You're making the assumption that its obvious to identify the sex of a person solely based on appearance?
No..you are making the assumption that I'd rely on appearance. Perhaps read what I actually wrote..
Seriously, do you think many sports coaches recruiting talent think they've uncovered the next big thing, only to find out after the fact they are in fact trans? Or do you think they'll figure it out fairly quickly by chatting to race organisers, their networks etc?
Sure a random observer may not know, but they aren't the ones who are going provide a pathway into elite sport for a talented athlete.
As with most of these issues, it comes down to men trying to police women's bodies"
do younot see the irony in men on here telling us what women should think and how womens sport should be run
do younot see the irony in men on here telling us what women should think and how womens sport should be run
He was discussing the topic and giving an opinion. Don't think anyone is prescribing how women should think!
But you make a valid point..this should be decided by women, and hopefully not a bunch of old white blokes at the IOC.
You're making the assumption that its obvious to identify the sex of a person solely based on appearance?
Seriously, do you think many sports coaches recruiting talent think they've uncovered the next big thing, only to find out after the fact they are in fact trans? Or do you think they'll figure it out fairly quickly by chatting to race organisers, their networks etc?
All of that information would fall under "protected characteristics", as part of the equality act 2010
It would be illegal for a professional member to share that information
this should be decided by women, and hopefully not a bunch of old white blokes at the IOC.
The policy was announced by the IOC President - Kirsty Coventry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsty_Coventry
The policy was announced by the IOC President - Kirsty Coventry.
More than that, it was one of her election pledges, and she set up the working group which made the decision as soon as she took up the position. Less than a year in the job and she's already secured an impressive legacy as the IOC's first female president.
Here is another man who is not happy with this plan to go back to the 90s:
https://www.mcri.edu.au/news/insights-and-opinions/world-athletics-sry-gene-conversation
Coe said the decision was made to ensure “the integrity of women’s sport” with World Athletics asserting:
The SRY gene is a reliable proxy for determining biological sex.
I argue the science does not support this overly simplistic assertion.
I should know, because I discovered the SRY gene on the human Y chromosome in 1990. For 35 years I have been researching it and other genes required for testis development.
But yeah, people are tired of experts.
And since people want to hear from women, here are the experiences of two Canadian women after World Athletics introduced the SRY test requirement:
World Athletics is taking advantage of the passion we have for this sport, knowing we're going to do whatever they say to be eligible [for the world championships].
In the "debate" of SRY gene testing, the first Canadian explained, there is "a lot of transphobia, misogyny and hatred towards all sorts of women and it's hard to talk about.
We don't know which women because they asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.
Surely in rugby you've always had big differences in the physique of those playing? Maybe less so now but it was a game for all, big n slow in the scrum, fast and wee out on the wing. Remember Jonah Lomu just smashing into Will Carling etc and absolutely flattening them. Plenty of footage of Ilona Maher doing it in the women's game and I'm sure she's not the only one. Rugby union has many health related controversies, trans women competing isn't even on the scale.
politics amongst the adults that has prevented guides and scouts amalgamation.
On the continent it seems that they're mixed. Certainly from what I've seen it seems that Scouts are Scouts and that's it.
Semenya took gold
This is the bit that sits very uncomfortably with me. Born a girl, raised a girl, identified as a girl. Never undergone any gender reassignment treatment.
You might have a different opinion if she was competing in boxing.
do younot see the irony in men on here telling us what women should think and how womens sport should be run
You are assuming you know who is male on here.
Surely in rugby you've always had big differences in the physique of those playing?
what world rugby found was that for the same weight a trans woman who had been tbru male puberty was stronger and with stronger bones and this created a visible injury risk.
It was a thorough review. evidence based and came as a suprise to them.
trans women playing womans rugby came with an increased risk of injury. to cis women hence creating a safeguarding issue
this is the guidance. there is a link to the data near the bottom of the page
https://www.world.rugby/the-game/player-welfare/guidelines/transgender
read the report
You might have a different opinion if she was competing in boxing.
Assuming we're talking about Imane Khelif, you know that we're talking about someone who had been boxing in competitions since 2018 prior to the Olympics? She won a lot of her bouts but also lost a fair number over those six years. There are a lot of 'real' women out there who have beaten her.
It was only after the media scrutiny that she became a hulking monster capable of causing real women to quit after only two punches.
One thing I do find ironic about women's safety at the 2024 Olympics is that it's always Khelif's name that comes up. For some reason the name Steven van de Velde never seems to get mentioned. Feel free to google him if you have no idea who he is.
Forgive me for taking any mention of women's safety with regard to the IOC with a pinch of salt.
