Should women with high testosterone or XY chromosomes be banned from women's sports?

No. This outcry is just another outgrowth of the rabid brainrot of transphobe agitators.

I also find it telling that when a male athlete is so far superior to his peers, it is just considered to be “the peak of masculinity” and “peak male performance”.
But when a woman does it, it instantly devolves into accusations of “this is actually a man”.
Instead of, you know, considering it “peak female performance”.
This betrays the institutionalised sexism that conflates femininity with weakness.

Conservative: “There are only 2 genders: Men and Women”
The same conservative: “That woman (born with a vagina) is man and shouldn’t be allowed to compete!”

For me: I’m not an expert in intersex biology and it’s none of my fucking business. I wasn’t born tall enough to be a middle hitter in volleyball, should we disqualify everyone over a certain height to make things more “fair” to people of more average height?

@gorillapaws Right, that’s what I would like to know as well. Which advantages are benign and which aren’t? It’s not a coincidence that basketball players skew tall, in some cases, quite far above the average. I excelled at gymnastics as a kid in part because I was so small. It’s hard to think any of this would even be discussed if it weren’t for the trans controversy.

Rather than gendered weight classes, we should create classes for all sports based on genetic testing. Only people with similar levels of testosterone/estrogen should be matched. And we need to have photos of their genitalia available (or maybe they should compete in the nude) for the public to see, as well as full fertility tests and semen analysis.

Once this happens, however, we’ll need to consider more influences of athletic performance, such as chest cavity/lung size, shoulder width, height, muscle tone, eyesight, and other genetic features to make sure we’re matching people fairly. We don’t want genetics unfairly contributing to sporting competition.

Or maybe conservatives can stop being so fragile, triggered, and politically correct every waking moment of their pathetic existence. That’s another option.

I was born a female, I have female parts & at 19 I had a surge in testosterone that docs couldn’t explain. This lasted until I went through menopause. Now I have more Estrogen than I need & docs are still baffled. I NEVER excelled at sports possibly because I had NO interest in any sport & didn’t try. I always thought that part of the transition is hormone replacement therapy. The male to female change would be HIGH in Estrogen NOT Testosterone.The female to male would be HIGH in Testosterone NOT Estrogen. I think the right is confused & just want to bitch about anything without understand what they be bitchin’ about!!!

I’ve also noticed that they don’t care when a female to male gets beat or uses the mens room. It’s only the male to female that drives them insane.

No. Just NO.

The twisted politics of criminalizing, defunding, stigmatizing, and banning everything we don’t understand is harming the quality of everyday life – and it will kill sports.

Any ban directed at women athletes that relies on phony “sex testing” protocols is based on weak science, and is inherently biased. This approach has already been tried, and grossly misused.
In 2021 blood testing detected elevated testosterone in three world class Namibian sprinters, and prevented them from competeing in Tokyo – even though the tests determined their testosterone was NATURALLY occuring and not caused by doping. The issue reflects continuing ignorance of female biophysiology, especially in elite athletes.

Some new research may offer better data, but the dick head gender paranoia won’t go away soon -

“Why might testosterone not enhance athletic performance in females?

“Previous research suggests the female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone may take over some of the muscle-building role of testosterone in young females.

” Another important consideration is natural testosterone exists in two forms: ‘free’ within the bloodstream, or ‘bound’ to a protein that reduces its capacity to signal to the muscle.” :

https://theconversation.com/do-naturally-high-testosterone-levels-equal-stronger-female-athletic-performance-not-necessarily-160009

So you are asking if men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Yes, they should be banned. It is idiotic and dangerous to believe otherwise. I don’t care how they feel inside or how they identify biologically they generally have stronger bones, more muscle mass, etc. Unless you support wife beating. That is about the same thing.

Read the details. I’m not talking about trans women, you two-watt lightbulb. Unless you’re actually stupid enough to believe that a biological female with unusually high testosterone is a man. Which undermines your entire point.

