happened on this thread. It is bizarre behaviour. I think Kuc’s turtles is a great way to describe it.

If they are biologically female, it would be so easy to put the speculation to rest by taking a quick and simple test. The fact they haven't speaks volumes.

I was discussing this with my daughter last night, who has different views to me. And she made me think.

firstly khalif has breasts, we can clearly see she does. Which means physically she presents as female. Likely with female genitalia, I doubt she has had implants. Not as an athlete. She must have had female puberty to grow breasts,

any testes she had would be tiny and undescended. Buried inside her body. So likely giving little to no testosterone,

the gender eligibility tests have not been revealed, but based on those two facts above it’s likely she has a Y chromosome. However science says having a Y chromosome doesn’t automatically mean you are male every time. Intersex is a grey area on this, Simply science says most people with a y are men and then there is intersex.

intersex athletes will have been competing in sports and the olympics since time began. This is not something new, 1 to 2 people in a hundred are intersex. So they have always participated , just now science can test for chromosomes.

we don’t know if the two athletes have elevated testosterone, and there is clearly a lot of misinformation out there on the tests, and there is over 40 variations of intersex. With many people not knowing until they hit puberty, and some never knowing. Some people with a Y chromosome even have wombs. Simply they lack enough female hormones to reproduce

neither boxer is that good, yes khalif may win gold, but she’s been beaten many a time, she’s not a flawless track record, and every time she was beaten she was beaten by biological women.

so for me I don’t think it’s as simple as saying she’s a biological male. She isn’t a biological female it seems, even if she has breasts and a vagina. She could even have a womb, but if this is simply she’s a Y chromosome, then science absolutely doesn’t say this means she’s automatically a biological man, science makes exceptions for intersex, basically she’s biologically intersex, like millions of others, a very difficult and grey area.

That's nonsense. There's no such thing as intersex. You can be male with a DSD or female with a DSD. And such disorders are extremely rare.

Khelif does not have breasts. If anything he appears to have a penis - he wears a cup, for a start.

The level of misinformation about this issue is unbelievable.

What bullshit. Khekif has male levels of testosterone. His testes are providing that. He doesn't have breasts.

“any testes she had would be tiny and undescended. Buried inside her body. So likely giving little to no testosterone,”

This is false.

Undescended does not necessarily mean ‘tiny’ nor that they produce ‘little to no testosterone’. Caster Semenya has undescended testes and has testosterone levels of 21 nmol/L which is well within the normal range.

And I have not seen breasts at all. Muscular pectorals? Yes.

This is full of misinformation

With many male DSD, the testes would descend at puberty resulting in full virilisation. Khelif's body certainly looks like one that has gone through male puberty and that is what the testing concluded.

There are individuals who are deemed XY but are female, but due to the specifics of that condition, they would be highly unlikely to be elite athletes. They definitely would not look like Khelif as their testosterone levels are abnormally low.

I have no idea where your daughter got the 'she has breasts' thing. I certainly can't see that. Some men are quite muscled in the breast area however. Speculation about having a womb is totally unverifiable and highly, highly unlikely.

Looks like your daughter needs to do some further reading on the subject. The testing Khelif had concluded a male advantage.

This is not something new, 1 to 2 people in a hundred are intersex.

This is completely untrue, both because there's no such thing as "intersex" and that the number is more like 0.018% (that's a 100-fold difference). Those with an agenda to inflate the proportion of DSDs have done so by including conditions such as PCOS (which by definition affects the ovaries), hypospadias (the urethra opens on the underside of the penis), Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late‐onset adrenal hyper‐plasia.

"neither boxer is that good, yes khalif may win gold, but she’s been beaten many a time, she’s not a flawless track record, and every time she was beaten she was beaten by biological women."

Below is why the arguments 'But they didn't win', 'they have been beaten', 'what does it matter', type arguments really show a complete lack of understanding about competitive advantage.

The male athletes losing are losing because they when you considered their physical advantages, if they were elite level male athletes at the same level of peak performance as the female people that they were losing against, they would not have lost. They are not at any where near the level of exceptionality of the female athletes they are competing against.

In many instances, there performance rates as mediocre when compared to male athlete peak performance.

To be very clear, if the male athletes losing to those exceptional female athletes were as good and as fit and performing at their full potential as those elite athletes, they would have won.

In fact, several male athletes are competing in female events and setting records that female people may never break. Those male athletes are in almost comparable performance level as the exceptional female athletes, but their physical advantage is coming into play, so to speak.

Consider the physical advantage to constitute x% performance advantage over all. To achieve the same level of exceptionality of the female athletes, their performance will = peak female athlete performance + x%. Hence setting records that may not be broken.

If the female athletes are beating the male athletes and those athletes have male pubertal advantage, then they simply are not as good as the female athlete. In fact, if those male athletes with x% pubertal advantage tied with the exceptional female athlete, then by comparison, the female athlete is better.

So this point too is irrelevant for competition. But. Not for safety.

What you are supporting is, in effect, very dangerous for female athletes due to male people have on average 160+% more punch power than female people (that is not athletes, that is just the general population) and many other advantages. In fact, part of the punch power is derived from skeletal leverage that males have to give this power that female people do not have. And bone mass and density that is greater in male people than female people.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289906/

This above is the review of 13 studies from Dr Emma Hilton and Tommy Lundberg and it shows these advantages, if anyone wishes to check for themselves.

To be clear. This bone difference means stronger bones!

Female people have been proven to have bones that are more prone to breakage, particularly in the face. And they are more prone to concussion and brain damage due to their more delicate brain fibres. This has been studied and is now shaping Rugby guidelines for female participation, as an example.

Rugby concussion: Swansea University study into protecting women https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51434749

To those who use the 'but they didn't win' what do you believe will happen to a female with those more delicate bones and brain fibres when hit with punches that are 160+% harder than other female boxers?

"intersex athletes will have been competing in sports and the olympics since time began. This is not something new, 1 to 2 people in a hundred are intersex. So they have always participated , just now science can test for chromosomes."

As has been posted, the % of DSDs with ambiguous genitals that may require to testing is 0.018%. Please see the below.

https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/intersex-is-not-as-common-as-red

Here "she" is training. Why is "she" wearing a mans box designed to protect testicles?

Dammit picture didn't cut over I'll try again

@JJathome What's the basis for you and your daughter concluding that a person with internal testes could not have normal (male) testosterone levels? What nonsense.

"the gender eligibility tests have not been revealed, but based on those two facts above it’s likely she has a Y chromosome. However science says having a Y chromosome doesn’t automatically mean you are male every time. Intersex is a grey area on this, Simply science says most people with a y are men and then there is intersex."

XY chromosomes means that a person has 'male' genotype chromosomes.

What you have just written here is talking about phenotype which effectively refers to body parts.

It is far more accurate to talk about these athletes as 'male' first and then to add 'with male pubertal advantages'. That cuts through all the whataboutery that refers to body parts. The only body parts that hold any relevance to the discussion are ovaries and testes. And then whether the testes produce testosterone that the body then processes or not.

Having vaginas/penises/breasts is actually totally irrelevant to this discussion.

The only body parts that hold any relevance to the discussion are ovaries and testes. And then whether the testes produce testosterone that the body then processes or not.

Yep.

Also, I love these kind of statements:

'intersex athletes will have been competing in sports and the olympics since time began.'

Since time began? Really?