this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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I've been mentioning this specifically in the context of Imane Khelif.
Even if she has XY chromosomes, you can have XY chromosomes and look biologically female with your clothes off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis
If the test revealed she had a Y chromosome, whether she is XXY or XY (and that has not been made clear at all), she may not have even known. And any partners she had would have thought she was cis as well.
Brittney Griner is as "manly" as Imane Khelif, but only the craziest of the TERFs claim she's not a woman.
The question that I don't think society has wrestled with, and I'm including both left and right wing people, is who should be allowed to do women's sports? What's the purpose of the competition?
Imagine a world without male and female events. Instead, every category is open to any athlete who wants to compete. In that world, very few Olympic events would feature any female athletes at all. You'd see some in equestrian events, some in shooting events. In most other sports, having a male body is enough of an advantage that you won't see many women at all.
So, the purpose of having a women's category seems mostly to be allowing women to have a chance at winning something by not having them compete with men. That means you have to draw the line somewhere. And, wherever you draw the line, some people are going to be left out.
Who gets to decide where the line is drawn? Different cultures have different ideas, and at something like the Olympics, every country is represented. Historically, it has been men deciding who's female enough to be allowed to compete. I think most people could agree that that's bad, and it should be women making that decision. But, should it be all women, or only athletes who are actually competing in a sport? If it's left up to the athletes, isn't there a chance they'll want to draw the line somewhere that favors themselves?
It's always going to be a sticky situation because the whole point of a women's category is to keep out another group who would otherwise have an advantage. But, there's no obvious line that can be drawn that everybody will agree with that separates the two groups.
While this reads and sounds reasonable, in reality it is anything but. Because what it boils down to is that women are not allowed to be successful on the same terms as men.
If a male athlete stands out over his peers through unusual body features and physical advantages, that's fine. But if a woman does, then you immediately get people questioning if she's really a woman.
The gender policing of successful female athletes is not new - it has a long and dreadful history. Athletes like Martina Navratilova, Venus and Serena Williams, even Simone Biles were subjected to this at some point in their careers. For some women it has led to significant disadvantages and loss of opportunities purely based on conjecture.
Also, this kind of policing is often done by women under the pretence of wanting to protect women - but hurting women in the process. Some women don't care that they're hurting other women. The key problem is that womanhood gets redefined all the time and narrowed at will depending on who currently rouses someone's ire.
So for what you're proposing to work, the criteria must be simple, wide-reaching, and unassailable. They must not discriminate against women with unusual physiques or body features so long as they are clearly women. Gender determination cannot be intrusive or demeaning. Anything else hurts all women and entrenches their systemic disadvantages.
Right, because current Olympic sports are almost exclusively ones where having a male body gives you an advantage.
Imagine someone invented a new sport where women had a natural advantage. Say, some kind of obstacle course where a small body size and flexibility was the most important thing. I can guarantee that if a group of men competed in that and one of the competitors won because he had a very feminine body, people would question whether he was really a man.
And, I don't think that's possible. Sex and gender are simply too complicated. There will always be some arbitrary line that a lot of people think is unfair, and that disadvantages people who happen to fall on the wrong side of it.
And yet the IOC seems to think that these two particular women qualify for the women's class in boxing. Why is the IOC wrong?
Why do you think they're wrong?
I don't. You're the one complaining about Khelif competing in the Olympics but also saying we should listen to the governing body.
For boxing, since they already have weight classes, could they just mesh those together to have a narrower range between classes and have people compete along those lines? Generally the cited advantages of men are their height and muscle mass, couldn't this ensure even fights?