I have not seen anyone offer an actual definition of 'biological woman'. You'd think supreme court judges would understand the need for specific legal definitions.
I’m not sure Judges see it as their problem to solve. Their task is to deal with the law, as written, and answer very specific questions on individual cases not to declare outcomes for all. The Supreme Court case doesn’t say what many people think it said. They did use a terminology of “biological sex” in their judgement - it would be almost inevitable that however they might word it their judgement would be rejected by people more focussed on words than meaning. For the vast majority of people their biological sex (as the term was used by the Supreme Court) is quite clear and correlates to the sex they are assigned at birth. There are a small number of people who may be wrongly assigned a particular sex at birth and it seems only right that their protected characteristics should not be based on that “error”.
Now I don’t know if the IOC’s proposed testing can resolve that issue and I’m not overly comfortable with my daughter having to prove her sex if she was to make it to be an Olympian. But I also think she shouldn’t lose out in any competition to someone who identifies as female but has male anatomy/physiology or who had it throughout their early development even if they have undergone surgery etc.
it does make sense for the IOC to define a single rule rather than each sport trying to work it out for themselves. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve found the right solution.
If this goes ahead it will be introduced at national level, then at regional, then at grassroots level. Young girls are going to find out in the worst way possible that not only are they not allowed to compete in sports (unless they want to go to the 'trans' category) but they also fail society's standards to be classed as a woman.
I think that’s scaremongering nonsense! There’s no way that expensive testing is going to be used at grass roots level. In many sports I doubt it would make it to national level.
read the report
I would say read the references and then count how many of the papers actually relate to studies of transgender athletes. Only 3 of them are papers relating to transgender people and none of them measure athletic performance.
And then read the reports that they reference and see the shortcomings within those few studies that are actually relevant.
Anyway, the fight for transgender rights in sport has been lost and there isn't much point in arguing about it. I don't see trangender people being allowed to play sport in your lifetime TJ so I wouldn't worry about it.
Unfortunately, now that the transgender fight has been won, the focus has shifted to ensuring women who participate in sport are sufficiently feminine. Which was always going to be the natural next step.
I think that’s scaremongering nonsense! There’s no way that expensive testing is going to be used at grass roots level. In many sports I doubt it would make it to national level.
I guess we'll find out soon enough.
At the very least I'd assume they wouldn't want to waste any lottery money on girls who turn out to not be properly female...
My son went to a scout group with a trans kid - I was impressed with how both the kids and the leaders navigated that.
My niece is a scout. Ok, she is very much what you would have called a 'tom boy' a generation back but she loves it.
I'd suggest, given the issues with numbers and adult volunteers as well as how society has moved on, it is only internal politics amongst the adults that has prevented guides and scouts amalgamation.
it’s odd - scouts are very much a unisex organisation now, although some groups will end up all boys (or maybe all girls) just from how friendships form at those ages. I’ve found our local group and all the groups that nieces and nephews have been in to be very inclusive. On that basis I might question what the point of the guides is? When I grew up and they were segregated on gender lines guides seemed to be progressively trying to be more and more like Girl Scouts. However when the scouts accepted girls and the guides decided they wanted to protect a girls only sanctuary they may have drifted back towards some stereotypes of female activities. I used to commute with a guide district commissioner and whilst they camped and made fires etc, and their members did doe they tended not to do the more adventurous activities that my children were doing with scouts. I don’t understand though why they would want to exclude any boy who particular leant towards their existing scope/style and even less what issue they believe exists by allowing trans girls to participate (in fact I’m not actually sure how they would know if a new member was trans or not if they didn’t volunteer the info). To me it’s a quite different issue from the IOC. And that is actually the problem - people tend to take sides on this depending on how they feel about gender identity rather than asking what the problem they are trying to solve is.
an increased risk of injury. to cis women hence creating a safeguarding issue
The very nature of rugby is risky. You have rugby players with significant height and weight advantages in every game. Look at early onset dementia in the men's game, if you're worried about the risk of injury you'd ban rugby. The same with boxing.
Forgot to add MND.
I have agonised over whether to post but have decided to, it's a lot of thoughts and might not be well structured but here goes.
I probably won't answer beyond this, not least because I'm going out in an hour or so to join the Together march*. To the same few on here, not sure if you're really bigots or just trolling - but just in case, look at the size of the march today and know while you might be currently having a resurgence, your time is running out.
