Differences in Sex Development (aka "intersex")

[Emily's Cat]

This?!

The author doesn't know what genitals Khelif has either - they're making an assumption based on how birth certificates are filled out. And they're completely glossing over the fact that in many very conservative nations, any genital ambiguity of any sort will result in the infant being labeled "female" for reasons that have nothing at all to do with biology. Extremely small penis? Female! Separated scrotal sacs? Female! Urethral opening on the underside of the penis? Female!

The article also completely ignores (or at least pretends to ignore) the fact that DSDs are a collection of many different conditions, and that those conditions are almost entirely sex-specific conditions. For example, the specific DSD that Caster Semenya has (5-ard) is a condition that ONLY males can have.

It's also a condition that often presents with ambiguous or not fully formed genitals at birth. It's not uncommon for a male child born with 5-ard to have extremely small scrotal sacs that appear divided, along with a very small penis at birth. In an undeveloped country that doesn't do any secondary tests for non-standard configurations at birth, this might be viewed as "not sufficiently male" and thus relegated to the scrap-heap of "female". Nobody bothers to check and see if there's actually a vaginal opening at all.

During puberty, however, young males with 5-ard will very often experience male-typical development, with elongation of their penis and dropping of their scrotum further away from the body. One might think that the complete lack of any sort of menstrual cycle, complete lack of breast development or hip widening, etc. might lead parents and doctors to suspect that the misdiagnosed child was actually male... but again - "not the right kind of male, therefore toss it in the pile of other not-good-enoughs that get labeled as female".

Plus, it's hard to walk back from having mistreated a young male throughout their entire childhood, subjecting them to all of the constraints and barriers that females are faced with. Much easier for the parents and the community to just go on calling them females, even though it has become abundantly clear that they are male.

Anyway... "birth cert says F" does NOT actually mean that Khelif has a vaginal canal. No more than "passport says F" means that Caitlyn Jenner has a cervix.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well the answers should be logically consistent at the very least, otherwise what's the point.

I would say that the point is that context makes a difference.

For the most part, I don't really care about toilets. Lots of people who support males using female spaces like to fall back on this as some kind of gotcha... but realistically, most females don't care a whole lot about toilet use. Especially when we're talking about fairly public, high traffic, non-secluded toilets.

It's an entirely different situation when you're talking about showers. Showers aren't toilets, people are frequently entirely nude and visible to others. That's not the same situation at all. So having a view that unisex toilets are acceptable but unisex showers are not is not evidence of a logical inconsistency at all.

People can even hold the view that toilets and showers should both be unisex, but that sports should be single sex and that's still not indicative of inconsistency. The act of showering isn't really much different for a male than for a female, and if a person isn't particularly self-conscious (or hasn't been subjected to being leered at and ogled) they just might not care. But seriously - anyone with a modicum of integrity acknowledges that there are physical differences between male and female bodies that result in different athletic performance levels. We've got decades of evidence that show this to be true.

 

[Emily's Cat]

they keep labelling sports as man woman instead of male female, I dont get it.

It shouldn't be that hard to get. To 99% of the people on the planet, the terms "woman" is synonymous with "female human", and the term "man" is synonymous with "male human". It's only within the circles of ideological zealotry that people insist that they have nothing at all to do with the other.

 

[Emily's Cat]

This gray area brings up an interesting point, which has been nagging a bit in this thread. Samson and others confidently claim that certain characteristics unequivocally define one's sex, but of course, if you use those standards to define sex, then that's how it's done. I don't myself know what would be the very best way to deal with such rare cases, but it seems that any practicable standard is going to leave someone unsatisfied, and I'm not convinced that the IOC's way of doing it is wrong.

Female athletes are pretty unanimously convinced that the IOC's way of "their passport says F" is wrong.

