It's confusing only if you accept the very deliberately confusing framing of the transgender activists. To transgender activists (and to most of the media which diligently adhere to the activists' framing), the issue is about "'trans women' in sports. In the real world, the debate is about men in women's sports.
The resolution in the real world is simple, not confusing: Men can't compete in women's sports. The concept of "gender" or "gender identity" is completely irrelevant to this. It doesn't matter if Lia Thomas says he identifies as a woman or if Imane Khelif does or does not identify as "trans." Men may not compete in women's sports.
I'd go with "genetic males", or maybe "genetic males with a level of testosterone higher than would be normal for women", rather than "men". It's true that transgender activists have muddled the issue, and it's even true that they've instrumentalized the existence of intersex people as part of their crusade to pretend that self-declared gender identity should trump biological sex in all cases, but the fact is intersex people still exist. I'm perfectly fine with Caster Semenya or Imane Khelif not being allowed to compete in the women's category. But the "anti-woke" framing that we see in some heterodox spaces, which I totally agree was developed in response to the transgender activist framing, appears to be that all so-called "trans women" are actually AGP sexually predatory men, and then extends this to people like Semenya or Khelif who aren't even actually trans.
It's not a better framing. There needs to be rules about who can compete in the women's category, and the IOC's surrendering to transgender activist viewpoints isn't going to lead to a satisfactory resolution. But I think it's also not useful to insist on calling Caster Semenya or Imane Khelif "men", using "he/him" pronouns for them, blaming them for "invading women's spaces" (you didn't do this, but I've seen something like this before in other comment sections), or insisting that they need to use the men's bathroom.
Oh, and Jeff: I don't know what the law is like in Algeria, but just because sexual activity between people of the same sex is illegal there doesn't necessarily mean that transitioning to the other gender is as well. In the West we tend to view trans as "like gay, but more controversial", but I remember a long time ago seeing a documentary about gay men in Iran (where homosexual activity is of course also illegal) transitioning to a female identity so that they could have sex with (and possibly marry? I don't quite remember) their partners. This was apparently allowed by the government.
No, “men” is the truth and using workaround phrases like “genetic males” is no less stupid than saying “person suffering from incarceration” or “unhoused.”
Algeria does not legally recognize the existence of trans people or have any legal process to change your gender. You are correct about Iran's policies, but Algeria does not share them.
What’s the justification for calling Khelif a “man,” when she was identified as a girl by her doctors, raised as a girl by her parents, and treated as a woman by her society, all using the same criteria that humans have relied on for nearly our entire history?
Khelif is NOT treated as a woman in his society. Just the fact that he was riding on his coaches shoulders at the Olympic demonstrates that. No way would a woman be allowed to do that in his culture. Based on the DSD he has, Khelif likely has ambiguous genitalia, similar to a micro penis. He has internal testicles that produce male levels of testosterone and no uterus or ovaries. He is a male and is treated as a man in his culture. It’s purposefully obtuse to pretend otherwise.
“Khelif is NOT treated as a woman in his society. Just the fact that he was riding on his coaches shoulders at the Olympic demonstrates that. No way would a woman be allowed to do that in his culture.”
Gonna need a link for this bit of cultural semiotics.
In Islam it is forbidden for a believer to touch a member of the opposite sex that they are not related to.
For example, UFC fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, who is also a devout Muslim, refused to shake the hand of female TV presenter Kate Scott at the UEFA Champions League. That’s because it would be a major transgression in his culture to touch a woman even on the hand
Imane Khelif was lifted onto the shoulders of his coach at the Olympics. In his culture, a woman spreading her legs and pressing her vagina against the neck of her coach while riding on his shoulders in public or private but especially on live television, would be a shocking transgression of the cultural norms. But Khelif doesn’t have a vagina, he is treated as a man in his culture, so it was fine.
Khelif grew up in the northwestern rural town of Biban Mesbah in the Tiaret province of Algeria and was raised as a devout Muslim.
Like I say, I’d read a link. The example of what a particular Russian fighter is willing to do is not sufficient to settle the question. I have no idea how devout Khelif or her coach are.
I think I have provided you with enough context for you to do your own research but of course you won’t because you are an entitled man with luxury beliefs who wants a woman to do all his work for him. Also an entitled man with luxury beliefs who supports other men punching women in the face at the Olympics. A man who gives no shits about women or their safety or fairness. You are just a men’s rights bro. Gross dude.
Are you suggesting that theres no biological component to sex? Or that because people in the past had less information available to them and made categorization errors that we should continue make them today?
“Are you suggesting that theres no biological component to sex?”
Of course not.
“Or that because people in the past had less information available to them and made categorization errors that we should continue make them today?”
Whether these were errors at all is what’s under dispute. We gender entities without reference to sex all the time. That’s separate from the question of who should be eligible to compete in women’s sports.
Do we gender entities without regard to sex? We describe things as masculine or feminine, meaning that they have characteristics generally associated with a particular sex, but I wouldnt call that assigning them a gender. Whats an example of this?
My go-to is robots and computer programs. Everyone (both in the movie and in real life) refers to C-3PO and R2-D2 as "he," even though they have no sex and R2-D2 doesn't even have any male traits like voice or appearance. Everyone refers to WALL-E as "he" and EVE as "she"; everyone calls Siri and Alexa "she" if they have the default voice, and so on. Other examples include metaphor ("Old man river, he don't plant cotton") and prized inanimate objects ("she's a beaut").
I think this true only on a very shallow level. If you asked people if r2d2 was really a male, I think most would say no. And if you asked them if the river was male they'd be confused by the question.
The various things that you mention are not what determines sex in humans. "Identified as," "raised as," "treated as" are culturally variable, subjective, and irrelevant to a person's sex, which is an objective reality. The objective reality of Khelif's sex is that he is a man. The fact that his is a man is the justification for calling him a man.
