We do not know what is between Imane Khelif’s legs. It is absolutely possible to be XY and be born with a vagina that looks and works like any vagina. They might even have rudimentary (but non-functional) female reproductive organs.
If that is true about Imane Khelif, she may not even have known about it most of her life.
Should all Olympians be genetically tested or just examined to see what’s between their legs? If the former, which event do the women with Swyer Syndrome perform in? How about people with both sets of genitalia? They exist. What about people who are XXY or XYY?
And if you think the latter- please do justify that sort of invasive examination for the purposes of athletic competition. Unpaid athletic competition at that.
I think the debate is about what a reasonable class is. I don’t think that an appendage, or identity for that matter, is a reasonable proxy for capability class. In my mind you really have to go one of two ways.
You either make everything class-less (think UFC 1) where all weights, sizes, abilities, genetics compete for a singular title
Or
You make science-based classes, based around whatever the best proxy for capabilities are (testosterone, chromosomes, height, weight, body fat percentage, some combination of the former, etc)
If you use nothing as a proxy, there would be a lot of people unable to compete but it would at least be unequivocally “fair”. If you use science-based capability classes you would have a wider range of “fair-ish” competitions, but there might be some weird overlap where some men, some women, and those in-between bridge accepted norms.
If you use nothing as a proxy, there would be a lot of people unable to compete but it would at least be unequivocally “fair”.
The thing is there’s always going to be people unable to compete. I don’t have the ability to compete in the Olympics, and that’s OK. I’m not asking for them to make a class for people like me specifically.
I don’t know what the “right” solution is, but my opinion has always been that the premier class should be unrestricted and anyone can compete. Whether we have subdivisions is another question, and then what those subdivisions should be is another. Is gender/sex the correct subdivision, or should it be something else? There are many women who can kick my ass despite being a 6’ tall man. Gender/sex is not a definitive proxy for capability.
That really doesn’t answer my question, it just splits it up between different bodies.
So let’s say it’s just a specific governing body of a sport? I’ll reword it with a minor changes:
Should athletes be genetically tested by that body or just examined to see what’s between their legs? If the former, do the women with Swyer Syndrome perform in the male or female divisions? How about people with both sets of genitalia? They exist. What about people who are XXY or XYY?
And if you think the latter- please do justify that sort of invasive examination for the purposes of athletic competition.
I think you can give a general answer to that question which applies to all members of, at the very least, the boxing league Khelif is in.
That really doesn’t answer my question, it just splits it up between different bodies.
Sorry, that’s just reality.
I can’t give you a general answer that applies to all of women’s sport, and for a specific answer regarding a particular women’s sport, you’ll need to consult with the governing body of that sport, and recognize that body may pander to interests (commercial, or the preferences of its participants and other stakeholders, etc) that have nothing to do with how you prefer to define “woman”.
I not telling you to accept or be happy with anything. I am saying that if you want women’s sports to work the way you think they should work, you’ll need to go through their governance bodies.
This isn’t about the external genitalia, not sure why you keep going there. This is about the levels of hormones over an amount of time that is known to impart a muscular advantage. The IOC needs a formula for this to decide who can be in the class. This would not be a determination of who is female.
I think the thing we are trying to regulate is the muscular advantage imparted by certain hormones over certain periods of time. Whether the person being measured has been labeled male or female doesn’t make any difference.
If it is about hormones, why then also not test for growth hormone (GH)? People with more than average GH might have longer legs, giving them an advantage in certain sports.
There is also Adrenaline, Cortisone, etc. also giving certain advantages.
Maybe we should try to cancel out ALL natural variations, to make the competitions more fair.
In the end, we can only allow exact clones from each other to compete to each other.
And end up with competitions which equal to throwing a dice, because nobody can be truly be “the best” anymore, which can be defined as “possessing the best set of natural variations that makes this person a born winner”.
Do we need a protected class? If yes, there must be standards and those standards must be either endocrine or genetic or both. Yes they should be tested. Anyone failing the protected class can compete in the open class. It’s really that simple.
If it’s about who might get hurt, maybe we should divide things up by something other than gender. I know plenty of women who could do a ton of damage with their fists and they aren’t even boxers.
It’s one thing to work within the limits of your physique to become stronger, better, etc. It’s another thing to have a totally different physique that gives you a starting point higher than can be achieved naturally by anyone else.
