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Algerian Imane Khelif wins boxing gold medal after her gender was wrongly questioned
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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What's interesting is Katie Ledecky can beat him on long distance swims, if we go by their times. So how much of an advantage is gender in many sports at this level? And let's look at disability - Usain Bolt had/has scoliosis, Ledecky has POTS, and many other athletes have "disabling" conditions. So why would intersex get a special category that isn't allowed? It's just transphobia.
Here’s a source for Katie Ledecky beating Phelps: https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-news-olympics-news-swimming-news-is-katie-ledecky-faster-than-michael-phelps-answering-the-burning-question-of-the-swimming-community-before-us-olympic-trials/
Looking at the other comments, you are clearly not here to discuss, but I will make a good faith attempt and play devil's advocate.
The difference between intersex and other conditions you mentioned is that it blurs the lines of a specific set of parameters that are specifically used to create categories between sports. Men and women are not fighting each other for more than anagraphic reasons (I hope we can all agree on this), and if a condition invalidates that distinction (I.e. gives some advantages that men have over a women), then it breaks the boundary of such categories in a similar way as it would be having someone from a heavier category fight in a lighter one (BTW, this is routinely done by having athletes go in terrible dehydration regimes).
Now this has nothing to do with this specific case, as there is no any objective proof for any of this, nor that she is intersex nor that she does have any advantage, but it's purely a way to frame the answer to the question "what's the difference between having scoliosis and being intersex".
Edit:
I will add one more thing, comparing a sprinter to a long-distance swimmer is exactly like comparing someone who runs 100m with those who run marathons. Clearly there is an advantage, considering that Katie Ledecky is an absolute monster, but she would have beaten the 3 worse times only that men did in this Olympics, and that she would have been almost a minute behind the winner, meaning almost 2 full lengths. Of course men have an advantage...also if you took the time from https://www.worldaquatics.com/athletes/1001621/michael-phelps, you probably have seen that he was 15 at the time...
The thing is, other hormones can give advantages too. That people put so much stock into testosterone alone is bad science. That intersex conditions that involve testosterone are so hated is transphobia. Women should be in their neat little boxes and men in theirs and any anatomy that changes that is taboo and should be banned. Like where should an intersex fighter compete? If this woman was intersex and had LOCAH or PCOS or other conditions, should she not be allowed in any division of Olympics?
Why don't we have testosterone classes instead of (or in addition to) weight classes, if it matters so much? All athletes with the same level of testosterone can compete, just like athletes that weigh the same compete against each other. Why dont we organize it that way instead? Isn't that more exact and fair?
I didn't mention testosterone at all. I am not a specialist and I mostly don't care about the details. I specifically talked in functional terms: if whatever condition gives you some advantages that men have, then it breaks the categories that are established. In this way, that condition would be different from -say- having huge feet like Phelps, even if they give you an advantage, because there are no categories based on foot size in swimming.
Everything else is an interesting hypothetical discussion, and maybe one day categories will be based on more parameters. Fact is, today they are like this, rough and using proxies such as gender and weight to make fights that are more-or-less fair.
Well, everyone else here is specifically talking about testosterone. That's the "problematic" chemical. It's relevant because it's a normal endogenous chemical we make and some women naturally make more. It can help with more muscle mass and bone density. That it's testosterone is entirely relevant.
That's like speaking on Gaza and saying "it doesn't matter where it is." Like yes it absolutely matters. The context and specifics matter when discussing complicated topics.
All athletes that beat other athletes have a presumed physical advantage. A physical advantage isn't an issue. It's testosterone that's the issue according to the people bitching about it.
No, it's a physical advantages that derive from a condition that renders certain parameters (whatever they are) similar to stronger categories (in this case, men).
If it's just testosterone or a combination of hormones and other things it doesn't matter in the perspective of the discussion I was trying to have (which answered your question, by the way)...
But that's literally every condition. Thats everything a top physical athlete has - their entire physique is a physical advantage over others. How is it different than say, Michael Phelps producing less lactic acid which allows him to have greater endurance? Why is lactic acid okay to be different with, but not testosterone? Both are genetic abnormalities that confer an advantage.
The reason is that they can't be transphobic about lactic acid.
So why men and women should compete separately? If you think they don't, then fine. If you think the do, then the reason pretty much is "because men have physical advantages and make the competition unfair or even impossible for women". What gives this advantage is the kind of stuff that I am talking about.
Is lactic acid production a property that is advantageous to men (I don't think it is, just making an example)? Then if you have the lactic acid production of men, you effectively have some of the advantages that men have over women, hence competing against women creates question. This is not binary, it's a scale, and at some point there is a limit that is fixed in the rules.
