Does Imane Khelif even have a DSD?

[BeLemonNow]

Giving the widespread reporting of a previous test showing Imane Khelif is biologically male / XY is there actually any evidence as to whether or not they even have a Disorder of Sexual Development (DSD). Or is this straightforward fraud? I know there was speculation before...

By DSD, going by NHS information, in this case I mean XY chromosomes with an abnormality causing a baby's genitals to look female (but not a DSD where there's XY and some sort of penis even if smaller than normal). To be clear, I am aware that these differences are usually apparent by puberty. It looks likely Imane went through male puberty.

Apologies if this has been covered in a different thread, but I cannot see it anywhere. I am aware that the only IOC criteria to compete at the Olympics was a female passport - ridiculous really - but that Imane has been claiming to be living as a woman since birth.

Hopefully we can move past that clear unfairness in sport. Make better rules.

I just don’t think it means we should start referring to everybody with a specific type of DSD as men, even though they identify as women. Even within a certain ‘class’ of DSD, eg 5-ARD or CAIS, there will be a spectrum of phenotypic appearance. It’s complicated.

No, they are not DSDs. There is no disorder or difference in their sexual development. They are chromosomal aneuploidies that just happen to affect the sex chromosomes. Just because the sex chromosomes are affected doesn’t make them DSDs.

No problem at all with respectful argument. As I said it was the continual sniping (in my perception at least) that was getting a bit much. Thanks for stopping, appreciate it @Helleofabore.

I’m sorry that anyone misunderstood what I was trying to say at first. I do think I clarified my point of view so it shouldn’t still be unclear at this point in the thread.

But you’re talking about being “respectful” and using the pronouns someone chooses. That means you have to refer to them as women (because that’s what they’re choosing”) and use she/her, doesn’t it?

So the conversation goes like this:

Passmeby: I don’t think she [whichever athlete of topic] should be in women’s sport.

Activist: but she’s a woman, that’s how she identifies, so why can’t she be in women’s sport?

Passmeby: I appreciate she sees herself as a woman but she has male advantage.

Activist: but you’re calling her a woman, acknowledge she is a woman because that’s her identity, so any advantage she has is just natural woman advantage, isn’t it?

Isn't this the danger of trying to be “respectful” in your language?

No, I don’t see that as a problem @NotBadConsidering. I think there needs to be clear medical guidelines about who can complete in women’s sport and athletes need to be individually assessed. I don’t think identity should be a factor in sport, it’s physicality that matters (re DSDs).

Yes, that’s your position. But you can’t argue your position because of the language you choose. Your position can be dismissed because you don’t make any sense. Anyone arguing for the inclusion of males who identify as women in women’s sport can just say

“You’re calling them women, why do they need separate assessments?”

”Why do people who you’re calling women need assessments to be in women’s sport?”

“If they’re women, then any difference found is just a difference found in women, isn’t it?”

This was the IOC argument.

If everyone else had used the language you want to use and think is respectful, nothing would have changed. Luckily the rest of us called the men we saw as men. Seb Coe wouldn’t have changed the rules without that. If people keep using your language then it won’t be possible to convince other sporting organisations to make the same changes.

So you say you’re against men in women’s sport but your adherence to language choices out of being “respectful” will only prolong men in women’s sport.

Okay, I’m not sure about how Jacobs is classified medically so. I thought an atypical sex chromosome arrangement meant DSD. Haven’t time to read up on it again now.

Pretty sure Turner’s is included? Intervention is needed at puberty afaik, literally because of differences in sex development. No ovaries so typical hormone-led development of secondary sex characteristics at puberty doesn’t occur (or only partially).

I think my argument makes sense so we’ll have to agree to disagree on that 😅

I think people are capable of appreciating nuance and understanding the implications of someone having a complicated medical condition.

Needing hormone treatment at puberty does not make it a DSD. Other conditions, like hypopituitarism need hormones to make puberty happen.

And we don’t agree.

What I think we agree on is the language choice is personal and people should feel free to make those choices.

The point is, this thread is about Khelif. Should we stick to the thread topic? I think the discussion around language is not going anywhere at all, the poster from pages back that started this deviation has left the thread it seems.

Thank you for clarifying that Notbad.

I think people are capable of appreciating nuance and understanding the implications of someone having a complicated medical condition.

Then you haven’t been paying attention. For years the language choice you advocate for has been the basis for the defence of male DSD athletes in women’s sport. It was part of the Caster Semenya case. It’s the argument people use repeatedly here and the rest of the internet.

“If you say they’re women, and they’re legally women, and their birth certificate says they’re women, then to say they can’t be in women’s sport is bigotry.”

People absolutely are not capable of nuance around medical conditions at all. All they see is identity and pronouns. There are still people who think Semenya is a woman who’s been mistreated for being a woman with natural advantage. Language has created this mess.

Turner's is listed on the NHS website as a sex chromosome DSD. Jacob's is not (presumably because it has no effect on reproductive function or structures).