So put those women in a higher class. There are plenty of women with “masculine” physiques… or are you going to claim Brittney Griner is also not a woman?
So many sports are entirely about the physique you inherited though. Yes there is some technique to swimming and obviously you have to train hard. But these are just prerequisites, not differentiators. If we start saying that winning because of your physique is no victory, then really half of the events become meaningless. To a large extent, the Olympics does measure inherited traits and I think we ought to recognize that that is its point. If you think back all those centuries, it was very obviously the point to prove that your people are genetically superior to their people.
Boxing has weight classes. As do most other martial arts.
The problem is not a 50kg men fighting a 70kg women in terms of injuries and power imbalance. And in that set up the women most likely wins. The problem is the typical situation of a 80-100 kg men smacking down on a 50-60kg women. And that is the image the demagogues try to conjure.
So if your full blown men is a 60kg feather to be able to compete against another 60kg women, the whole trope falls apart.
Boxers and wrestlers have weight classes because weight confers a massive advantage and almost predetermines the outcome of the match. You might as well just award someone for weighing more, because skill can only overcome it to a point.
I would prefer if competitive classes were determined by things like weight which are universal and obvious and non-invasive to measure. However I don’t know if that works for everything. Hormones do in fact confer major advantages, as chemical doping does. Should we not test for doping either?
I do think it’s actually more invasive to try to measure if someone “lives as a woman” than it is to measure what’s in their blood. How do you even begin to define that, and aren’t you engaging in prescriptive sexism as soon as you start? I can tell that your suggestion comes from a place of wanting to support women and their autonomy but I don’t think you thought it through at all, at least not in the context of competitive sport. If you don’t care at all about fair sports competition, it’s all super easy. If you do want to enable fair sport competition, you have to actually deal with the complexities and not just fire off leftist slogans.
At least one X is required because it contains instructions to make very crucial stuff, while Y contains a bunch of switches turning things on and off.
We do not know what is between Imane Khelif’s legs. It is absolutely possible to be XY and be born with a vagina that looks and works like any vagina. They might even have rudimentary (but non-functional) female reproductive organs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis
If that is true about Imane Khelif, she may not even have known about it most of her life.
Should all Olympians be genetically tested or just examined to see what’s between their legs? If the former, which event do the women with Swyer Syndrome perform in? How about people with both sets of genitalia? They exist. What about people who are XXY or XYY?
And if you think the latter- please do justify that sort of invasive examination for the purposes of athletic competition. Unpaid athletic competition at that.
The determination of who may compete in limited-class sports must be made by rules.
It’s not a matter of who you or I think is a woman who qualifies. Only the governing body of that sport makes that determination.
I think the debate is about what a reasonable class is. I don’t think that an appendage, or identity for that matter, is a reasonable proxy for capability class. In my mind you really have to go one of two ways.
You either make everything class-less (think UFC 1) where all weights, sizes, abilities, genetics compete for a singular title
Or
You make science-based classes, based around whatever the best proxy for capabilities are (testosterone, chromosomes, height, weight, body fat percentage, some combination of the former, etc)
If you use nothing as a proxy, there would be a lot of people unable to compete but it would at least be unequivocally “fair”. If you use science-based capability classes you would have a wider range of “fair-ish” competitions, but there might be some weird overlap where some men, some women, and those in-between bridge accepted norms.
The thing is there’s always going to be people unable to compete. I don’t have the ability to compete in the Olympics, and that’s OK. I’m not asking for them to make a class for people like me specifically.
I don’t know what the “right” solution is, but my opinion has always been that the premier class should be unrestricted and anyone can compete. Whether we have subdivisions is another question, and then what those subdivisions should be is another. Is gender/sex the correct subdivision, or should it be something else? There are many women who can kick my ass despite being a 6’ tall man. Gender/sex is not a definitive proxy for capability.
That really doesn’t answer my question, it just splits it up between different bodies.
So let’s say it’s just a specific governing body of a sport? I’ll reword it with a minor changes:
Should athletes be genetically tested by that body or just examined to see what’s between their legs? If the former, do the women with Swyer Syndrome perform in the male or female divisions? How about people with both sets of genitalia? They exist. What about people who are XXY or XYY?
And if you think the latter- please do justify that sort of invasive examination for the purposes of athletic competition.
I think you can give a general answer to that question which applies to all members of, at the very least, the boxing league Khelif is in.
Sorry, that’s just reality.
