After years of feminists telling us that males are awful and violent, that males perpetuate rape culture, and that male violence against females has to stop, we are now supposed to celebrate when ‘stunning and brave’ trans women, who are actually male, win gold medals, beating the absolute daylights out of real women at the Paris Olympics (including a world champion), apparently proving that it takes a man to be a real woman.
I suggest chromosomal analysis for all aspiring Olympic athletes resulting in 3 categories of gender: male, female and inter-sex. Now we have another category for competition. Males vs males, females vs females and inter-sex vs inter-sex - all in separate events. Problem solved!!
Women have had to fight tooth and nail for centuries to be taken seriously and try to become equal to men. Gay people have had the same fight and only achieved equal marriage status in the last decade or so. I’m astounded at the rapid pace transgender and all of the other pronouns that follow have been recognised and accepted at the fast pace we have experienced. There is an agenda happening right before our eyes and it’s being promoted as equality. I don’t think so. It’s a deliberate move to creating a society that is non descriptive and acceptant of basically anything one wishes to be. This creates issues as we have seen at the olympics and needs to be addressed immediately. There is no fairness in a person with higher testosterone levels that create natural strength, fighting a female with less testosterone and therefore less natural physical strength.
One thing that I've noticed (and that's how you get in trouble, noticing things) is that females and gays wanted the same as everyone else. Fair enough. Trans people want more. They want their lifestyles promoted, not just tolerated. They want 'gender-affirming care' paid for by the rest of us. Male trans women want access to female spaces, even though they are not female, and sex and gender are supposed to be different.
As I understand - and I could be misinformed - it the boxing authorities ruled them male due to their XY configuration but were overruled by the IOC. If so, the IOC is at fault.
In any case, even if there are exceptions to the XX/XY demarcation, surely that’s the place to start? As you say there may be exceptions but they will be few in number and resolvable case by case.
Finally, why is this only an issue now? Where were these people over the past 100+ years? Have we not artificially created the situation through well meaning but wishy-washy thinking? I’m afraid I’d rather see unfairness to the 0.00 whatever % indeterminates than to the 1 minus 0.00 whatever % female population.
Might have something to do with all the chemical crap in our food, water, cosmetics and home care products that effect hormone production and regulation. But intersex is still a birth defect that is quite rare.
Next, take the countries out of the Olympics. Let athletes compete against athletes, not athletes competing "for countries".
Next, have men compete against men and women compete against women. Anyone who has transitioned from the one to the other cannot expect to be treated as either, for all our best efforts. What in the end will it mean to say "the fastest woman" or "the highest woman"? What does that even mean?
Like Japanese in America in 1941: not Japanese, and not American. When the pick-up tried to be a sports utility, it was neither. They gave it a different name: cross-over. Hm.
Of course, the IOC and their likes will study in forensic detail the precise chromosomal or other things that are used to define "sex" and come up with some finely honed definition but, in short, if you have, or identify with, a gender that does not match the pairing of male/masculine or female/feminine as allotted at birth: we don't have a category for you. It'd be the same for Martians.
The criterion is whether the athletes can compete on equal terms with one another as a sex. We seed sportspeople according to ability (golf handicaps) but, in the end, the question is "Can you lob an 8 kilo lump of iron out of the circle?" and, if you want to match inherent ability with inherent ability, then you have to find another criterion than sex. Maybe doping records (Martians are discounted because they don't have doping there.)
One mechanism by which X genetically male people develop more like females and so are raised as females, including (I guess) having a female sense of identity and being attracted to males, is 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency. Reduced activity of lack of this enzyme means that testosterone is not converted to dihydro-testosterone, which activates androgen receptors more than testosterone itself.
Another mechanism is complete or partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which the androgen receptors cannot be activated at all, or are activated much less than normal by testosterone and dihydro-testosterone.
The Wikipedia page (assuming what it presents is valid, which I think is reasonable) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome is most instructive since it shows photographs of the bodies of what appear to be young women. These are of X chromosome males who have a single genetic defect. Their Y chromosome carries, as is normal, the SRY gene which lead to a male-typical process of in-utero" masculinisation: i.e., the Wolffian duct system is promoted and the Müllerian duct system is suppressed (the reverse happens with typically developing females)." So they develop testes rather than ovaries.