OK
Sport is inherently unfair. It has always favoured the bigger, or the faster, or the stronger, or the more flexible, or whatever, and a lot of that is genetics. Is allowing a trans-woman to compete in sport the same thing, or another level beyond the genetics that make Bolt fast, or Wemby tall, or Biles super flexy and twisty. While I'm not yet totally convinced the advantages are so overbearing then I can see, sympathise, and ultimately if it's all about fairness, then the IOC ruling is right.
Some sport is inherently dangerous. Combat sports aside, rugby has been given as the example and you can always get a 23 stone 12 seconds for 100m forward in a one on one situation against the 5'6 scrum half at about half their weight. Is that MORE dangerous if the forward is a trans woman and the scrum half a cis-woman. Possibly. Is it part of the game, also possibly.
Against all this is the problem of inclusivity. Is the harm being done by othering and excluding people greater or lesser than the unfairness.
People talk of common sense. Cuts both ways; it might be common sense to exclude transgender people from competitive sport but is it really common sense to exclude them from the WI or Guides. That's the trouble with hurried legislation, it's often bad legislation and has set the cause back hugely because now Guiding UK can't use common sense, because if they did someone (maybe well meaning but probably a bigot) is probably going to take them to court over it. And recreational sport. I know people say they're not excluded, they could be in an 'other' category, or the category of their birth sex...trust me, that's exactly what exclusion looks like to a trans person. Make them play in a trans category - same problem plus where do you find sufficient transwomen to play in a football league for example. You can't so the few transwomen that want to play, have clubs that are perfectly willing to allow it, now can't. That's exclusion, right there.
So in the end it comes down to whether fairness or inclusivity is the deciding principle. Of course I have a chip in the game, and 20-30 years ago, before they were born and when I was playing a semi-decent level of competitive sport I'd have said fairness. I wouldn't now, I've changed as a person (I think I'm a better person for it, that's not a dig) and I've seen the damage of exclusion and while I'm still a massive sports fan including women's sport, to me winning pots isn't as important. -> TO ME <- being the key part. YMMV and I don't hate anyone for thinking otherwise. Those that think 'other' is the solution - I don't hate you either but :facepalm: The bigots - yes, I genuinely hate you.
*alone - he is very supportive but it would mean getting out of bed while the clock's still in single digits and if proof was needed that a 19yo boy behaves like a 19yo boy irrespective of their back story, **** that for a game of soldiers is his guiding principle there 😉
As I would have expected, a very useful post from someone who has seen this issue playout up close and very personal. Thank you.
*alone
This was actually the most interesting bit of the whole post for me. I'm not quite sure what I think, not knowing your son and all. But I think it's far more profound than you are making out. And I work with a large number early adult older teens everyday - they get up early when they want to. Could be really positive... or not.
not sure if you're really bigots or just trolling
A comment which actually shows who the bigot is. People should be allowed to hold a different POV without being accused of bigotry.
Perfectly prepared for people to have different opinions. But is (quoting from the other thread on this) 'female swimmer with a cock' a different opinion, or bigotry.
Anyway, said I agonised over posting and suspect I have made a bad decision. I've asked mods to remove my post, will leave you all to it.
The quality and respect shown in this volatile debate is to be praised. I think it's a testament to this forum that proves it's possible to debate such an emotive topic as this in an online space with respect and consideration. Well done all who have demonstrated what is possible and how WE differ from other online spaces.
Please continue showing respect and consideration.
Assuming we're talking about Imane Khelif,
Had never heard of her and had to have a Google. I don't really follow boxing nor the Olympics.
Seems she's in that limbo, like Caster Semenya, of being a woman, but carrying XY chromosomes.
Steven van de Velde
He's one who could do with having his cock and balls removed.
I don't really have a properly formed opinion on the individual competitor pro sport debate, I don't have anywhere near enough medical knowledge to start to make a reasoned judgement. It's a rather first world issue for a tiny proportion of people.
However I do feel this debate rather shines a light on the out dated practices in many organisations and religions where gender segregration exists for no other reason than to exclude. Men only clubs, WI, Guides, places of worship, team sports* even, should just be places where people with similar interests come together, someone's gender shouldn't make a difference.
*Yes some can be dangerous but I think worrying about women being hurt harks back to Victorian values and has nothing to do with risk management.
So in the end it comes down to whether fairness or inclusivity is the deciding principle
Which is the crux of the whole debate (Olympics and generally)
If you want inclusivity then you just have one category - you remove sex/gender and everyone is classified as a person.
99% of the time this doesnt matter.
Its when groups (on both sides of the debate) want to split people into 2 categories, you have to define the characteristics of each category.
Unfortunately you'll never have everyone agreeing on a single definition.