The factors I mentioned are certainly culturally variable and subjective, but that's at least as relevant as objective fact when determining what to call someone. Objectively, my given name is Thomas; there's not a legal document anywhere in the world that refers to me as Tom, yet Tom is what I go by and if you persisted in calling me Thomas even after I had asked you to use Tom, you'd be considered rude. For that matter, I've got one of your books on my shelf right in front of me, but it says George Orwell, even though objectively there was no such person!
Everything you write here is true, but you've swerved quite a bit from the topic at hand.
Given names are in fact changeable and malleable, amenable to nicknames, diminutives, and noms de plume, and that is a reflection of the fact that given names are largely arbitrary. But of course a person's sex (what we're discussing here) is not in any way arbitrary. It simply is what it is.
Similarly, the question of who belongs in women's sports is not a matter of what it is rude to say, but merely what is true. If you're referring to Khelif as a woman because you think he might be reading comment threads on Substack and you don't want to hurt his feelings when he comes across your post, but you don't actually believe he's a woman, that's one thing. If you're referring to him as a woman because you think he's actually a woman despite the fact that he is a man, that's another thing entirely. But if you think he belongs in women's sports because it would be rude to say that he's not a woman, you're prioritizing politeness over truth, and that does not seem to be a defensible position.
I'm personally referring to the proper ways to refer to Khelif. I don't see that "he" and "man" are correct. I consider those separate questions from whether she should be allowed to compete in women's boxing.
It is complicated, because she presents as female. She was identified (not "assigned") as female at birth and probably had no reason to question any of this until people started asking questions about her chromosomes. By the same token, I've never looked into my genetics but take it as read that I'm male as I have a dick and stuff.
Yeah, "XY" is the easiest definition of a male (unless it's "sperm producer") but it's simply not reasonable to act as if Khelif is a person born male who has decided to identify as female, still less a CIS man pretending to be female so he can win the Punching Women Competition.
We have these categories called "male" and "female" that upwards of 99% of the population fit into easily, but a few don't, for reasons that are physical, not psychological.
Yeah, it’s plenty simple, I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that the anti-trans movement is treating it as self-evident that external genitalia is irrelevant to the question of how we classify someone as a man or a woman.
It is irrelevant when we're talking about sports. What matters is the male advantage, and you can have a male advantage without having external genitalia if you have a DSD.
I am saying that it is really dumb that the cause celebre that motivated this latest round of the debate is a regular woman, not a trans woman. A bunch of people saw a woman boxer whose face looked mannish to them and suddenly declared that she was a man beating up women, even though she is from a country that doesn't legally recognize the existence of trans people.
Your entire comment I was replying to was about trans activists and not allowing men in women's sports even if they say they are trans women. So the fact that Khelif is not a trans woman seems like a pretty important data point. Khelif's parents have shared pictures of her from when she was a little girl. She has clearly always been one, she is not a man who transitioned later in life.
Some people have asserted that Khelif might have a genetic condition that makes her body more masculine than is typical for a woman. That isn't impossible, but she is still clearly a woman, otherwise she wouldn't have been raised as one for decades in a conservative religious country.
"Imane Khelif’s sex-test results from the 2023 World Championships have been published for the first time, with the medical report appearing to indicate that the boxer is biologically male."
I said in my final paragraph is possible that Khelif has an intersex condition. Some women are born with male chromosomes, but develop female bodies because their system does not respond to androgens.
However, Khelif definitely isn't trans. She was assigned female at birth, raised as a girl, and has a female enough body that it took a DNA test to show she had the condition. She isn't a man who decided she "identified" as a woman and had surgery and hormone treatments to give herself a female phenotype.
"To transgender activists (and to most of the media which diligently adhere to the activists' framing), the issue is about "'trans women' in sports. In the real world, the debate is about men in women's sports."
And we have to put Jeff in this sad category of "media diligently adhering to activists' framing".
My paid subscription expires tomorrow. I won't be renewing.
Fair, although in my defense, it’s all too common to see people avoid the word sex entirely and use gender to mean sex, gender roles, &/or anything in between. But sure, I jumped to conclusions there.
edit: this should have been a response to Filk’s answer to me, I put it in the wrong place. No coffee yet!
These two words are only used in “blatantly manipulative ways” by the “trans women are women” crowd, who spent twenty or so years smugly lecturing all of us that gender is different from sex (okay), but anytime it’s convenient for them (e.g. the passport debate) they conflate the two. Although this debate isn’t a trans issue, these two DSD guys and their defenders are doing the same linguistic trick.
MOST languages don’t have a separate word for “gender.” (Even Danish doesn’t, and surgical sex reassignment started in Denmark.) Because in English we use the word “sex” probably more often to refer to the sex act, there’s been a prudish tendency to use “gender” as an alternative, the way Victorians supposedly avoided the word leg as being too racy (or something).
Yeah, pick up an actual real life 15 year old dictionary. Sex and gender were interchangeable until gender was co-opted to describe if you FELT and ACTED like a woman/man.
May I suggest that part of why this debate has become so confusing for some is in part thanks to people in media and with other platforms who refer to men as "she", solidifying in the minds of those less attuned to the post-modern tactics of trans activism that these individuals must be women of some kind. They are not, and they should not be referred to as such if you want to be part of the solution rather than the problem. You don't need to call them "he" if you don't think the evidence is strong enough that Khelif has 5-ARD same as Semenya (which is confirmed beyond all doubt) which is an undisputed male DSD. But maybe don't participate in the notion these men's feelings are more important than facts and reality- and actual women- and people won't be so confused.