Yet due to both their genes (on the X chromosome, one from their mother and one from their father) for the androgen receptor (which senses the presence of testosterone and dihydro-testosterone) being faulty, their cells do not respond to the these two compounds, which exist at levels which are normal for males. Although the genetically determined structure of testes, and lack of ovaries, uterus etc., is perfectly normal for a male, all other aspects of the body's development are controlled hormonally. These develop in an approximately female pattern, leaving the testes inside their body, so the person has almost all the externally visible attributes of being female, from birth onwards, including, usually, neuronal development in the normal male pattern, which is to self-identify as male and be sexually attracted to women.
"Most individuals with CAIS are raised as females. They are born with an external phenotype of a typical female and are thought to be usually heterosexual with a female gender identity; however, some research has suggested that individuals with CAIS are more likely to have more variable gender outcomes and a non-primarily heterosexual sexual orientation than relatively similar control groups of those with MRKH syndrome and PCOS, contradicting this belief. At least two case studies have reported male gender identity in individuals with CAIS."
As best I understand it, a person with CAIS is for most intents and purposes female. Their testosterone level is much higher than normal for females, but this has no effect on them. So they would have no advantage in sports.
However, with partial androgen receptor insensitivity, I guess that a person could be born with distinctly female genitalia and may be raised as female and feel female to a complete or large degree, but have a high testosterone level which is detected by their cells' androgen receptors to some degree at least and so provides their body and brain with some degree of the strength and abilities typical of males. This would give them a significant and unnatural (since these insensitivities are rare and pathological) advantage over normal females in sports.
There is an important distinction between the relatively rare (compared to current popular perceptions) real transgenderism and the results of the trans-activist social contagion of the past 5 or 10 years.
The development of brain structures which control our male/female sense of self and of other brain structures which control who we are sexually attracted to does not always follow the normal pattern.
There are people who genuinely have a strong sense of self identity which is of the opposite sex to their body. These are genuine trans people. It is reasonable to assume that most or all of this is due to developmental problems, most likely a hormonal balance in utero which skewed the way their brain built itself in ways which gave the circuitry for sense of self, regarding sex, a pattern which is more characteristic of what normally occurs in people of the opposite sex.
Likewise the neural circuits which control what sex of person they are sexually attracted to.
Ignoring, for simplicity, genuine intersex individuals, who are quite rare (https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/00224490209552139) there are 2 possible physical sexes. For sense of self, again simplifying humanity into neat categories we have 3: M, M & F and F. Likewise for sexual attraction, 3 categories: M, M & F and F. In this simplified system, there are 2 x 3 x 3 = 18 categories of people.
Normal development produces people who are M-M-F and F-F-M. However, aberrant development results in the other 16 categories. There may be advantages and disadvantages to all categories, depending on the person, their family and society. However, since M-M-F and F-F-M people have significant reproductive advantages over all others, it is reasonable to assume that the other 16 outcomes are pathological in some important respects and that they arise in spite of normal evolutionary mechanisms: survival to reproductive age and sexual selection.
Some M->F trans people are M-F-F - they are attracted entirely to women, as are ordinary M-M-F males. Others are M-F-M - their brain development is entirely feminised so they feel female and are attracted entirely to males. M-M-M people are homosexual men who feel like men and who are sexually attracted to males.
Some people have a sense of self with M and F aspects to the point where this significantly affects their lives, even if they do not want to live fully as if they were the opposite sex to their physical body.
It is easy to imagine that external disturbance could explain brain development patterns like this. Soy products or other phytoestrogens (plant products which activate estrogen receptors) consumed or used by the mother, while her babe's brain is building itself in-utero, could easily explain the pattern of development of these brain structures being more like the feminine pattern (female sense of self, attraction to males) than is normally the case for males (XY genes with no problems I mention in a second comment to follow).
One such set of compounds which is increasingly used in Western countries is the phytoestrogens in pueraria mirifica, a root vegetable which grows mostly in parts of Thailand and Myanmar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueraria_mirifica. Pueraria mirifica cream is widely used in Thailand by women as a facial cream and for increased breast growth. This practice is now more common in the West. I have never seen anyone else state this, but it is obvious to me that women of childbearing age making use of these products, while pregnant, will lead to the very high prevalence of M-F trans people, both those who are attracted to females and to males, since the phytoestrogens probably cross the placenta and so feminise the way the fetus builds its own brain. This high prevalence is well-known https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathoey though I don't know of any study which quantifies it. This 2008 article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7529227.stm reports on a school with a third set of toilets for M->F trans students. This is in north-east Thailand, where pueraria mirifica grows most prolifically, and where it is used as a food.
In the last few years there has been an increasingly pervasive and disastrous social contagion regarding all things trans.