Anyway, said I agonised over posting and suspect I have made a bad decision. I've asked mods to remove my post, will leave you all to it.
your post is interesting and from an informed point of view. Its also nuanced. Its well worth leaving up.
folk can look at responses and make their own mind up
I don't care what the science says, in my opinion she's a girl and has every right to compete
And there is lies the problem. You have decide that your opinion is more accurate and more important than estabished science
Do you believe the earth is flat or accept established science? Or do you only reject science when it disagrees with your opinion
So in the end it comes down to whether fairness or inclusivity is the deciding principle.
For me? At amateur level in non contact sports inclusivity. In contact sports and elite - fairness
Some prominent sports legal experts have weighed in here:
There's a lot to read there but the final paragraph is fairly unambiguous:
Mandatory genetic sex testing is a stigmatizing and exclusionary policy that lacks democratic legitimacy, scientific grounding, and proportionality between its harms and its aims. It simply has no place in international sport if sport is to be respectful of the values of human dignity, inclusion, fairness, and non-discrimination.
Surely the best thing is to have a really simple, no ifs , buts, but what about me , answer. That way everyone knows where they stand. I will stand up and say that I firmly believe that how you come out of the womb is what you are. If you wish to live life differently that is fair enough but I don't believe that any allowances should be made for that and you should accept that other people may not like what you do. If we have to accept one persons views we have to accept them all and that leads to chaos and wo/uld have made , say Hitler or Stalin acceptable.
At amateur level in non contact sports inclusivity.
One of the simplest things they could do in something like local level 10km running events is make one category and sack off prizes and podiums. You just come over the line and look at your time and your overall position. You look at your time/position and see if you were better or worse than last time and maybe scan the results to see if you beat your friends or fellow club members. Essentially its a personal competition with your past and future self and the performance of those around you is just there to guage how well you did. In reality it's what most of us do anyway all the time. It's an incredibly small group of 'athletes' that care or are eligible for a trophy or to stand on a podium. By just getting rid of them there is no need to think about gender, or if you are a senior, a vet or a super vet etc. Aside from any issues about trans inclusion, I also think it's probably more healthy for all of us.
Team non-contact sports - I can see pros and cons. Say in hockey where a club currently had a mens 1st XI, 2nd XI and vet team then the same for women, you could just have a 1st the 6th XI. Could work. But in a smaller club with fewer teams it could be incredibly frustrating if you were a regular talented and committed woman's player who could never get into the side because the less talented men were just that bit faster than you and no matter what you did you could not overcome that hurdle so the team was always 9 men and a just couple of very skilful women.
I will stand up and say that I firmly believe that how you come out of the womb is what you are. If you wish to live life differently that is fair enough but I don't believe that any allowances should be made for that and you should accept that other people may not like what you do.
I don't think it's quite that simple. We always seem to lump genetic intersex conditions in with others who don't show those conditions but, for whatever reason, want to be identified as being a different gender. The number of the latter will be larger by orders of magnitude, and I think it's this that is driving the conversation.
For me, the IOC policy is a "one size fits all" option that might not be appropriate. However, I'm not clever or informed enough to come up with a better option, particularly when you take intrusion, dignity and ease of testing into account.
A comment which actually shows who the bigot is. People should be allowed to hold a different POV without being accused of bigotry.
True, but they shouldn't be immune from it either. Shitty opinions can and should be challenged. I'm sure Fred Phelps just had a point of view.
You have decide that your opinion is more accurate and more important than estabished science
Tell us more about this established science, Chris. You appear to have solved the problem which has so far evaded everyone from the IOC to genetic scientists.
I will stand up and say that I firmly believe that how you come out of the womb is what you are. If you wish to live life differently that is fair enough but I don't believe that any allowances should be made for that and you should accept that other people may not like what you do.
Like Scotroutes, that's a little oversimplified imo.
How would that cope with someone like Caster Semenya - i.e. not a hypothetical trans athlete winning a medal in a hypothetical future Olympic race, but a real life case of a XY chromosome DSD athlete that won actual gold medals. 'Came out of the womb' and as I understand it everyone at the birth would have identified her as female. If you were there you would have too. They then were named as a girl, dressed like a girl, thought of themselves as a girl and went to a girls school. But in later life it transpired they had 46 XY 5-ARD and correspondingly 50 times the testosterone levels of those lined up against them in a race. Under these new guidelines, if they had not previously had any testing (which I'd find hard to imagine would be the case with modern sports science) they would have found out they were ineligible to compete when their name was proposed on the entry list by their nation and went through the compulsory SYR gene screening blood test.
It's complicated. With real people with real lives and feelings and consequences.
Damn - I told myself I was going to limit myself to one post.....
