Simple, easy to understand summary, kudos. As I read somewhere, “female is not a hormone”. I’d add clearly that female is neither a choice nor a decision. For sports, it’s just an observation about an athletes body.
I have come to the belief that there are many more males (and females) than I realized that despise the advancement of women and our full participation in society. The goal is to destroy female sports, more to follow, and this couldn't be happening without the support of many men in high places, along with their transmaidens. Thank you for writing the history of this mess. (Natal) females are Females!
Thank you, Linda, for your diligence and attention to detail. This is clear and comprehensive and we must disseminate this information and elect better leadership.
This was an excellent article - I did not know this history in detail. What is happening is astounding and unacceptable. I spent a number of years as a postdoc studying the mechanisms that underlie how hormones like testosterone have permanent programming effects on the brain during early life and again at puberty. The rest of the body is no less affected by these hormones surges and the permanent effects they have. The IOC has to go back to looking at the chromosomes.
Amazing how all this happened during the emergence of social media as a dominant form of getting "news".
Why have any changes been made to the category of woman's sport before the science was determined.
Why hasn't the IOC created an open category where anyone can compete. Men, Women, Trans-Men, Trans-Women. I assume it would be mostly trans-women competing.
I'm a long-time liberal, and I don't know when it became a leftist value to shove women to the back of the line for *their own activities* to make way for men, I really don't. I used to be quiet about it because I thought it's what you had to do to be a good person--no one wants to be a transphobe-- but no more. I have no moral duty to pretend to believe something untrue, or to use that belief to do something unfair.
This is Leslie, not Susan (e-mail glitch at Substack)
I don't know the technical details of why the Barr-body-negative or SRY-positive athletes were allowed to compete in the specific cases Dr. Blade describes. However a female competitor who is XY but lacks a gene for the testosterone receptor will be phenotypically female in every respect (except for lacking internal sex organs which aren't relevant in sport. ) Despite having a Y chromosome (and a SRY gene) she looks female and is athletically female. This condition, called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, occurs with a frequency of 1 in 20,000 or so. World Athletics is well aware of this condition and clears them to compete as women, because they are. A handful of Olympic-level athletes have done so. There are other conditions which are harder to adjudicate but there is a process for doing so.
So you could use cheek-swab testing for Barr bodies. It is a microscope technique which takes some practice. Not all women have easily seen Barr bodies in every cell, and some men have clumps of stuff that can look like Barr bodies in some cells. Calling a test positive or negative is not entirely cut and dried. But in doubtful cases -- Barr bodies seen by a skilled technician in, say, 10% of cells -- you could do SRY testing to confirm. Then, if a woman was DQ'd because she had no Barr bodies or had SRY (even though she knew she didn't have a penis), she would have the right to appeal and have the gene assay to prove she had CAIS. There have been world-class athletes who discovered for the first time during their rise to elite level than they have CAIS.
The point is, even with these rare conditions you can still do sensible testing for maleness that doesn't require the athlete to pull down her pants in front of a marshal.
The likely solution, given the intense political pressure from Marxist queers to allow self-identification to play in whatever gender one is most comfortable with, is for fans to stop buying tickets for women's sporting events, or buying sponsors' products, whenever it becomes known that the event will include a man as a competitor. I don't believe fans really want to pay to watch the 250th-best man, who couldn't even meet minimal qualifying criteria in men's events, trounce the world's best woman in every event he enters.
The sad truth is that women's sport (other than the "grace" events like gymnastics and figure skating and some team sports with a real fan base) just aren't as interesting as men's sport: the women are slower and weaker and usually less skilled than the men in every event. The only reason to watch them is to reward someone who has trained all her life for an event she would have no chance of winning unless in a protected female category. That makes sense if the athlete is your friend or family member, or if the tickets are cheaper and easier to get for a marquee event than the men's. If we all know that our friend and family member is going to lose to a mediocre man, we'll have to break it to her gently that we aren't going to come out and watch her at all. Who wants to see that?
Edit: I'd even say that gamblers won't want to bet on women's events with male competitors. The odds will be too short for bookmakers to attract action on anyone else. If a $100 bet on Ralph Kramden pays $101, how does the bookie attract enough bets on Lucy Ricardo to pay $1 to everyone who'll bet on sure-thing Ralph? Think of the incentive there would be to bribe Ralph to throw a race, though!
Simple, easy to understand summary, kudos. As I read somewhere, “female is not a hormone”. I’d add clearly that female is neither a choice nor a decision. For sports, it’s just an observation about an athletes body.
