But verify
Second man wins women’s boxing round.
Lin Yu-ting, one of the boxers at the centre of a gender row at the Olympics, won her opening bout in the women’s featherweight category by outpointing Sitora Turdibekova.
The participation of the Chinese Taipei fighter and Algeria’s Imane Khelif at these Games has invited intense scrutiny, with the pair disqualified from last year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.
…
Lin, the top seed in the women’s -57kg category, breezed into the quarter-finals with a unanimous decision win although Turdibekova proved a tough opponent and won one of the rounds on one of the scorecards.
Ultimately, the taller and rangier Lin recorded victory by scores of 29-28 and four of 30-27 to set up a last-eight clash against Bulgarian Svetlana Staneva, who beat Ireland’s Michaela Walsh.
Looking back at the end of the bout today, after the decision was announced Turdibekova made an effort to shake [hands with] both of Yu-Ting’s coaches, but avoided Yu-Ting, who, unlike Khelif, made no attempt to console her opponent. Turdibekova was tearful as she left the arena.
A reminder on why the IOC are subject to Oliver’s criticism: amidst ongoing riffs between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Boxing Association (IBA) that might see boxing excluded from LA 2028, the IOC are in charge of this year’s boxing event, and
believeallow athletes to compete per the gender on their passport. Many individual sports federations, like the IBA or World Athletics, now base their eligibility on whether athletes can pass a gender test, that examines their chromosomes and by virtue their testosterone levels.
In other words many sports federations actually verify which sex their athletes are, while the IOC just takes the athletes’ word for it. One’s gender [sex] on a passport is simply a matter of declaration; it’s not tested or verified or documented. You need a social security number (in the US) but your sex is just which box you tick.
Both imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting have failed these tests, so are disqualified from the IBA – neither [has] appealed this – but are eligible for the IOC’s criteria.
Because the IOC doesn’t have real criteria.
Isn’t it curious how they keep reporting that these two boxers failed “gender tests*” when in fact they failed sex tests. Calling it what it is would show how dishonest the reporting is though, wouldn’t it? Maybe not so curious then.
*What would a gender test even be? Questions about favourite colours and preferred fashion designers, with the occasional question about beer or cars to catch the unwary?
[shrugs]
[checks passport]
:P
Until is was revived and twisted by the trans cult the word “gender” had little use in English (which has almost no grammatical gender) other than in relation to languages like French, Spanish and many others that have grammatical gender. In French, for example, it would be absurd to claim that there is no connexion between sex and gender, but the connexion is much weaker than many people realize: no one is embarrassed that le vagin is masculine, or, at a coarser level, la bite is feminine and le con is masculine. When I’m un homme I’m masculine, but when I’m une personne I’m feminine.
@#3:
I don’t think I can agree that gender had almost no use in English. The standard usage as a linguistics tool, no. But for those of us who grew up in the squeamish midwest and south, gender was used frequently as a euphemism for sex. People like my parents couldn’t bring themselves to say ‘sex’ because it has become so conflated with the act of intercourse and threw ‘gender’ around like water.
That is one reason the gender ideologists are so easily able to slip between the two; a lot of people already conflated them. The ambiguity of the term has allowed them to both adopt the idea that they are talking about gender (the external presentation of one’s characteristics as pertaining to their sex) and use the term gender to mean sex (the actual status of the individual based on chromosomes, gametes, and anatomy/physiology).
Probably you’re right about the USA, but where I grew up in England people who wanted to refer to sex said “sex”.
But also also – until this mess started, I used to say “gender” instead of “sex” sometimes just to avoid ambiguity. It wasn’t squeamishness or embarrassment, it was just for clarity or precision or both.