Khelif and Semenya are women, though. They are not any kind of trans. They were both born with vaginas. Neither of them has ever had a penis. If you are going around telling someone who has a naturally occurring vagina that she is a man and that you don't care about her feelings, you are seriously deranged.
You are incorrect. Semenya has 5-ARD beyond all doubt thanks to his CAS case, and there is evidence that suggests Khelif does too. Please research 5-ARD and you will find the scientific and medical communities universally refer to those with 5-ARD as men, because they are male. This condition causes males that do not get the effects of DHT, which merely results in no male-pattern facial hair or baldness, and in utero- causes the genitals to not fully mature. But they are still male genitals. It results in a micro penis and internal testes that do not descend to testicles. And the path that they are supposed to descend results in a cavity at birth that along with the micro-penis can be confused with female genitalia in places without adequate medical care. But that cavity is NOT a vagina and those testes produce sperm, and these males are capable of fathering children though usually with some help.
Semenya is fully aware he is male. He knew exactly what he was doing competing in women's events- which is cheating. So forgive me if I don't care about his feelings.
So you are saying that Semenya doesn't have a vagina, she has a naturally occurring cavity between her legs? That's what a vagina is. People with 5-ARD have a micro-penis located near the top of that cavity? That is called a clitoris. They have organs that produce gametes inside their torso instead of hanging outside their body? People who have those are typically called "women."
Remember that all mammals are initially female. The Y chromosomes just sends signals that tweaks a few body parts to masculinize them. In the case of 5-ARD that process is disrupted and not completed. That doesn't make someone with 5-ARD a man, that would be like saying someone who enrolled in an MD program and then dropped out is a doctor.
You seem to have this idea that if someone has a mix of male and female characteristics, that makes them male automatically, sort of like a "one drop rule" for sex. It makes more sense to say that they are biologically neither male nor female, or that they are a female that began to develop into a male, but stopped.
What a disgusting thing to say. A vagina is not just any old hole in that general region, it is a legitimate organ with unique properties. You are reducing women's anatomy to what men think our anatomy is- just a hole to penetrate- and you really should be ashamed.
This dude legit thinks woman = fuckable hole. He has said so several times in this comment thread. It's astounding. He should go have drinks with Andrea Long Chu.
How is it a disgusting thing to say that a woman has a vagina? You are the hateful monster who is denying someone's womanhood because she has a rare genetic disorder that caused her to develop some male characteristics. I can understand people being angry at trans people and not wanting them included in the gender they identify as. Transitioning and taking hormone treatments/surgery is something they on some level chose to do. Intersex people didn't make any choices, they just have unusual biology they were born with. Going after them is vile.
I didn't say anything about the vagina "just being a hole for men to penetrate." The vagina isn't "for" anything, it was created by evolution, a non-sentient process. It has the purposes we assign to it and no others. It is extremely silly to argue that an organ in the same spot as the vagina, is the same shape as the vagina, is descended from the same precursor tissues as the vagina, and is used by its owner for many of the same purposes of the vagina (one of which sometimes is PIV sex) somehow isn't a vagina.
Because you are claiming a vagina is any old hole to fuck rather than understanding the actual organ. Absolutely degrading and disgusting.
He is a man who knows he is a man and he has ZERO female parts. His chomosones are male, his gonads are male, his skeletal structure is male, and he is capable of fathering children which imo is the most relevant attribute. In the west, boys with 5-ARD get diagnosed at birth and helped, we tend not to make the mistake that happened with Semenya. He would've had a much less confusing life with proper medical care and that's sad, but not a reason to pretend the truth isn't true.
The Paradox Institute appears to be some kind of anti-trans lobbying/propoganda group founded by an architect. I wouldn't trust anything they say. When I watched the video it waffled a lot, but basically admitted the point that female is the "default" developmental pathway and an embryo not exposed to androgen from the Y chromosome will become female, which is what I meant.
You could also argue that an embryo is neither male nor female and will develop into one or the other later (even if female is the "default" path), but if that is the case then it is wrong to insist that someone is male if some parts of them developed masculine characteristics and other parts of them developed feminine characteristics. You can argue that they are neither male nor female and insist on "they/them" pronouns for them if you want to be pedantic, but it really makes more sense to just classify them as whatever they were raised as and identify with. Intersex conditions are something you are born with, so you don't have the argument you have with trans athletes that someone might choose to transition just so they can gain an unfair athletic advantage.
Women don't pee or ejaculate sperm out of our clitoris, which is what a 5-ARD micro penis will do. You seem intent on defining male and female features by the most shallow appearances rather than function- which isn't helpful. Where is the cutoff that a penis that pees and ejaculates becomes small enough that it is considered a clitoris? Is it the same size that a clitoris that doesn't pee or ejaculate becomes a penis?
5-ARD people can have their urethra located in a number of different places, but it is usually not located inside the micro-penis, which is a major reason why so many people with 5-ARD are assigned female at birth. Don't get me wrong, some people with 5-ARD do have urethra's that terminate at the end of their micro penis like in a male. However, they appear to be in the minority. I'm not sure there is any "cutoff" based on capability for urination, biologists still refer to the clitoris of a spotted hyena as a clitoris, even though it can pee out of it.
I am intent on defining male and female feature by very broad appearances because there is extremely large individual variation between individuals. Having a broad definition includes unusual variants more easily. You seem to define "male" broadly and "female" narrowly, so any person with a mix of male and female traits is a man. That seems silly.
Fair enough. I did oversimply the variation in urethra in 5-ARD- but it's still not where women pee out of. And my guess is the hyenas clitoris that can pee is the exception that proves the rule. I'd like to hear your definition of a clitoris though cuz so far it sounds like its if it looks like one and is attached to someone who says they are a woman.
