How does it solve this situation? She was not born a man.
Olympics boxing controversy - IBA bans lifted on Lin and Khelif by IOC
- Thread starter klsv
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It's not IQ, it's ragebaiting for clicks. The internet is just a giant ragebaiting machine now, especially on X after it's been taken over by the ragebaiter in chief.This whole ordeal made me realise how many low IQ people there are on socials. Do they think that a man can suddenly identify as a woman in Algeria ? Do they not know anything about the MENA region ? I mean, this is a country that banned the barbie movie because they thought the portrayal of Ken was 'too feminine'.
The ignorant masses are really just victims of a lack of education and these evil grifters filling their heads with lies to make money. Well that and the awesome social media algorythm.
It won’t solve this problem (based on what little we know about it) but if you’re legislating for the more general issue of transgender athletes than XX vs XY seems the obvious way to establish biological sex. Biological females with XY chromosomes are so incredibly rare - relative to the incidence of transgenderism - they can be dealt with on a case by case basis. Basically the same way they are now. Although, obviously, with a lot more proactivity than the way IOC decided to handle what happened here. The fact we know the only two high profile DSD athletes by name (and make that one, if it turns out this boxer doesn’t have DSD) really just proves how unusual this particular condition is.
The Algerian fighter was banned before the gold medal match at the worlds last year.
I think the contention is that they were born male with a DSD which still makes them "male".
Do we have all the facts yet? Some of this is speculation, but I want to try to get a rough outline:
1. Khelif is probably born intersex (possibly with male chromosomes and female genitalia?).
2. In Algeria transitioning/changing gender is illegal (although I don't know the rules in the case of infants born intersex).
3. She was raised as a girl and there are photos to prove this.
4. Her physique, while masculine for a woman, is not that strange when comparing to some other female top athletes over the years.
5. She became a professional (or high level) boxer at the age of 19 and spent the next 4 years not looking abnormally strong or good.
6. In 2023 she failed a chromosome test and was banned from the tournament.
7. The IOC let her compete in this Olympics because she doesn't break any of their established rules.
And now we are in murky waters... I don't think that there is anything insidious going on from her side. Unless she has purposely taken "drugs" to hold herself back for the first 4 (!) years of her career then she hasn't cheated in any way. She was raised as a girl and worked hard to get where she is, and she seemingly doesn't have an unfair physical advantage either. But on the other hand, the rules must be clear in order to prevent others from cheating.
It's a mess, but my sympathies lie with Khelif for now. I hope that she is allowed to continue competing. And not just in the Olympics.
The other possibility is that the IBA has fecked up and that Khelif is female and always has been. In which case: feck them!
1. Khelif is probably born intersex (possibly with male chromosomes and female genitalia?).
2. In Algeria transitioning/changing gender is illegal (although I don't know the rules in the case of infants born intersex).
3. She was raised as a girl and there are photos to prove this.
4. Her physique, while masculine for a woman, is not that strange when comparing to some other female top athletes over the years.
5. She became a professional (or high level) boxer at the age of 19 and spent the next 4 years not looking abnormally strong or good.
6. In 2023 she failed a chromosome test and was banned from the tournament.
7. The IOC let her compete in this Olympics because she doesn't break any of their established rules.
And now we are in murky waters... I don't think that there is anything insidious going on from her side. Unless she has purposely taken "drugs" to hold herself back for the first 4 (!) years of her career then she hasn't cheated in any way. She was raised as a girl and worked hard to get where she is, and she seemingly doesn't have an unfair physical advantage either. But on the other hand, the rules must be clear in order to prevent others from cheating.
It's a mess, but my sympathies lie with Khelif for now. I hope that she is allowed to continue competing. And not just in the Olympics.
The other possibility is that the IBA has fecked up and that Khelif is female and always has been. In which case: feck them!
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Except there is zero evidence the Algerian fighter was born male.