@Demosthenes When you talk about “women” with XY chromosomes, you are talking about trans women, or at least men who identify as women. I’m ignoring Swyer Syndrome due to the fact it is extremely rare and those that have it frequently have a myriad of other health issues. Either way it is bullshit. If you cannot understand the basic biology behind this, I suggest you look it up and edit your question. Women can, indeed, have higher testosterone than normal. But it is not excessively higher and generally is short lived. If it continues, it might point to something serious like ovarian cancer. Women typically have somewhere in the range of 10–55 ng/dl of testosterone whereas men of the same age are anywhere from 200–900 ng/dl. And in women, the testosterone is normally converted into sex hormones, not used to build up stronger bones and build muscle mass as it does in men. So when they are running anywhere from 1/10th to ½0th the amount in men, it wouldn’t make any difference in sports. But that isn’t really what we are talking about here.

https://www.healthline.com/health/womens-health/do-women-have-testosterone#treatment

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090506816300616

But hey, don’t let science get in the way of your radical beliefs.

Also, while we’re at it and you are in the mood to try being belligerent with answers you don’t agree with, why don’t you define what a “woman” is since you identified “Women’s Sports” in the question? You are trying desperately to include rare oddities at the best but you aren’t really defining everything, are you?

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/lin-yu-ting-olympics-boxing-imane-khelif-b2590045.html

You were saying? What you are missing is the radicalized lefties running the olympics are supporting radical left-wing ideology. Both boxers failed gender eligibility tests in actual boxing leagues. You might want to ask why the Olympic committees accepted them after the rest of their sport viewed them a being bogus.

And I noticed you still didn’t attempt to define “woman”.

I find it funny that all the hysterical griping and bed-wetting about this is coming from right-wingers and reactionaries—the same people who think “the left” imposes a kind of unmeritocratic egalitarianism on everyone.

So when a woman appears who is a bit taller and stronger than her peers—which are traits well-suited and likely self-selected for boxing—moronic evidence-free conspiracies from reactionaries claim she’s too strong to be a real woman, even though there is literally no evidence at all that she is anything other than a woman.

@Kropotkin Which is what I’m asking about. I’m not asking about someone who has undergone a gender transition. I am asking about someone who has only ever been one gender, from the moment of birth (should add that’s illegal to change your gender in Algeria, where Khelif is from, so the idea that she is trans is ridiculous on multiple levels), and who possesses physical advantages over other women, perhaps related to being born intersex (which we don’t know if Khelif is, but sometimes female athletes end up being so, like Caster Semenya).

@Kropotkin It isn’t just taller or stronger…that is the problem. The International Boxing commission disqualified both boxers for failing gender standards. They were trying to box as women and couldn’t meet gender standards. If the international commission can’t pass them as being women, it would seem abnormal for the Olympic commission to suddenly allow it.

Women’s sports are supposed to be just that. Being taller or stronger plays a part. That isn’t the point. Laila Ali boxed for 8 years and retired undefeated. But she was born a woman…not a man. Men have an unfair and sometimes dangerous advantage when competing against women in contact sports. To allow men to compete with women in women’s sports is wrong. It defeats the purpose of “Women’s Sports” entirely. It can hurt the actual women that are competing. And it is all done to support some virtue signaling woke agenda.

@seawulf575 The IBA banned them. The IBA has in recent years been run by a Russian nationalist and the organisation decertified by the IOC. There’s no evidence that they carried out any “gender standards”. Khelif was retroactively banned after beating a Russian boxer under the premise that she wasn’t really a woman.

In my opinion people taking part in sports should accept the rules of the sport’s governing body and not complain about them just because they got beaten. Imane’s opponent has apologised for her behaviour and says she accepts the decisions of the Olympic Committee. If that’s good enough for her then it should be good enough for us.

@Kropotkin The IBA was stripped of its governance over the sport by the IOC last year because they weren’t kowtowing to the ESG standards the IOC wanted. In other words, they weren’t embracing the left wing idiocy revolving around cases like these. The IOC wants to let anyone that identifies as a woman to compete. The irony is that this decision flies in the face of what the IOC says when it comes to determining if gender could play an unfair role in a given sport

https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-releases-framework-on-fairness-inclusion-and-non-discrimination-on-the-basis-of-gender-identity-and-sex-variations

Yet as soon as the governing body says these two didn’t meet the gender standards for the sport, the IOC reneged and pushed the governing body out. They then got the WBO to step in and say they supported whatever the IOC wanted in the hopes they can replace the IBA as the oversight entity for the sport.

