Why must we protect women's sport? It's elitist, it costs money that could be used for other purposes, and the quality of competition is almost always lower than male sport...to the effect that few people will pay to watch it. It seems the only compelling reason to have women's sport is so that women can win things. If left-handed tennis players had a disadvantage against right-handers, would you create a separate tennis league where only left-handers could play, thus ensuring that a left-hander will win at least one medal in every tennis tournament? The immediate question you would ask is, "Why should left-handers be singled out for special treatment?" So I can ask the same thing about women's tennis.
If women want to form their own private club where they exclude male players, fine, that should be their right. But why does the state feel obligated to provide tax support to the women-only club?
I appreciate this, because I dont agree AND its healthy for people to speak up and challenge prevailing narratives with reasoned arguments. So, thank you!
I don't have a robust rebuttal to this argument, but I will give you my own simple reason for championing the separation of womens sport from mens and keeping it funded.
For me it comes down to what sport does for all humans. There is SO much to learn in sport that creates advantages in ALL OTHER areas of life. This is what girls would lose out on if they were forced out of sport because their biology is weaker compared to men in the context of sport, and therefore women and girls would not get a chance to compete.
All my life I could give a rats ass about sports. I felt I was forced to play them at a young age. Then I grew to like them, the comraderie, the constrained social space for girls (we need that to practice social interaction). On the playing field things get real very quickly and you get to learn how hard work, merit, and ethics play out in scenario's with specific constraints. I could go on about athleticism, understanding your body and its limits, spacial perception, motor skills, teamwork, fairness, empathy, time management, organization, listening skills, etc etc there is SO much to learn about how to get on in the world and how to be the best human you can be... in sport!
The problem is, unlike left-handers who make up 10% of the population, women are 50% of the population and generally, the caregivers of the next generation who will also be 50% women. If we base participation solely on physical prowess across all humans, male and female, the women would shake down to the bottom and drop out. At that point you have half of society getting less opportunity to experience the lessons sport has to offer.
But that doesnt explain why it is CRUCIAL to fund it NOW.
Currently we are faced with the dawning of a new technological age. This "birthing" process is proving particularly harmful to girls in ways that sport is particularly suited to combat. The new tech era isnt going away. Hopefully the kinks will work out for the good of mankind but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, one of the simplest, most well established, and effective means to combat body image issues, mental health problems, the ill effects of social media, isolation, and a host of other issues facing girls in particular is... sport.
I was not an 'athlete' in college. I couldnt even make JV in highschool in the sport I liked but since sports were required I found my niche somewhere. Then I went on to do other things in life. Now I have 3 girls and I jump through hoops to coach their teams. Its one of very few things keeping their childhood age appropriate in a world gone absolutely mad. And I am counting on sport to help me raise them into healthy adults both physically and mentally. Will they be olympians? Honestly, i hope not 😆 ...i dont have that in me. But I will encourage them none the less because what is the alternative?
In 3rd grade the boys already run circles around almost any girl... just as the girls run circles around the boys academically. It is imperative we level those two playing fields, although not necessarily by the same means or in the same way. I am not claiming the radical feminist tropes here. What I am saying is female sport is a necessary corrective for what the tech era is doing to girls specifically. Whats happening to boys is a separate but equally disturbing problem. The difference is, we already have the corrective for girls in place. Why mess with it?
Thank you for that. I find your argument compelling. I’m glad I said what I did because otherwise you might not have seen fit to compose a reply here and then I would not have had the opportunity to read it. So you have done me a favour by changing my mind. Well, not really, because I did pretty much agree with you anyway. I was being the Devil’s advocate. But I will certainly use your arguments in future. Best to you and your daughters as you coach them. (Neither my son nor I was much use in competitive sport but he coaches T-Ball.).
Another value of at least trying sport is that it teaches you that you will fail at things. A lot. And with luck you will find something you can do into late adult life that keeps your body young and lean. Girls shouldn’t miss out on that.
Also, lefties have advantages in many sports. Thanks for your reply. I really don't understand trashing women's sports. I really do understand this commenter being sick and tired of the chaos.
We must protect Women’s sports and private spaces from males. I assumed this was implicit. Also, the top women tennis players make millions of dollars in career earnings and endorsements. Why would you not want that for them?