Wouldn’t having a single sex chromosome instead of two and no ovaries make it a DSD?

I know I’ve seen Turners on lists of DSD conditions.

The issue is that usage of language brings philosophical debate into the discussion that should be restricted to strict sports science when it involves whether to include a group of people from outside the female sports category into that category.

It is this philosophical discussion about rights that opened the Olympics up to this very group of male people in the first place. And it is the same basis that remains with the passport sex being used.

We have seen different aspects of this philosophical discussion being leveraged about this topic constantly in media and official discussion. The claim that people can see the nuance is not supported at all when you continue to see media presenters, journalists and academics all using obfuscating language that causes confusion and misinformation.

It would be supported if the public had years of reading about this group of conditions and had that basic knowledge. Strangely, we are getting there slowly, but we are not there at all. I still have discussions with people who genuinely believe that Khelif and Semenya are female athletes with high testosterone in the healthy female range of testosterone levels.

I know there have been problems in the past. I don’t think the best way to move past those problems is to insist on a use of language that means that others (outside sport) may be unfairly treated iyswim.

I don’t think it’s okay to advocate for rights for one group of people by stomping on the rights of others (in this case people with complex medical conditions). That’s why I don’t like the way the trans situation has gone either.

For a long time, the argument was "transwomen are women so they belong in women's sport". For many, it still is. There was a poster earlier who did the old "and other women/females" to try to slip in the dishonest language by stealth, as TRAs have been doing for 500 years and can't believe we notice. This person claimed to believe Khelif doesn't belong in women's sports but considered it nasty (no) and disrespectful (again no) to use honest and accurate language when explaining why.

We had a very brief window where we might have been able to keep referring to men as women and she/her, as a polite fiction, if they would keep to their side of the unspoken bargain and not actually tried to make us prove that we actually believed what we were saying by giving them free rein in women's spaces and the erasure of women as a sex class that does not include men. Obviously, that was never going to happen so here we are.

Messing around with language, Newspeak, trying to make it impossible to articulate the issue because the words no longer exist to do it, is straight out of Nineteen Eighty Four. It's not even satirical. It's quite literally what happens in the book. Right up there with wrongthink and thoughtcrime. But I don't think even Big Sibling Assigned Male at Birth saw this one coming.

Yes and I don’t agree. Girls with Turner Syndrome are unequivocally girls at birth, and unequivocally develop along the female pathway, and are afflicted with underdeveloped ovaries. They still have ovaries, just underdeveloped. The ovarian problems in Turner’s are just one issue of a whole body syndrome with multiple systems affected by the chromosomal abnormality. The difference in ovary development is not the defining feature of the condition so in my view it’s not the same as DSDs, where the DSD part is a defining feature of the diagnosis. Contrast that with 5-ARD or PAIS as examples, where the only issues seen are related to the the lack of DHT and lack of full androgen sensitivity respectively.

A range of genetic syndromes cause cryptorchidism as one of many effects of the syndrome - Down Syndrome, Prader Willi, Noonan Syndrome, plus loads of others - but we don’t call those syndromes DSDs. Turner should be considered like these, a systemic syndrome that includes genitourinary issues as part of its effects.

Well you can blame the TRAs for that! They were the ones who exploited people with DSDs and spread bullshit misinformation about them and dragged them into a subject that had nothing to do with them, so that they could try to muddy the concept of a woman to include men. Khelif has always been clear he isn't trans, the concept is shameful to him. He wants everyone to think he's a born woman.

If you don't like the exploitation of people with DSDs, don't take it up with us. We're the ones who have always been consistent that a man with a DSD is a man and it's fuck all to do with transgenderism.

I don’t think the best way to move past those problems is to insist on a use of language that means that others (outside sport) may be unfairly treated iyswim.

But you still haven’t proffered a solution as to how you can accurately describe the men with DSDs in sport. What you’re proposing is we have to dishonestly refer to the male athletes because non-athletes might get upset. But how do you make it clear the athletes are male?

I don’t think it’s okay to advocate for rights for one group of people by stomping on the rights of others (in this case people with complex medical conditions)

How is defending the rights of women and girls and the right to single sex sport, by using clear language pointing out the transgressors into women’s sport are men (or male if you want to temper it a bit) “stomping” on the rights of other people with DSDs?

Is this anything other than “be kind and acquiesce?”

But you still haven’t proffered a solution as to how you can accurately describe the men with DSDs in sport.

‘This person has a DSD condition that means they’re ineligible for the women’s competition’ or words to that effect?

“But you're just discriminating against natural advantage, it’s not her problem she was born that way, it’s like Michael Phelps and his big feet. Why is she ineligible?”

Now what?

The NHS lists Turners as a DSD, along with Kleinfelters (XXY).

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/differences-in-sex-development/#:~:text=Another%20example%20of%20this%20type,with%20a%20missing%20X%20chromosome.

Up until women made a big fuss, the NHS also said puberty blockers are reversible.

The NHS says things like “people with cervixes”. They’re not the authority people think they are.

ETA x post with Arabella