Thanks Julie- another great article our great grandmas would be proud of. How horrified must older women be, watching their hard won rights being vacuously handed over by privileged women with no idea of what it took to get them. Next article- please research the topic of the IOC itself, how it got to be stacked with trans activists/ autogynephiles.
I was trying to remember where I read about how it’s been reshuffled and stacked with transactivist men. There’s a women’s sports campaign group who highlight that it took something like 8 men to ruin sport for millions of women… I’ll see if I can find it…
I agree that the personal attacks on these boxers should cease. From the little we currently know, it appears both were treated as female from birth, perhaps out of ignorance or an unwillingness to investigate their conditions.
Opprobrium should be reserved for the IOC and like bodies who effectively allow athletes to self-ID their sex by only a passport check. Given most, if not all, athletes at that level must submit to drug testing, the idea that a simple blood test is a breach of privacy or overly intrusive is laughable.
Chromosomal and testosterone tests should be mandatory at world class sporting events to preserve the sanctity of sex divisions in competitive sport. Arguably, beyond fairness, it also falls under a duty of care for athlete's safety in many sports and particularly combat disciplines such as boxing and the martial arts.
I’m saddened by undue concern for these DSD male athletes. Where is the hand wringing for their gaslit and abused opponents- Angela was booed by the Algerian heavy crowd. Both men have known since they were teenagers with 5ARD syndrome that they’ve gone through male puberty. Failing sex testing in 2022 & 2023 was their opportunity to gracefully retire, show integrity and avoid public criticism.
Perhaps I should clarify that my comments weren't born of undue kindness towards the athletes in question but rather were directed towards what I consider to be the overarching problem - a lack of proper regulation.
Personal attacks unduly focus the problem on individuals, which gives rise to all the countering opinions and potential for misinformation about their particular circumstances. The result is a murky soup of competing allegations that could be quickly cleared by proper testing and the rigorous application of scientific benchmarks to ensure women are not getting punched in the face by a man for entertainment.
I feel very sorry for the women who have had to confront male opponents in whatever sport they participate in. Riley Gaines has been incredibly brave in her advocacy for such women and I believe she will be remembered as a feminist heroine for her efforts. The real change though must be institutional if we are to achieve fairness in female sport.
It seems a little unfeeling to describe Khelif and Lin simply as 'DSD male athletes', though technically correct. I think the more humane reaction is to show equal concern for the athletes on both sides of this awful confrontation. None of us know Khelif personally, but we can surely imagine what it’s like to find yourself exposed to this relentless international scrutiny, just as happened to Castor Semenya a few years ago. This doesn't detract one jot from the sympathy due to the Italian and Hungarian women robbed of their chance at medals. But no one is holding these women up to international derision.
What we do know is that Khelif was presumably born without external male genitalia, and was raised as a girl in conservative Islamic Algeria. We understand that as a young person she wanted to play soccer with the boys, but was rejected because (of course) the boys refused to accept a girl playing their game. And she says she was bullied by the girls because she was too much of a tomboy for them. We can also imagine her unhappiness at puberty when those internal testes started kicking in with the testosterone produced by male XY chromosomes.
Looking in the mirror as a teenager, did she see a girl’s face transforming into a pretty young woman, or a disconcertingly male jawbone and heavy eyebrows? Don’t we remember our own adolescent anxieties vividly enough?
This is an entirely different situation from a teenage boy or an adult man deciding to ‘transition’ to become a woman by putting on a dress and makeup, for whatever reason, and proceeding to beat the ‘cis’ girls at women’s sport. We should reserve our anger for the clowns who run the IOC, not these two young people.
I genuinely appreciate your compassion Justin, but I am concerned at the thought of it becoming ‘inhumane’ to point directly at male advantage and name it plainly.
Males with 5ARD are over represented in female elite sport because of this advantage, Khelif has had a decade since puberty to fully comprehend their situation, but insists he is female. I have real reservations about adding to this toxic ideological soup, by not using the term DSD male athletes.
The women athletes that complain are indeed experiencing international derision, have a look at the hatred for the Italian boxer and for Riley Gaines.
Your comment actually epitomises the entire problem: lets not be mean and make an exception. This may be a well and good principle when teaching primary school kids to get along but the sharp end of competitive sport is just that: a mutually exclusive competition where explicit fairness needs to assert itself over niceness.
It is an established fact sports scouts & coaches deliberately scan populations for such DSD children to recruit them into their programs. Look up Henk Botha.
This was not an unfortunate turn of events, but a planned outcome. The fact that the race card is there so clearly available to be played clearly emboldens such practices. The two are just the ones you've heard of. If this doesn't convince you think of this: if this is allowed the top tier of female sports will be the "DSD Men" category. If inclusion is valued - there is no reason why such athletes can't be accommodated in the paralympics.