I'll offer a definition that I hope won't be too oversimplified. But there really is no such thing as a mix of male and female parts. We are not soup in utero that can go either way on any whim. In 5-ARD, we know exactly what went wrong with the child's development and but for the lack of DHT there would be zero ambiguity as to the presence of a penis. Clitorises are NOT the product of male development minus DHT. They are the product of female development. We can get into the internal structures but they are not the same even if they externally appear similar.
So your assertion is that the pictures of people with complete androgen insensitivity on the Wikipedia article about this condition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome) are of people who should unambiguously be considered men and not women, and treated in society as belonging to the masculine gender (for example, use "he/him" pronouns as well as the men's bathroom)? Would this really make things less confusing?
Note that this has nothing to do about whether said people should be allowed to compete in the women's category at the Olympic games. Though I would say that I think the onus should be on sports' regulating organizations to put in place tenable rules about who can compete in the women's category, and not on individual athletes to somehow decide they ought not to compete as women, even if they might have been socialized as girls and women for their whole lives.
That’s CAIS, not 5-ARD, and very few gender-critical people believe CAIS individuals should play sports with men. Each DSD should be handled based on its own unique characteristics. In the case of 5-ARD, all male advantage remains. In the case of CAIS, there is essentially zero male advantage.
Ah, interesting. The article includes the line "[h]ormone levels are similar to those of males, including high testosterone levels and relatively low estradiol levels", so I figured that maybe there would be an advantage (or that there would be no way to identify them as having no male advantage, if we use testosterone levels as determinative), but I guess that complete androgen insensitivity means that testosterone did not make their muscles grow as they would a man's. So that makes sense.
But what this means is that the distinction between male/man and female/woman is actually not (always) as simple as some people here claim, and that the presence of testes isn't actually the determinative factor.
I think someone's sex is irrelevant in most cases but where it matters it REALLY matters. I am happy to consider DSDs individually and be polite to males with unfortunate circumstances of birth up until they use my kindness to shit on women. Then I'm going to insist on brutal truths.
Based on his CAS case. When one sues one's sport governing body over one's physiology, the facts about said physiology are part of discovery. He and his legal team agreed that he has 5-ARD and internal testes. He is on tape talking about how his testes don't make him less of a woman. He is married to a woman and has children with her. While he will never confirm they are his biologically, there is no reason they can't be. Would you use donor sperm if you were perfectly capable of creating your own?
It is public record that Semenya has known about his condition since 2009 after being subjected to a sex verification test after the 2009 world championships. He kept stealing from women for years, including an Olympic gold medal in the women's 800m event in 2016. To this day, even after his CAS case in 2018 that *really* leaves no doubt that he knows now as he had to agree in a legally binding fashion- he still believes men like him ought to be able to cheat women and sues and advocates for it. Why you would extend the benefit of the doubt to such a man, I cannot wrap my head around.
People with 5-ARD don't just not have a penis, they typically have a vaginal opening and a rectouterine pouch (although each case is different). Many of them can have PIV sex. It's absurd to tell someone with a naturally occurring opening in the front of their crotch that they have used to have sex with guys that they are a man.
Yeah, the position that there’s no such thing as gender, only sex, AND that sex is solely about chromosomes (hence undetectable to the naked eye) is as radical and detached from traditional practice as total self-ID is.
The concept of “gender” exists, of course, but why the heck would it be relevant in sports? Sports are played with bodies, not “gender identities.” XY out of XX sports, end of story, find another hobby!
Right, I'm not talking about her participation in sports, but whether Khelif is properly called a man, he, etc., as Lauren was doing. I was agreeing with someone who finds that incorrect.
When scientists say that DSD only occurs in males they mean a organism with a Y chromosome, not one with a male body. The main cause of DSDs is that something interferes with signals from the Y chromosome so the person develops a mostly or partly female body in spite of their chromosomal sex.
A DSD means someone's body isn't really male or female, it's a combination of both. In many cases they might appear completely female from the outside, and only display male characteristics if you do a DNA test or X-ray them.
Right, but as we've already discussed, gender exists, and if that means anything it means that it might make sense for someone who was raised as a girl, with apparent female genitalia, to be considered a woman in terms of gender, even if biologically male.
This will be abused by individuals and countries that care more about medals for the country than any spirit of the rules. Very quickly a man that only ever entered one race as non-binary used it to qualify for the Boston marathon. With almost nothing on the line, no fame, glory or money people are willing to cheat. Make it easier and more socially acceptable and it will only grow.
It's confusing only if you accept the very deliberately confusing framing of the transgender activists. To transgender activists (and to most of the media which diligently adhere to the activists' framing), the issue is about "'trans women' in sports. In the real world, the debate is about men in women's sports.
The resolution in the real world is simple, not confusing: Men can't compete in women's sports. The concept of "gender" or "gender identity" is completely irrelevant to this. It doesn't matter if Lia Thomas says he identifies as a woman or if Imane Khelif does or does not identify as "trans." Men may not compete in women's sports.
I'd go with "genetic males", or maybe "genetic males with a level of testosterone higher than would be normal for women", rather than "men". It's true that transgender activists have muddled the issue, and it's even true that they've instrumentalized the existence of intersex people as part of their crusade to pretend that self-declared gender identity should trump biological sex in all cases, but the fact is intersex people still exist. I'm perfectly fine with Caster Semenya or Imane Khelif not being allowed to compete in the women's category. But the "anti-woke" framing that we see in some heterodox spaces, which I totally agree was developed in response to the transgender activist framing, appears to be that all so-called "trans women" are actually AGP sexually predatory men, and then extends this to people like Semenya or Khelif who aren't even actually trans.