This has meant that the usual barriers to people identifying themselves to others as trans have been changed into a situation where anyone who does this gets special treatment and is often celebrated, at least in some circles, including by many teachers, therapists, doctors and other professionals, as well as those in the media. This has also lead to a terrible situation where emotionally vulnerable people who are really not trans - or are to only a very slight degree which is not really a problem and is quite common - imagine that their problems are due to being trans: "misgendered at birth". Then they identify as trans, get celebrated and - including in the case of those under 18 - are offered life-altering surgery and/or hormonal treatment.
This has lead to a vast increase in the proportion of teenage girls identifying as trans. Some of them get surgery and/or hormonal treatment and many of these bitterly regret it a few years later. In the past, M-F trans people were more common than F-M trans people. I guess that this is still true, but the social contagion, especially among adolescent girls - some who fear becoming women, in part due to the porn they have seen - has led to the recent development of there being more F->M self-identified adolescents and young adults and M->F.
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria affecting adolescent girls is sometimes observed to occur to whole groups of friends. This article, https://nypost.com/2023/03/15/why-teen-girl-who-became-a-trans-man-is-now-a-woman-again/, about a young woman who was F->M after testosterone treatment and having her breasts removed and is now detransitioning, begins: "“I thought womanhood was unsafe before ever experiencing it,”. Anorexia, assaulted at 14. "Being violated made her further reject her womanhood." ". . . meeting with the specialist was affirming: “She looked me in my eyes and she said, ‘You are a boy.’”
Now we have an extremely visible, (because some or many of them are so obnoxious: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/10/punch-a-terf-the-violent-misogyny-of-the-trans-movement/) so-called M->F "trans" activists (some are trans, many think they are, but are not, I am sure) and their allies who take it upon themselves to force such trans or pseudo-trans people with male bodies into women's spaces. One horrific incarnation of this is the violent attacks on Rosie Parker, who is a woman who speaks for many women, and her supporters, in New Zealand, in which middle aged women have been bashed for attending the talk: https://twitter.com/TheZeitgeistNZ/status/1640050457350656001. Another is males who identify as M->F trans being admitted to women's prisons. Another is women's sport.
I suggest chromosomal analysis for all aspiring Olympic athletes resulting in 3 categories of gender: male, female and inter-sex. Now we have another category for competition. Males vs males, females vs females and inter-sex vs inter-sex - all in separate events. Problem solved!!
It is very easy to do such testing too, so there is no excuse.
Women have had to fight tooth and nail for centuries to be taken seriously and try to become equal to men. Gay people have had the same fight and only achieved equal marriage status in the last decade or so. I’m astounded at the rapid pace transgender and all of the other pronouns that follow have been recognised and accepted at the fast pace we have experienced. There is an agenda happening right before our eyes and it’s being promoted as equality. I don’t think so. It’s a deliberate move to creating a society that is non descriptive and acceptant of basically anything one wishes to be. This creates issues as we have seen at the olympics and needs to be addressed immediately. There is no fairness in a person with higher testosterone levels that create natural strength, fighting a female with less testosterone and therefore less natural physical strength.
One thing that I've noticed (and that's how you get in trouble, noticing things) is that females and gays wanted the same as everyone else. Fair enough. Trans people want more. They want their lifestyles promoted, not just tolerated. They want 'gender-affirming care' paid for by the rest of us. Male trans women want access to female spaces, even though they are not female, and sex and gender are supposed to be different.
I feel sorry for individuals with birth defects. But no XY chromosome carrier should be competing against women, undropped gonads notwithstanding.
As I understand - and I could be misinformed - it the boxing authorities ruled them male due to their XY configuration but were overruled by the IOC. If so, the IOC is at fault.
In any case, even if there are exceptions to the XX/XY demarcation, surely that’s the place to start? As you say there may be exceptions but they will be few in number and resolvable case by case.
Finally, why is this only an issue now? Where were these people over the past 100+ years? Have we not artificially created the situation through well meaning but wishy-washy thinking? I’m afraid I’d rather see unfairness to the 0.00 whatever % indeterminates than to the 1 minus 0.00 whatever % female population.
Might have something to do with all the chemical crap in our food, water, cosmetics and home care products that effect hormone production and regulation. But intersex is still a birth defect that is quite rare.
First, make Olympic athletes amateur again.
Next, take the countries out of the Olympics. Let athletes compete against athletes, not athletes competing "for countries".
Next, have men compete against men and women compete against women. Anyone who has transitioned from the one to the other cannot expect to be treated as either, for all our best efforts. What in the end will it mean to say "the fastest woman" or "the highest woman"? What does that even mean?
