Anti GC online abuse

[NotNowFGS]

I rose to it today. Couldn't help myself. Challenged a couple of folk on Twitter who were responding positively to my batshit TRA MPs statement on Twitter about the Olympic boxing business. I'm always polite. I ask questions and challenge gently here and there, but good god they always get abusive. I never learn.

I think illtemperedclavicinist was joking?

No one who is GC including JKR said the boxer is trans. The boxer who is most likely suffering a DSD located within the male sex - hence the xy chromosomes and the evidence before our eyes of quite a masculine appearance (it is a fiction that people cannot tell the sexes apart, we have been doing it for 200 000 years!) was most probably identified and treated as a female in their country and I understand it is a pity that that person has become the focus rather than the IOC and the idiots who believe in sex transubstantiation.

Sex identification is not complicated for the vast majority - 99.98% and the even the 0.02% who who suffer from developmental disorders fall within male and female categories.

@@Immemorialelms

Why?? Why has it taken off like this? I am shocked that maybe these TERFS I heard about, these prejudiced folk, might exist after all - I've seen no evidence of them before today

It has taken off because the IOC drunk the koolAid and has been refusing to do anything about trans and intersex people in sport for years.

No it has come back to bite them on the arse and has also dragged in the athletes themselves.

And surely if their is a question over someone's sex, the first thing to do would be to test them to find out.

I was joking, yes, but I am also someone who thinks that people with complex DSDs (but only them) should be free to choose their 'social' sex. So I see no inconsistency in she/her-ing Semenya, but also expecting her male gross body type to exclude her from female competition.

I have to take issue with the sperm thing though @Zita60 . 5-ARD individuals don't produce spermatazoa. They do have non-mobile precursor germ cells, which can be surgically extracted and used in intracytoplasmic injection (a form of ivf). It's a faff, and I don't think Semenya has revealed whether they did that, or used a sperm donor.

I see, thanks.
I disagree unless it's Swyers or CAIS.

Just on point 1.

This is a variation of Be Kind. It is valid of you to take the stand that these two boxers are “eligible” but there is no moral superiority cookies for you. It is at least equally valid to say “these two boxers are not eligible” without it being a commentary as to their “womanhood”.
I think the IBA ruling of “they are not eligible” is fair and valid. I think the IOC ruling that they are is problematic on several fronts, only one of which is that they won’t own the decision.

Yeah, it's not a hill I want to die on, but it makes me wince when people insist CAIS individuals should be treated as men (someone here suggested they should be excluded from women's facilities for instance) so I've adopted something more or less internally consistent that works for me.

ETA I think that 5-ARD individuals in certain countries could find it politically impossible to live as a man, for instance.

Nobody is saying CAIS males should be treated as men in all circumstances, I'm pretty sure. But speaking for myself, my view is that since they are male, they should not be in women's sport.

it makes me wince when people insist CAIS individuals should be treated as men someone here suggested they should be excluded from women's facilities for instance) so I've adopted something more or less internally consistent that works for me.

Have they? On MN? I remember the issue surfacing when (then) YouTuber Exulansic is reported to have said something as extreme as that. I remember the thread after thread in which nobody supported that stance but I may well have missed the thread/poster that you recall.

It was someone on this board in the last two days, but I don't know how I'd find it. And maybe they didn't know much about it.

I think the point is the IOC, and others including TRAs, what the category of female to include anyone with F on their birth certificate or passport
Given the ease in many countries to change documentation it means the female category will include males with or without DSDs
Neither should be there of course

I'd be interested if you do find it and post it, so please tag me in.

This is the approach I have taken. I correct misinformation, possibly add a single point on an issue, and remain polite and respectful. On one occasion I corrected an American poster, male, who stated that trans people were being executed in the UK. I gave the years when we last executed a man and a woman. I was called names and a whole bunch of strangers defended me. So it's getting to the neutral bystanders.

My understanding is that this person has a DSD. Some men with DSDs are born with a 'vagina', but have XY chromosomes and are male. They ought not to be in competition with women.

Blimey, that's a weird one, actually believing that we are executing trans people!

I'm glad you pointed out the truth.

Completely tangential but Woolf contrived a substantial misunderstanding about execution for sodomy.

It was only published this week, but already the writer Naomi Wolf has admitted an error at the heart of her latest book. Instead of being “actually executed for sodomy” in 1859, as the writer claims in Outrages, Thomas Silver was apparently “paroled two years after being convicted”.
Silver, who was 14 when he was convicted, is just one of several cases cited in the book but, according to the writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet, the error stems from a simple misreading of a historical record and raises wider questions about the argument Wolf puts forward.

