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.

I know you didn't say DSDs make men ineligible. I said what you said. Once again (I still have it in the clipboard): You said "This person has a DSD condition that means they’re ineligible for the women’s competition".

But the DSD is not what means they are ineligible. They are ineligible because they're male.

You made a factually untrue and incorrect statement because you won't use honest language.

Do you want to deny it again? It's nothing to us, you aren't fooling anyone.

Look we’re clearly not going to see eye-to-eye on this @ThatCyanCat.

I stand over the phrase
”This person has a DSD condition that means they’re ineligible for the women’s competition". It was just meant as a quick example of wording that might possibly be used instead of saying someone can’t compete because they’re a man (pp questioned me on this).

I didn’t deny saying that particular phrase.

Okay, just read your last post @ThatCyanCat. I’m not going to interact with you anymore.

It's nothing about a difference of opinion and everything about your posts being dishonest and deflective.

The DSD is not what makes a man ineligible for a women's competition. He is ineligible because he is a man, DSD or not. If you don't understand this,
you have no right to lecture anyone about the complexities of, well, anything.

Perhaps you do not understand biological sex, or perhaps you do not understand DSDs. I suspect, though, that you understand both but you're seeking a back door way to try to use DSDs to complicate sex while denying that you're doing it because you know the discussion has moved on and people aren't buying it any more.

These tactics worked at one point, but that time is long gone. Try something else. Absolutely nobody is fooled.

you were asking about the PAIS individual and Van der Wouden. The last three items would still apply, but their reproductive potential would not be improved [if they had feminising treatment]! If they had decided to have masculinising treatment instead, they might have become able to father children.

This tells you something very important about the sex of people with PAIS.

It says all it needed to say.

I do see the problems of course.

It’s just…I see it as people saying that to avoid being unfair to women in sports (which I agree is an absolute necessity) we need to be unfair to people with DSDs instead (regarding language and their identity I mean). All because the public isn’t too smart?

It rankles. I don’t think it’s okay. Maybe I’m being too idealistic. I don’t want to settle for what I see as unfairness towards anyone.

I think journalists especially can do better. And sporting organisations of course.

But why is unfair to call a man a man?

It’s just…I see it as people saying that to avoid being unfair to women in sports (which I agree is an absolute necessity) we need to be unfair to people with DSDs instead (regarding language and their identity I mean). All because the public isn’t too smart?

It's got nothing to do with DSDs despite your constant attempts to make them relevant, and it most certainly isn't because people aren't clever enough to see through the obfuscation. However, if you do think people are stupid, using clear and honest language is the best way to make them understand.

People with DSDs are men or women. Any man is not eligible for women's sport and if he has a DSD, nobody ever has to know if he simply sticks to his correct category. Most people with DSDs naturally appear the sex they are and their condition can stay between them and their doctor. There's no need for it to be an issue if you're not ever trying to obfuscate the concept of sex.

I think DSDs are an exception to the usual ‘rules’, or some of them can be at least.

Mostly XY means male, but occasionally it doesn’t. Even if it’s just a case of not recognising a condition at birth, as in 5-ARD, I think the subsequent upbringing as female has to be taken into account.

External appearance of genitals also seems to matter. I don’t know how IK identifies in private but the report someone linked upthread spoke of a (blind-ending) vagina and not of a penis. I do know some with the same condition continue to consider themselves heterosexual females even when their diagnosis is made clear post puberty. According to the scientific literature, the degree to which someone considers themselves male or female post-diagnosis seems to correlate with the appearance of the genitals, and this varies. 5-ARD is a spectrum condition.

Other DSDs can be more complex.

I don’t think it’s okay to dismiss these people’s experience or their identity in these cases. I do think that’s unfair. They are more than a collection of their body parts.

And let's face it, they already know that they are male before any official sporting body tests anyway.

"Let's be fair to the man who is trying to cheat"

No.

So feel free to lobby for a DSD category in sport. Because you can’t allow males in female sports if you don’t want to be unfair to anyone. Males have a biological advantage which is the reason we have a female only carton the first place.

@GargoylesofBeelzebub
Yes, I agree about the biological advantage. I don’t think anyone who’s had a male puberty should be allowed compete in women’s sports. I was speaking about identity and language use only.

But the difficulty still remains in how to convince others you’re even talking about male advantage, because none of your proposed solutions describe that. If it was up to you and you were in charge of sport, everyone would think you were unfairly picking on women with DSDs.