It's not a better framing. There needs to be rules about who can compete in the women's category, and the IOC's surrendering to transgender activist viewpoints isn't going to lead to a satisfactory resolution. But I think it's also not useful to insist on calling Caster Semenya or Imane Khelif "men", using "he/him" pronouns for them, blaming them for "invading women's spaces" (you didn't do this, but I've seen something like this before in other comment sections), or insisting that they need to use the men's bathroom.
Oh, and Jeff: I don't know what the law is like in Algeria, but just because sexual activity between people of the same sex is illegal there doesn't necessarily mean that transitioning to the other gender is as well. In the West we tend to view trans as "like gay, but more controversial", but I remember a long time ago seeing a documentary about gay men in Iran (where homosexual activity is of course also illegal) transitioning to a female identity so that they could have sex with (and possibly marry? I don't quite remember) their partners. This was apparently allowed by the government.
No, “men” is the truth and using workaround phrases like “genetic males” is no less stupid than saying “person suffering from incarceration” or “unhoused.”
Algeria does not legally recognize the existence of trans people or have any legal process to change your gender. You are correct about Iran's policies, but Algeria does not share them.
Ah, thanks.
What’s the justification for calling Khelif a “man,” when she was identified as a girl by her doctors, raised as a girl by her parents, and treated as a woman by her society, all using the same criteria that humans have relied on for nearly our entire history?
Khelif is NOT treated as a woman in his society. Just the fact that he was riding on his coaches shoulders at the Olympic demonstrates that. No way would a woman be allowed to do that in his culture. Based on the DSD he has, Khelif likely has ambiguous genitalia, similar to a micro penis. He has internal testicles that produce male levels of testosterone and no uterus or ovaries. He is a male and is treated as a man in his culture. It’s purposefully obtuse to pretend otherwise.
“Khelif is NOT treated as a woman in his society. Just the fact that he was riding on his coaches shoulders at the Olympic demonstrates that. No way would a woman be allowed to do that in his culture.”
Gonna need a link for this bit of cultural semiotics.
In Islam it is forbidden for a believer to touch a member of the opposite sex that they are not related to.
For example, UFC fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, who is also a devout Muslim, refused to shake the hand of female TV presenter Kate Scott at the UEFA Champions League. That’s because it would be a major transgression in his culture to touch a woman even on the hand
Imane Khelif was lifted onto the shoulders of his coach at the Olympics. In his culture, a woman spreading her legs and pressing her vagina against the neck of her coach while riding on his shoulders in public or private but especially on live television, would be a shocking transgression of the cultural norms. But Khelif doesn’t have a vagina, he is treated as a man in his culture, so it was fine.
Khelif grew up in the northwestern rural town of Biban Mesbah in the Tiaret province of Algeria and was raised as a devout Muslim.
Like I say, I’d read a link. The example of what a particular Russian fighter is willing to do is not sufficient to settle the question. I have no idea how devout Khelif or her coach are.
I think I have provided you with enough context for you to do your own research but of course you won’t because you are an entitled man with luxury beliefs who wants a woman to do all his work for him. Also an entitled man with luxury beliefs who supports other men punching women in the face at the Olympics. A man who gives no shits about women or their safety or fairness. You are just a men’s rights bro. Gross dude.
Are you suggesting that theres no biological component to sex? Or that because people in the past had less information available to them and made categorization errors that we should continue make them today?
“Are you suggesting that theres no biological component to sex?”
Of course not.
“Or that because people in the past had less information available to them and made categorization errors that we should continue make them today?”
Whether these were errors at all is what’s under dispute. We gender entities without reference to sex all the time. That’s separate from the question of who should be eligible to compete in women’s sports.
Do we gender entities without regard to sex? We describe things as masculine or feminine, meaning that they have characteristics generally associated with a particular sex, but I wouldnt call that assigning them a gender. Whats an example of this?
My go-to is robots and computer programs. Everyone (both in the movie and in real life) refers to C-3PO and R2-D2 as "he," even though they have no sex and R2-D2 doesn't even have any male traits like voice or appearance. Everyone refers to WALL-E as "he" and EVE as "she"; everyone calls Siri and Alexa "she" if they have the default voice, and so on. Other examples include metaphor ("Old man river, he don't plant cotton") and prized inanimate objects ("she's a beaut").
I think this true only on a very shallow level. If you asked people if r2d2 was really a male, I think most would say no. And if you asked them if the river was male they'd be confused by the question.
The various things that you mention are not what determines sex in humans. "Identified as," "raised as," "treated as" are culturally variable, subjective, and irrelevant to a person's sex, which is an objective reality. The objective reality of Khelif's sex is that he is a man. The fact that his is a man is the justification for calling him a man.
The factors I mentioned are certainly culturally variable and subjective, but that's at least as relevant as objective fact when determining what to call someone. Objectively, my given name is Thomas; there's not a legal document anywhere in the world that refers to me as Tom, yet Tom is what I go by and if you persisted in calling me Thomas even after I had asked you to use Tom, you'd be considered rude. For that matter, I've got one of your books on my shelf right in front of me, but it says George Orwell, even though objectively there was no such person!
Everything you write here is true, but you've swerved quite a bit from the topic at hand.
Given names are in fact changeable and malleable, amenable to nicknames, diminutives, and noms de plume, and that is a reflection of the fact that given names are largely arbitrary. But of course a person's sex (what we're discussing here) is not in any way arbitrary. It simply is what it is.
Similarly, the question of who belongs in women's sports is not a matter of what it is rude to say, but merely what is true. If you're referring to Khelif as a woman because you think he might be reading comment threads on Substack and you don't want to hurt his feelings when he comes across your post, but you don't actually believe he's a woman, that's one thing. If you're referring to him as a woman because you think he's actually a woman despite the fact that he is a man, that's another thing entirely. But if you think he belongs in women's sports because it would be rude to say that he's not a woman, you're prioritizing politeness over truth, and that does not seem to be a defensible position.