 

[Hercules56]

The author doesn't know what genitals Khelif has either - they're making an assumption based on how birth certificates are filled out. And they're completely glossing over the fact that in many very conservative nations, any genital ambiguity of any sort will result in the infant being labeled "female" for reasons that have nothing at all to do with biology. Extremely small penis? Female! Separated scrotal sacs? Female! Urethral opening on the underside of the penis? Female!

The article also completely ignores (or at least pretends to ignore) the fact that DSDs are a collection of many different conditions, and that those conditions are almost entirely sex-specific conditions. For example, the specific DSD that Caster Semenya has (5-ard) is a condition that ONLY males can have.

It's also a condition that often presents with ambiguous or not fully formed genitals at birth. It's not uncommon for a male child born with 5-ard to have extremely small scrotal sacs that appear divided, along with a very small penis at birth. In an undeveloped country that doesn't do any secondary tests for non-standard configurations at birth, this might be viewed as "not sufficiently male" and thus relegated to the scrap-heap of "female". Nobody bothers to check and see if there's actually a vaginal opening at all.

During puberty, however, young males with 5-ard will very often experience male-typical development, with elongation of their penis and dropping of their scrotum further away from the body. One might think that the complete lack of any sort of menstrual cycle, complete lack of breast development or hip widening, etc. might lead parents and doctors to suspect that the misdiagnosed child was actually male... but again - "not the right kind of male, therefore toss it in the pile of other not-good-enoughs that get labeled as female".

Plus, it's hard to walk back from having mistreated a young male throughout their entire childhood, subjecting them to all of the constraints and barriers that females are faced with. Much easier for the parents and the community to just go on calling them females, even though it has become abundantly clear that they are male.

Anyway... "birth cert says F" does NOT actually mean that Khelif has a vaginal canal. No more than "passport says F" means that Caitlyn Jenner has a cervix.

She is a woman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif

 

[Ziggurat]

She is a woman.

What's your point? And what's your definition of "woman"? I suspect it isn't "adult human female".

 

[Hercules56]

What's your point? And what's your definition of "woman"? I suspect it isn't "adult human female".

You don't know what a female human is???

LOL!!!!!

 

[Ziggurat]

You don't know what a female human is???

LOL!!!!!

I know what a human female is. What I don't know is what definition of "woman" YOU are using, because there's no universal agreement about that anymore. I prefer the definition where a woman is an adult human female, but that's considered regressive nowdays, if not outright hate speech. So I'm not going to simply assume that this is the definition you're using, you need to tell me which definition you're using.

But if "adult human female" actually is the definition that you're working with, you have no evidence that Khelif is a woman.

 

[Emily's Cat]

She is a woman.

[qimg]https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1446&pictureid=14096[/qimg]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif

By that criteria... so is my entirely male younger sibling. I have a picture of them in female-typical clothing from when they were five. Of course, we were playing dress-up in my step-mother's closet, so female clothing was what was available. But we had a great time with the make-up and jewelry too.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Have you considered how regressive your view is? You point to a child - prior to the stage where we develop secondary sexual characteristics - as being male or female based solely on whether or not they're wearing "girl clothes" or "boy clothes". You're ASSIGNING sex based on how well the child conforms to arbitrary social styles. Further, you're pretty much saying "OMG, that kid is wearing PINK! Their biology doesn't matter, they're disqualified from being a male because PINK!!!!!"

I spent most of my youth in jeans or shorts, with tshirts, and tennis shoes or flip-flops. I had short hair for a good chunk of my childhood. I climbed trees, plays cops & robbers, built forts, set up campfires, rode bikes, and generally rough-housed with all the males nearby. I disliked dolls or frilly clothes, I didn't want to play house or make-believe cooking. You'd be hard pressed to find a picture of me prior to about 5th grade in which I didn't look more like the males of my age group than the females.

None of that would support you trying to insist that I'm actually for-realsies a male as an adult though. Because fashion isn't sex, and clothing does not determine sex.