@seawulf575 Since you made this question about transgender people, do you take issue with the boxer who is a trans man who happens to be the ONLY transgender person participating in the Olympics this year?

@jonsblond I don’t really even know who you are talking about but the answer is a simple yes. Stop the insanity. If you have a biological female that wants to transition to being a male, more power to him. But if she starts competing with biological men in most sports she could hurt badly. And given the question and the two athletes being discussed, I’m not sure they aren’t transitioned or at least identifying as female. Again, they were disqualified by the oversight commission previously for gender issues. The IOC has oversight over the IBA (or whatever group is filling that role) and canceled them because they weren’t following ESG/DEI enough. They weren’t allowing men that wanted to identify as women to participate. And now here we are with controversy again.

“Imagine growing up as a little girl, just living your life and doing all the little girl things that little girls do.

You hit puberty and you find that as your body changes you are becoming more masculine in figure rather than more feminine.

You go to the doctor and learn that your body has a genetic factor that produces testosterone instead of estrogen, and so your body thinks you’re male, when your genitalia and upbringing say otherwise.

This is the case of the boxer in the Olympics. She is not trans. She did not undergo hormone therapy to become more masculine. This is her as God made her.

Now, if you want to make a case that she shouldn’t compete because she has too much testosterone in her body, there are some boxing agencies that would agree with you. And that could be a valid argument. But don’t make it about “trans people in sports” issues when it’s not that.

Btw: she had a 9–5 record in the professional circuit, which is why it was deemed that her body type does not give her an unfair advantage. Agree or disagree, but at least know the facts before leaping to judgment

Ciao” -FB Post

It does seem unfair.

@seawulf575 No. Now here YOU are with a controversy. The rest of us are just trying to live our lives.

I saw the fight with the Italian boxer. I think that if the Italian boxer doesn’t want to get punched in the fucking face maybe she should pick a sport that doesn’t involve getting punched in the fucking face.

No, No, No

@seawulf575: “It makes you look hateful and intolerant.”

@jonsblond – Don’t you know that it’s hateful and intolerant to be intolerant of intolerance?

Again, @seawulf575‘s whole schtick is that it’s racist to be anti-racist, imperialist to be anti-imperialist, sexist to be anti-sexist, authoritarian to be anti-authoritarian, etc.

I do find it funny how perpetually horny conservative are. They spend an inordinate amount of their waking hours thinking about genitals.

I think it was the power that she was punched in the fucking face with @caravanfam. I just don’t quite know tho.

People seem to be ignoring the fact that she has lost several bouts. To women.

@hat I’ve noticed that a lot with libs too. “A ceasefire will actually hurt Gazans”, “A labor union will actually hurt the labor movement”, “A left wing candidate will actually hurt the left”. It’s basically just gaslighting.

Good god.

Another Fluther clusterfuck led by bitter old men in a hurry to define who and what women are, by ignoring science, making up facts, and politicicizing their stupidity.

This is why I left.

Thank you for wasting my time.

Again.

@JLoon I’m sorry one of my questions had that effect. :( But I appreciate your initial response and link. Thanks for answering.

@hat I guess not since I haven’t grown up yet. ;)

I wasn’t ignoring the fact that she’d lost several bouts @Caravanfan. I didn’t know she had. That puts things in a different light.

@JLoon Actually, this one was by a confused younger guy that refuses to actually acknowledge biology. It was the crotchety old man that pointed out the fallacy being pushed. But while we’re at it, why don’t you define what a woman is for us? Since an bitter old guy like me can’t do it.

@hat Yes, that’s me. I guess I should not have a different opinion from the rest of the flock of sheep. It gets me every time. Enjoy the echo chamber you live in.

She’s gone wulfie.

@seawulf575: ”@hat Yes, that’s me. I guess I should not have a different opinion from the rest of the flock of sheep. It gets me every time. Enjoy the echo chamber you live in.”

It’s not that you have a different opinion. Rather, you have a formula where the oppressor is always the victim, up is always down, wet is always dry, etc. You try to convince us (or yourself, more accurately) that not punching someone is really punching someone.

That kind of thing is fun when you’re a kid and playing some kind of “opposite game” (my kids and I would try this when they were young – saying the complete opposite of everything to communicate). But as adults trying to have serious conversations, it becomes tiresome. And it’s embarrassing to have to explain that not breaking a stick is not breaking a stick. It’s bizarre, and I’m not sure if it’s just become a habit of yours, or if you sense that you’re engaging in this silliness when you do it.