Yes the IOC is inhumane to women - agreed. Accurate language is crucial in defending Women’s sex based reality and human rights and child safeguarding. Would “life saving gender affirming care” have caused such devastating harm if described accurately as “experimental child sex change hormones and surgeries?” As women have discovered if you give an inch the sex denialist lobby will garrotte you with the kindness.
In certain cultures being gay is completely unacceptable. A ‘sissy boy’ is a social embarrassment. It’s far more acceptable to be categorised as a girl. Homophobia drives transgenderism in such societies (eg Iran, which has been praised by Stonewall for the promotion of transgender surgeries- despite these being the ‘cure’ for gay people.
Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that sporting organisations should make an exception to allow these DSD children and adults to compete against girls and women. Not at all.
National sporting organisations, and particularly international organisations like the IOC, should make it clear that a simple one-off test for XY chromosomes will be applied at elite levels in sports like boxing and swimming where male strength makes a statistical difference. (Obviously it would be unnecessarily cruel to apply such tests rigorously at junior amateur levels, given the psychological impact on young people with DSD.)
And I think that national organisations should be warned against seeking out such DSD males for inclusion in women's teams. That should be treated just like the East Germans' synthetic steroid program in the 1970s.
It was sheer bad faith on the part of the IOC to devolve these decisions onto national bodies -- and then to pretend that it's the sex on your passport that counts!
Kind of you Michael. Thank you. It is amusing to watch the mainstream media struggling with this story. You get the sense that many of the journos are reporting as if someone's holding a gun to their head! The alternative/heterodox media (Quillette etc) were set up for moments like these and they're delivering.
I agree that the IOC is the main culprit here. Based on its attitude so far though I am not optimistic that much will change. I have some sympathy for Khelif in the sense that life must have been difficult for him being DSD. I agree with Jazz though- I find it hard to believe that he would have been unaware that he had the strength of an adult man. He can’t help being DSD but he is responsible for his choices and he has chosen to box against biological women. That stinks.
Thanks Julie- another great article our great grandmas would be proud of. How horrified must older women be, watching their hard won rights being vacuously handed over by privileged women with no idea of what it took to get them. Next article- please research the topic of the IOC itself, how it got to be stacked with trans activists/ autogynephiles.
I have very little expertise when it comes to the IOC but I appreciate the sentiment!
I was trying to remember where I read about how it’s been reshuffled and stacked with transactivist men. There’s a women’s sports campaign group who highlight that it took something like 8 men to ruin sport for millions of women… I’ll see if I can find it…
I agree that the personal attacks on these boxers should cease. From the little we currently know, it appears both were treated as female from birth, perhaps out of ignorance or an unwillingness to investigate their conditions.
Opprobrium should be reserved for the IOC and like bodies who effectively allow athletes to self-ID their sex by only a passport check. Given most, if not all, athletes at that level must submit to drug testing, the idea that a simple blood test is a breach of privacy or overly intrusive is laughable.
Chromosomal and testosterone tests should be mandatory at world class sporting events to preserve the sanctity of sex divisions in competitive sport. Arguably, beyond fairness, it also falls under a duty of care for athlete's safety in many sports and particularly combat disciplines such as boxing and the martial arts.
I’m saddened by undue concern for these DSD male athletes. Where is the hand wringing for their gaslit and abused opponents- Angela was booed by the Algerian heavy crowd. Both men have known since they were teenagers with 5ARD syndrome that they’ve gone through male puberty. Failing sex testing in 2022 & 2023 was their opportunity to gracefully retire, show integrity and avoid public criticism.
Perhaps I should clarify that my comments weren't born of undue kindness towards the athletes in question but rather were directed towards what I consider to be the overarching problem - a lack of proper regulation.
Personal attacks unduly focus the problem on individuals, which gives rise to all the countering opinions and potential for misinformation about their particular circumstances. The result is a murky soup of competing allegations that could be quickly cleared by proper testing and the rigorous application of scientific benchmarks to ensure women are not getting punched in the face by a man for entertainment.
I feel very sorry for the women who have had to confront male opponents in whatever sport they participate in. Riley Gaines has been incredibly brave in her advocacy for such women and I believe she will be remembered as a feminist heroine for her efforts. The real change though must be institutional if we are to achieve fairness in female sport.
It seems a little unfeeling to describe Khelif and Lin simply as 'DSD male athletes', though technically correct. I think the more humane reaction is to show equal concern for the athletes on both sides of this awful confrontation. None of us know Khelif personally, but we can surely imagine what it’s like to find yourself exposed to this relentless international scrutiny, just as happened to Castor Semenya a few years ago. This doesn't detract one jot from the sympathy due to the Italian and Hungarian women robbed of their chance at medals. But no one is holding these women up to international derision.
