20 ms·

Not only trans athletes, but any biologically born women the IOC thinks are insufficiently feminine. It’s an unfair advantage apparently. You know, like being

• EA-3167 6mo ago
  That doesn’t seem to be the case, given the first paragraph of the article: > The International Olympic Committee has barred transgender athletes from competing in the women’s category of the Olympics and said that all participants in those events must undergo genetic testing. Genetic testing doesn’t leave a lot of room for accidentally or intentionally targeting women for being “insufficiently feminine.”
  • altruios 6mo ago
    just going to leave this here for you to read... https://www.olympics.com/en/news/semenya-niyonsaba-wambui-what-is-dsd-iaaf-regulations https://www.olympics.com/en/news/semenya-niyonsaba-wambui-wh...
    • EA-3167 6mo ago
      Oh thank you, but I’m not uninformed, and genetic testing wouldn’t have missed Castor Semenya either.
  • pasquinelli 6mo ago
    wouldn't a woman with a y chromosome be disqualified then?
  • poizan42 6mo ago
    Is the "genetic testing" for the presence of a Y chromosome or the presence of the SRY gene? And what about people with AIS? If it's just karyotype, are men with XX male syndrome (SRY gene without an Y chromosome) then allowed to participate in women's sports?
    • functional_dev 6mo ago
      It's very confusing topic. I rendered this visual map to show how SRY gene is the 'trigger' for development, not just having the Y chromosome. It helps see the signaling steps where things like AIS or XX syndrome happen: https://vectree.io/c/y-chromosome-genomic-signaling https://vectree.io/c/y-chromosome-genomic-signaling
    • belorn 6mo ago
      The question comes down if the presence of the SRY gene impact athletic ability. From my reading, it seems very much like an ongoing research topic. I recall a study looking at genetics in general and how much of professional sport abilities that can be attributed to it, and the number were fairly high for most sports, especially those involving strength and endurance. Genetic disorders like AIS could however also be a hindrance. I do recall that in some endurance sports, certain genetic disorders involving oxygen delivery were much more common in top elites than in the average population, meaning that people without that disorder is at severe disadvantage compared to general population. It is an ongoing discussion if people with those kind of disorders should be allowed to compete in for example long distance skiing, as the disorder becomes natural doping and would be cheating if a person without the disorder was competing with that kind of blood in their system. Genetic testing, outside of the culture war about what defines a man or a woman, really comes down to what is fair competition. Personally I can't really say. Does knowing that maybe half of the top skiers has a rare blood disorder make it less fun for people?
  • dragonwriter 6mo ago
    Genetic testing for what? I'm just going to leave the headline of this article for you to consider while you answer: "Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2190741/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2190741/
    • mothballed 6mo ago
      Before you hold genetic testing down to this standard of perfection (catching a single event of something so notable it merited its own article in JCEM), it would do well to compare it to the alternatives from which you are moving, and whether those alternatives met this standard of perfection. Otherwise it might turn out you are proposing a standard that no system that bifurcates men and women can achieve, and on the basis of that, rejecting genetic testing.
  • lynndotpy 6mo ago
    This might be true if the Olympics were exclusively classifying the 23rd chromosomes, and nothing but. Leave aside the fact that very few of us here have actually tested our 23rd chromosome. Historically, the Olympics have not been (and are not) strictly chromosomal. The 2023 testosterone suppression decision requirements has exclusively impacted cis women, for one example. Humans are biologically dimorphic in the same way winters are usually cold and summers are usually hot.
    • EA-3167 6mo ago
      I would say that humans are sexually dimorphic in the same way that humans are bipeds. if you attempted to make a serious argument that limb agenesis implies that we’re a variable-limbed species it would be obfuscating rather than illuminating.
      • enragedcacti 6mo ago
        99.8% of all matter by count is either hydrogen or helium, are atoms dimorphic?
        • EA-3167 6mo ago
          That’s a very fun way to think about it, but it’s far more effective in a semantic debate than a serious one. I also don’t for a minute believe that the goal here is some broader reform of how the world talks about statistical distributions. I’d rather not have discussions in bad faith.
          • enragedcacti 6mo ago
            It was intended in good faith, to make the point that rarity alone is not a good metric for salience. In my experience, most trans people have no problem with the statement "humans are sexually dimorphic" in a biology context. They (and I) have issue with it when its used in a debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and therefore trans and intersex people are irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)". In the context of sports, it is definitely relevant that there are many edge cases and substantial overlap in the distribution of phenotypes between AFAB and AMAB people. Coming back around to the olympics: I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should take great care to create rules and categories for paralympic athletes. I think there's a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree without dismissing the complexity that comes from organizing across 8 billion people.