I was going to write a lot more here but @theotherjonv has written 90% of what I wanted to say, far more eloquently than I could have done. So instead I'm going to post a devil's advocate question.
What actually is competitive sport?
It's a test to see whether one person, or team, is objectively better than the other. Who's the fastest, strongest, bendiest, most accurate, most graceful...
Professional athletes dedicate years of their life to training, discipline and practice. But since the dawn of time genetic advantage has been a part of this - it has to be, surely, you don't get many pro basketball players who are 4'6". Historically this has just been the way it is.
Now is it suddenly a problem because in some people's heads being trans means a bloke putting on a frock, going "I'm a lady now" and causing bother for women?
What do we suppose the bottom half of the Internet would be saying if Fatima Whitbread was competing today?
I understand the need for classification and I also understand that this is both difficult and (currently) controversial. Boxing manages it, "step on the scales mate... OK, you're fighting him." Moreover, the Paralympics manages it. How do you pit someone with no arms against someone with one leg? You have a system which attempts to define exactly that. It may not be perfect, but they can go (ahem) "if X then Y" and there's a framework. The SRY test mentioned earlier is deeply flawed in several ways, not least because it seeks to exclude otherwise perfectly eligible competitors, but at least it is something rather than the nothing we had before. Which presumably is what the IOC wants, a "computer says no" solution rather than ambiguity.
I do wonder though how far we can take genetic exclusion. For the slippery slope argument, go watch a young Sean Astin in Harrison Bergeron. "And the result of today's 200m is... a draw."
Not sure watching/reading a version of that is a good idea with the current USA government’s foreign policy playing out around us.
Plenty of footage of Ilona Maher doing it in the women's game and I'm sure she's not the only one
I just thought for interest I would look at some Stats
Maher 1m78 90 kg - considered big and strong for a back - she plays centre in 15s
Emilly Scarrett - ( england star centre) 1.81. 77kg
Darcy Graham - considered ( and looks ) small for rugby even as a winger 1m77, 85kg
huw Jones - not seen as a particularly big centre - 186, 102 kg
Duhan - 1.94 106 kg
forwards:
Abbie Ward ( lock) 1.81, 77kg
Rosie Galliagan - (lock) 175, 85 kg
Zoe Aldcroft - (lock) 182, 85 kg
I picked 3 england women locks pretty much at random. I am astonished how small they are considering this is usually the position for the biggest players. I do not know if they are considered small for womens locks
Eben Etzebeth - SA lock - 204, 120 kg ( big but not out of the normal range)
tim Swinson ( retired Scottish lock known as "tiny tim" as he was considered small) 193, 116 kg
Props ( the heaviest / strongest players usually)
Sarah Bern - 1.70, 90 kg
Hannah Botterman - 1.70, 103 kg
Dan Cole 191, 124 kg
Zander fagerson - 188, 125 kg
There is a French prop hitting 145 kg
I think that probably shows clearly enough the height and weight disparity. I have not done exhaustive research here - just an indication using mainly the england womens team who are the probably best team in world rugby. Remember also for the same weight someone going thru male puberty has denser bones so can hit harder with less risk of injury.
One of the simplest things they could do in something like local level 10km running events is make one category and sack off prizes and podiums. You just come over the line and look at your time and your overall position. You look at your time/position and see if you were better or worse than last time and maybe scan the results to see if you beat your friends or fellow club members.
I think you've just invented 10km ParkRun!
I think you've just invented 10km ParkRun
😀 Very true.
It's odd - in my head I was thinking of the 10km (and greater distances) "serious" events dominated by club runners all taking it very seriously and completely forgot about parkrun. Maybe that's the issue - people just giving too much of a ****! You only need categories if you NEED people 'like you' to beat and so you can discard others who did beat you as in some other race.
I add old me to this list. Oh my did I care a lot about it as a competition. Maybe it's because I was near the pointy end. Maybe it was a time in my life thing but retrospectively I cared way too much about it. I could turn myself inside out to beat someone. I now seem to have lost all my competitive spirit/interest. Maybe my testosterone levels have plunged 😉
It's worth pointing out that that the guy who discovered the SRY gene, Andrew Sinclair in the article BruceWee posted, doesn't appear to have read the IOC policy. It already addresses his concerns about the presence of an SRY gene being used to exclude athletes.
The SRY gene presence test will used as a screen rather than a final YES/NO test. Being -ve for SRY means an athlete is automatically eligible, but being +ve for SRY doesn't mean automatic ineligibility, but that tests should be done to determine eligibility based on the specific DSD.
It's on page 3 of the policy.