 

[Hercules56]

By that criteria... so is my entirely male younger sibling. I have a picture of them in female-typical clothing from when they were five. Of course, we were playing dress-up in my step-mother's closet, so female clothing was what was available. But we had a great time with the make-up and jewelry too.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Have you considered how regressive your view is? You point to a child - prior to the stage where we develop secondary sexual characteristics - as being male or female based solely on whether or not they're wearing "girl clothes" or "boy clothes". You're ASSIGNING sex based on how well the child conforms to arbitrary social styles. Further, you're pretty much saying "OMG, that kid is wearing PINK! Their biology doesn't matter, they're disqualified from being a male because PINK!!!!!"

I spent most of my youth in jeans or shorts, with tshirts, and tennis shoes or flip-flops. I had short hair for a good chunk of my childhood. I climbed trees, plays cops & robbers, built forts, set up campfires, rode bikes, and generally rough-housed with all the males nearby. I disliked dolls or frilly clothes, I didn't want to play house or make-believe cooking. You'd be hard pressed to find a picture of me prior to about 5th grade in which I didn't look more like the males of my age group than the females.

None of that would support you trying to insist that I'm actually for-realsies a male as an adult though. Because fashion isn't sex, and clothing does not determine sex.

She is a female human with higher than normal testosterone for a girl. That's why she looks like she does. But her organs are that of a woman.

 

[Hercules56]

I know what a human female is. What I don't know is what definition of "woman" YOU are using, because there's no universal agreement about that anymore. I prefer the definition where a woman is an adult human female, but that's considered regressive nowdays, if not outright hate speech. So I'm not going to simply assume that this is the definition you're using, you need to tell me which definition you're using.

But if "adult human female" actually is the definition that you're working with, you have no evidence that Khelif is a woman.

She is a female human with more testosterone than a normal girl. Thats why she looks like she does. But she has all the normal female organs and no male organs.

You guys really need to let go of this sick obsession.

 

[d4m10n]

What's your point? And what's your definition of "woman"? I suspect it isn't "adult human female".

I would also like to hear what Hercules56 means by "woman" in this context. We can probably rule out "someone who went through puberty without significant amounts of bioavailable androgens."

...she has all the normal female organs and no male organs.

Internal testes are male organs.

 

[Hercules56]

I would also like to hear what Hercules56 means by "woman" in this context. We can probably rule out "someone who went through puberty without significant amounts of bioavailable androgens."

Internal testes are male organs.

There is no evidence that she has anything but female organs.

Only folks with a sick obsession, suggest she does.

 

[TomB]

What's your point? And what's your definition of "woman"? I suspect it isn't "adult human female".

I'm guessing his point would be that Khelif has been considered by herself and those around her to be female her entire life. I don't know that anyone disputes that. If she had a DSD, she probably wouldn't know about it until some point where some specific tests are run.

If that's the case, the ruling from the IBA would have been a shock to her.

This is also in the wikipedia post:

In 2023, IBA president Umar Kremlev said that the disqualifications were because DNA tests "proved they had XY chromosomes".[34][5] The Washington Post stated, "It remains unclear what standards Khelif and Lin Yu Ting failed [in 2023] to lead to the disqualifications",[5][34] further writing, "There never has been evidence that [...] Khelif [...] had XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone."[5] The IBA did not reveal the testing methodology, stating the "specifics remain confidential".[35] At the time, Khelif said the ruling meant having "characteristics that mean I can't box with women", but said she was the victim of a "big conspiracy" regarding the disqualification.[36] She initially appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but the appeal was terminated since Khelif couldn't pay the procedural costs. After the appeal, Khelif organised her own independent tests in order to clear her name and return to boxing.[13][37]

There also appears to be discrepancy as to what was tested for by the IBA and who did the analyses.

I don't know her genetics or if she has a DSD. I do think it matters for eligibility. Depending on the nature of the DSD, of course.