What we do know is that Khelif was presumably born without external male genitalia, and was raised as a girl in conservative Islamic Algeria. We understand that as a young person she wanted to play soccer with the boys, but was rejected because (of course) the boys refused to accept a girl playing their game. And she says she was bullied by the girls because she was too much of a tomboy for them. We can also imagine her unhappiness at puberty when those internal testes started kicking in with the testosterone produced by male XY chromosomes.
Looking in the mirror as a teenager, did she see a girl’s face transforming into a pretty young woman, or a disconcertingly male jawbone and heavy eyebrows? Don’t we remember our own adolescent anxieties vividly enough?
This is an entirely different situation from a teenage boy or an adult man deciding to ‘transition’ to become a woman by putting on a dress and makeup, for whatever reason, and proceeding to beat the ‘cis’ girls at women’s sport. We should reserve our anger for the clowns who run the IOC, not these two young people.
I genuinely appreciate your compassion Justin, but I am concerned at the thought of it becoming ‘inhumane’ to point directly at male advantage and name it plainly.
Males with 5ARD are over represented in female elite sport because of this advantage, Khelif has had a decade since puberty to fully comprehend their situation, but insists he is female. I have real reservations about adding to this toxic ideological soup, by not using the term DSD male athletes.
The women athletes that complain are indeed experiencing international derision, have a look at the hatred for the Italian boxer and for Riley Gaines.
Your comment actually epitomises the entire problem: lets not be mean and make an exception. This may be a well and good principle when teaching primary school kids to get along but the sharp end of competitive sport is just that: a mutually exclusive competition where explicit fairness needs to assert itself over niceness.
It is an established fact sports scouts & coaches deliberately scan populations for such DSD children to recruit them into their programs. Look up Henk Botha.
This was not an unfortunate turn of events, but a planned outcome. The fact that the race card is there so clearly available to be played clearly emboldens such practices. The two are just the ones you've heard of. If this doesn't convince you think of this: if this is allowed the top tier of female sports will be the "DSD Men" category. If inclusion is valued - there is no reason why such athletes can't be accommodated in the paralympics.
Yes the IOC is inhumane to women - agreed. Accurate language is crucial in defending Women’s sex based reality and human rights and child safeguarding. Would “life saving gender affirming care” have caused such devastating harm if described accurately as “experimental child sex change hormones and surgeries?” As women have discovered if you give an inch the sex denialist lobby will garrotte you with the kindness.
In certain cultures being gay is completely unacceptable. A ‘sissy boy’ is a social embarrassment. It’s far more acceptable to be categorised as a girl. Homophobia drives transgenderism in such societies (eg Iran, which has been praised by Stonewall for the promotion of transgender surgeries- despite these being the ‘cure’ for gay people.
His pronouns look quite pronounced looking at his crotch sorry.
Well said David. It is unfair to delude anyone, including the XY people invited to invest everything they have, only to have no chance of winning.
Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that sporting organisations should make an exception to allow these DSD children and adults to compete against girls and women. Not at all.
National sporting organisations, and particularly international organisations like the IOC, should make it clear that a simple one-off test for XY chromosomes will be applied at elite levels in sports like boxing and swimming where male strength makes a statistical difference. (Obviously it would be unnecessarily cruel to apply such tests rigorously at junior amateur levels, given the psychological impact on young people with DSD.)
And I think that national organisations should be warned against seeking out such DSD males for inclusion in women's teams. That should be treated just like the East Germans' synthetic steroid program in the 1970s.
It was sheer bad faith on the part of the IOC to devolve these decisions onto national bodies -- and then to pretend that it's the sex on your passport that counts!
Why have I read nothing approaching the quality and depth of this piece from the journalists in Paris? Thank you Julie.
Kind of you Michael. Thank you. It is amusing to watch the mainstream media struggling with this story. You get the sense that many of the journos are reporting as if someone's holding a gun to their head! The alternative/heterodox media (Quillette etc) were set up for moments like these and they're delivering.
I agree that the IOC is the main culprit here. Based on its attitude so far though I am not optimistic that much will change. I have some sympathy for Khelif in the sense that life must have been difficult for him being DSD. I agree with Jazz though- I find it hard to believe that he would have been unaware that he had the strength of an adult man. He can’t help being DSD but he is responsible for his choices and he has chosen to box against biological women. That stinks.
As always insightful and spot on!
Thanks Julie - your article is so informative as usual. I love your style and can’t help chuckling to myself at some of your funny descriptions.