Well, certainly women’s private spaces where they might be beaten up and raped by men should be protected against male interlopers: bathrooms, violence shelters, and prisons. Sororities? Dunno. The issue with sport is that it’s public, not private. Only a few female athletes command the attention that the Williams sisters do. And they concede that if they played against any of the top 200 seeded men, they wouldn’t win a single point. You presented this as an argument for segregation, which it is, and good for them that it protects their earnings. It’s also an admission that women’s tennis is an inferior product. But who ever said sports fans were rational, cheering itinerant mercenary gladiators as if they represented the Home Team? Maybe the women play a game that seems just a little more accessible to the rest of us.
Much as Canadians love hockey and get excited whenever our women’s national team is playing in some tournament, very few Canadians could name even one player. The women’s game has no following in Canada, other than the parents of the players who drive around from town to town in cold dark snowy winters eating terrible ice-rink hot dogs and stale coffee for dinner and sleeping in Super 8s — bless their hearts.
In baseball, left-handed pitchers have an advantage over the majority of the hitters, who are majority right handed. I don't see handedness as a relevant detail here. It may very well be that left-handed boxers have an advantage over the more common right-ies. I always found the Olympics level women athletes inspiring as a child. There are also the mixed teams, like the US track team of 2 men, 2 women (all of darker complexions, as it happens) who took gold in the 4x400 relay. For a long time, I watched Greta Waitz, the Norwegian marathoner with pride, as a woman and with Norwegian grandparents. If I hadn't started dance training in my teens, I would have tried very hard to be a top notch hurdler. I loved leaping. Let's stay positive on women's sport, I suggest.
I think that answers my point about handedness, thanks. Batters are expected to bat against left-handed pitchers even though they, the batters, suffer a disadvantage. A less-skilled batter can’t elect to play in a league that requires all pitchers to throw right-handed, just so he can get on base more frequently, and be less likely to get picked off at first. No, sorry, we tell him, you have to bat against whomever the other team puts on the mound. If you can’t cope with southpaws, then we’ll replace you with someone who can.
We recognize this is just part of the game, no complaining. If the advantage to left-handed pitchers was huge, baseball probably would ban left-handed pitching, just as it bans the spit-ball. (There’s no reason why it couldn’t. Basketball rules have changed a lot, to make the game more interesting.). Yet except in purely recreational formats like Slo-Pitch we don’t make female batters face male pitchers. But when women do make special leagues only for themselves, they are playing a different game. Can’t get around that.
Are you actually familiar with baseball? The signals between catchers and pitchers, the runners who steal bases, the 3 bases loaded strike outs? The handedness in baseball is part of the game. It's nothing like males in female categories of sports.
That's the point I'm trying to make, that handedness in baseball even though it gives an advantage to left-handed pitchers is part of the game. The feminists who don't want the Olympics to be policing women's bodies -- that's why the Olympics stopped sex testing -- are trying to say that running up against testosterone-enhanced (because male) competitors now and then is just part of the game, too, for women. Clearly the IOC thinks that male competitors in female categories is *NOT* much different from left-handed baseball pitchers, otherwise they would try harder to weed out the men. But they don't do a damn thing about it other than rely on the sporting federations themselves to test, or not test, as the sporting federations see fit. In the case of boxing, the IOC over-ruled the boxing federation because it came up with a result for these two boxers that the IOC didn't like.
But I guess I'm failing to make my point, so never mind.
Thank you for clarifying. I had a similar assumption that this boxer shared the same kind of DSD as Caster Semenya. So much misinformation is being posted online on this subject!
I suspect another issue layered into the IOC's overall squalidly incompetent approach to protecting women athletes: their fanatical Russophobia. The number of times it has been mentioned that the IBA has "Russian ties" and its president has "ties to Putin" -- as if any of that could affect the outcome of genetic tests on individual boxers -- has been very striking.
The IOC is completely politicized along multiple axes. In this case, two of the axes it grinds intersected (I'm having a metaphor garage sale next weekend, don't worry).
It's really sad because the Games themselves are so beautiful. The athletes are so inspiring, the whole thing is so gorgeous and human. The IOC is a toad squatting atop it.