@hat you just describe yourself and every other lefty on this page. You attack and oppress, try to shut down dissenting views and then claim victimhood when I push back. Look at this question as the perfect example. I answered the question in the way I felt it needed to be answered. Since then I have been attacked endlessly. Yet I have backed up my views with citation after citation…something that only one other jelly did. One citation that was from a left leaning site. I cited Healthline and Science Direct for the medical stuff, I did cite the Independent UK just to address the fact that these two boxers had been disqualified for failing gender standards to compete in women’s boxing and I cited the Olympics own standards for what they expect when it comes to gender and how it conflicted with what they are doing with these two boxers. This is what people do when they are in a discussion or a debate. They don’t go directly to attacks. Yet the attacks keep coming.

So I voiced an opinion that was different from everyone else and got attacked for it. It degraded to where I was being called the aggressor…creating the controversy. And you are backing it up. So you are just as guilty of it. Maybe you’ll want to avoid mirrors for a while until you can build it back up in your mind again.

^ Because you are the aggressor. People just want to live their lives, and you are constantly explaining how some people are more people-ish than other people. Pushing back against transphobia or homophobia doesn’t make someone look “hateful and intolerant”.

You hold views that are vile, so when you express them here, there are going to be people that push back. You call this being “attacked”. But you have to understand that the world out there is quite different than you imagine it. We are all just trying to get by and live our lives, and there are conservatives that won’t accept that. They remind us repeatedly that they’re very concerned with everyone’s genitals, and have an interest in controlling reproduction. It is horny and pretty creepy, and we don’t want to be part of your kink/fetish.

I have people who are trans in my family. My daughter is in a relationship with a trans man, and he has lived with us for most of the summer. Outside of conservative culture, there are no issues. Nobody gives a shit, and everyone can just be who they are and love who they want. Calling that “hateful and intolerant” is absurd.

@Dutchess_III And I’m gone too. I may be back after the election in November, but I am sick of the transphobic racist shit on here. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I know vanfan.

I’m against allowing XY with male level hormones compete with females.

The Italian female boxer who was hit said she had never been hit that hard before.

Men have thicker bones, naturally a shit ton more strength. I am sorry that some people don’t have nature and their identity all lining up, or their genitals didn’t fully develop, that does suck to be outside of the statistical norms. I have empathy for it, I don’t have any judgment, but they are not naturally born females, and if they take estrogen it doesn’t make up for part of their life maturing with male hormones, especially if they went through puberty, but even before puberty boys demonstrate more strength than girls on average, it’s just not as dramatic as after puberty. It can be very complicated admittedly. Back years ago doctors would advise parents what to do if gender was ambiguous.

I can’t see putting women at a disadvantage and maybe in more danger than usual competing to accommodate a small minority of people.

The XY female boxers probably would get pummeled in the ring with male boxers, so instead they pummel women?

I don’t like it.

I was very strong as a kid and teen. I was the top two of the girls in jr. high when they put us through evaluations in school in the 1960’s. I did the most sit-ups per minute, climbed the rope to the top, did male pull-ups, and male push-ups. I feel confident the average boy in my class, especially by high school, could have held me down and killed me. Ok, being trained in a sport is different, but I don’t think it’s different enough.

If XY women win almost every time against XX women, then will people admit it isn’t fair?

@hat I voiced an opinion that wasn’t part of the echo chamber and that makes me the aggressor? Huh. Sounds like you are trying to justify attacking and making yourself the victim.

Shut up @seawulf575.

@seawulf575: ”@hat I voiced an opinion that wasn’t part of the echo chamber and that makes me the aggressor? Huh. Sounds like you are trying to justify attacking and making yourself the victim.”

You don’t get to play victim if you’re the oppressor. And you most certainly don’t get to play victim because nobody agrees with you.

In case you’ve forgotten – the “echo chamber” you describe are a bunch of people who find my politics repulsive. So, I am quite used to holding dissenting opinions. Having a position that is different than the people around you doesn’t make you a victim.