I can’t give you a general answer that applies to all of women’s sport, and for a specific answer regarding a particular women’s sport, you’ll need to consult with the governing body of that sport, and recognize that body may pander to interests (commercial, or the preferences of its participants and other stakeholders, etc) that have nothing to do with how you prefer to define “woman”.
So just accept that’s how things are and be happy with it? That’s what you’re saying?
I not telling you to accept or be happy with anything. I am saying that if you want women’s sports to work the way you think they should work, you’ll need to go through their governance bodies.
This isn’t about the external genitalia, not sure why you keep going there. This is about the levels of hormones over an amount of time that is known to impart a muscular advantage. The IOC needs a formula for this to decide who can be in the class. This would not be a determination of who is female.
So it is entirely based on hormones?
I guess in that case, men with hypogonadism would fight women. Right?
In that case, maybe they shouldn’t classify it between “men” and “women” classes.
I think the thing we are trying to regulate is the muscular advantage imparted by certain hormones over certain periods of time. Whether the person being measured has been labeled male or female doesn’t make any difference.
Again, in that case, let’s not classify it between men and women.
If it is about hormones, why then also not test for growth hormone (GH)? People with more than average GH might have longer legs, giving them an advantage in certain sports. There is also Adrenaline, Cortisone, etc. also giving certain advantages. Maybe we should try to cancel out ALL natural variations, to make the competitions more fair. In the end, we can only allow exact clones from each other to compete to each other. And end up with competitions which equal to throwing a dice, because nobody can be truly be “the best” anymore, which can be defined as “possessing the best set of natural variations that makes this person a born winner”.
Harrison Bergeron
This has been discussed for decades now: https://www.academia.edu/3811639
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Do we need a protected class? If yes, there must be standards and those standards must be either endocrine or genetic or both. Yes they should be tested. Anyone failing the protected class can compete in the open class. It’s really that simple.
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If it’s about who might get hurt, maybe we should divide things up by something other than gender. I know plenty of women who could do a ton of damage with their fists and they aren’t even boxers.
This is the correct answer. Divide competitors up by class, skill level, or anything else besides perceived sexual anatomy.
It’s one thing to work within the limits of your physique to become stronger, better, etc. It’s another thing to have a totally different physique that gives you a starting point higher than can be achieved naturally by anyone else.
So put those women in a higher class. There are plenty of women with “masculine” physiques… or are you going to claim Brittney Griner is also not a woman?
So many sports are entirely about the physique you inherited though. Yes there is some technique to swimming and obviously you have to train hard. But these are just prerequisites, not differentiators. If we start saying that winning because of your physique is no victory, then really half of the events become meaningless. To a large extent, the Olympics does measure inherited traits and I think we ought to recognize that that is its point. If you think back all those centuries, it was very obviously the point to prove that your people are genetically superior to their people.
Boxing has weight classes. As do most other martial arts.
The problem is not a 50kg men fighting a 70kg women in terms of injuries and power imbalance. And in that set up the women most likely wins. The problem is the typical situation of a 80-100 kg men smacking down on a 50-60kg women. And that is the image the demagogues try to conjure.
So if your full blown men is a 60kg feather to be able to compete against another 60kg women, the whole trope falls apart.
Can you cite an example of this?
Boxers and wrestlers have weight classes because weight confers a massive advantage and almost predetermines the outcome of the match. You might as well just award someone for weighing more, because skill can only overcome it to a point.
I would prefer if competitive classes were determined by things like weight which are universal and obvious and non-invasive to measure. However I don’t know if that works for everything. Hormones do in fact confer major advantages, as chemical doping does. Should we not test for doping either?
I do think it’s actually more invasive to try to measure if someone “lives as a woman” than it is to measure what’s in their blood. How do you even begin to define that, and aren’t you engaging in prescriptive sexism as soon as you start? I can tell that your suggestion comes from a place of wanting to support women and their autonomy but I don’t think you thought it through at all, at least not in the context of competitive sport. If you don’t care at all about fair sports competition, it’s all super easy. If you do want to enable fair sport competition, you have to actually deal with the complexities and not just fire off leftist slogans.
What open class? There is no open class at the Olympics. So no it isn’t really that simple.
YY is also a thing I believe
At least one X is required because it contains instructions to make very crucial stuff, while Y contains a bunch of switches turning things on and off.
Oh right, I think I was confusing that with Jacobs syndrome
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