I have come to the belief that there are many more males (and females) than I realized that despise the advancement of women and our full participation in society. The goal is to destroy female sports, more to follow, and this couldn't be happening without the support of many men in high places, along with their transmaidens. Thank you for writing the history of this mess. (Natal) females are Females!
Thank you, Linda, for your diligence and attention to detail. This is clear and comprehensive and we must disseminate this information and elect better leadership.
This a really excellent summary. I just wish you could force every politician and decision maker to read and respond to it. Enough is enough.
This was an excellent article - I did not know this history in detail. What is happening is astounding and unacceptable. I spent a number of years as a postdoc studying the mechanisms that underlie how hormones like testosterone have permanent programming effects on the brain during early life and again at puberty. The rest of the body is no less affected by these hormones surges and the permanent effects they have. The IOC has to go back to looking at the chromosomes.
Reading this is absolutely infuriating. I grew up with second-wave feminism and the flourishing of female sports. How did we regress so far?
Amazing how all this happened during the emergence of social media as a dominant form of getting "news".
Why have any changes been made to the category of woman's sport before the science was determined.
Why hasn't the IOC created an open category where anyone can compete. Men, Women, Trans-Men, Trans-Women. I assume it would be mostly trans-women competing.
This is a great, if infuriating, read.
I'm a long-time liberal, and I don't know when it became a leftist value to shove women to the back of the line for *their own activities* to make way for men, I really don't. I used to be quiet about it because I thought it's what you had to do to be a good person--no one wants to be a transphobe-- but no more. I have no moral duty to pretend to believe something untrue, or to use that belief to do something unfair.
This is Leslie, not Susan (e-mail glitch at Substack)
I don't know the technical details of why the Barr-body-negative or SRY-positive athletes were allowed to compete in the specific cases Dr. Blade describes. However a female competitor who is XY but lacks a gene for the testosterone receptor will be phenotypically female in every respect (except for lacking internal sex organs which aren't relevant in sport. ) Despite having a Y chromosome (and a SRY gene) she looks female and is athletically female. This condition, called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, occurs with a frequency of 1 in 20,000 or so. World Athletics is well aware of this condition and clears them to compete as women, because they are. A handful of Olympic-level athletes have done so. There are other conditions which are harder to adjudicate but there is a process for doing so.
So you could use cheek-swab testing for Barr bodies. It is a microscope technique which takes some practice. Not all women have easily seen Barr bodies in every cell, and some men have clumps of stuff that can look like Barr bodies in some cells. Calling a test positive or negative is not entirely cut and dried. But in doubtful cases -- Barr bodies seen by a skilled technician in, say, 10% of cells -- you could do SRY testing to confirm. Then, if a woman was DQ'd because she had no Barr bodies or had SRY (even though she knew she didn't have a penis), she would have the right to appeal and have the gene assay to prove she had CAIS. There have been world-class athletes who discovered for the first time during their rise to elite level than they have CAIS.
The point is, even with these rare conditions you can still do sensible testing for maleness that doesn't require the athlete to pull down her pants in front of a marshal.
The likely solution, given the intense political pressure from Marxist queers to allow self-identification to play in whatever gender one is most comfortable with, is for fans to stop buying tickets for women's sporting events, or buying sponsors' products, whenever it becomes known that the event will include a man as a competitor. I don't believe fans really want to pay to watch the 250th-best man, who couldn't even meet minimal qualifying criteria in men's events, trounce the world's best woman in every event he enters.
The sad truth is that women's sport (other than the "grace" events like gymnastics and figure skating and some team sports with a real fan base) just aren't as interesting as men's sport: the women are slower and weaker and usually less skilled than the men in every event. The only reason to watch them is to reward someone who has trained all her life for an event she would have no chance of winning unless in a protected female category. That makes sense if the athlete is your friend or family member, or if the tickets are cheaper and easier to get for a marquee event than the men's. If we all know that our friend and family member is going to lose to a mediocre man, we'll have to break it to her gently that we aren't going to come out and watch her at all. Who wants to see that?
Edit: I'd even say that gamblers won't want to bet on women's events with male competitors. The odds will be too short for bookmakers to attract action on anyone else. If a $100 bet on Ralph Kramden pays $101, how does the bookie attract enough bets on Lucy Ricardo to pay $1 to everyone who'll bet on sure-thing Ralph? Think of the incentive there would be to bribe Ralph to throw a race, though!