BBC finally acknowledges something may be amiss in Olympics women's boxing

[Janie143]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crlr8gp813ko Good quotes from Dr Hilton.

When sex verification was in place, it still found several males in women’s sport prior to the Sydney Olympics.

We need to get back to some basic questions.

Given the fact that we know men will compete in women's sports events why do organisations like the IOC not demand sex tests.

Given the fact that Athlethics and Swimming bans males in women's competitions why did the IOC not do the same for boxing.

The IOC stated this games was all about equality of the sexes. Male and Female. Why has no journalist called them up on their stated aims of increasing female representation, but ignoring sex tests for cheating males.

There are conditions where people can have XY in some cells and XX (or just X) in others....so it is complicated. Maybe that's what was being referred to?

However, I'd still describe sex as being binary in humans, just as I'd describe humans as a bipedal species, even though some individuals are born without functioning legs. Descriptions at a population level are different to descriptions of an individual.

All this has been handled terribly badly. So unfair on everyone involved.

Ross Tucker's comments/interview on the Sports Agents podcast were very clear, not at all like this article. Cheek swab should be a screening process (done very early on in a sporting career) and then further tests done if the swab result is unclear. The question is does this person have male advantage - can they produce and benefit from testosterone, have they benefitted from a male skeleton, heart size etc?

Interesting question above about height and no detrimental effect of periods, pregnancy on atheletes who might externally appear female and not have testosterone-derived male advantage, but IMO to ban them from women's sport would be to open the door to discriminating on height and fertility grounds against all women and no doubt people with that DSD have competed in women's sport for decades, having been raised female and not known any different. DSDs have always been the edge cases and it is the trans stuff which has stirred this up more recently.

yes. It has been handled poorly by the IOC and the IBA has not been a shining light of clarity.

If the IOC showed leadership in November 2021 and took the position of excluding all males with pubertal advantage, that would have been the fairest thing they could do at that point. It would not have made up for all the harm for the previous 20+ years that they allowed after dropping sex testing, but it would have signified that they understood that they made a mistake and that they were now going to address it with the evidence that has been published.

It is about collective group descriptions.

If one group of people, have XY chromosomes which leads them to have advantages that may be proven to deliver advantages that other groups of female people don't have access to, then it is can be argued that that collective group has an advantage. At the moment, this group has not been proven to have advantages although there is plenty of discussion.

I would say that not ever having the potential to have a menstrual cycle is different to having the potential but those ovaries not working as expected.

However, as I say, at this time the group is not considered to have advantage and I look forward to this being shown so they can continue to compete.

you've not been following these threads closely have you.

XY, female phenotype, no uterus suggests CAIS I think.

Someone put up a very helpful flow diagram of dsd's on one of these many threads, I meant to save it as it was very comprehensive.

Interesting question above about height and no detrimental effect of periods, pregnancy on atheletes who might externally appear female and not have testosterone-derived male advantage, but IMO to ban them from women's sport would be to open the door to discriminating on height and fertility grounds against all women and no doubt people with that DSD have competed in women's sport for decades, having been raised female and not known any different

It would not open the door to discriminating against women on height and fertility fertility grounds. CAIS males are taller because their male-specific DSD means they are not responsive to the testosterone which puts a brake on growth. The reason they do not have periods is because they are male - they're not supposed to have periods. Their AIS is irrelevant to that - women are carriers of the genetic mutation that causes AIS and are unaffected.
From the NHS site:
The AIS gene is found on the mother's X chromosome. As the mother has 2 X chromosomes, the normal chromosome is able to make up for the faulty one. This means she's a carrier of the AIS gene, but does not have AIS and is able to have children.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/causes/#:~:text=The%20AIS%20gene%20is%20found,is%20able%20to%20have%20children.

The CAIS males' advantage of height and lack of periods is because they are male. Women's competition was created to exclude male advantage. External appearance doesn't matter. Healthy women do respond to testosterone. Our ovaries make more testosterone than oestrogen. Zero response to testosterone is as abnormal for women as it is for men.
We (including the scientists) have to stop defining women as people who look like women. We are not ushering the many masculine-looking sportswomen into male sport because they could pass, are we? Women are female human beings, of the sex which has the function (even if impaired) of producing large gametes.

and no doubt people with that DSD have competed in women's sport for decades, having been raised female and not known any different
For decades? And not known any different? Unlikely, and in any case irrelevant to eligibility for the female category in sport.

I understand the compassion for male athletes with a DSD but the answer is not to make women and women's sport compensate them for it.

Nothings amiss, but male on female violence is now an Olympic sport.

nothing to see here move along.