And just to reiterate, these positions you hold aren’t just preferences for flavors of ice cream. They are positions that have real world effects on people just trying to live their lives. Your commitment to poking your nose in everyone else’s business (or having big brother government do it for you) means that people are – and will be – victims of your ideology. There are actual consequences for your opinions. And it means that people will suffer and die. Again, you can’t be the victim – or even an innocent “opinion” holder – when your opinions are that others should suffer because of you.

And when you spout off your rebellious views (which are actually quite regressive and anti-rebellious) on gender and sexuality, you speak as though something is at stake for you and your family, when nothing actually is. When the “echo chamber” pushes back, it’s likely that we actually do have something at stake. It’s our children, friends, and loved ones that actually at risk and being attacked. So, we may have strong emotions that come along with arguing with someone who holds such reactionary, dangerous views. I’ve said before that I’d easily cut the throat of anyone who even looked at my daughter the wrong way. When someone tells me that they want to control her uterus, how she identifies, and who she loves, I’m not capable of sitting back and listening. I’m in go mode. And I mean it.

So you might want to spout this shit with your militia/church group/conservative meetup group so you can all feel good about manufacturing suffering. Or you could voice them here and put on your big boy pants. If you don’t like the pushback, remember that you’re not the victim – just the bully who wants to convince others to be the same.

“And when you spout off your rebellious views (which are actually quite regressive and anti-rebellious) on gender and sexuality, you speak as though something is at stake for you and your family, when nothing actually is. When the “echo chamber” pushes back, it’s likely that we actually do have something at stake. It’s our children, friends, and loved ones that actually at risk and being attacked.”

Thank you, @hat.

@JLeslie Iman Khelif lost five of her first six elite-level bouts, but improved and excelled. Khelif was one of Algeria’s first three Olympic women’s boxers sent to Tokyo three years ago. She won her opening bout but lost her second to eventual gold medalist Kellie Harrington of Ireland. She’s not boxing with an advantage.

@jonsblond And really, the whole “advantage” argument is moot if the IBA won’t even disclose what their “gender test” consists of. They very pointedly will not explain it and insist on keeping it secret. “She failed a gender test, but we refuse to say what that means”. Then fuck off with that shit, already. In either case, Khelif is not trans and has never identified or been regarded by her family or her country as a man. So to make this an argument about people AMAB competing in women’s sports is ridiculous, and is not what the point of this question was. Khelif was assigned female at birth. Whether she’s intersex or has some other rare condition we don’t know, but she is not and has never been a “man”.

The “IBA” is just another arm of Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy to sow discord in the west.
They actually paid Khelif’s opponent to lose

A lot of babies with ambiguous genitalia, or male genitalia not fully developed, were sometimes operated on and assigned female, or were sometimes not operated on and assigned female. Sometimes I think they could enhance the penis and assign male. It often was a decision a doctor recommended very close to the time when the baby was born and the parents went along with it. I don’t know how it is done in the last 20 years, but many years ago that was the case. I am assuming in more recent years they wait longer before deciding for the child. Some children simply appear as girls when born, raised as girls, and then at puberty it is discovered they are XY.

I am not the one deciding whether she competes, but I am just voicing my opinion.

Trans or not, if they have very exaggerated testosterone, beyond anything seen in XX women (which I have no idea if these women do, I am making an assumption and a general statement) then it seems to me unfair and dangerous. I am not questioning whether she deserves to be referred to as a woman, I am questioning whether it is fair, good sportsmanship, and safe for them to compete with women.

Does the genitalia determine if someone is a certain gender? I think our current thinking on gender is no. A woman with XY has higher testosterone than XX women. If we want to go with she just got lucky regarding competition, ok, go ahead. It really does not affect me much, but as a girl issue, I think it is unfair, and I do care about it as a woman’s issue.

Does the Olympics and other competitions allow steroids to build strength? Why not? Should we make all sorts coed? Why not?

I guess you can look at it like luck; she was just lucky to have high testosterone, but really is that the case? I am not diminishing some of the struggles that probably comes with being raised a girl and being XY. When I say lucky, I am only referring to strength for physical competition.

@jonsblond Boxing is technique and strength, so if they don’t always win at boxing, it doesn’t mean their punch isn’t much strong than an XX woman. I don’t know if it is, but one boxer said it was, and some competitions don’t allow them to box.