In Outrages, which was published by Virago, Wolf examines the effect of 19th-century legal changes on the lives of Victorian poets such as John Addington Symonds and argues that the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 marked a turning point in the treatment of gay people.

“People widely believe that the last executions for sodomy were in 1830,” Wolf told the Observer. “But I read every Old Bailey record throughout the 19th century, so I know that not only did they continue; they got worse.”
According to Sweet, who first challenged Wolf on Radio 3’s Arts and Ideas, her error concerning Silver stems from a misunderstanding of “the very precise historical legal term, ‘death recorded’, as evidence of execution, when in fact it indicates the opposite”.

www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/24/naomi-wolf-admits-blunder-over-victorians-and-sodomy-executions

According to Sweet, [....], her error concerning Silver stems from a misunderstanding of “the very precise historical legal term, ‘death recorded’, as evidence of execution, when in fact it indicates the opposite”.

How weird! Sounds bonkers, so I shall read the article, see if it explains...

A little learning is a dangerous thing? 'death recorded' meant that the judge recorded that the death sentence was applicable but knew it would be overturned. For an execution to take place the judge had to say that the death sentence was to be carried out. 'death recorded' did the opposite, meaning no death sentence would be carried out but was only a written note that the death sentence applied.

Found it!

"I just keep imagining either of my daughters in their mid teens (one of whom WAS a late menstruator) being diagnosed with such a condition and suddenly being told they are a male and must use male facilities etc."

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5128805-olympics-question?reply=137140481&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

It was just an aside.

I realised the last comment was a joke. 😄Although in this area, you can never be entirely sure...

From what I've read, it seems that some males with 5-ARD do produce sperm that can fertilise an egg normally, although it's not common.

"Besides impaired virilization, subfertility is common. Varying causes have been reported including cryptorchidism and abnormal prostate development with low semen volumes and impaired seminal liquefaction, which is mediated by PSA.1,2 Fertility treatments depend on the grade of impaired spermatogenesis and seminal transport. For men with normal sperm concentration and motility, spontaneous or intrauterine insemination is possible. In vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) has been proven successful in men with small and viscous semen samples."

https://www.endocrine-abstracts.org/ea/0071/ea0071028

I wasn't aware of intracytoplasmic injection before, so thank you for mentioning that. I had actually assumed that in all cases of IVF a sperm was injected into the egg - I didn't realise that it normally simply involves the egg and sperm being mixed together.

It seems that at least one of Semenya's children was conceived through "insemination". It's not clear whether that was using his own sperm though.

https://www.news24.com/life/arts-and-entertainment/celebrities/news/caster-semenya-and-wife-violet-celebrate-miracle-baby-on-third-birthday-20220706-2

(As an aside, I was sitting in the front row of the stadium when the World Athletics Championships took place in London in 2017, and Semenya and the other athletes walked out for their race just a few feet away from me. Semenya looked so much like a man in comparison with the women. Clearly that's not how we should judge if someone is male or female, but Semenya's physicality was quite striking.)

The number of different ways that things can go wrong with sexual development is very interesting. It must be very difficult for people who thought they were one sex and then later find out they are a different one.

I may be missing something but what you previously posted was
it makes me wince when people insist CAIS individuals should be treated as men someone here suggested they should be excluded from women's facilities for instance)

I questioned that - I haven't seen any posts on MN which say that or anything like that. The post you've just quoted in evidence doesn't say that, either:
"I just keep imagining either of my daughters in their mid teens (one of whom WAS a late menstruator) being diagnosed with such a condition and suddenly being told they are a male and must use male facilities etc."

All I've seen is people (like me) saying CAIS males should be excluded from women's sport.

It was just an aside.

Nobody actually advocated that they should be? It was a hypothetical concern? Thank you for finding the link and posting it as it's rather reassuring. (I'd have been concerned if it hadn't been challenged in situ had such a thing been suggested.)

Doesn't "suddenly being told they are a male and must use male facilities etc." mean that? If not, I have misunderstood: my apologies.

I remember reading about that - it was pretty embarrassing for her.

She's a strange one. She's gone very weird in recent years.

The full quote you posted:
"I just keep imagining either of my daughters in their mid teens (one of whom WAS a late menstruator) being diagnosed with such a condition and suddenly being told they are a male and must use male facilities etc."

So we've established that nobody said they must be treated as a man in all circumstances or anything approximating that.
Anyone can misread or misunderstand, I do sometimes, it's no biggy if you admit it.