I disagree, I'm not sure DSDs can be judged as a group as phenotypes vary so much.

It's a body, including hormones etc, that provide advantage, not a person's genetic material.

Usually the latter dictates the former, but not always and not to the same degree. There can be huge variability even among people with the same basic diagnosis too.

Thank you for this. I’m squirming at Letizia’s “Gender and Identity Correspondent” job title.

IMO to ban them from women's sport would be to open the door to discriminating on height and fertility grounds against all women

What utter rot. They would be banned from women's sport because they are male.

There'll be a lot of people looking for jobs if the genderwoo scam collapses.

@Snowypeaks Very informative, thank you. Your final paragraph is spot on.

(Edited to say that I didn’t mean to quote you quantumbutterfly but yes, what will these people do?!)

“The article also jumps about all over the place, never really gets to grips with what makes someone male or female, and quotes experts without establishing their credentials.“

That was something I noticed with one or two of the persons quoted.

And I disagree.

Because specific DSDs have their own collective categories and needs based on those categories. Are you melding all DSDs into one group?

What part of male people with testes who may have advantage because they will never menstruate is unclear though?

They have a body that can never be categorised as one that had the potential to menstruate. They wouldn't have ovaries or ovary tissue. At this stage, menstruation is poorly researched. If in the future this has been found to be an advantage that is not attainable to the collective category of female people (as a collective) it will be discussion that should be had.

Males should be banned where they have male advantage. It appears there is a DSD whereby someone with XY chromosomes (and thought to be/raised as female hence looking to enter the female category) does not have any male advantage. Examples of height and lack of menstruation have been cited as possible advantages. Women (XX) can also be tall and not menstruate. It is a question of pinning down what is the advantage, and is it a specifically male advantage. Are they going to have an unfair sporting advantage as against an XX person of the same height. Subject to better understanding the nature and variations of DSDs I think there may be instances where a person with a Y chromosome might compete in the female category. If there is always some material male-specific advantage present, then probably not.

This^^

its all bullshit and needs to be dismissed as such.

"Are they going to have an unfair sporting advantage as against an XX person of the same height."

It is partly this. But it is also partly looking at it from a collective grouping as well. ie. is there potential for all the female athletes to have been born with that advantage, is what I think I am trying to say. If a group is XY and there was never going to be functioning ovaries due to the body being coded to produce testes only, then as a collective group for that specific difference of sex disorder, there would be an argument to exclude.

Of course, to be clear, this is dependent on there being confirmed as lack of menstruation being an advantage to such a degree that it should be excluded. At the moment, it is not, and it may never be.

If not why not?
If Y then not.

I’m quite concerned that someone who looks unambiguously female can get to 33 and not seek out some sort of medical advice re: the lack of a period. Presumably the relative who never menstruated is ann older relative and hadn’t sought medical adevice either?

Yes, I found this surprising. Even more so that the woman was evidently trying to conceive- surely her lack of periods must have given her reason to think it might be tricky to get pregnant?

Males should be banned where they have male advantage.

Males should be banned because they are not female. The female category is not for males with medical conditions.

@Crouton19

Males as a class have male advantage. The fact that a specific male or group of males has a reduced advantage doesn't matter.

CAIS males are over-represented in the women's category of elite sport. Since they will have come up through female sporting pathways and, with the same prejudices and restricted access to resources, this fact of over-representation alone creates a strong presumption of advantage. It's the perfect experiment. Males who look like females, are treated as female, still do better at sport than females. How can it not be a specifically male advantage/female disadvantage?

CAIS males are taller on average than women. As a class, they are taller. Height is an advantage in most sports and the reason they are taller is because they are male.

No CAIS male has periods.
If a woman does not have periods, something is wrong. Perhaps she is over-training, or has taken hormonal medication. A CAIS male without periods is a normal healthy individual.
You are making exactly the same argument as could be made for inclusion of a male with another kind of disability. If CAIS males are in female sport, why shouldn't disabled males or males with a performance-limiting medical condition also compete in female sport?

Which brings me to the fact that there is no reciprocity. Where are the females with DSDs doing well in men's elite sport?

Author of the article has tweeted about it here: https://x.com/SofiaBettiza/status/1821826347074752979

Perhaps those of us with Twitter account could leave some kind words of encouragement and appreciativeness?

I know there are things in the article to nitpick (and plenty are doing so in the replies to that tweet) but this is a sea change for the BBC in actually publishing a fairly balanced article on a highly controversial sex and gender issue. Worth recognising I think.

(Yes I know this is at odds with my earlier snarky comment.)