UK media reporting on BBC ignoring risk of gender identity

[Heylo]

Most recent is telegraph reporting that BBC not reporting in adequate detail (bbc don’t mention gender at all) the boxer with XY chromosomes participating in female boxing this olympics

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2024/08/01/bbc-fails-show-fight-imane-khelif-gender-paris-2024/

other publications also picked up on bbc not reporting WPATH files.

how long will the bbc be allowed to omit key stories relating to gender identity and keep access to the tv licence fee? This goes beyond biased reporting - readers are not being made aware of the issue at all.

how long do we tolerate this from the U.K. national broadcaster? It is no longer fit for purpose.

Justin has been clear in the past.

The BBC are strongly consistent in being very weak on these issues.

It’s my understanding that these two boxers have a DSD which means that at birth they appeared female despite having XY chromosomes (which only became apparent much later, possibly not until they were tested by the IBA.

That's a highly unlikely scenario. Taiwan has an excellent healthcare system. The absence of menarche despite good height attainment etc. is likely to have triggered a clinical investigation during adolescence. If it didn't, there may have already been other considerations that influenced a voluntary lack of investigation.

It may well be highly unlikely - but my point is that there should be some reporting to enable the public to gain a more nuanced understanding than on the one hand fingers-in-ears ‘la la la they’re women on their passports’ and on the other ‘they’re filthy male cheats.’

Unfortunately, the IOC's media rules mitigate against that as does the UK IPSO (largely).

It's a striking instance of global control of the information flow for this topic.

I don't get how they can control how journalists report this. What authority do they have?

The only answer that's generally on offer is that the IOC control which media organisations get media rights.

https://olympics.com/ioc/media-rights-holders

Even so, it's remarkable.

They have the threat that they control access to the TV coverage rights world-wide. It would actually be great if a really big media set-up like the BBC or CNN said to the IOC, you know what? We'll say what we please to best inform the public, and if you want to take our coverage away, just do it, and see how that works for you. Sadly, just a pipe-dream, though!

I've just read the most recent BBC article. They do now acknowledge that both these athletes have tested as having XY chromosomes, but they quote IOC spokesperson Mark Adams:

"There has been some confusion that somehow it's a man fighting a woman. This is just not the case. On that there is consensus, scientifically this is not a man fighting a woman."

And they make their own assertion that "There is no suggestion Khelif identifies as anything other than a woman.... There is no suggestion that Khelif identifies as transgender or intersex."

They also quote IBA chief executive Roberts: "There are many women with higher levels of testosterone than men," which doesn't tally with any graph I've ever seen.....

This hasn't cleared anything up for me I'll be honest - if it weren't for this board I would have no idea what was actually going on here.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/articles/cye0ex43k63o

It’s ridiculous. Surely you can’t ‘identify’ as intersex, any more than you can ‘identify’ as (say) having cancer?
What were the tests carried out by the IBA that led to their being banned? That the boxers didn’t appeal? The IBA have stated that they weren’t testosterone tests, which (doesn’t it?) leaves one to assume they were genetic tests.
And if a fight between someone with XX chromosomes and someone with XY isn’t ’scientifically a man fighting a woman’, what the actual fuck is it then?
We deserve more than the implication that a bunch of hysterical women are crying foul because one of them has been beaten by someone with short hair and a flat chest.

Once more Janice Turner comes to the rescue
A simple cheek swab can protect female boxers

https://www.thetimes.com/article/b8a7b567-810f-4505-8c2e-e9cfb0b8132b?shareToken=bd8ee6dbf7a7ab4a95e4c816412900aa

People do. And then use the results that demonstrate they aren't to demonstrate that gender is a spectrum and there are no binaries.

"That mask is a potent symbol of her struggle to rip apart preconceived notions of gender and gain recognition of her own gender identity--that biology is not black and white and that shades of gray should be celebrated, not denied.
Xora was raised as a boy and began presenting as a woman when she turned 25. For years, she believed that she had androgen insensitivity syndrome, or AIS, a condition that causes person who is genetically male, with XY chromosomes, to not respond to male hormones. She identified as intersex, and she thought she was lucky to escape to invasive, painful, and often lengthy surgical procedures that other intersex children undergo, a practice that the United Nations has recently denounced as "torture."
Early this year, chromosomal tests showed that Xora was mistaken—she does not have AIS. She says that this only adds to her belief that gender does not exist on a binary—and that neither trans nor intersex people should have the suffer for that."

https://archive.is/ARGbR

However, currently, in sports, a test that demonstrates that somebody

• is male rather than female or
• has a VSD

is used as an argument that they are the sex with which it's strategic to identify.

Notably, Zdeněk Koubek, a medal winning athlete in the 1934 Women's Games (back when women couldn't enter Olympics and there were no women's events) opted to live as a man after learning of a VSD. afaict, there was nothing but positive and supportive press about this decision. Koubek (voluntarily) handed back the medals and Koubek's records were cancelled.

If my info is right, Khelif has a DSD in which the external genitalia appear ambiguous at birth, but chromosomes are XY. During childhood, sex differences are not that striking, so the fact that the child is a boy isn't that obvious. At puberty, carriers of this type of DSD go through ordinary male puberty, testosterone surge, muscle development and the lot.