Like Japanese in America in 1941: not Japanese, and not American. When the pick-up tried to be a sports utility, it was neither. They gave it a different name: cross-over. Hm.
Of course, the IOC and their likes will study in forensic detail the precise chromosomal or other things that are used to define "sex" and come up with some finely honed definition but, in short, if you have, or identify with, a gender that does not match the pairing of male/masculine or female/feminine as allotted at birth: we don't have a category for you. It'd be the same for Martians.
The criterion is whether the athletes can compete on equal terms with one another as a sex. We seed sportspeople according to ability (golf handicaps) but, in the end, the question is "Can you lob an 8 kilo lump of iron out of the circle?" and, if you want to match inherent ability with inherent ability, then you have to find another criterion than sex. Maybe doping records (Martians are discounted because they don't have doping there.)
The recent controversy involving Olympic boxers probably does not involve trans identification at all. Here is an updated version of what I wrote at: https://moderndiscontent.substack.com/p/olympic-level-confusion-regarding/comments
One mechanism by which X genetically male people develop more like females and so are raised as females, including (I guess) having a female sense of identity and being attracted to males, is 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency. Reduced activity of lack of this enzyme means that testosterone is not converted to dihydro-testosterone, which activates androgen receptors more than testosterone itself.
Another mechanism is complete or partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which the androgen receptors cannot be activated at all, or are activated much less than normal by testosterone and dihydro-testosterone.
In Modern Discontent's article, there was a link to https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22199-androgen-insensitivity-syndrome. Perhaps this boxer Imane Khelif has partial androgen insensitivity syndrome and so is a male, with undescended testes and genitalia resembling the female pattern.
The Wikipedia page (assuming what it presents is valid, which I think is reasonable) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome is most instructive since it shows photographs of the bodies of what appear to be young women. These are of X chromosome males who have a single genetic defect. Their Y chromosome carries, as is normal, the SRY gene which lead to a male-typical process of in-utero" masculinisation: i.e., the Wolffian duct system is promoted and the Müllerian duct system is suppressed (the reverse happens with typically developing females)." So they develop testes rather than ovaries.
Yet due to both their genes (on the X chromosome, one from their mother and one from their father) for the androgen receptor (which senses the presence of testosterone and dihydro-testosterone) being faulty, their cells do not respond to the these two compounds, which exist at levels which are normal for males. Although the genetically determined structure of testes, and lack of ovaries, uterus etc., is perfectly normal for a male, all other aspects of the body's development are controlled hormonally. These develop in an approximately female pattern, leaving the testes inside their body, so the person has almost all the externally visible attributes of being female, from birth onwards, including, usually, neuronal development in the normal male pattern, which is to self-identify as male and be sexually attracted to women.
"Most individuals with CAIS are raised as females. They are born with an external phenotype of a typical female and are thought to be usually heterosexual with a female gender identity; however, some research has suggested that individuals with CAIS are more likely to have more variable gender outcomes and a non-primarily heterosexual sexual orientation than relatively similar control groups of those with MRKH syndrome and PCOS, contradicting this belief. At least two case studies have reported male gender identity in individuals with CAIS."
As best I understand it, a person with CAIS is for most intents and purposes female. Their testosterone level is much higher than normal for females, but this has no effect on them. So they would have no advantage in sports.
However, with partial androgen receptor insensitivity, I guess that a person could be born with distinctly female genitalia and may be raised as female and feel female to a complete or large degree, but have a high testosterone level which is detected by their cells' androgen receptors to some degree at least and so provides their body and brain with some degree of the strength and abilities typical of males. This would give them a significant and unnatural (since these insensitivities are rare and pathological) advantage over normal females in sports.
There is an important distinction between the relatively rare (compared to current popular perceptions) real transgenderism and the results of the trans-activist social contagion of the past 5 or 10 years.
The development of brain structures which control our male/female sense of self and of other brain structures which control who we are sexually attracted to does not always follow the normal pattern.
There are people who genuinely have a strong sense of self identity which is of the opposite sex to their body. These are genuine trans people. It is reasonable to assume that most or all of this is due to developmental problems, most likely a hormonal balance in utero which skewed the way their brain built itself in ways which gave the circuitry for sense of self, regarding sex, a pattern which is more characteristic of what normally occurs in people of the opposite sex.
Likewise the neural circuits which control what sex of person they are sexually attracted to.