I'm personally referring to the proper ways to refer to Khelif. I don't see that "he" and "man" are correct. I consider those separate questions from whether she should be allowed to compete in women's boxing.
It's the same question: Is Khelif a woman or not?
If yes, why shouldn't he be allowed to compete in women's boxing? If not, why insist on referring to him a woman?
Because if you say “man” you clearly communicate what is actually happening here. Anything else is, at least partially, obfuscation.
That’s just begging the question! You’re repeating the point under dispute.
A man is an adult human male. Words mean things. You asked for a justification and that is mine.
He has XY chromosomes = man. It’s not complicated.
It is complicated, because she presents as female. She was identified (not "assigned") as female at birth and probably had no reason to question any of this until people started asking questions about her chromosomes. By the same token, I've never looked into my genetics but take it as read that I'm male as I have a dick and stuff.
Yeah, "XY" is the easiest definition of a male (unless it's "sperm producer") but it's simply not reasonable to act as if Khelif is a person born male who has decided to identify as female, still less a CIS man pretending to be female so he can win the Punching Women Competition.
We have these categories called "male" and "female" that upwards of 99% of the population fit into easily, but a few don't, for reasons that are physical, not psychological.
Yeah, it’s plenty simple, I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that the anti-trans movement is treating it as self-evident that external genitalia is irrelevant to the question of how we classify someone as a man or a woman.
It is irrelevant when we're talking about sports. What matters is the male advantage, and you can have a male advantage without having external genitalia if you have a DSD.
When it comes to sports, I agree.
Khelif isn't trans or a man though. The whole reason this debate is so stupid is that the athlete that prompted this round of it is a woman.
Are you saying that Khelif is an actual woman, as opposed to a trans woman?
How exactly would this situation be different if Khelif were trans?
Yes, Khelif is an actual woman who is not trans.
I am saying that it is really dumb that the cause celebre that motivated this latest round of the debate is a regular woman, not a trans woman. A bunch of people saw a woman boxer whose face looked mannish to them and suddenly declared that she was a man beating up women, even though she is from a country that doesn't legally recognize the existence of trans people.
Your entire comment I was replying to was about trans activists and not allowing men in women's sports even if they say they are trans women. So the fact that Khelif is not a trans woman seems like a pretty important data point. Khelif's parents have shared pictures of her from when she was a little girl. She has clearly always been one, she is not a man who transitioned later in life.
Some people have asserted that Khelif might have a genetic condition that makes her body more masculine than is typical for a woman. That isn't impossible, but she is still clearly a woman, otherwise she wouldn't have been raised as one for decades in a conservative religious country.
"Imane Khelif’s sex-test results from the 2023 World Championships have been published for the first time, with the medical report appearing to indicate that the boxer is biologically male."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/medical-report-leaked-proves-imane-182447965.html
I said in my final paragraph is possible that Khelif has an intersex condition. Some women are born with male chromosomes, but develop female bodies because their system does not respond to androgens.
However, Khelif definitely isn't trans. She was assigned female at birth, raised as a girl, and has a female enough body that it took a DNA test to show she had the condition. She isn't a man who decided she "identified" as a woman and had surgery and hormone treatments to give herself a female phenotype.
Khelif is male. There is no question about that. Therefore, Khelif is not eligible to compete in the female category.
"To transgender activists (and to most of the media which diligently adhere to the activists' framing), the issue is about "'trans women' in sports. In the real world, the debate is about men in women's sports."
And we have to put Jeff in this sad category of "media diligently adhering to activists' framing".
My paid subscription expires tomorrow. I won't be renewing.
Well, in his defense he does stipulate at the outset that he might be wrong.
Khelif is no kind of woman. Not genetically, not by his sexual organs, and not culturally either. Khelif is male and has no place in female sports.
Get well soon Jeff!
The world needs you!
How do we test for gender again?
Do you mean sex? One-time cheek swab, as Jeff stated. Once per lifetime.
Paragraph 4, “The IBA says that Kehlief twice failed an unspecified gender test that apparently was not a test of testosterone levels…”
No, I don’t mean sex. I know how we test for sex. I do not know how we test for gender.
I’m making a very important rhetorical point.
Fair, although in my defense, it’s all too common to see people avoid the word sex entirely and use gender to mean sex, gender roles, &/or anything in between. But sure, I jumped to conclusions there.
edit: this should have been a response to Filk’s answer to me, I put it in the wrong place. No coffee yet!
No worries. My statement was intentionally goading to make a point. And pretty sure a point with which you, and many, may agree.
These two words are only used in “blatantly manipulative ways” by the “trans women are women” crowd, who spent twenty or so years smugly lecturing all of us that gender is different from sex (okay), but anytime it’s convenient for them (e.g. the passport debate) they conflate the two. Although this debate isn’t a trans issue, these two DSD guys and their defenders are doing the same linguistic trick.
Hm seems like I responded incorrectly to the wrong thread. Yes, I completely co-sign your assessment.
MOST languages don’t have a separate word for “gender.” (Even Danish doesn’t, and surgical sex reassignment started in Denmark.) Because in English we use the word “sex” probably more often to refer to the sex act, there’s been a prudish tendency to use “gender” as an alternative, the way Victorians supposedly avoided the word leg as being too racy (or something).
Well sure, but this language game is used in blatantly manipulative ways. I’m not accusing anyone here of doing that, just pointing it out.
Yeah, pick up an actual real life 15 year old dictionary. Sex and gender were interchangeable until gender was co-opted to describe if you FELT and ACTED like a woman/man.