Whatever criteria and method of verification is used, I think it should apply to all athletes at the point of registration. If everyone takes the test, it's over and done with. If the testing is done when questioned later (whether by officials or other competitors) it becomes something that can be weaponized. It is also the type of information one might not want to receive while in a public spotlight.

 

[Ziggurat]

She is a female human with more testosterone than a normal girl. Thats why she looks like she does. But she has all the normal female organs and no male organs.

Is she? How do you know? Because of a childhood picture? That's not evidence. Prepubescent children (including Khelif) are pretty androgynous outside of social cues such as dress and hair.

No evidence offered so far indicates that she is just a female with unusually high testosterone rather than a male with DSD that was incorrectly categorized as female. Could she be the former rather than the latter? If we don't trust the IBA, then yes, it's possible. But it sure as hell hasn't been demonstrated. Hell, I don't think Khelif has even denied having a DSD.

You guys really need to let go of this sick obsession.

What's sick about recognizing that males with certain DSDs that are incorrectly categorized as females are still actually male? Why are you so DSD-phobic?

 

[Hercules56]

Is she? How do you know? Because of a childhood picture? That's not evidence. Prepubescent children (including Khelif) are pretty androgynous outside of social cues such as dress and hair.

No evidence offered so far indicates that she is just a female with unusually high testosterone rather than a male with DSD that was incorrectly categorized as female. Could she be the former rather than the latter? If we don't trust the IBA, then yes, it's possible. But it sure as hell hasn't been demonstrated. Hell, I don't think Khelif has even denied having a DSD.



What's sick about recognizing that males with certain DSDs that are incorrectly categorized as females are still actually male? Why are you so DSD-phobic?

All the evidence we have suggests she is a woman with high levels of testosterone.

Everything else is just transphobic, irrational and pathological bigotry.

And calling her a liar is not helping your case.

Let it go.

 

[Ziggurat]

All the evidence we have suggests she is a woman with high levels of testosterone.

What evidence? The testimony of people who say she was raised as a girl? Sure. That's not in dispute. But none of that evidence contradicts the hypothesis that she's a male with a DSD. All that evidence fits with such a scenario. Nothing you have said, nothing anyone has said, contradicts that scenario. Hell, even you resorting to the term "woman" rather than "female" is a concession to that possibility.

Everything else is just transphobic, irrational and pathological bigotry.

Let it go.

Why do you hate people with DSDs? Why are you trying to erase their existence, their lived experience? That's irrational and bigoted of you.

ETA: and I never called Khelif a liar. I never even suggested she's a liar.

 

[Hercules56]

What evidence? The testimony of people who say she was raised as a girl? Sure. That's not in dispute. But none of that evidence contradicts the hypothesis that she's a male with a DSD. All that evidence fits with such a scenario. Nothing you have said, nothing anyone has said, contradicts that scenario. Hell, even you resorting to the term "woman" rather than "female" is a concession to that possibility.



Why do you hate people with DSDs? Why are you trying to erase their existence, their lived experience? That's irrational and bigoted of you.

ETA: and I never called Khelif a liar. I never even suggested she's a liar.

You have no evidence she is DSD.

Unless one of your MAGA anti-trans websites posted photos from up her skirt.

 

[Hercules56]

.....

ETA: and I never called Khelif a liar. I never even suggested she's a liar.

You accuse her of actually being a man. Which means she is lying about being a woman and she lied when she applied to participate in female Olympic sports.

And yet you have no evidence she is lying about being a woman.

 

[ahhell]

Is there a threshold of high levels of testosterone that could be considered disqualifying for Women's sport?

You accuse her of actually being a man. Which means she is lying about being a woman and she lied when she applied to participate in female Olympic sports.

And yet you have no evidence she is lying about being a woman.

Curious thing, I've run across a few adults in my life that think that someone saying something that is untrue is necessary a lie. Lots of children believe that but most adults understand that people can also just be wrong.

If she is male, she was also clearly raised as a femal, so totally understandable that she would persist in being wrong about that. Noone is necessarily accusing her of lying.