[Other Sport] Boxing 🥊 Carini v Khelif.

[Washie]

Ok. So can Khelif give birth?

Dunno, i'm not her doctor

 

[Triggaaar]

Not necessarily.
This really comes down to the whole concept that sex is not actually binary.

IMO there should be two categorise for sport. One where the athlete fits certain criteria for being female (eg, XX chromosomes), and one for everyone else.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Not necessarily.
This really comes down to the whole concept that sex is not actually binary.

I don’t think that many people can cope with this fact. Certainly folk like Boris Johnson and JK Rowling would tell you it’s not true. They know what a man or a woman is and believe opinion trumps science.

Personally, I believe that any signs of genetic differences outside of XY and XX or the sort of testosterone levels associated with drug taking or typical of the sex category you are not competing in should result in you being barred from competitive sports. This is a discriminatory view which I acknowledge but it protects the integrity of female competitions.

What is not helpful is people calling these women out as men because they wish to live in the sort of Farage conducted tabloid world where something is either black or white because simple folk don’t have the capacity to process linear differences rather than binary differences.

 

[Triggaaar]

for the first few hours of reading about this story, I fell for the implication that she had transitioned at some point, possibly for sporting advantage.

This is not the case.

Yes that's not something I ever thought was the case.

The issue here, is the discrepancy between IOC and IBF.

I think the issue relates to all sport. Some women will get body building benefits from the fact that they have some male attributes. I don't think it's fair for other women to have to compete with them in any sport where males and females don't compete together.

 

[Uh_huh_him]

Ok. So can Khelif give birth?

I appreciate it is within your nature to do this, but really?
Is that the benchmark for all women?

She has a physical advantage because of her genetics.
But she was born female and had she not pursued olympic sport, would have lived a life as a woman.

IBF have acknowledged that the specific advantage she has, should preclude her from competing in their competitions.
This is quite an easy call for them, because they administer 1 sport.

The IOC have fudged this issue (presumably because it opens a whole can of worms around classifications in other sports).
i.e should Hermaphrodites (almost certainly no longer the correct term, but apologies, I am old) be excluded from the women's archery?

 

[Triggaaar]

Dunno, i'm not her doctor

Ok, but you said being able to give birth was what made Khelif a woman, but you don't actually know she can give birth, which kinda undoes your point.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

Not necessarily.
This really comes down to the whole concept that sex is not actually binary.
In the old days, the concept of hermaphrodites was something we were aware of, but little else was known other than "it happens".

It seems there are many versions of this.
There are reported examples of athletic champions of the past, who had a natural physical advantage.

This particular story is being plugged into the zeitgeist and is being portrayed as a man attacking a woman..
In any other era, this would have happened without the furore surrounding this particular case.

A mate of mine used to play Rugby League for Catalan Dragons and has a daughter that plays Rugby. In a game a few years back she broke a girls leg making a try saving tackle. The girl who broke her leg was playing rugby for the first time whilst my mates obviously wasn't. They shouldn't have been on the same pitch but ..

Your posts have educated me that who should play whom is complicated at all levels and there is no easy answer. Equally, 90% plus will believe this is a trans athlete at first glance. It certainly was when I caught the end of a convo on Talk sport (natch)

That said, it does seem the World Championship managed to arrive at the right answer and the Olympics didn't even if that is a bit unfair on the woman in question. I'd asterix my last comment by saying this is also the oldest trick in the book and remember watching Eastern German females luzz a shot put further than Geoff Capes back in the day.

Answers on a post card.

 

[Triggaaar]

I appreciate it is within your nature to do this, but really?

I'll try and ignore the personal dig.

Is that the benchmark for all women?

For someone to be a woman in life, no. If someone is born a man, but feels they should be a woman for any reason, and transitions, then as far as I'm concerned, they're a woman. But I don't think sport should follow the same rules as society. Just as people might legally be able to take steroids to make themselves really big and strong, but I don't think they should then be able to compete in sport.

The IOC have fudged this issue (presumably because it opens a whole can of worms around classifications in other sports).
i.e should Hermaphrodites (almost certainly no longer the correct term, but apologies, I am old) be excluded from Olympic archery?

No of course they shouldn't be excluded from archery. They should compete in the category for people with some male genetics (currently called the men's category).

 

[Uh_huh_him]

I'll try and ignore the personal dig.



For someone to be a woman in life, no. If someone is born a man, but feels they should be a woman for any reason, and transitions, then as far as I'm concerned, they're a woman. But I don't think sport should follow the same rules as society. Just as people might legally be able to take steroids to make themselves really big and strong, but I don't think they should then be able to compete in sport.




No of course they shouldn't be excluded from archery. They should compete in the category for people with some male genetics (currently called the men's category).

Yeah sure, but for decades, women with her genetics, would have been excluded from doing just that in many sports..
Regardless of whether they had a physical advantage or not.

What I find irritating about this debate, is that the issue is not with the athlete, but the categorization methods of the IOC.

She is eligible to compete and has competed in many competitions.
This scenario has always existed in Women's sport.

What is needed is CHANGE from IOC. Not indignation because one fighter stopped another in 46 seconds.