Not sure how well he'd do among male light welterweights, probably not championship calibre, but among female boxers he obviously crushes bones. Which is the whole reason for having separate categories for those classes of people.

“There has been some confusion that somehow it's a man fighting a woman. This is just not the case. On that there is consensus, scientifically this is not a man fighting a woman."

That really pissed me off, when I heard the IOC man say that. I had to walk out of the room, I couldn’t bear to listen to any more of his nonsense.

The only 'evidence' there is that Imane has XY chromosomes at all comes from the head of a shady Russian organization.
Imane is a woman. There's pictures of her as (quite clearly) a little girl.
Her story should be inspiring. She collected scrap metal and worked hard to do boxing in the first place because her father wouldn't allow it. She has lifted herself out of poverty and has spent yer career championing sport in a country where there are worrying patterns of obesity in children, and where girls are discouraged from participating. Instead she's facing abuse and a gross spread of information, including from governmental figures! Shame on them and Rowling.

Just goes to show where all of this hate leads. Women who don't look or act like they're 'supposed' to being dragged in to the firing line, trans or otherwise.
This Reddit post sums it up. (Might be in the wrong order)

Nothingeverything · Yesterday 17:44

I don't get how they can control how journalists report this. What authority do they have?

None whatsoever, they work insidiously, by blackmail. If reporters don't toe the line, they will be thrown out and black-listed.

Facebook thread about this today had people who were clearly trans activists (from their profiles) stating that this man is in fact a woman who has given birth and doing their usual slagging off JKR as they like to slip her name in as often as possible.
The BBC are completely deranged on the whole issue of transgenderism in relation to women's spaces including sports. They are being ridiculously oblique in their reporting of this situation in boxing. I understand the IOC has told journalists they can’t refer to anybody as anything other than what that individual chooses. No wonder audiences are confused.

x.com/slatzism/status/1819427537740558848?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

She writes in a myth debunking post on behalf of her media platform Reduxx:

1. "The IBA only disqualified L & K because they beat Russian boxers at the 2023 championships!"

No they did not. I started seeing this weird, completely false claim circulating over the last 24 hours.

Khelif beat Thailand's Janjaem Suwannapheng and was set to compete against China's Yang Liu for gold in the Welterweight category.

Lin beat Bulgaria's Svetlana Kamenova Staneva for bronze in the Featherweight category.

They were scheduled to fight no Russian boxers in either one of their categories, and only one Russian boxer won a gold medal in the entire championship (Anastasiia Demurchian, Light Middleweight).

India won the most gold medals (4) at the 2023 Women's Championship. China won the most medals overall (7). Kazakhstan won the second most medals overall (6). Russia only won 3 medals at the championship.

Also worth noting that another Taiwanese boxer, Huang Hsiao-wen, won gold in the Bantamweight category. So for all the Taiwanese mouthpieces claiming Lin's disqualification was just "discrimination against Taiwan"... lol no.

That's in response to that Reddit screenshot being spammed all over social media, and posted here by @Ladybrrrd

@Ladybrrrd If the IOC are concerned over the accuracy of previous genetic testing, they should (quickly, easily, painlessly, maintaining everyone's dignity) do their own cheek swabs. Do it on every single athlete, if they don't want to single anyone out 🤷‍♀️

The debate isn't about whether these athletes have XX chromosomes - if they did, that would shut the whole thing down instantly and there would be no further discussion.

The question is, how far from standard XX female are we willing to consider to be eligible to compete against women.

That BBC headline infuriated me so much. Making it out to be that Carini wasn't able to cope under the pressure whereas the real issue was that she had to fight against a man.

As has been explained, males with 5ARD may appear to be female at birth. The raising of a child with 5ARD to believe they are an XX female, and to put them in stereotypical girls’ clothing is hardly surprising.

However, at puberty, such people start to go through a male puberty and their bodies undergo virilisation as part of a normal puberty. It’s extremely unlikely that in any country with developed healthcare that medical attention would not be sought at this point, and the underlying DSD diagnosed.

This is terrible for those individuals, and they undoubtedly deserve compassion.

However, this compassion cannot be reasonably extended to permitting 5ARD males who, through no fault of their own, believe/d themselves to be female, to compete in contact sports (or indeed any sport) with women.

The idea that males with 5ARD have testosterone levels within the upper XX female range is fallacious. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cen.13840

This isn’t hate. It’s anger at the wilful disregard for women’s safety.

The Reddit post is disinformation.

It is beyond discouraging that women are patiently, repeatedly, explaining over and over again, and people are still popping up here having read none of it with a downloaded opinion from reddit.

Basically it's the whole issue in a nutshell. He who rules well marketed bollocks on social media rules the word.

The whole thing is confusing. You have various media outlets citing entirely different DSDs Imane is meant to have had confirmed by testing.

Then you have Imane and the other boxer saying the IBA refused to give them the results of the testing. If that's true it makes the IBA look very cavalier with regards to athlete welfare because various DSDs carry other health risks and the person has a right to know so they can get properly checked out.

Imane tested as female on the athlete bio passport. That tests not just for doping analogues that may not show in urine but also tests for gene doping. So that's also confusing. The bio passport should have picked up the DSD

The whole thing just get weirder and weirder so maybe the BBC are keeping their powder dry lest they end up with egg on their face.

I keep seeing the "vagina" thing repeated on facebook - where has this idea come from?