Thanks for laying this out. It’s been fascinating to watch it play out as ideologues on both sides rush to ideologically-aligned judgment rather than following the breadcrumbs based on what we currently know, and a willingness to retract something if it turns out to be wrong.
Gender ideologues have been twisting themselves into knots on this issue.
Normally, those of us who are gender critical are accused of being biological essentialists, gamete-lovers, blah blah. However, when it comes to Khelif, the accusers themselves are becoming quite essentialist, declaring that Khelif takes no hormones and has had no surgery, and must therefore be a woman. Funny to hear that from a crowd who insists that women are who they say they are, regardless of biology.
To my mind, there is a simple way to settle this. Khelif can give a respected organization a sample of her DNA, through saliva or skin cells or whatever, and prove to the world that she does not have a DSD. Easy-peasy.
All Khelif has to do is consent to allow the boxing association's genetic tests they've already done to be released. If he has a Y chromosome (or an SRY gene) he's male. He has clearly been masculinized, therefore as Colin says he shouldn't be boxing against women. If she's XX and looks like that I'd be suspicious that she'd been doping with T from an early age although presumably she's passed doping tests through her career. But if she was XX she would certainly have won any appeal, and the boxing association wouldn't have DQ'd her in the first place if she was XX. It's really not that difficult for purposes of sport eligibility.
Produce is one thing. Conducting them to the outside world and into a female partner is another. In CAIS the testes can produce gametes but there are no conducting organs to connect them to the urethra and no penis to intromit them with. But the testes are as functional as undescended testes can be, given that carrying them in the scrotum makes them work better. (Because they are undescended they are usually removed once the diagnosis is made to prevent them from becoming cancer.)
An example of a person with a Y chromosome who can't produce sperm is Swyer syndrome. The SRY gene on the Y is defective so no testes are produced at all, just bits of fibrous tissue. So no spermatozoa.
People with XXY don't usually make viable spermatozoa, either.
And then there are those millions of men who are perfectly normal except they make no sperm and no one knows why.
I wonder if this episode is an attempt by the IOC to cement sex eligibility by documentation or self-declaration ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, where self-id is more popular than in the rest of the world. If so, it appears to have backfired.
Glad you mentioned Ilona Maher. First, because the US Women's Rugby Team won a bronze medal, the first time US women have medaled in the sport in Olympic history. And in dramatic fashion. Trailing Australia with tie running out, they started a play and went the length of the field scoring with tie elapsed. Check it out:
Maher has been harassed by "transvestigators" and other haters. She's not svelte like a track runner, and not at all petite - 5'10", 200 lbs of muscle and total fitness. But because she has dealt with the crap she has, she's become a tremendous spokesperson to young women about body positivity, accepting and appreciating their own body. I would encourage all women that are concerned with what's going on with teenage girls these days to learn more about her. Ilona already has millions of followers on Instagram, where she is getting her own word out.
Thank you so very much for such a fantastic article! It was beyond clear and comprehensive. It's such a loss that this invaluable piece will never be seen in The NY Times, WAPO, The Economist, The Guardian, etc. with their fear of backlash by the gender ideology activists. Have to search X and youtube, turn to people and programs I never would have watched but do now because they support women's sports. It's alienating that Dems have eroded Title IX women's "sex" rights with "gender" inclusion, act like "abortion" is the paramount right to defend for women. Thanks again.
In your article “The True Meaning of Intersex”, you state "Intersex is a subset of the category of people having DSDs (Differences of Sexual Development). Not all those with DSD are intersex, but all intersex people have a DSD condition."
So based on your assumptions about this case, Khelif would be considered as having a DSD that qualifies as an intersex condition, correct? And someone in this situation could understandably be identified as female as their "sex assigned at birth" and thus raised as a female, but should be considered male for their biological sex when treating them medically or determining whether they can participate in female only sports?
I think the answer to this question is yes, the person in question may have been raised female from birth. Whether or not this person still feels like a female today is another question. Recent photos of Khelif show him dressing as a normal male.
