XY chromosomes
Time magazine lets us know Taiwan is super mad at JK Rowling.
Local politicians and journalists are taking jabs at Rowling, some Harry Potter fans have vowed to boycott her products, and social media users have defended Lin Yu Ting, the 28-year-old Chinese Taipei women’s boxer who has found herself at the center of a raging debate about biology and sports.
As boxing events kicked off at the Olympics in Paris this week, the eligibility of Taiwan’s Lin as well as Algeria’s Imane Khelif has been questioned by critics claiming that they are men pretending to be women for competitive advantage. (Both have identified as women since birth, and both have competed and lost to women in international boxing events, including previous Olympics.)
This issue turns people’s brains to mush. Nobody identifies as anything “since birth” – infants don’t know from identify, and if they did they wouldn’t identify as women.
Among the most prominent voices crying unfair is Rowling, who achieved massive renown for her Harry Potter series but has in recent years become known for her outspokenness on transgender issues—a turn that has alienated both her fans and the franchise’s biggest stars.
Not all her fans, you numskulls.
Taiwanese officials, media, and members of the public have emphasized that Lin is and has always been considered female. Others’ doubt, however, stems from a decision by the International Boxing Association (IBA) last year to disqualify her and Khelif from the World Championships, claiming that they failed an unspecified eligibility test that determined they have XY chromosomes (the pair typically associated with males).
The IBA, which is led by Russia, was stripped of its authority over Olympic boxing events because of long-standing concerns about integrity and governance, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has repeatedly declared that Lin and Khelif are eligible to continue competing as women.
Yes, but when asked on what basis, the IOC says irritably “their passports.” Anyone who has watched yesterday’s match can see why that’s not really the last word on the matter.
Given the history of the Olympics with respect to Caster Semenya, it’s ridiculous for the IOC to not take this seriously. When (not if) the facts come out about the two boxers in question, some medals are going to be taken away. So much for national pride then and for the IOC pretending to care about fairness with respect to female Olympic athletes too.
There was a long article about the first beating of a woman (I can’t call it a match) in local newspaper today. Just a torrent of words that cleverly danced around saying what test it was that the IBA says it administered and what the results of that test were. Paragraphs used to avoid saying that the IBA did chromosome tests and both men got XY results.
At least we’ve got some explanation why the IBA was ignored; another set of notorious cheaters (and current invaders) run the joint. Taiwan and Algeria are pissy because their legal cheating is being scrutinized. Interesting that the Americans aren’t running one right?
On another note, Katie Ledecky is a woman, right? For real?
JKR is right, and she hasn’t been abusive in pointing out the unfairness at all, but she has been strawmanned at every turn by the trans cultists and their ignorant sympathisers. If some Taiwanese and Algerian sports fans want their heroic male boxers to beat up women and disenfranchise them, in the Olympics no less, then to hell with them too. The IOC was making big noise about how the ratio of women has become more equal only a few years ago, and the opportunities it has created for women. Now it denies them these very categories by letting males compete in women’s events.
It is insanity.
@ J. A., #1
When medals are eventually taken away, it’s not going to be an easy matter.
In a sport like track and field, or swimming, every competitor’s score or time stands on its own. When a cheater is eliminated, all the following competitors move up one place. The medal is re-awarded to the competitor who rightfully earned it.
It seems a bit different in tournament type play. The cheater has eliminated a competitor who rightfully should have advanced at an earlier stage. That would affect the entire draw. The final rankings with the cheater in are not the same as the final rankings would have been with the cheater out. The medal might actually have belonged to a competitor wrongfully eliminated in round 1, and not the competitor just below the cheater in the final competition rankings. The unfairness is deeper in a tournament style competition.
@maddog1129 @J.A.
No chance of medals being taken away or any results revised (in the absence of failed doping tests etc): the only thing relevant is that the athletes comply with whatever rules were governing the event. How f***ed up those rules are won’t come into it… Semenya et al have not had their Olympic medals revoked nor has any official recognition been given to the rightful winners of those medals.
The tranny fight is really distorting basically everything around this; this ain’t a Lia Thomas thing. Dudes plausibly look like chicks in a way no tranny ever will and 57kg is *tiny*. It should be a conversation strictly about males with certain DSDs and sporting events, but it’s toothpaste flags and tranny haters all the way down.
JKR can say and write whatever she likes, and she does it with great wit and charm. If her writing in support of women’s rights, her donations to women’s causes, and her pointing out the Emperor is naked causes her to never sell another book in her life, they still can’t take away her fame or fortune. She has more money now than she could spend in 10 lifetimes, but unlike a lot of the world’s Smaugs, she is also using some to help others less fortunate.
More power to her arm and her pen. And the next Strike book will be one more bestseller, no matter what a couple of frightened bookshops do.
Is that the best you’ve got?
These two men are not “trannies”, transexuals, or transgender. They both have a DSD, something the trans-Mafia latch onto, but in no way makes their case. To oppose their participation as women in women’s sport is not anti-trans, it is quite simply pro-woman and pro keeping the sex categories of sport defined by sex, not passports, plausible looks, or any other red herring.