Ignoring, for simplicity, genuine intersex individuals, who are quite rare (https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/00224490209552139) there are 2 possible physical sexes. For sense of self, again simplifying humanity into neat categories we have 3: M, M & F and F. Likewise for sexual attraction, 3 categories: M, M & F and F. In this simplified system, there are 2 x 3 x 3 = 18 categories of people.
Normal development produces people who are M-M-F and F-F-M. However, aberrant development results in the other 16 categories. There may be advantages and disadvantages to all categories, depending on the person, their family and society. However, since M-M-F and F-F-M people have significant reproductive advantages over all others, it is reasonable to assume that the other 16 outcomes are pathological in some important respects and that they arise in spite of normal evolutionary mechanisms: survival to reproductive age and sexual selection.
Some M->F trans people are M-F-F - they are attracted entirely to women, as are ordinary M-M-F males. Others are M-F-M - their brain development is entirely feminised so they feel female and are attracted entirely to males. M-M-M people are homosexual men who feel like men and who are sexually attracted to males.
Some people have a sense of self with M and F aspects to the point where this significantly affects their lives, even if they do not want to live fully as if they were the opposite sex to their physical body.
It is easy to imagine that external disturbance could explain brain development patterns like this. Soy products or other phytoestrogens (plant products which activate estrogen receptors) consumed or used by the mother, while her babe's brain is building itself in-utero, could easily explain the pattern of development of these brain structures being more like the feminine pattern (female sense of self, attraction to males) than is normally the case for males (XY genes with no problems I mention in a second comment to follow).
One such set of compounds which is increasingly used in Western countries is the phytoestrogens in pueraria mirifica, a root vegetable which grows mostly in parts of Thailand and Myanmar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueraria_mirifica. Pueraria mirifica cream is widely used in Thailand by women as a facial cream and for increased breast growth. This practice is now more common in the West. I have never seen anyone else state this, but it is obvious to me that women of childbearing age making use of these products, while pregnant, will lead to the very high prevalence of M-F trans people, both those who are attracted to females and to males, since the phytoestrogens probably cross the placenta and so feminise the way the fetus builds its own brain. This high prevalence is well-known https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathoey though I don't know of any study which quantifies it. This 2008 article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7529227.stm reports on a school with a third set of toilets for M->F trans students. This is in north-east Thailand, where pueraria mirifica grows most prolifically, and where it is used as a food.
In the last few years there has been an increasingly pervasive and disastrous social contagion regarding all things trans.
This has meant that the usual barriers to people identifying themselves to others as trans have been changed into a situation where anyone who does this gets special treatment and is often celebrated, at least in some circles, including by many teachers, therapists, doctors and other professionals, as well as those in the media. This has also lead to a terrible situation where emotionally vulnerable people who are really not trans - or are to only a very slight degree which is not really a problem and is quite common - imagine that their problems are due to being trans: "misgendered at birth". Then they identify as trans, get celebrated and - including in the case of those under 18 - are offered life-altering surgery and/or hormonal treatment.
This has lead to a vast increase in the proportion of teenage girls identifying as trans. Some of them get surgery and/or hormonal treatment and many of these bitterly regret it a few years later. In the past, M-F trans people were more common than F-M trans people. I guess that this is still true, but the social contagion, especially among adolescent girls - some who fear becoming women, in part due to the porn they have seen - has led to the recent development of there being more F->M self-identified adolescents and young adults and M->F.
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria affecting adolescent girls is sometimes observed to occur to whole groups of friends. This article, https://nypost.com/2023/03/15/why-teen-girl-who-became-a-trans-man-is-now-a-woman-again/, about a young woman who was F->M after testosterone treatment and having her breasts removed and is now detransitioning, begins: "“I thought womanhood was unsafe before ever experiencing it,”. Anorexia, assaulted at 14. "Being violated made her further reject her womanhood." ". . . meeting with the specialist was affirming: “She looked me in my eyes and she said, ‘You are a boy.’”
Now we have an extremely visible, (because some or many of them are so obnoxious: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/10/punch-a-terf-the-violent-misogyny-of-the-trans-movement/) so-called M->F "trans" activists (some are trans, many think they are, but are not, I am sure) and their allies who take it upon themselves to force such trans or pseudo-trans people with male bodies into women's spaces. One horrific incarnation of this is the violent attacks on Rosie Parker, who is a woman who speaks for many women, and her supporters, in New Zealand, in which middle aged women have been bashed for attending the talk: https://twitter.com/TheZeitgeistNZ/status/1640050457350656001. Another is males who identify as M->F trans being admitted to women's prisons. Another is women's sport.