My reading of Dr. Wright's article is that a 46 XY male could have a condition, likely 5 ARD, that would lead to male puberty and its masculinizing effects on his body, except for lack of normal development of male genitals. So during puberty I would think that most families would wonder what was going on with their presumed daughter, and would probably seek a medical evaluation. If a boy or man in this scenario was raised as a girl and always thought he was one, discovering the truth could be a challenging process. I would be interested in knowing the percentage of affected males who shift their sexual identities to male versus continuing to think of themselves as female or shifting to an "intersex" identity.
Would someone with Swyer Syndrome be considered male or female? Given that there has been a document case of someone with XY chromosomes giving birth through in-vitro?
I couldn't really find much on this condition beyond the past ten years, making me think it's a little fishy about the rare documented cases of it.
Interesting. It's the main one that confuses me. It seems like the one condition that kinda throws a wrench in the whole XY is Male and XX is Female. But I guess all these have exceptions. But I guess it's worth noting for argument.
The language of "gender test" is the most prominent obfuscation here to me. This uses the antiquated sense of gender, appropriate only in the old sense where it was simply a synonym for sex. The only "gender" test now that makes any sense with today's language would be Self-ID... The topic has been so complicated by the language games that the actual issue is obscured. Much of the media coverage I've seen leans into that confusion, and so it would be natural for a layperson to throw up their hands and default to allowing it. Somehow the discussion needs to get back to the reason there are women sports in the first place - the clear advantage of testosterone and male physical development.
Gender was a synonym for sex for the longest time, the distinction of a difference is a pretty recent popularization, I think outside the US politicized bubble a lot of science people are not making the distinction. Also, Trans usually women claim that their gender and their sex are female. So, everyone is using some confusing terms.
Thank you for these facts, Colin. We MUST protect women’s sports and spaces.
I also wanted to share this link where Serene Williams, one of the greatest FEMALE tennis players addresses competing against MALES.
Link: https://youtu.be/5L_JbZFx5H0?si=VXG2oPhYHRyBh-kE
Thank you Serena! That level of honesty on celebrity TV is almost shocking.
Why must we protect women's sport? It's elitist, it costs money that could be used for other purposes, and the quality of competition is almost always lower than male sport...to the effect that few people will pay to watch it. It seems the only compelling reason to have women's sport is so that women can win things. If left-handed tennis players had a disadvantage against right-handers, would you create a separate tennis league where only left-handers could play, thus ensuring that a left-hander will win at least one medal in every tennis tournament? The immediate question you would ask is, "Why should left-handers be singled out for special treatment?" So I can ask the same thing about women's tennis.
If women want to form their own private club where they exclude male players, fine, that should be their right. But why does the state feel obligated to provide tax support to the women-only club?
I appreciate this, because I dont agree AND its healthy for people to speak up and challenge prevailing narratives with reasoned arguments. So, thank you!
I don't have a robust rebuttal to this argument, but I will give you my own simple reason for championing the separation of womens sport from mens and keeping it funded.
For me it comes down to what sport does for all humans. There is SO much to learn in sport that creates advantages in ALL OTHER areas of life. This is what girls would lose out on if they were forced out of sport because their biology is weaker compared to men in the context of sport, and therefore women and girls would not get a chance to compete.
All my life I could give a rats ass about sports. I felt I was forced to play them at a young age. Then I grew to like them, the comraderie, the constrained social space for girls (we need that to practice social interaction). On the playing field things get real very quickly and you get to learn how hard work, merit, and ethics play out in scenario's with specific constraints. I could go on about athleticism, understanding your body and its limits, spacial perception, motor skills, teamwork, fairness, empathy, time management, organization, listening skills, etc etc there is SO much to learn about how to get on in the world and how to be the best human you can be... in sport!
The problem is, unlike left-handers who make up 10% of the population, women are 50% of the population and generally, the caregivers of the next generation who will also be 50% women. If we base participation solely on physical prowess across all humans, male and female, the women would shake down to the bottom and drop out. At that point you have half of society getting less opportunity to experience the lessons sport has to offer.
But that doesnt explain why it is CRUCIAL to fund it NOW.
Currently we are faced with the dawning of a new technological age. This "birthing" process is proving particularly harmful to girls in ways that sport is particularly suited to combat. The new tech era isnt going away. Hopefully the kinks will work out for the good of mankind but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, one of the simplest, most well established, and effective means to combat body image issues, mental health problems, the ill effects of social media, isolation, and a host of other issues facing girls in particular is... sport.