I will answer your question once again: because there are categories based on gender, there are not based on lactic acid production. Testosterone is one of the advantages that men have over women, and in fact there is a limit.
You specifically ignored my argument, which can be summed up like this: categories for sport are fairly arbitrary, but it's what is currently used. If you have properties of a stronger category, it is unfair for those of the category you compete in. Yes, there are other N genetic advantages within that category, but since they are not parameters that are used to slice competition, they are not addressed. I didn't make the rules and frankly I don't care. If in the future we are going to have height and feet size categories for swimming, with lactic acid production, and tens more, I honestly would have no problem. Today genders are used in most of the sports because it's a simple and effective proxy to a bunch of advantages.
There are sports that are designed in a way that give estrogen dominant people advantages. Testosterone isn't an advantage for every sport, and Testosterone in isolation isn't an "advantage men have over women," because it comes with a cost including lower lifespan. Cool that you think that way?
The way many sports are designed gives testosterone dominant people an advantage. That's patriarchy for ya.
Height isn't that important for swimming or even running - ShaCarri is like 5'1".
Lactic acid is not related to gender, that's my point. But you clearly believe in gender determinism and think sex chromosomes make up a huge part of genetic makeup when it is quite tiny. Women and men have more in common than we have different.
My criticism is that categories based on gender are unscientific. Which you agree with but say you can't be bothered with the details so its good enough. Well, some of us are smart enough to actually analyze this and know enough about medicine to criticize the heuristic of Testosterone as a metric for athletic competitions when there's more involved than just T.
Is it for boxing?
How is this relevant when you look at advantages in a single competition? This is not a "is it good in life"-situation.
hence it doesn't have a separate category? BTW, swimmers are taller than average, because being tall is generally ad advantage. It's one of many factors, but it's there.
This seems...unlikely. I would say that combat sports have not been "designed" with this in mind, and many other sports are done in the only way they could: swim as fast as you can, run as fast as you can, jump as high/far/etc. as you can.
Then you should understand my answer: it doesn't break the boundary of established categories.
Are you a medium? Do you read my mind on arbitrary topics? Can you give me 6 numbers for next lottery?
Jokes aside, I didn't talk about chromosomes, I didn't talk about testosterone (only once you brought it up), I specifically referred to functional difference, whatever the origin, and also mentioned that the reality is not so easy (not binary).
Perfect, this is a completely separate discussion, one I might agree with even. I wouldn't know how to make it better, it's not my area of expertise. What I know is that in many sports women holding record would barely qualify if they were to compete against males, and I think that would not be fun nor fair for anybody. I also think that in combat sports that would be potentially dangerous. Happy to see alternatives in the future.
My argument is that if testosterone is considered an advantage in a sport, then athletes shouldn't be banned for their anatomy, but instead the sport should adapt and sort athletes by T levels if it truly matters. Men shouldn't be getting hurt by other men with higher testosterone, either. And we should be MORE inclusive of athletes who don't fit the gender binary by getting rid of these men's/women's categories that aren't really helpful or accurate anyway.
If a sport included both men and women at the higher level, then they will compete at lower levels. It's not like we'd be asking women to box men for the very first time in an Olympic setting, if we organized the groups by testosterone and some women and men ended up competing.
Some sports including fighting sports can have rule changes or be redesigned to give women advantages. If we look at those warrior challenges, many of that has to do with center of gravity. If women can get their hips over stuff, they are good, but for men it's often their shoulders. If women run the course a little differently, they can often do really well. That's not because they are "worse" athletes, they are just athletes different than men.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNG16aYg/
I may even agree with you here, but I think this is going to be a nightmare. Continuous testing, plus, while sex is a proxy for many attributes at once, testosterone is only one. Then you need many more parameters to compare and create categories, on a global scale. This assuming we actually understand such parameters well enough.
I guess the difference between low testosterone men (assuming there are many in high competition levels) and high ones is smaller than high testosterone women and low testosterone men. So yes, I agree, but this is hardly a problem in practice.
I really don't see how you could do this in most sports and make it fair and interesting. Sure, you jumped 20cm lower, here is your gold medal because there is an estimated disadvantage for you of 25cm. Yes, you arrived 45s after, here is your gold medal. It seems like a terrible idea and even harder to implement in sports with points (football, tennis, volleyball etc.). Considering the relative low amount of "corner cases", keeping sex as a category seems more reasonable imho, although with its limits. I am interested in what women athletes think.
There is nothing moral behind "worse". There are differences that simply provide advantages to men and make them faster/stronger/taller which is an advantage in many sports.