I think it depends on the specific DSD doesn't it? Athletes with CAIS are technically 46,XY males with testes, but the complete insensitivity to androgens has them develop an external female phenotype. So they're eligible in some competitions where 5-ARD males would be excluded (e.g. World Athletics DSD policy).

Maybe you are overthinking this. It's really only a major issue in the situation exemplified by Khelif and Semenya.

Others with 46XY DSDs (CAIS, Swyer, treated PAIS, and 5-ARD with feminising treatment) will have a physique entirely consistent with their sex registered at birth (including any corrections), which is also their biological sex for equality purposes. Since their medical history is confidential, they'll be treated as women. Unless they blab about being gonadally male in their acceptance speech for a women's prize , which might earn them some side-eye. (I'm also aware that CAIS in sport is not entirely uncontroversial.)

But someone with 5-ARD who goes through male puberty without correcting their birth registration (nothing wrong with that as such), and then gets into women's sport is just taking the piss.

Silver lining is that their blatant male appearance will keep them out of Schedule 3 women's spaces: and we can misgender them all the live long day without falling foul of discrimination law.

The individual DSDs may have varying levels of hormonal and physical presentations but the World Athletics and hopefully eventually the IOC guidelines couldn’t be clearer.

If you are XY AND androgen sensitive ie gone through any form of male puberty, then you’re ineligible. That’s it 🤷‍♀️

Pragmatically, that means males with 5ARD and PAIS are excluded from the women’s category and CAIS can compete with women.

There’s no need to bring up other conditions such as Klinefelter’s and Turner’s. I agree with notbad that classifying them as DSDs is erroneous, there’s no sex ambiguity, Kinefleter’s only occurs in boys/men and Turner’s only occurs in girls/women and both disorders confer athletic disadvantages, they aren’t going to be in elite sport.

I don’t think it’s okay to dismiss these people’s experience or their identity in these cases. I do think that’s unfair. They are more than a collection of their body parts

In private, of course. For cheating men trying to weasel their way into women’s sport - a protected category? I think the media and even the sports’ bodies are being too sensitive to the feelings of the cheating males.

There’s no room for privacy in elite sport - with a urinary drug test the tester needs to see the urine leave the athlete’s body.

Murmuring about “chromosomal tests” and “hormone imbalances” obfuscates the issue. They need to make it clear what the guidelines are - in athletics it’s XY and male puberty. I still see some posters arguing “what about women with PCOS?” As though it’s a gotcha, not realising how badly they’ve misunderstood the guidelines, as well as female physiology. Women with severe PCOS with elevated androgens are not well women, they’re not elite athletes.

A positive aspect of all of this is that, in Western countries at least, the development of NIPT screening and the ever-improving quality of antenatal scanning means that it will become increasingly rare for infants with ambiguous genitalia to have the incorrect sex assigned at birth.

It’s also ridiculous for any source to include 46XYY as a DSD. It’s debatable whether it’s even a syndrome because many, many men go through life never even knowing they have an extra Y chromosome. Add to that there is no difference in their sexual development whatsoever how on earth is it a DSD?

With respect, I don’t think it’s up to us on MN to decide how DSDs are classified.
Turners and Kleinfelters are classified as DSDs in the medical literature. I agree they’re not relevant from the point of view of elite sport (though I think fairness is equally important in non-elite sport anyway).

Some sources do include all sex chromosome trisomies as DSDs, some don’t seem to list 47,XYY so I’m not sure of the consensus on this condition as a DSD tbh.

It is a syndrome and is associated with a higher incidence of certain diagnoses and medical conditions but it’s often undiagnosed.

No it’s not. If it’s massively undiagnosed - and it is - there’s no way of knowing that any difficulties are associated with it or associated with just the general population. Millions of men have an extra Y and don’t know about it. They don’t have an undiagnosed syndrome.

Given the same medical literature includes XYY as a DSD, it’s safe to say that it’s ok to challenge its inclusion and the inclusion of XO and XXY as DSDs.

Of course the classifications can be questioned. DSDs are now considered the correct nomenclature, rather than “intersex”. It wasn’t that long ago that CAIS was known as “testicular feminisation”.

When people try to include men with Klinefelter’s in a discussion around ambiguity of sex I always assume they have no idea what they’re talking about. People with XXY chromosomes are born boys, who look like boys and grow into men. There’s no ambiguity.