May I suggest that part of why this debate has become so confusing for some is in part thanks to people in media and with other platforms who refer to men as "she", solidifying in the minds of those less attuned to the post-modern tactics of trans activism that these individuals must be women of some kind. They are not, and they should not be referred to as such if you want to be part of the solution rather than the problem. You don't need to call them "he" if you don't think the evidence is strong enough that Khelif has 5-ARD same as Semenya (which is confirmed beyond all doubt) which is an undisputed male DSD. But maybe don't participate in the notion these men's feelings are more important than facts and reality- and actual women- and people won't be so confused.
Khelif and Semenya are women, though. They are not any kind of trans. They were both born with vaginas. Neither of them has ever had a penis. If you are going around telling someone who has a naturally occurring vagina that she is a man and that you don't care about her feelings, you are seriously deranged.
You are incorrect. Semenya has 5-ARD beyond all doubt thanks to his CAS case, and there is evidence that suggests Khelif does too. Please research 5-ARD and you will find the scientific and medical communities universally refer to those with 5-ARD as men, because they are male. This condition causes males that do not get the effects of DHT, which merely results in no male-pattern facial hair or baldness, and in utero- causes the genitals to not fully mature. But they are still male genitals. It results in a micro penis and internal testes that do not descend to testicles. And the path that they are supposed to descend results in a cavity at birth that along with the micro-penis can be confused with female genitalia in places without adequate medical care. But that cavity is NOT a vagina and those testes produce sperm, and these males are capable of fathering children though usually with some help.
Semenya is fully aware he is male. He knew exactly what he was doing competing in women's events- which is cheating. So forgive me if I don't care about his feelings.
So you are saying that Semenya doesn't have a vagina, she has a naturally occurring cavity between her legs? That's what a vagina is. People with 5-ARD have a micro-penis located near the top of that cavity? That is called a clitoris. They have organs that produce gametes inside their torso instead of hanging outside their body? People who have those are typically called "women."
Remember that all mammals are initially female. The Y chromosomes just sends signals that tweaks a few body parts to masculinize them. In the case of 5-ARD that process is disrupted and not completed. That doesn't make someone with 5-ARD a man, that would be like saying someone who enrolled in an MD program and then dropped out is a doctor.
You seem to have this idea that if someone has a mix of male and female characteristics, that makes them male automatically, sort of like a "one drop rule" for sex. It makes more sense to say that they are biologically neither male nor female, or that they are a female that began to develop into a male, but stopped.
What a disgusting thing to say. A vagina is not just any old hole in that general region, it is a legitimate organ with unique properties. You are reducing women's anatomy to what men think our anatomy is- just a hole to penetrate- and you really should be ashamed.
This dude legit thinks woman = fuckable hole. He has said so several times in this comment thread. It's astounding. He should go have drinks with Andrea Long Chu.
How is it a disgusting thing to say that a woman has a vagina? You are the hateful monster who is denying someone's womanhood because she has a rare genetic disorder that caused her to develop some male characteristics. I can understand people being angry at trans people and not wanting them included in the gender they identify as. Transitioning and taking hormone treatments/surgery is something they on some level chose to do. Intersex people didn't make any choices, they just have unusual biology they were born with. Going after them is vile.
I didn't say anything about the vagina "just being a hole for men to penetrate." The vagina isn't "for" anything, it was created by evolution, a non-sentient process. It has the purposes we assign to it and no others. It is extremely silly to argue that an organ in the same spot as the vagina, is the same shape as the vagina, is descended from the same precursor tissues as the vagina, and is used by its owner for many of the same purposes of the vagina (one of which sometimes is PIV sex) somehow isn't a vagina.
Because you are claiming a vagina is any old hole to fuck rather than understanding the actual organ. Absolutely degrading and disgusting.
He is a man who knows he is a man and he has ZERO female parts. His chomosones are male, his gonads are male, his skeletal structure is male, and he is capable of fathering children which imo is the most relevant attribute. In the west, boys with 5-ARD get diagnosed at birth and helped, we tend not to make the mistake that happened with Semenya. He would've had a much less confusing life with proper medical care and that's sad, but not a reason to pretend the truth isn't true.
"Remember that all mammals are initially female" As usual, you are wrong. Here is a good explainer from the Paradox Institute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz7NQDfa4eU
The Paradox Institute appears to be some kind of anti-trans lobbying/propoganda group founded by an architect. I wouldn't trust anything they say. When I watched the video it waffled a lot, but basically admitted the point that female is the "default" developmental pathway and an embryo not exposed to androgen from the Y chromosome will become female, which is what I meant.
You could also argue that an embryo is neither male nor female and will develop into one or the other later (even if female is the "default" path), but if that is the case then it is wrong to insist that someone is male if some parts of them developed masculine characteristics and other parts of them developed feminine characteristics. You can argue that they are neither male nor female and insist on "they/them" pronouns for them if you want to be pedantic, but it really makes more sense to just classify them as whatever they were raised as and identify with. Intersex conditions are something you are born with, so you don't have the argument you have with trans athletes that someone might choose to transition just so they can gain an unfair athletic advantage.
Women don't pee or ejaculate sperm out of our clitoris, which is what a 5-ARD micro penis will do. You seem intent on defining male and female features by the most shallow appearances rather than function- which isn't helpful. Where is the cutoff that a penis that pees and ejaculates becomes small enough that it is considered a clitoris? Is it the same size that a clitoris that doesn't pee or ejaculate becomes a penis?
5-ARD people can have their urethra located in a number of different places, but it is usually not located inside the micro-penis, which is a major reason why so many people with 5-ARD are assigned female at birth. Don't get me wrong, some people with 5-ARD do have urethra's that terminate at the end of their micro penis like in a male. However, they appear to be in the minority. I'm not sure there is any "cutoff" based on capability for urination, biologists still refer to the clitoris of a spotted hyena as a clitoris, even though it can pee out of it.
