AIBU to point people to an article on the BBC website about the gender row on boxing at the Olympics?

[GenderRow]

This article on the BBC website is the most informative explanation of DSD I have read:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crlr8gp813ko.amp

Before reading this, I was certain that Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting had male bodies. Having read the BBC article, I can see that it is by no means definite.
I feel very sorry for both of these 2 boxers that the International Olympic Committee have failed to develop proper testing procedures that would determine whether having a DSD would give an unfair advantage in the female boxing category. The IOC should have investigated this issue properly for Khelif and Yu-ting before they were allowed to compete in the Olympics. It is such a shame that these boxers have the humiliation of us all discussing their intimate medical details.

The tests would be a once-in-your-career cheek swab and a blood test, hardly invasive. Peeing in a cup is a lot messier and athletes have to do it every time they are tested for doping.

You say IK has a female body and no reason to see herself as anything else. But if she has a DSD she likely has never had a period. She is 25, the lack of periods would have been queried and investigated by her parents, coaches and the Algerian boxing federation a long time ago. Boxing is not a sport that goes hand in hand with the very low body fat levels that can cause lack of periods.

Lots of articles talking about dsd, but it's pure speculation that she has it & both she & her father have outright said she doesn't.

There is also some debate about the reliability of the tests which through up initial concerns pre-olympics.

Ps the point was even his family knew he was male from early on, male puberty helped as well. Did you have male puberty. He has advantages that biological xx women don't have.

“The most recent woman we diagnosed with having XY chromosomes was 33,” says Claus Højbjerg Gravholt - an endocrinology professor at Aarhus University who spent the past 30 years dealing with DSD.
His patient came to see him because she had no idea why she couldn’t get pregnant.
“We discovered she didn’t have a uterus, so she would never be able to have a baby. She was absolutely devastated.”

From article. So this person is biologically male if they have XY chromosomes but I'm guessing no one would think it's fair to categorise them as male. They clearly have a vagina just not the internal female parts.

We don't know how IK presents when she's naked. What I do know if that you can't examine her physique and say she's male based on that, like they have been doing for 3 threads on the other one. There are loads of female athletes who get accused of being men. IK doesn't stand out to me as obviously male when comparing her to other female boxers. So either there are loads of female boxers all with dsd, or they all have a particular body type, or they end up with that body type through training, or they have the natural body type, training, AND dope..which I what I think is the most likely.

"in this case it would mean these athletes would compete as women"

No, it wouldn't.

What you're missing (not unsurprisingly as it's being glossed over by articles such as the one OP linked) is that for people with 5ARD, although they will have had genitals that looked female at birth that will no longer be the case, as these people go through male puberty, and their penis becomes apparent at that point.

That's not proof! All athletes should have a simple sex test easy to do and a Y chromosomes means no female category allowed. Easy

Males born with the DSD it is suspected these boxers have may have, appear to have female genitalia when born, but the surge in testosterone at puberty causes their ‘micro penis’ to develop into a regular sized penis. So no, they likely wouldn’t look female as adults. That’s why the colloquial term for these males is ‘penis at 12’.
https://simmonsvoice.com/2671/health-and-science/guevedoces-growing-a-penis-at-age-12/#:~:text=Children%20who%20are%20born%20with,and%20appearance%20start%20to%20change.

How do you know the specific DSD these athletes have and what is in their pants? Are you just speculating or do you have a source?

The article fails to acknowledge that we can see male traits with our own eyes. The science may be complex in some instances, but not for these boxers.

I think the point about Algeria as a patriarchal society is a good one. I don’t understand why people see this as a progressive move from a country with such a poor track record on gay rights and where homosexuality is still illegal.

I am baffled as to how people can see this as anything other than opportunism and exploitation.

Again, you are being lead a merry dance here by people who want you to be confused.

A person who has a vagina and is unsure why they are struggling to get pregnant at 33 has a totally different DSD to the boxers.

Such a person will likely have Swyer Syndrome, where the SRY gene (that activates make puberty, for example) is absent.