According to who though? other than these right wing grifters or known transphobes who have a wonderful record of being truthful and not know for absolutely not spreading fake news to support their agendas.
Well both fighters under scrutiny were both banned last year during the Worlds for failing gender tests, one before the gold medal match and one past winning gold, so there is that. Issue I agree is the IBA are in disreput currently so perhaps there is a nefarious conspiracy where they did this to get back at the IOC, but then that starts to get a bit fantastical.
Listened to this, had some really good explainers on DSD, testosterone and the situation between the IOC and the IBA.
Not really. They can have female genitalia and be assigned as female at birth. So they’re definitely not (always) born “male”.
The issue is that they can have internalised testes and, hence, high testosterone levels. Which needs to be taken into account when considering eligibility to compete. They would fail a “gender test” based on chromosomes but they’re not transgender and may only discover they have this condition very late on in their athletic career. It’s a tricky scenario for sporting governence to deal with. But very very rare.
Two things. They didn't provide any evidence of the test which was one of the initial issues and it's actually mentioned in one of the tweets that you posted, in fact it states the IBA themselves recognize that they didn't have a clear procedure in place. And unless you know the details of that test, you can't actually know whether she is medically considered a male or female.
Now, the IOC should have done their own test. I don't know if they have or not but it hasn't been mentioned anywhere, the only thing I have seen is that the algerian association provided a medical report but its content isn't known.
Yeah that’s fair vs my post, but she was such a distinctly average boxer that no one else she had ever fought reacted in this way before the test. I’ve just seen the Italian fighter said that she had to withdraw to save her life. It’s laughable. I’ve also seen a video of the Italian fighter getting schooled and withdrawing from another fight for a sore ankle.
There’s massive question marks about the tests the IBA did before banning her. There’s no test results available or even confirmation of the tests that were conducted. The IBA is run by a Russian and banned Khelif after defeating a Russian fighter in the Worlds. It stinks.
Aha. That answers a question I had earlier. What motivated the (corrupt) IBA to ban someone unfairly. Is there a similar explanation for the other fighter they banned who is competing in the Olympics?
As an aside, I agree with you that the Italian fighter was probably being a drama queen. No doubt because of all the drama going into the fight, with the whole world telling her she was about to fight a man.
I meant " - " as in, male chromosones etc, regardless of gender/society "Male" but I agree with you.
You might enjoy the podcast I linked too, seemed fair and also very scientific (to a layman), given your scientific background I am sure you'll grasp the concepts. Beyond this subject, the daily olympic update is nice.
Khelif beat the Russian in the round of 16, the Taiwanese boxer didn't beat any Russians, and Russians lost in other weight-classes. I don't think "beating a Russian" prompted any of this.
The Chinese Taipei athlete as well was banned after they won gold? Perhaps they also beat a Russian fighter.
Edit: @Alex99 just confirmed they didn't beat a Russian fighter.
Looooooong thread/post on DSD from a biologist.
Interesting statement, not sure I follow the logic of the IOC, they're saying they class the athletes as female because that is what is on their passports and it's not them to investigate the accusations?
I'm no expert, but from everything I've seen about testosterone levels, this answer is surely bollocks?
So someone outwardly female but went through male puberty internally can benefit from male strength even if they reduce the testosterone levels.
There's also issues with people claiming such and such was beat by a female 4 years ago therefore female. This doesn't determine anything. Any unskilled young male of any variation could get beat by a skilled female boxer. 4 years later this male could become very skilled or physically develop in those years and further increase strength and more with training. A 16 year male can transform by 20, or a scrawny 20 year old male can be completely transformed by 24, people grow at different rates at different ages.
Hypothetically someone classed female with male puberty could be on par with other females at a certain point whether that be by drugs to inhibit or just late development or resisting certain training, then at some point in early adulthood the male strength of a thought to be female manifests. Note I'm not saying Khelif is this person but Xy, testosterone, body parts you're born with, feminine pictures as a child don't determine it for everyone and seems to be a moving target as the body and training changes from teen to early adult and mature , a single test at 17 won't be enough.