I am intent on defining male and female feature by very broad appearances because there is extremely large individual variation between individuals. Having a broad definition includes unusual variants more easily. You seem to define "male" broadly and "female" narrowly, so any person with a mix of male and female traits is a man. That seems silly.
Fair enough. I did oversimply the variation in urethra in 5-ARD- but it's still not where women pee out of. And my guess is the hyenas clitoris that can pee is the exception that proves the rule. I'd like to hear your definition of a clitoris though cuz so far it sounds like its if it looks like one and is attached to someone who says they are a woman.
I'll offer a definition that I hope won't be too oversimplified. But there really is no such thing as a mix of male and female parts. We are not soup in utero that can go either way on any whim. In 5-ARD, we know exactly what went wrong with the child's development and but for the lack of DHT there would be zero ambiguity as to the presence of a penis. Clitorises are NOT the product of male development minus DHT. They are the product of female development. We can get into the internal structures but they are not the same even if they externally appear similar.
So your assertion is that the pictures of people with complete androgen insensitivity on the Wikipedia article about this condition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome) are of people who should unambiguously be considered men and not women, and treated in society as belonging to the masculine gender (for example, use "he/him" pronouns as well as the men's bathroom)? Would this really make things less confusing?
Note that this has nothing to do about whether said people should be allowed to compete in the women's category at the Olympic games. Though I would say that I think the onus should be on sports' regulating organizations to put in place tenable rules about who can compete in the women's category, and not on individual athletes to somehow decide they ought not to compete as women, even if they might have been socialized as girls and women for their whole lives.
That’s CAIS, not 5-ARD, and very few gender-critical people believe CAIS individuals should play sports with men. Each DSD should be handled based on its own unique characteristics. In the case of 5-ARD, all male advantage remains. In the case of CAIS, there is essentially zero male advantage.
Ah, interesting. The article includes the line "[h]ormone levels are similar to those of males, including high testosterone levels and relatively low estradiol levels", so I figured that maybe there would be an advantage (or that there would be no way to identify them as having no male advantage, if we use testosterone levels as determinative), but I guess that complete androgen insensitivity means that testosterone did not make their muscles grow as they would a man's. So that makes sense.
But what this means is that the distinction between male/man and female/woman is actually not (always) as simple as some people here claim, and that the presence of testes isn't actually the determinative factor.
The presence of testes is the determinative factor well over 99.98% of the time, so I wouldn't get too excited.
I think someone's sex is irrelevant in most cases but where it matters it REALLY matters. I am happy to consider DSDs individually and be polite to males with unfortunate circumstances of birth up until they use my kindness to shit on women. Then I'm going to insist on brutal truths.
"Semenya is fully aware he is male." Based on what do you draw this conclusion?
Based on his CAS case. When one sues one's sport governing body over one's physiology, the facts about said physiology are part of discovery. He and his legal team agreed that he has 5-ARD and internal testes. He is on tape talking about how his testes don't make him less of a woman. He is married to a woman and has children with her. While he will never confirm they are his biologically, there is no reason they can't be. Would you use donor sperm if you were perfectly capable of creating your own?
Did the discovery reveal that Semenya knew about her condition at the time she competed?
It is public record that Semenya has known about his condition since 2009 after being subjected to a sex verification test after the 2009 world championships. He kept stealing from women for years, including an Olympic gold medal in the women's 800m event in 2016. To this day, even after his CAS case in 2018 that *really* leaves no doubt that he knows now as he had to agree in a legally binding fashion- he still believes men like him ought to be able to cheat women and sues and advocates for it. Why you would extend the benefit of the doubt to such a man, I cannot wrap my head around.
“Naturally occurring vagina” is false. The absence of a penis is not a vagina. If someone chopped your dick off, would you suddenly become a woman?
People with 5-ARD don't just not have a penis, they typically have a vaginal opening and a rectouterine pouch (although each case is different). Many of them can have PIV sex. It's absurd to tell someone with a naturally occurring opening in the front of their crotch that they have used to have sex with guys that they are a man.
No. It is not a vaginal opening because it is not a vagina. The absence of a penis is not a vagina.
Yeah, the position that there’s no such thing as gender, only sex, AND that sex is solely about chromosomes (hence undetectable to the naked eye) is as radical and detached from traditional practice as total self-ID is.
No one intelligent is saying sex is solely about chromosomes. Semenya is male because of his testes.
Absolutely correct.
The concept of “gender” exists, of course, but why the heck would it be relevant in sports? Sports are played with bodies, not “gender identities.” XY out of XX sports, end of story, find another hobby!
Right, I'm not talking about her participation in sports, but whether Khelif is properly called a man, he, etc., as Lauren was doing. I was agreeing with someone who finds that incorrect.
The DSD he has only occurs in males.
When scientists say that DSD only occurs in males they mean a organism with a Y chromosome, not one with a male body. The main cause of DSDs is that something interferes with signals from the Y chromosome so the person develops a mostly or partly female body in spite of their chromosomal sex.
A DSD means someone's body isn't really male or female, it's a combination of both. In many cases they might appear completely female from the outside, and only display male characteristics if you do a DNA test or X-ray them.
Right, but as we've already discussed, gender exists, and if that means anything it means that it might make sense for someone who was raised as a girl, with apparent female genitalia, to be considered a woman in terms of gender, even if biologically male.
This will be abused by individuals and countries that care more about medals for the country than any spirit of the rules. Very quickly a man that only ever entered one race as non-binary used it to qualify for the Boston marathon. With almost nothing on the line, no fame, glory or money people are willing to cheat. Make it easier and more socially acceptable and it will only grow.
East German lady swimmers of the 70s anyone?
GWS!
Has anyone else noticed that "Khelif" was spelled more than one way in this post, such as "Khelief" and "Kehlief"?