The boxers do not have Swyer syndrome. They both went through male puberty. This is the crucial point.

Your empathy and kindness is being weaponised against you, to enable you to go along with this travesty.

Colour me utterly shocked that the beeee kiiiiind bbc is continuing to peddle the line that it’s soooooo complicated and really wouldn’t it just be easier and kinder to go lalalala and ignore ppl who are male with a DSD punching women? I mean after all it’s only the support humans

i had hoped after the caster semanya debacle women would not be gaslit again into denying the evidence of their own eyes but it seems not

I am very sorry but a male who has a DSD and is an atypical male (ie small or no penis, infertile) is not then a woman by default. We are not the category for men who do not fit the norm.

This should be repeated on every page of this thread, and every other post on this topic.

I complained about this article - it includes the ridiculous phrase that ‘sex isn’t binary’. These boxers have DSDs that only affect men. There is no third sex. I’m not surprised the BBC’s new ‘gender’ reporter can get something so basic wrong.

Oh FFS.
Let's just tell girls not to bother trying for the elite levels in sport...

In the past day I've seen video clips of Khalif sat manspreading and another of adjusting his tackle in the ring with his hand down the front of his shorts! (an action men often do but no woman ever does). It's like the IOC is laughing at us at this point. Laughing whilst women's lives are put at risk. I couldn't be more disgusted.

No doubt the topic is complex.

What's clear and simple, is that these competitors aren't eligible for the women's category.

I agree they've been let down and the IOC have behaved like cowboys.

Men with 46 XY 5ARD have been massively over represented in the Olympics ever since the political decision to stop sex testing was made. There are corrupt talent scouts who go round looking for teenage boys with this DSD. They know that in some countries this DSD is more common.

We know for a fact that two separate laboratories have found these boxers to have male genes and high testosterone. So we know they went through male puberty and we can rule out these incredibly rare cases like Swyers.

People sharing emotional cases of males who thought they were female until their 30s are just trying to confuse gullible people by distracting from the obvious fact that these boxers went through male puberty and will therefore have known they were male for longer than they are claiming to be female.

Given press restrictions it's not surprising people are still confused. There are still people who genuinely believe that Caster Semenya is 'a woman with naturally high tesosterone' despite the fact we've known for years that he has 5ARD.

Having undescended testicles and a small penis does not make you a woman.

It can be surmised from the information we have as the most likely scenario.

https://x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1820830649080570197

Scenarios such a Swyers syndrome where someone has female looking genitalia at 33 and don't realise they're male do not fit the facts we have for the boxers.

Back when the IOC had sex testing there was a famous case of Erik (formerly Erika) Schinegger. When Erik found out he was male, he gave back his gold medals to the women who should have won them.

He then had an operation to descend his testicles and went on to naturally become a dad. he's now a grandfather.

Funny how things were less 'complicated' then.

The sex matters briefing for those who are interested in seeing the bits the BBC left out.

x.com/sexmattersorg/status/1821617277399081338?s=46&t=AjtjSItRj-kgZwRzL-pdyQ

@EdithStourton ? Boxing has numerous gold medals based on weight categories for women and men. Of the medals available for women, it’s likely two will go to men. The IOC has had numerous wobbles on who is a man and who isn’t. They need to make a decision on how to evaluate athletes and not push it to other organisations which are not up to the job. People like Seb Coe are professional fence sitters. They don’t like upsetting anyone. This is why drugs issues are treated differently by different countries. Hence Adam Peaty speaking out. Other countries barely give drugs bans. The IOC just rolls over. It’s not good enough.

So just speculating then 🙄

So just speculating then 🙄

The IBA, WBO and EBC are all very clear that these boxers are male and therefore ineligible to compete in female boxing.

And not for those of us who aren’t experts with decades old Biology GSEs… it’s still really not that complicated. Certain factions are trying to market this issue and complex and nuanced, but science of often quite straightforward. It’s the human response to scientific fact that is complex.