Azza
This is so ridiculous it’s hard to believe.
How do we know he’s a woman? Because we keep saying so. What more could anyone possibly need?
Tip Jar
This is so ridiculous it’s hard to believe.
How do we know he’s a woman? Because we keep saying so. What more could anyone possibly need?
The IOC just effectively admitted that this is a DSD case, i.e. they know this is a male: https://x.com/iocmedia/status/1819667573698445793?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
IOC: Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter-accusations.
Or as the cool kids today now say, DARVO.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so unfair to those female boxers that are being made to participate in an unfair competition.
Well golly gee, maybe biology is COMPLICATED!
Feels good to throw that one back at them.
If being “born as a woman” means that a baby who looks like a female IS a female, then the trans activist crowd is in big trouble.
The issue here isn’t really how we define “woman” — it’s whether a competitor has a body which benefited from male advantages. These particular boxers did. They don’t have CAIS; they don’t have Swyers. One look at them tells us this. It doesn’t matter how they were raised or what they identify as.
Or even what their passports say.
@Sastra, exactly so. This is one case where the phrase “assigned female at birth” makes sense. The baby Khalif had no penis, so he was determined to be a girl. Then he grew up as a girl, continued to look like a girl as a child, but had a remarkable puberty, during which he did not develop any female characteristics, only the height and muscles typical of a man. But nobody changed his identification, even after genetic testing revealed XY genes, so legally he remains female.
For the IOC and its myriad apologists in the press, the fact that a doctor called Khalif a girl and he got a girl’s ID card and a woman’s passport means he is forever and irrevocably a girl, regardless of chromosomes. But if a man were to spontaneously decide his special inner self is a girly self, then for the same commenters, all the same criteria would become immaterial. For example, they would not hesitate to assert that Lia Thomas is a woman, despite having been identified as a boy at birth, grown up as a boy, etc. Is it one rule for Khalif and a different rule for Thomas?
The only thing consistent in all of this is misogyny. Whatever reasoning is necessary to conclude that women must lose is deployed in each situation.
Sastra: ‘The issue here isn’t really how we define “woman” — it’s whether a competitor has a body which benefited from male advantages.’
I’m not so sure about that. One of the reasons that there are sex divisions in sports is because of male physical advantages, but it’s not the only reason. Women’s sports are not opened to men who, for whatever reason or via whatever mechanism, do not have male advantages. Women’s sports are open to women who have perhaps some similar advantages (large frame, say). Women’s sports are open only to women, and they are open to all women who otherwise qualify. So sure, it’s worth pointing out that these male boxers have dangerous competitive advantages, but they are still male no matter what, and should be rejected from the competition on that basis alone. They were disqualified by the IBA not for having long arms and high strength, but for having XY chromosomes.
@Sackbut;
True. There’s also concerns re privacy and dignity in the locker rooms. Too much emphasis on male advantage and people will start arguing that men who have naturally weak physiques or physical impairments now qualify for the woman’s category.
Sastra, for sure. And I’ve also been seeing facetious speculation that women should avoid looking too strong, lest “JKR” and “JD Vance” (as if they are on the same side) call them men.