Olympic Boxing Gender Controversy

The BBQ Pit
141

Here’s the problems with what you say:

The only way to tell if you are not female if you say that you are is with intrusive tests.

Note that if you are AFAB, raised female and not sufficiently feminine they will still claim that you must be somehow intersex. Especially if you are BIPOC and win against a white person.

The second problem is that you assume that testosterone confers a clear advantage. This is unproven. And it plays into the sexist construct that men are simply better at sports than women. That is what I want to challenge

142

Sadly, I live in Texas. These people are not just stupid, they’re on office

143

I think it’s a fair question. Some here seem to object to the whole idea of separate women’s divisions and leagues. If so, that’s a fair position to take. If that’s not what your saying then exactly why do you think female sports should exist separately from males ? And if you think they should exist what criteria should qualify them to participate? What criteria would you use to disqualify somebody?

144

Whoa, whoa, whoa, I apologize for the misunderstanding, but I certainly never meant to imply that I was including you or any other poster in this thread in the category “vicious gender police”. I thought the general trend of my comments had made it quite clear that I was referring to ill-informed and disingenuous celebrity hatemongers such as Rowling.

Certainly, my complaining in the post that you quoted about such gender police "scrutinizing and denouncing female athletes for not ‘looking feminine’ enough in no way applies to you, AFAICT.

But if that wasn’t sufficiently clear from my post, I’m sorry.

145

And ISTM the question may merit its own thread that’s not stuck on the particular case of one competitor’s situation.

Yes… though out there our laughter is scant consolation to those affected, as long as corrupt economic interests can put their thumbs on the scales, and the weirdos can have access to them.

BTW the way the weirdos as in the cases mentioned in the thread have pivoted from genital inspectors to chromosome lab techs to some sort of ad-hoc labeling of individuals who should be excluded on account of “too butch”, kind of triggers in me a vibe of the classic reactionary trope of “protection of the virtue of womanhood” – I am in no way confident that the RW reactionaries will ever stop finding further threats of “unfemininity” in sport until we wind up with women’s events reduced to croquet in long dresses and musical gymnastics. The self-anointed “RadFems” should be careful with whom they travel.

…

And this is not like how we in the West used to just take it as a given that any and every large, tough, butch female (or even some male!) athlete from the Eastern Bloc was absolutely for sure juicing up and just cleaned up for a little while to pass the PED test for the games. That was something that was a credible line of questioning since we knew it happened because some of our athletes did so too. That suspicion at least had a basis in observed facts. This has a basis in “if I don’t understand it something must be WRONG!”

146

Definitely, although at the same time I think it’s necessary to acknowledge the across-the-board performance advantage conferred by, to coin a phrase, “totally male physiology” in most sports.

That certainly doesn’t make men on average intrinsically “better” at sports than women, but it does count as a predictable competitive advantage.

Just as being a younger adult typically confers a performance advantage over otherwise comparable older adults, which is why we have age classes in competition for most sports. And being a larger and heavier adult typically confers a performance advantage over otherwise comparable smaller and lighter adults in some sports, which is why we have weight classes in competition in those sports.

You are quite right that testosterone level by itself is not at all a reliable proxy for competitive advantage of men over women. For example, here’s a description of a 2018 study of testosterone levels in several hundred Olympic-level elite athletes in various sports, both male and female.

Unsurprisingly, the average level for the female athletes is much lower (typically assigned a range between 0 and 10 nmol/L) than that for male athletes (typically assigned a range of 10-35 nmol/L). But what’s more surprising is not only that a few (about 5%) of the female athletes have T levels well up in the typical male range, but a whole lot (a couple hundred, over 25%) of the male athletes have T levels well down in the typical female range.

Yet AFAICT all of the sports in question are ones with a significant performance differential between elite male and elite female athletes. Clearly it’s not just testosterone disparities that are making the men measurably and reliably faster, stronger and more powerful than the women.

147

There are three possible cultural factors that could contribute: coaching, competition and expectations. Competition because people get better at sports when they’re competing against better people - are there any truly coed sports? Coaching - are men and women getting the same quality of coaching? Or are coaches going to treat men and differently? And expectations - boys are expected to be good at sports, but girls are often discouraged

All of these can make a difference and none of these have anything to do with physiology.

148

I agree, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that, as women’s serious involvement in athletic sports increases, at least some of the typical “male performance advantage” differential in some sports decreases further than we might assume nowadays.

In recent years for example, a number of world record results in women’s competitions have been broken more drastically or more persistently than their counterparts in men’s competitions. Which is what we’d expect to see if women as a group, due to differences in opportunity and training etc. in earlier years, had previously been reaching less of their athletic-achievement potential than men as a group. There’s no reason to take it for granted that female athletes as a group have now achieved total parity with male ones when it comes to reaching their fullest potential.

But I am highly doubtful that the sex differentials in athletic performance overall will ever become really negligible for postpubescent athletes. Sex-based average size and muscle-mass discrepancies are never going to totally disappear, and that is always going to impact measurable physical performance to some extent.