I think my point is, if indeed it is unfair, then I am against allowing it just because their identity is female. Anyone can identify female. I am absolutely ok with anyone identifying female who wants to, but it does not necessarily give them access to everything.

With that logic you might as well advocate for segregating black from white sprinters.

@ragingloli I didn’t know Black people have much higher testosterone, I thought that was some sort of mean stereotype. So is a Black woman on average the same testosterone level as a white man? Or, is a man still much higher? Normal range for women is something like 20–70, men 300–900. Women with PCOS will be higher than average women, but not 300.

How about we don’t segregate by weight for boxers and wrestlers?

I don’t think gender is the same as race. If Black people have a small edge hormonally I’m ok with it, I doubt it is drastic. Traditionally, in the US, Black people compete in sports that don’t cost a lot of money to practice and train. That’s been changing of course, but socio-economics used to play a major part in it. Skiing, ice skating, swimming all year, diving, gymnastics, traditionally more expensive than playing basketball or running track.

@JLeslie
There has not been a white olympic gold medalist in sprinting in 40 years. Whether there is a difference in biology or sociologically, there is an implied advantage. If you care so much about “fairness”...

@hat “You don’t get to play victim if you’re the oppressor. And you most certainly don’t get to play victim because nobody agrees with you.” Again, that brings us back to the challenge: How am I the oppressor by merely voicing a differing opinion? Go back up and look. All I did was give an opinion that people didn’t want to hear. Isn’t that how discussions go sometimes? And what happened when I gave that answer? The echo chamber started melting down and attacking me. Oppression is when someone unjustly exercises power over another to gain control. Isn’t that what attacking me is? Yet when you are called on it, you suddenly start trying to claim victim status. And where are we now? Exactly where the left always goes…projecting. You accuse me of exactly what you are doing.

@ragingloli You realize that in that article you cited, it backs up exactly what I said, right?

“The IOC last year stripped the IBA of its status as boxing’s governing body over governance issues, and took charge of the Paris 2024 boxing competition itself, but now finds itself at the centre of a row over the pair’s participation.”

The IBA canned these two boxers because they couldn’t pass gender standards…standards that are put in place for the protection of actual, biological women. You like to fancy yourself a genetics genius…so tell me: How can a biological female have XY chromosomes? It can’t be Swyer Syndrome because that is a biological male (XY chromosomes) that has a genetic defect where they get some attributes of biological females. But they are still genetically men. So dazzle me…tell me how a female can have XY chromosomes?

@ragingloli Fair has little to nothing to do with people from one race winning most of the time. When has a Black person won a gold Olympic medal in ice skating? I can’t think of one, I can think of one for silver when I was in school in the 80’s. I certainly do not think they cannot win or that they are less graceful or less able. I think they have less access and less introduction to ice skating. I understand that competitions are not completely fair in many ways. Financial advantages, communist countries vs democracies, there are all sorts of things we can point to, but are you now saying we should have all coed competitions for everything?

Look up how much stronger the average male is compared to women or studies on muscle strength of male athletes compared to women, some even adjust for muscle density or something like that. Men are considerably stronger because of the make up of their muscles and density.

@JLeslie
But we are not talking about men vs women. We are not even talking about transwomen vs women. We are talking about a cis woman with an alleged hormonal anomaly, derived by the way from the dubious claims by a russian controlled organisation that has claimed to have performed tests, yet refuses to say what tests those were, and refuses to publish their alleged results.

Furthermore, the accused athletes are not even these undefeated juggernauts that no other woman can beat. They have been beaten many times before. There is no undue advantage.

@ragingloli I understand she has always been female, I am not questioning that, but she is XY. XY women have much more testosterone than XX women. Are you saying if she was a transwoman then you would be against her competing? What is your point?

This isn’t a case of banning Black people from sports or from performing in ballets only because of the color of their skin. It is not the same as the physiological advantages of someone who is biologically XY over someone who is XX. If they keep losing it doesn’t mean they aren’t still hurting people along the way. In this case it is boxing not running.

Let the professionals decide, I feel I have pointed out my concerns.

I forgot to add that I agree it is ridiculous not to release the tests performed if the athletes are ok with releasing them. Otherwise, it would be a violation of their medical privacy I would think.

I don’t what kind of testing is standard for athletes. Can the tests differentiate between increased hormones from drugs vs natural hormone levels? I have no idea how that works.