Their biology is male. That has been proven. Their feelings don’t matter, but women’s ability to compete solely against other women does.
“Dudes plausibly look like chicks in a way no tranny ever will” – what does that even mean?
Well I’ll preface it by saying I don’t think either of them have any business in any women’s category (and fuck their feelings, I don’t care about them, they’re not people I know).
But think about some of this stuff:
1. Almost none of the people pissed off about this (or are pissed off about people being pissed off about this) give a shit about women’s boxing or boxing in general.
2. No one would’ve said boo about it in 2012 or if the IBA hadn’t sex tested the (let’s call them intersex males, but yes they have DSDs obviously). The participants probably think they’re female and have almost certainly been told that but they’re wrong. You don’t get quite the Lia Thomas/Veronica Ivy(can’t remember how his old name was spelled) on the podium effect with tiny 57kg arseholes.
3. Everyone is hyper focused on it since it’s their pet identarian issue (toothpaste goblins and transphobes alike) and also there’s the whole internet hive mind thing
4. Here’s where the media component is most important: if the likes of the BBC would just do straight reporting we could ignore GLAAD-adjacent types, KJK, Rowling, etc, but as y’all know the trannies have captured basically everything in respectable media. This isn’t trans shit but of course it is because the forces involved are all in one of the two camps.
5. This should be about two males with DSDs competing in a category they shouldn’t be but no, it’s about trans garbage yet again, because of course it is. The trans blackhole distorts everything around it, and yeah, there’s a certain level of both siderism that makes pursuing truth almost impossible.
“They are men. They shouldn’t be competing in the women’s division.”
“You anti-trans zealots are so mean. These boxers aren’t even trans, they are just women.”
“We’re not anti-trans, we’re anti-men-in-women’s-sports. These boxers are men.”
“They’re women, they were born women, and I don’t see why you are lumping them in with all your anti-trans hysteria.”
“They are male; they may have been told otherwise, but they are male. It isn’t about trans, it’s about women’s sports and keeping males out.”
“You’re just saying that because you hate trans people, I don’t believe you. And you’re wrong.”
Something like that.
Is 11 meant to be a reply to my 10? If so, my 10 was misunderstood. It’s not that complicated. I meant I very literally don’t know what “Dudes plausibly look like chicks” is supposed to mean. Dudes don’t look like chicks, aka men don’t look like women. Plausibly or otherwise.
FWIW, I took “Dudes plausibly look like chicks in a way no tranny ever will” to mean that males with at least some DSDs might appear convincingly female, while a male without a DSD, but who just wants to pretend to be female, has much less of a chance of being convincing.
I suppose that could be what it means, but it’s impossible to tell. A terse hipster style can be overdone; this example is very overdone. (Also, of course, women don’t like being called “chicks.” It’s belittling in a way “dudes” is not.)
This has become a “trans” thing because the IOC has agreed with the gender ideology concept of “Self ID” and that an “F” in the passport is all the proof they need to allow males to compete against females. However much the two boxers in question were “raised as girls/women” they are still biologically male. Males with DSD. Even if neither of them claims to be “trans”, both they and the IOC are playing by the gender identity rulebook, wherein self declaration is all that’s required to be a woman, and that that, along with any degree of performative “womanhood,” overrides the undeniably unfair advantages conferred by male puberty when it comes to determining elegibility for the female division.
So what? This goes way beyond boxing. This is an important test case for trans ideology, which has appropriated, through forced teaming, DSD conditions (through the deceptive and insulting term “intersex”), as part of their remit, and which they use as much of the rationale behind their socio-political program. Women who are concerned with this situation, and pointing out this rank unfairness know this. Even if they have no interest in women’s sports, they know this is part of the battle for women’s rights.
Let’s not. This is conceding trans ideology’s forced teaming of DSD conditions. The term “intersex” plays into the sex-denialist bullshit of trans ideology that claims that sex is a “spectrum.” I’ve read things by people with DSDconditions who dislike the term because it’s dehumanozing, and suggests rather strongly that they are neither men nor women, but lost in some limbo between, or that they posses some “blend” of sexes, are, both sexes, or somehow constitute an additional sex. This is part of the price they’ve been forced to pay because trans ideology rather liked the idea of sex being “assigned at birth” and decided to apply it universally in order to “explain” putative “mismatches” between sex and supposed “gender identity.”
And this has happened here at B&W where, exactly?
See above. Trans or not, these two men are using Self ID to invade women’s sports, and the IOC is accepting it. It’s gender ideology in a nutshell. “Both sides” see this. Women have every right to oppose it, and are correct to tie it to trans ideology because it is trans ideology.
My 9-year old grandson, staying with us at moment, is avidly reading Harry Potter et l’ordre du Phénix and can hardly put it down. Maybe I should explain that that’s as bad as wanting Marine Le Pen as President.
“toothpaste goblins and transphobes”
What are you talking about? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. It’s not ” transphobic” to know that men are not women, and that sex doesn’t change. WTF is a “toothpaste goblin”?
Are you toothpaste goblin phobic or something?
Quite likely. I’m afraid of things I’m not familiar with.
;-)