It's factually accurate. Just depends how you define "many". If you think about the extreme outliers at each end of the two bell shaped curves, there's going to be an overlap.
I feel like in this context, using "many" to refer to the overlap of extreme outliers is a bit disingenuous, no?
Dunno. Needs more context. I haven't read the thread. I don't have a Twitter account.
"Many" has two meanings.
If there are 1 million women with higher testosterone levels than the average man then using the word "many" is technically correct, even though this is less than 1% of women. But you would think that this is far more likely to occur in sports than elsewhere.
If there are 1 million women with higher testosterone levels than the average man then using the word "many" is technically correct, even though this is less than 1% of women. But you would think that this is far more likely to occur in sports than elsewhere.
I would imagine if a woman has 800ng/dl testosterone, she is doping.
Sorry, I forgot, when I send you links, my bad.
One thing about this topic, is that it's relatively new and we don't know the proportion of intersex or abnormal women/female. But there is a kind of silly comparison that we can make, there is many WNBA players that are taller than NBA players which isn't normal when you consider that NBA players are significantly taller than the average men, it means that many WNBA players are out of the norm in ways that are extreme, not just among women but also among men. We accept that fact because it's visible and we are used to it.
Yeah, that's a good point. Being good at sports will bias towards having high testosterone levels. So there probably are "many" elite female athletes with testoterone levels higher than those of "many" non-athletic men, with abnormally low testosterone levels. Definitely disingenuous to pretend that the levels in average people is comparable. There's a very big difference.
The context is the IOC making that comment while answering questions about athletes at the Olympics.
The extreme outliers are surely irrelevant in the context of the Olympic games, as presumably the men on the very low end aren't going to be professional athletes?
Well, no because the sport is self selective of height as a beneficial trait. So you will get women who are 6'8'' which is an outlier but then they would be taller than the average 6'6" for men.
You would have thought so. Although, as per my post above, female athletes will also be biased towards having high levels. So maybe the point is how they compare with your average Joe Shmoe?
Yeah, good analogy.
EDIT: Although average T levels in men vs women is much further apart than average heights, with much less overlap of the bell shaped distribution curves. So we're talking really extreme outliers here.
Average height in WBNA is 6'0"
Average height in NBA is 6'6"
Average height in NBA is 6'6"
All sports are selective based on athletic traits. And the point is that the highest end of women elite sport is bound to have people that are abnormally close to the lowest end of man elite sport. And out of this women some if not many are bound to have disorders that put them in that elite tier, iirc for these extremely tall people it's gigantism.
We know that intersex people exist, but we don't actually know how common it is and if I'm not mistaken it's more likely to happen to someone that was supposed to develop as a male but for various biological reasons, developed like a female or only partially as a male, they will look like female and have many traits that are associated to female but unless you specifically test them, you won't know.
Exactly. Which makes all the WNBA players that are 6'6" or above not only huge outliers but they are also taller than a very large portion of NBA player which is absolutely abnormal.
Men in average are just 10-12cm taller than women in average, so around 7% difference on mean. Of course that a lot of women are taller than a lot of men, in pretty much every setting, so not sure what is your argument.
In NBA/WNBA to be fair, the difference is 6 inches, which is higher than in the average population (again, this makes sense, if you shift the mean, the outliers will shift more).
Is that not still a disingenuous comparison within the context of the Olympics though?
From what I've read, the top end for women is still way lower than the bottom end of the typical range for men.
I'm not sure of the exact numbers involved, but it was something like the top end for women being a good four or five times lower than the bottom end for men.
Even if elite female athletes push out of that typical range, surely it's not by such a large amount?
Yeah, there's a huge difference. The bell shaped curves are very far apart. So it looks as though what they say there is arguably factually correct but definitely disingenuous. Which is a pretty dumb thing to do, knowing the sort of forensic analysis their statement would get.