I was not an 'athlete' in college. I couldnt even make JV in highschool in the sport I liked but since sports were required I found my niche somewhere. Then I went on to do other things in life. Now I have 3 girls and I jump through hoops to coach their teams. Its one of very few things keeping their childhood age appropriate in a world gone absolutely mad. And I am counting on sport to help me raise them into healthy adults both physically and mentally. Will they be olympians? Honestly, i hope not 😆 ...i dont have that in me. But I will encourage them none the less because what is the alternative?
In 3rd grade the boys already run circles around almost any girl... just as the girls run circles around the boys academically. It is imperative we level those two playing fields, although not necessarily by the same means or in the same way. I am not claiming the radical feminist tropes here. What I am saying is female sport is a necessary corrective for what the tech era is doing to girls specifically. Whats happening to boys is a separate but equally disturbing problem. The difference is, we already have the corrective for girls in place. Why mess with it?
Thank you for that. I find your argument compelling. I’m glad I said what I did because otherwise you might not have seen fit to compose a reply here and then I would not have had the opportunity to read it. So you have done me a favour by changing my mind. Well, not really, because I did pretty much agree with you anyway. I was being the Devil’s advocate. But I will certainly use your arguments in future. Best to you and your daughters as you coach them. (Neither my son nor I was much use in competitive sport but he coaches T-Ball.).
Another value of at least trying sport is that it teaches you that you will fail at things. A lot. And with luck you will find something you can do into late adult life that keeps your body young and lean. Girls shouldn’t miss out on that.
Class.
I get so many messages i never saw this one. Thank you Susan!
Also, lefties have advantages in many sports. Thanks for your reply. I really don't understand trashing women's sports. I really do understand this commenter being sick and tired of the chaos.
Thanks. Perfect answer to the rather ignorant preceding comment
We must protect Women’s sports and private spaces from males. I assumed this was implicit. Also, the top women tennis players make millions of dollars in career earnings and endorsements. Why would you not want that for them?
Well, certainly women’s private spaces where they might be beaten up and raped by men should be protected against male interlopers: bathrooms, violence shelters, and prisons. Sororities? Dunno. The issue with sport is that it’s public, not private. Only a few female athletes command the attention that the Williams sisters do. And they concede that if they played against any of the top 200 seeded men, they wouldn’t win a single point. You presented this as an argument for segregation, which it is, and good for them that it protects their earnings. It’s also an admission that women’s tennis is an inferior product. But who ever said sports fans were rational, cheering itinerant mercenary gladiators as if they represented the Home Team? Maybe the women play a game that seems just a little more accessible to the rest of us.
Much as Canadians love hockey and get excited whenever our women’s national team is playing in some tournament, very few Canadians could name even one player. The women’s game has no following in Canada, other than the parents of the players who drive around from town to town in cold dark snowy winters eating terrible ice-rink hot dogs and stale coffee for dinner and sleeping in Super 8s — bless their hearts.
In baseball, left-handed pitchers have an advantage over the majority of the hitters, who are majority right handed. I don't see handedness as a relevant detail here. It may very well be that left-handed boxers have an advantage over the more common right-ies. I always found the Olympics level women athletes inspiring as a child. There are also the mixed teams, like the US track team of 2 men, 2 women (all of darker complexions, as it happens) who took gold in the 4x400 relay. For a long time, I watched Greta Waitz, the Norwegian marathoner with pride, as a woman and with Norwegian grandparents. If I hadn't started dance training in my teens, I would have tried very hard to be a top notch hurdler. I loved leaping. Let's stay positive on women's sport, I suggest.
I think that answers my point about handedness, thanks. Batters are expected to bat against left-handed pitchers even though they, the batters, suffer a disadvantage. A less-skilled batter can’t elect to play in a league that requires all pitchers to throw right-handed, just so he can get on base more frequently, and be less likely to get picked off at first. No, sorry, we tell him, you have to bat against whomever the other team puts on the mound. If you can’t cope with southpaws, then we’ll replace you with someone who can.