Update: Khelif won gold. I see articles now that say maybe she isn’t XY and in the same articles explaining ad nauseum that she isn’t transgender. To that my question is, are people now saying transgender women should not compete with other women?

^ “To that my question is, are people now saying transgender women should not compete with other women?”

This has been an issue for the past few years that even divides the transgender community. Some say no while others say yes.

@JLeslie IMO they are separate issues.

@Demosthenes What is the difference to you in terms of fairness in a competition?

@jonsblond Yes, I know. I just wondered why jellies might see the two as very different if the hormones and strength issues can be or are very similar. This is about competition, not being understanding about one of fifty different gender/sex variations that is now being scrutinized in the public domain and politically. Previously, mostly only medical doctors and families dealing with these things knew about the various possibilities. I’ve known about various XX, XY, genitals not fully forming, and on and on since I was a teenager 40 years ago, so it’s not new to me. Although, admittedly many of the new terms being used are new to me.

@Demosthenes That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Does one of these DSDs incur enough of an advantage that the woman should be banned? That was my initial question, and I’m not sure of the answer.

But so far, all answers of “yes” I’m seeing are just trans bashing. So the “other side” hasn’t made a convincing argument to me. If you have to falsely insist that Khelif is trans to make your point, you haven’t made your point. DSDs and trans are different things. (And the “you” here is meant generically, not referring to what you have been saying speficially).

A trans woman was assigned male at birth, was at some point legally recognized as male, was previously regarded by friends/family/society as a man/boy. A woman like Khelif has not. She has only ever been a woman. So how you handle excluding someone like her from women’s competitions is more complicated.

@Demosthenes Thanks for your answer. I appreciate the original question and you seem to be open to hearing arguments pro and con.

It is complicated. Right now I feel many progressives have knee jerk reactions to be empathetic to people outside of the norms, and I want to be sympathetic to them too, but not if it hurts a large swath of society, and I’m especially sensitive to women being hurt. I might be wrong in my opinions on this Q in the end, but I push back at automatically always siding with the minority of the day without really evaluating the impact on everyone involved. I’m not accusing you of that, or anyone else on the Q, just stating my position and concern.

One jelly brought up comparing gender to race, which I reject that analogy regarding competition.

My dad is colorblind so he cannot be a military pilot. A genetic “defect.” Not sure people would see that as an analogy, but anyway a lot of people want to do something but their genes or abilities prevent it.

“Right now I feel many progressives have knee jerk reactions to be empathetic to people outside of the norms, and I want to be sympathetic to them too, but not if it hurts a large swath of society, and I’m especially sensitive to women being hurt.”

I wish you knew how bigoted this sounds.

Please tell me how these minorities are hurting large swaths of women.

@jonsblond This Q is not about LGBT or Asians or Blacks or Muslims or Jews or any minority group just going about their life not affecting anyone else. This Q is about competition. The large swath in this case is half of the world, women, who throughout time have also been unable to be equal in so many parts of life like so many minority groups. Not to mention physically we are at the mercy on average of being shorter and having significantly less physical strength than men.

If you want to twist my words go ahead, but I caution that people like me have always fought and voted for equality, fought for understanding, and rejected hate.

How should I state my concern without sounding bigoted and I’ll change my wording.

How does a transgender person who believes transgender women competing isn’t fair say it, or are they self-loathing transgender women in your mind?

Or, are you just rejecting that I generalized about progressives? Note, I did not say all.

^You have an issue with transgender people and you are afraid to admit it. Quit trying to be Switzerland. We can all see through you.

@JLeslie You have a clear bias. That is why I’m responding to you the way I am. For you to suggest I would think anyone who disagrees with me on this subject is a “self loathing transgender woman” is hurtful. You’ve known me and my history since 2008. I am not a hateful person. If you feel my support for the LGBTQ community is hateful you can go ahead and unfriend me on fb.

I should follow JLoon and Caravan. Transphobia is only going to get worse the next few months. You are the problem if you can’t understand why a person might get upset with everyone constantly questioning their identity.

@jonsblond I have no issue with transgender people. I don’t question anyone’s identity. I interact with transgender people my entire life. You yourself said transgender people have varying opinions on the topic in sports. Are you accusing them of being transphobic? WTH?!