So which is it that's an issue? Is it sex or is it testosterone? And how do you define sex? What if someone has testosterone but isn't responsive, in the case of people who are XY and appear to be cisfemale and are simply nonresponsive to testosterone?
We weigh people continously.
We aren't asking for other parameters. Stop strawmanning. I asked for testosterone and weight for combat sports.
Why must this fully be accurate and correct when you're completely fine with the less precise heuristic we have currently going based on gender?
It's not a problem in practice because we force a false gender dichotomy that literally disqualifies these specific athletes.
They are only "corner cases" because you define gender as red and yellow and thus leave out orange, green, and purple.
Women athletes think a variety of things because they are a variety of people.
There are advantages to men when the only men allowed to represent men are high testosterone and the only women allowed to represent women are low testosterone.
Are you misunderstanding my argument on purpose?
You and I both know that testosterone is not the only thing. There are people who have different sensitivity (low reception) to it, for example, then there is the problem that testosterone (and probably other stuff too!) has an historical effect on development that is not captured by a snapshot in time. I am not strawmanning, I simply assumed that since both of us know that testosterone level at time T is insufficient data, you would need at least more parameters to make fair categories. If that's not the case and you actually meant just using testosterone level and weight, than I think this is a bad idea. Actually, I think this is worse than the sex categorisation. This way you are 100% bundling together people with high T and low reception (I.e. didn't get most of the benefits) with people with low T and high reception. You are also exposing yourself to men artificially lowering testosterone levels after having gotten all the historical developmental advantages to compete in "lower" categories (similarly to how it happens today with weight).
No, I don't. They are corner cases because we can look at the reality and observe that this is a problem with a relative small incidence. I think your proposal will present way more corner cases and problematic situations.
Did you read the article I linked? I am aware of these issues with testosterone. But this is the issue people have with men competing against women - testosterone. It's what they do blood tests for.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men
So your solution to this issue is to be regressive and keep the bad gender heuristic which forces an arbitrary gender binary on us and excludes otherwise legitimate athletes from competing because they don't fit this arbitrary mold? Tell me what's ideal here. What's fair?
I don't have a solution. I started this whole conversation by simply answering "why being intersex is different from having scoliosis", and we are at this point where you proposed a completely alternative way to slice competitions in sports. In my opinion your solution is impractical at least, let alone there might be tens of scientific issues that I am not aware of. A quick search shows that your idea has been suggested already in informal conversations, and even in a non-scientific forum received objections of missing advantages deriving from hemoglobin, reaction times, biomechanical advantages and sizes, all properties for which sex is a good proxy. This should be addressed somehow, and I am not in a position to do that, I am simply not an expert. That said, I am not against finding a better way to make sport both inclusive and fair/entertaining in principle. I simply believe, based on some reading and a basic understanding that your suggestion might not be it.
Okay so you're just here to be regressive, got it.
You cannot address any of the problems around this situation, you cannot debate a scientific answer, you do not even know what a scientific answer for this might look like, you neglect how this incorporates into a greater discussion about what we define as "ableism" (I didn't ask ONLY about how it is different than scoliosis, but also about any other difference in biology).... Like not only are you unable to debate the science of it, which you admit, but you are also so sure I'm wrong, even though you don't know anything about this topic.
So I take it you're here in bad faith.
That is simply because you moved the topic of the conversation to something else. You changed topic twice, and now you are burdening me with providing a solution, when I was barely acknowledging the existence of a problem. Not sure why you are so unnecessarily confrontational, but I am arguing in good faith, laying down exactly what I mean and what I don't. I am not going to search stuff on the fly I am not competent about to entertain a conversation you are forcing.
Let's also remember the other shameful thread in which you were claiming something objectively false (Phelps swims slower than Ledecky on distance), and after 3 comments of bad faith arguments you simply disappeared without ever acknowlding the mistake in your argument. Who is arguing in bad faith? You are the one that after being shown that your argument was bases on comparibg times when Phelps was 15 yo answered "being a teenager is an advantage in some sports".
So please, I don't think you are in any position to moralize anybody. Including in this case, where I clearly said that even though I am not an expert, a quick search showed some objections to your proposal. Instead of addressing any of that, you just wrote this meta-comment about how I didn't "debate the science". So yeah, you want to call me regressive to support status quo vs the impromptu proposal of a random internet user who is not an expert in this either, with the proposal having no general support (I found one article having the same idea in addition to that reddit post)? Sure, I am regressive then.
I didn't change it. Aren't we discussing the arbitrary nature of the gender binary and the intersection of biology, genetic diversity, and ability?