We recognize this is just part of the game, no complaining. If the advantage to left-handed pitchers was huge, baseball probably would ban left-handed pitching, just as it bans the spit-ball. (There’s no reason why it couldn’t. Basketball rules have changed a lot, to make the game more interesting.). Yet except in purely recreational formats like Slo-Pitch we don’t make female batters face male pitchers. But when women do make special leagues only for themselves, they are playing a different game. Can’t get around that.
Are you actually familiar with baseball? The signals between catchers and pitchers, the runners who steal bases, the 3 bases loaded strike outs? The handedness in baseball is part of the game. It's nothing like males in female categories of sports.
That's the point I'm trying to make, that handedness in baseball even though it gives an advantage to left-handed pitchers is part of the game. The feminists who don't want the Olympics to be policing women's bodies -- that's why the Olympics stopped sex testing -- are trying to say that running up against testosterone-enhanced (because male) competitors now and then is just part of the game, too, for women. Clearly the IOC thinks that male competitors in female categories is *NOT* much different from left-handed baseball pitchers, otherwise they would try harder to weed out the men. But they don't do a damn thing about it other than rely on the sporting federations themselves to test, or not test, as the sporting federations see fit. In the case of boxing, the IOC over-ruled the boxing federation because it came up with a result for these two boxers that the IOC didn't like.
But I guess I'm failing to make my point, so never mind.
Thank you for clarifying. I had a similar assumption that this boxer shared the same kind of DSD as Caster Semenya. So much misinformation is being posted online on this subject!
I suspect another issue layered into the IOC's overall squalidly incompetent approach to protecting women athletes: their fanatical Russophobia. The number of times it has been mentioned that the IBA has "Russian ties" and its president has "ties to Putin" -- as if any of that could affect the outcome of genetic tests on individual boxers -- has been very striking.
The IOC is completely politicized along multiple axes. In this case, two of the axes it grinds intersected (I'm having a metaphor garage sale next weekend, don't worry).
It's really sad because the Games themselves are so beautiful. The athletes are so inspiring, the whole thing is so gorgeous and human. The IOC is a toad squatting atop it.
Thanks for laying this out. It’s been fascinating to watch it play out as ideologues on both sides rush to ideologically-aligned judgment rather than following the breadcrumbs based on what we currently know, and a willingness to retract something if it turns out to be wrong.
Gender ideologues have been twisting themselves into knots on this issue.
Normally, those of us who are gender critical are accused of being biological essentialists, gamete-lovers, blah blah. However, when it comes to Khelif, the accusers themselves are becoming quite essentialist, declaring that Khelif takes no hormones and has had no surgery, and must therefore be a woman. Funny to hear that from a crowd who insists that women are who they say they are, regardless of biology.
To my mind, there is a simple way to settle this. Khelif can give a respected organization a sample of her DNA, through saliva or skin cells or whatever, and prove to the world that she does not have a DSD. Easy-peasy.
All Khelif has to do is consent to allow the boxing association's genetic tests they've already done to be released. If he has a Y chromosome (or an SRY gene) he's male. He has clearly been masculinized, therefore as Colin says he shouldn't be boxing against women. If she's XX and looks like that I'd be suspicious that she'd been doping with T from an early age although presumably she's passed doping tests through her career. But if she was XX she would certainly have won any appeal, and the boxing association wouldn't have DQ'd her in the first place if she was XX. It's really not that difficult for purposes of sport eligibility.
A masterpiece Colin, thankyou for the clarification.
Thanks for sharing the hard science facts with all of us.
Colin, does a person with the conditions you mentioned (5-ARD etc.) produce male gametes?
Yes.
Are there any conditions where a person has a Y chromosome but doesn't produce sperm?
Produce is one thing. Conducting them to the outside world and into a female partner is another. In CAIS the testes can produce gametes but there are no conducting organs to connect them to the urethra and no penis to intromit them with. But the testes are as functional as undescended testes can be, given that carrying them in the scrotum makes them work better. (Because they are undescended they are usually removed once the diagnosis is made to prevent them from becoming cancer.)
An example of a person with a Y chromosome who can't produce sperm is Swyer syndrome. The SRY gene on the Y is defective so no testes are produced at all, just bits of fibrous tissue. So no spermatozoa.