 

[Han Solo]

Recognise a lot of these arguments back and forth from the last few years in Swedish media, where feminist intellectual Kajsa Ekis Ekman is on a war against trans/ambigious sexes competing with the women, because once again femininity gets pushed over by male attributes. This caused her a lot of problems with her "own", the Left, where a significant number of people either claim that genders & sexes don't exist or they claim that the rights of the trans people are more important than "protecting women's sport".

Its a mess.

Everybody wants to be inclusive... but being too inclusive would mean almost 50% of the world population can't compete for medals in sport because in the end it would be men in one competition and kind-of-not-men in the other. You have to put the line somewhere if you want to avoid that. XY chromosomes seems like one of the reasonble lines.

Like literally everything else, it is binary, and the only way it can't be is through creation of intersubjective realities where it isn't, and that should be avoided: firm and steadfast measurement of what is a woman and what is a man is required if we want to keep it fair. Leave no room for emotions or subjectivity.

 

[Triggaaar]

What I find irritating about this debate, is that the issue is not with the athlete, but the categorization methods of the IOC.

I agree that the issue is with the governing bodies, just as it was with Caster Semenya.

What is needed is CHANGE from IOC. Not indignation because one fighter stopped another in 46 seconds.

I agree.

 

[Uh_huh_him]

I'll try and ignore the personal dig.



For someone to be a woman in life, no. If someone is born a man, but feels they should be a woman for any reason, and transitions, then as far as I'm concerned, they're a woman. But I don't think sport should follow the same rules as society. Just as people might legally be able to take steroids to make themselves really big and strong, but I don't think they should then be able to compete in sport.




No of course they shouldn't be excluded from archery. They should compete in the category for people with some male genetics (currently called the men's category).

Yep totally agree with this
But this isn't what's happened in this case.

Woman, born female, has rare condition which gives her an advantage .
IOC ruling required to resolve this scenario and exclude women with this condition from competing.

It's tough on the athletes affected (some of whom may not have known about their condition)

 

[Triggaaar]

Everybody wants to be inclusive... but being too inclusive would mean almost 50% of the world population can't compete for medals in sport because in the end it would be men in one competition and kind-of-not-men in the other. You have to put the line somewhere if you want to avoid that. XY chromosomes seems like one of the reasonble lines.

I agree.

Like literally everything else, it is binary, and the only way it can't be is through creation of intersubjective realities where it isn't, and that should be avoided: firm and steadfast measurement of what is a woman and what is a man is required if we want to keep it fair. Leave no room for emotions or subjectivity.

Well I wouldn't word it as "what is a woman and what is a man" because there are clearly people are are women, who just happen to have some genetically male attributes that makes them stronger than the women who don't. So I'd want to do something along the lines of what you suggest, but not word it in quite the same way.

 

[Curious Orange]

The general issue of people with some male attributes (eg, a Y chromosome and higher testosterone levels than females generally have) competing against females who don't have those attributes, and therefore aren't as strong.




Fair enough - what are those terms? Do you mean she was born with a womb?

The human body is quite a remarkable thing, and there are a number of ways it can f*ck up in development.

If anything, it sounds like the boxer in question is intersex, in that while they are coded to be male (they have a y chromosome) they developed female sex organs and grew up and present as such. What they won't be able to do is produce female gametes.

What I think we can all probably agree on is that any person who has been through male puberty should not be competing in any physical sports with females, due to their physiological advantages.

 

[Uh_huh_him]

The human body is quite a remarkable thing, and there are a number of ways it can f*ck up in development.

If anything, it sounds like the boxer in question is intersex, in that while they are coded to be male (they have a y chromosome) they developed female sex organs and present as such. What they won't be able to do is produce female gametes.

What I think we can all probably agree on is that any person who has been through male puberty should not be competing in any physical sports with females, due to their physiological advantages.

I'm sure you are right about that, but how does one tell what type of puberty an intersex athlete has gone through?

 

[swindonseagull]

Khelif is not a man, and never has been.

This is not a “trans” issue, she was born a woman and still is.

Thats not how the IBF see it ..

 

[Curious Orange]

I'm sure you are right about that, but how does one tell what type of puberty an intersex athlete has gone through?

That I do not know. Intersex conditions are rare, so present an equally rare and specific problem for the governing bodies of female sports.

I suspect there isn't the same problem in male sports.

 

[A1X]

Thats not how the IBF see it ..

Well they’re wrong then, as Khelif is not a trans woman

 

[Seagull58]

She was born with female organs - I don't know the precise nature of her condition.
And for the first few hours of reading about this story, I fell for the implication that she had transitioned at some point, possibly for sporting advantage.

This is not the case.

Boxing is littered with champions who had physical advantages.
Some great athletes have unique attributes.

The issue here, is the discrepancy between IOC and IBF.
The IBF rightly (IMO) acknowledge that this particular physical advantage, poses a risk to other competitors.

There is also another factor in this story, Khelif isn't really that good.
It's not like she has a string of gold medals, from smacking all and sundry into the ground.

​

She wishes to transition to a male but it is illegal in Algeria so she has to continue living and boxing as a female.

 

[The Clamp]

I’ve had a read of the little there is online about this.

I will concede that this is not as clear cut as it first appears.

I have some things to learn but my takeaway is that I should perhaps not take on face value the headlines from certain media outlets.

I’m not sure what the rules or previous rulings are on this topic so I shall take a back seat and maybe learn some things.

Either way, I’m enjoying this years Olympics and getting so see a fair amount due to my work pattern.