I didn't force a conversation. You are free to leave. Amd I'm pretty sure you are the one who started the confrontation.
You won't do research to further your knowledge on this subject because you aren't competent enough to do so. Idk why you're even attempting to argue at all here.
Per the source, Ledecky beat Phelps.
Yes, regressive like fascists and every other terrible person who can't fathom a better world so they make us all miserable with the status quo. Thanks
No. You are, maybe. I am discussing the way certain characteristics relate to categories currently used in sport. You started from here to then contest categories themselves, which in have no problem with, recognizing they have obviously limits and they are simply ok-ish proxies.
I started a discussion. You turned every single topic of conversation in a polarizing discussions between two opposite sides, despite me being fully open to a lot of your ideas (like for example that categories are arbitrary, that limits are mostly arbitrary especially considering genders are a spectrum, etc.). You constantly force a me vs you fight, which pushed you to actually misrepresent my opinion a couple of times (remember when you claimed I am gender deterministic and see it as fully binary, few comments down from when I said the exact opposite?).
Bad faith 100%. You just made a rant of few lines about how I refuse to make research to further my knowledge (brb, taking a biology degree in between comments), and yet you deny reality about something so simple that doesn't even require research, it requires basic math and a pinch of common sense.
Yes, your source shows the the personal best for Phelps for a race he did once, when he was 15 is (few seconds!) slower than Katie Ledecky peak performance record. I told you, I run faster the 100m than Bolt when he was 5, so I am faster than Bolt. I actually also outrun my mom's car when it was without fuel, so I am faster than cars and I ride faster than the winner of the Tour de France when he was learning to bike, so I am faster than him! You can prove anything if you use a shitty enough comparison!
I won't even try to convince you, because it's clear you are not here with the intellectual honestly to say "yep, my claim was bullshit", I will just lay it out as it is to show how ridiculous your argument is. In fact, the source you showed could be used by anybody with a bit of honesty to prove the opposite: if Phelps at 15, without it being his specialty, could swim only a few seconds slower than Ledecky in her main specialty at peak performance, it is clear that men have advantages in swimming!
Yes, exactly like that, it makes perfect sense. It's obvious that anybody who didn't welcome without questions your proposal (which is based on solid science and of course deep, deep understanding of all sports - see above for example swimming!) is a regressive fascist who hates a better world. That's how the world works!
I've already provided multiple examples where the physical advantages, resulting from a neurochemical anomaly, exist and no one had an issue. Why is testosterone special? And if testosterone ISN'T special, then why aren't they testing for other enodgenous neurochemicals like lactic acid and banning based on that? Why doesn't this group of lactic acid anomalies get kicked out and refused placement?
Again, it's transphobia.
You are arguing a point I specifically didn't make. So I don't know what to answer you, since none of it has to do with my actual opinion.
Your argument is that intersex conditions blur boundaries for sex in sports. My argument is that these categories are arbitrary and I'm explaining why.
You: the color orange messes with the boundaries we have in place for red and yellow! It can't be involved!
Me: the boundary for yellow and red is arbitrary and visible light exists on a continuum anyway!
Actually me:
I fully recognize that this is arbitrary, I fully recognize that any "limit" is somewhat arbitrary. The only difference is that I acknowledge that sex is a "good enough" proxy for now.
I still don't understand how would you avoid that women will never see a medal again in any combat sport, athletics, swimming, tennis and many other sports if you stop using sex as a category. What categories would you use, and are they pragmatic enough that they can be implemented easily?
You see how when you demand orange not exist, and that's apparently "good enough" for you, that it doesn't represent reality? Instead of demanding these boundaries, if testosterone matters, then organize people into classes by testosterone. This allows women with higher T to compete as well as men with lower T. For many categories, testosterone will be unnecessary to test anyway.
"Women will never see a medal again," hmm don't be so confident about that.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNG16aYg/
It's often the way sports are designed that keep women out intentionally
I am saying that it's better to have 10 corner cases that can be dealt with than 2000 corner cases.
I am really curious how you would design running in a way that having stronger muscle doesn't help, or combat sports in a way that power doesn't help etc. Also, women have their own category with almost in all cases same rules. How does this keep women out?
Go check all time-trial based sports, let me know if any women would have won anything.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men
I give up. You have tons of data available that you can still compare from Olympic games that just happened. I specifically didn't mention "every sport ever invented", but I mentioned "most sports" and you quote something that is supposed to prove...what? Lol
Nevermind. Continue living in a fantasy world in which Phelps swims slower than Ledecky (at 15, but who cares?!), because denying reality is a great way to approach problems.