People with XXY don't usually make viable spermatozoa, either.
And then there are those millions of men who are perfectly normal except they make no sperm and no one knows why.
I wonder if this episode is an attempt by the IOC to cement sex eligibility by documentation or self-declaration ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, where self-id is more popular than in the rest of the world. If so, it appears to have backfired.
Thank you. Yours is the most complete analysis of this issue that I have read.
Very well argued article. Thanks very much!
Glad you mentioned Ilona Maher. First, because the US Women's Rugby Team won a bronze medal, the first time US women have medaled in the sport in Olympic history. And in dramatic fashion. Trailing Australia with tie running out, they started a play and went the length of the field scoring with tie elapsed. Check it out:
https://youtu.be/BtXhHzH40SQ?t=276
Maher has been harassed by "transvestigators" and other haters. She's not svelte like a track runner, and not at all petite - 5'10", 200 lbs of muscle and total fitness. But because she has dealt with the crap she has, she's become a tremendous spokesperson to young women about body positivity, accepting and appreciating their own body. I would encourage all women that are concerned with what's going on with teenage girls these days to learn more about her. Ilona already has millions of followers on Instagram, where she is getting her own word out.
Thank you so very much for such a fantastic article! It was beyond clear and comprehensive. It's such a loss that this invaluable piece will never be seen in The NY Times, WAPO, The Economist, The Guardian, etc. with their fear of backlash by the gender ideology activists. Have to search X and youtube, turn to people and programs I never would have watched but do now because they support women's sports. It's alienating that Dems have eroded Title IX women's "sex" rights with "gender" inclusion, act like "abortion" is the paramount right to defend for women. Thanks again.
In your article “The True Meaning of Intersex”, you state "Intersex is a subset of the category of people having DSDs (Differences of Sexual Development). Not all those with DSD are intersex, but all intersex people have a DSD condition."
So based on your assumptions about this case, Khelif would be considered as having a DSD that qualifies as an intersex condition, correct? And someone in this situation could understandably be identified as female as their "sex assigned at birth" and thus raised as a female, but should be considered male for their biological sex when treating them medically or determining whether they can participate in female only sports?
I think the answer to this question is yes, the person in question may have been raised female from birth. Whether or not this person still feels like a female today is another question. Recent photos of Khelif show him dressing as a normal male.
My reading of Dr. Wright's article is that a 46 XY male could have a condition, likely 5 ARD, that would lead to male puberty and its masculinizing effects on his body, except for lack of normal development of male genitals. So during puberty I would think that most families would wonder what was going on with their presumed daughter, and would probably seek a medical evaluation. If a boy or man in this scenario was raised as a girl and always thought he was one, discovering the truth could be a challenging process. I would be interested in knowing the percentage of affected males who shift their sexual identities to male versus continuing to think of themselves as female or shifting to an "intersex" identity.
Confused about one thing.
Would someone with Swyer Syndrome be considered male or female? Given that there has been a document case of someone with XY chromosomes giving birth through in-vitro?
I couldn't really find much on this condition beyond the past ten years, making me think it's a little fishy about the rare documented cases of it.
It's a somewhat sexually ambiguous condition IMO. For sports, there's no reason why people with Swyer shouldn't be able to compete as women.
Interesting. It's the main one that confuses me. It seems like the one condition that kinda throws a wrench in the whole XY is Male and XX is Female. But I guess all these have exceptions. But I guess it's worth noting for argument.
I agree with the sports deduction as well.
The language of "gender test" is the most prominent obfuscation here to me. This uses the antiquated sense of gender, appropriate only in the old sense where it was simply a synonym for sex. The only "gender" test now that makes any sense with today's language would be Self-ID... The topic has been so complicated by the language games that the actual issue is obscured. Much of the media coverage I've seen leans into that confusion, and so it would be natural for a layperson to throw up their hands and default to allowing it. Somehow the discussion needs to get back to the reason there are women sports in the first place - the clear advantage of testosterone and male physical development.
Gender was a synonym for sex for the longest time, the distinction of a difference is a pretty recent popularization, I think outside the US politicized bubble a lot of science people are not making the distinction. Also, Trans usually women claim that their gender and their sex are female. So, everyone is using some confusing terms.