In light of plans to introduce this policy and the particular circumstances surrounding some boxers that competed at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, World Boxing has written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform it that Imane Khelif will not be allowed to participate in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup or any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes sex testing.
Olympics testing sex means they will be testing women, and never men, it means they’ll come up with a test that requires different representatives of different competing nations to agree a woman doesn’t technically qualify as a woman despite her fully functioning uterus, and again they’ll be invasive and humiliating and poor countries will have twice or more disqualified athletes, they will go after women of color twice as hard, and the more extreme countries they send these women back to live in will treat these women horrifyingly bad.
Generally because the differences in male and female biology mean that ftm athletes are coming in at a disadvantage and only risk end up being hurt themselves by male athletes who generally have them at a disadvantage. Mtf athletes however, due to the aspects of male physiology that remain, have a higher likelihood of having an advantage over female athletes and also posing a danger to the other athletes. This is generally why most womens categories were introduced in the first place (female physical disadvantage).
Especially in martial arts and combat sports like boxing, which are already inherently dangerous, the physical safety of the athletes and protecting them must come above more ephemeral goals such as inclusion in my view.
As it stands with current day medical technology, there are limits to how close a transitioning individual can be changed to resemble the opposing gender.
Given how deep the differences are physiologically between the sexes with things such as lyonization I’m not entirely sure that it will ever be possible to fully transition a person outside of weird and ethically questionable future tech such as vat-growing a genetically modified clone and somehow transferring the consciousness of the person.
There are several cases in sports already where people who are born women and have a female phenotype and genotype, but have naturally higher levels of testosterone, who have been banned from competition.
The message they use is the they’re “protecting women” but it isn’t actually the goal. Often there aren’t any cases of transgender athletes outperforming their cis opponents, yet they still try to create these rules. It’s frequently actively harmful to many cisgendered women.
The problem with all of this is the “basic biology” crowd never learn that biology is really fucking complex. What they learn in grade school is not the totality of biology, yet they assume they must be experts and force their very limited and wrong views on other people. It’s bad and harmful and siding with them makes them feel all the more justified in their crusade of bullshit and misinformation.
I’m not particularly familiar with the politics of sports, nor am I particularly interested - as such I won’t comment on what their goals are. I am, however, very familiar with human biology and healthcare. 5 yrs of secondary + tertiary education familiar in addition to several years of work experience. You’ll unfortunately have to take my word for that. I don’t intend to dox myself with documentation.
With my outlook on the topic, it doesn’t seem like a “crusade of bullshit and misinformation”. Headline news, physiology and most importantly “data and medical evidence from an extensive range of sources and consulted widely with other sports and experts across the world” - as they claim. I don’t have time to personally look into that (sucks to have a life amirite) but am inclined to trust that they care for the athletes and have done due diligence. If you (or anyone else for that matter!) has material that disputes the validity of their work do feel free to link it in a reply. I and others I’m sure would be interested in reading such material.
Thanks.
They’re gonna discover the same thing they did in the Olympics that made them stop testing.
It was making people uncomfortable how many of them had the wrong sex assigned at birth.
Women and men who had lived their entire lives as one sex realized they actually had the chromosomes for the opposite sex.
What? Really? Didnt know this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_and_intersex_athletes_at_the_Olympic_Games
The history of sex testing for sports is really interesting, for me it’s interesting because despite almost 100 years of the practice not a single “male imposter” has ever been found.
And I was mistaken. Like another comment on this post says they just stopped testing in men’s sports.
That is really interesting
Nice; how much sex do they need to have to pass the test?
Looks like I need to post this again.
Thanks for sharing. I never seen it before.
The only kind of sex testing I am okay with, is making sure condoms and sex toys work properly by actually using them on myself.
So much pointless and cruel bullshit over fucking sport, and one of the stupidest sports no less.
If you pay someone to pass the sex test does that count as doping?
Unlikely, but it would be hilarious if some self-proclaimed alpha male found out the hard way that he is in fact intersex.
And those tiny number of edges cases need to be highlighted to show it does indeed happen. With biology, there is rarely ever truely binary. Biology is too mushy.
Sex testing should be allowed but any time someone calls for sex testing and gets it incorrect the boxer 2should get one good punch in on them
Wtf are they gonna do? Check if there is a vagina? Uterus? DNA? If you are insensitive to testosterone but with SRY (the gene responsible for sexual differentiation during fetal development), you end up AFAB, but without uterus. Is this woman enough? (You even lack testoserone)
You could read the article, it states it’s a chromosome test. Not that I agree with this, but its a bad look to react without doing the bare minimum
They are going to find out chromosomes are super complicated. There are XY AFAB cis women and we don’t actually know how common they are because we don’t test for it.
Pretty sure there’s XX AMAB as well. But what are they going to do with XXY or XYY?
FTA:
The PCR test is a laboratory technique used to detect specific genetic material, in this case the SRY gene, that reveals the presence of the Y chromosome,
So it seems as though the test will basically be
if y_chromosome: return Male else: return FemaleI assume in both XXY and XYY, those would be classified as male under their criteria.
The best thing with that is that there is a possibility to have the SRY jumping to a X chromosome. They are fucking dumb
“Where test results for boxers that want to compete in the female category reveal Y chromosome genetic material and a potential DSD, the initial screenings will be referred to independent clinical specialists for genetic screening, hormonal profiles, anatomical examination or other valuation of endocrine profiles by medical specialists.”
“None of these guys can fuck, it’s over for this sport.”
I had a sex test done recently. The results were negative.
Genitalia: unremarkable
Meanwhile in the near future: world boxing to end needless sex testing to save costs.
The international rise of the Cult of Naturalism and the growing prevalence of their ur-eugenics pseudoscience is horrifying to watch. Like so many other actively harmful ideologies and policies I don’t see any non-violent solutions.
Imagine kinda masculine looking female tests female. I want to see their faces
We already saw what they do, it’s what they did to Imane Khelif
