The Guardian

[viques]

Do not adjust your set. Normal service has been resumed. All the usual, including a swipe at JKR, a slight blurring over possibly awkward facts, and a final plea for us all to “be kind”, yes honestly, be kind you meanies.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/02/boxing-imane-khelif-lin-yu-ting-facts-fairness-battering

Forgot to highlight the wonderful phrase used in this piece to explain away male bodied athletes with DSD.

”a different less linear personal biology, that may convey certain performance advantages” .

Thank you. This is infuriating. Basically they are sanctioning male violence against women. WTAF?

Fuck it! One step forward, two steps back
That'd be journalistic 'balance' then.😡

The author of that article is clueless.

At last year’s world championships Lin took a swab test which, according to the International Boxing Association (IBA), indicated the presence of sufficient male chromosomes to disqualify her from the women’s event.

"Sufficient male chromosomes"? Does he think that we all have a mixture of male and female chromosomes? But he seems to be accepting the IBA's statement that Lin has male chromosomes, although he doesn't understand that that means Lin is male. If he actually understood what he's said here, he'd realise that this makes the rest of his article complete nonsense.

No one knows if she [Lin], like Mboma, is what elite sport calls a DSD athlete, which means a person with a different, less linear personal biology, that may convey certain performance advantages.

No one? Lin probably knows. Also Lin's doctors. And the IBA, who carried out tests which resulted in Lin being disqualified from the world championships. But none of them are telling us. And the IOC may also know, but it suits their purposes to pretend not to know.

Mate

You either support female sport or you don't.

If you don't, then just say so, alright? Have the fucking courage of your convictions, Guardian.

there are obvious problems with encouraging people who have been through a testosterone-fuelled male puberty to compete in particular sporting events against people who have not.

These are hugely complex, essentially irresolvable issues.

They're really not. A chromosome test could show who is male and shouldn't be allowed to compete in the women's category. The only 'grey area' is people with XY chromosomes and CAIS. But this doesn't apply to the two boxers or people like Mboma or Semenya who have normal male levels of testosterone.

It is an impossibly difficult balance of interests, one that requires care and thought and sensitivity on all sides; that can only progress with trust and respect, by an absence of censure and blame, and above all by total clarity on the facts.

I agree that we need clarity on the facts, but the IOC doesn't want that. Why would that be?

Ffs

He has form. What a fool.

Sean Ingle has been immense, though. He’s been very careful previously to avoid “she/her” pronouns where appropriate and has done a great job in relation to the boxing yesterday. The Guardian may have taken him off the boxing today, though, as we have a slightly less robust report:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/02/boxing-olympics-lisa-nandy-imane-khelif-lin-yu-ting

Yes, Sean Ingle gets it and IIRC has written some good articles in the past.

How long before we get Jonathan Liew, formerly of The Independent, chiming in? He’s got form.

Ronay is such a fool. It’s hard to imagine how he can’t have learnt anything about this over the years since Semenya’s case. It’s like it’s still 2009 in his head.

This guy Ronay understands but pretends not to. He brings up Mboma as a parallel precisely because he understands that Mboma has a male DSD. It's likely that these two boxers have the same DSD.

Being "born a girl" simply means that no one identified their DSD at birth or in their childhood, due to access to suitable healthcare. If they appeared outwardly to be female then that's what would have been recorded and they would have been brought up to conform to the sex-based expectations of girls in their respective cultures. Of course none of that removes the physical differences that result from their DSD.

Another journo who probably has a trans in the family, read this makes me sick, so glad I dont subscribe to TG anymore and seeing their pleas for money at the bottom of articles makes my skin crawl.

As so many people have said, once you read an article by a journalist that you know something about, it changes your view of other journalism, because you realise it's a mishmash of half-understood facts and deliberate 'angles' with quotes from highly motivated sources who are magically available (if you're lucky - increasingly one of their tweets stands in for an actual quote).

Wonder if Barney Ronay and Sean Ingle ever talk.

@OldCrone - "Sufficient male chromosomes"? Does he think that we all have a mixture of male and female chromosomes?

I think it's too many Marvel movies, where people get injected with magic DNA (or bitten by a spider) and suddenly develop super powers.

“Sufficient male chromosomes” is embarrassing. There is only one male chromosome. He hasn’t understood even the most basic facts about this case. With typical mediocre male confidence, this hasn’t deterred him from writing an entire article about the subject.

What a load of bollocks. Of course the issue is resolvable.

One can have immemse sympathy on a personal level for any individual who discovers later in life that they have a DSD, especially when this discovery means they are ineligible to compete in the category they have trained so hard for.

But the fact that it is very distressing for that individual is completely and utterly irrelevant to the decision to allow or disallow male bodied athletes to complete in female sports, which should be based solely on the issue of safety and fairness for women.

God, the Guardian absolutely hates women doesn’t it. The beardy woke bros must be loving this, looking forward to another woman battered then getting to call her a bigot if she dares complain.

' sufficient male chromosomes!'
Haha how do these ignorant journalists keep their jobs?
Are we talking about a pick and mix selection? Maybe 60/40? 70/30?
Beyond belief.

I read this load of tosh before coming on to MN this morning and that "sufficient male chromosomes" nearly made me throw my phone across the room. I guess if you are that much of an idiot then lots of issues really do seem "essentially irresolvable".

It's not that "complex", dude.

I wonder how long it took him to pull that out of his arse?

It’s crazy isn’t it? Not an ounce of doubt must have crossed his mind because he has just put metaphorical ink to paper declaring he is ok with men battering women as an Olympic sport. It’s there forever for us all to see.

Just how idiotic can someone be? How can you become a journalist when either your general knowledge is so poor that you don't that there is ONE male chromosome, or you are so venal that you're prepared to lie about it?

The Grain is such a shameless rag. Anything of any value that it might have to say is tarnished by being associated with it. I just associate it with misinformation these days.

My guess is that he has very poor general knowledge. A surprising number of supposedly well-educated journalists lack even a rudimentary understanding of science. When I was in school, we did male and female chromosomes in the equivalent of year 9, ie before starting O-level/GCSE - we're not talking about degree-level stuff here. So he can't have paid any attention in biology class, or bothered to read anything related to human biology since then.

The subeditor who checked the piece should also have picked up on this, but didn't. It's a very poor show all round.

Journalistic integrity is not what it used to be.