At least, that’s my only-slightly-informed-layperson opinion and prediction on the subject. It would be quite fun in some ways if I turned out to be wrong about that. :slight_smile: Hey, if eagles can do it, why can’t we?

149

“Women’s sporting events exist because people want to watch attractive women” is pretty fucking offensive to women.

150

IAN Chronos and cannot speak for him, but my impression of his remark was not that he was in any way endorsing this view as a justification for the existence of women’s sports. Rather, my take was that he was using that view to explain part of the reason why the appearance of female athletes, in terms of conventional feminine attractiveness, is so much more heavily scrutinized by viewers and media than the appearance of male athletes.

I mean, is anybody unaware that there are in fact a whole lot of male sports viewers who openly express contempt for women’s sports and declare that the only reason to watch them is to look at scantily clad female bodies? Does anybody really think that that attitude has had zero influence in the development of women’s sporting events as public spectacle?

151

It may not be 100% the reason for women’s sports in the Olympics, but it’s certainly a factor.
And women are well aware of it

152

I know you meant “in office” but this particular typo is incredibly apt. They are using their governmental office as a weapon. So, “on offense” equals “on office” because of those idjits.

153

I hope you’re not stupid enough to think that Chronos was in any way advocating that idea. He even said it would be a terrible reason for it.

Also, Chingon should really learn how to use quotes. Actually quoting what part of a post you find offensive would be helpful so people have any idea what the hell you’re talking about.

154

And while we’re on the subject:

I’m not sure what incident you mean; there was a Norwegian women’s beach volleyball team a few years ago in a non-Olympic championship that got fined for deciding to wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms, but that’s as close as I get to this description.

The “Islamic” issue reminds me of another seriously annoying aspect of this Gender Hypocritical kerfuffle about Khelif, though. The gender-critical transphobes are always talking about how “feminist” they are and how they want freedom of gender expression for women and girls, and how nobody should be pressured into gender transition just because they’re not sufficiently “masculine” or “feminine” in their gender expression.*

And this “feminist” veneer on their transphobia is frequently accompanied by a hefty dose of Islamophobia, reducing Muslim culture to stereotyped caricatures of misogynistic female oppression and burqa mandates and homophobic legislation and so on, which the gender-criticals hate hate hate because they care about the rights of women and girls and gays so much! (Not that there isn’t a whole lot of seriously damaging institutionalized misogyny, sexism and homophobia in many Muslim societies, of course, but you can’t just reduce the diversity of views in global Islam to a single undifferentiated lump of “MUSLIMS BAD”.)

So what do the Gender Hypocriticals do when they see a strong muscular short-haired non-hijab-wearing Algerian woman overcoming sexist conservatism in her home country to become a world-class boxer to the cheers of her compatriots? Do they rejoice that this Muslim woman is rejecting repressive gender stereotypes and celebrating gender nonconformity and advancing women’s freedom?

Do they hell. What they do, the instant that this Muslim woman of color wins her bout against a conventionally feminine-looking white boxer from a historically Christian country, is lose their absolute shit in a wave of groundless accusations that the Muslim woman is really “a male punching a female” and “enjoying the distress” of her defeated opponent, and all kinds of vile spew.

It’s been heartening to see the outpouring of support for Khelif, including among Algerians, but it’s not hard to predict how this whole shitshow is bound to be weaponized by the exact same proponents of right-wing Islamic sexism that the Gender Hypocriticals claim they’re so opposed to. I’ll eat my grandma’s Bible if there aren’t conservative sexist imams all over the place right now composing addresses to their congregations about how this just shows the falsity and bigotry of “western liberal values” about women’s rights and gender egalitarianism and what-not.

“My brothers, the Western media love to condemn and mock you for being ‘backward’ and ‘repressive’ because you want your daughters to remain pious and modest women as God intended instead of behaving like men. But look what they do to this misguided girl who was allowed to cut her hair like a man, dress like a man, build her muscles like a man, train in fighting like a man. No sooner does she win a competition against a white Christian woman than they turn on her like wolves, calling her a man and a cheater, speculating obscenely about her body and her chromosomes and her farj and heaping shame and disgrace on her! Their vaunted ‘modern values’ and ‘equality’ are nothing but a snare to destroy us” etc. etc. etc., I’m sure you can figure out the playbook as well as I can.

Yeah, great work, Gender Critical “feminists”. So much for supporting women. :roll_eyes:

(*) Of course, nobody is actually being pressured into gender transition for the sake of gender conformity, but acknowledging that reality would undermine the Gender Critical propaganda.

155

I used to know a guy who would say, with great regularity and enthusiasm, that he liked women’s basketball a lot more “before all the lesbians took over.”

I no longer associate with this person, for I hope obvious reasons.

156

“Took over”? According to this article, there are 42 (out) LGBTQ+ players total among this year’s 12 WNBA teams, each of which has a roster of 11 or 12 players.

So I make that somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of all WNBA players who are LGBTQ+.

There was probably a not-too-dissimilar percentage of lesbians among WNBA players in earlier years as well; it’s just that it was much rarer for them to be out, so your ex-acquaintance didn’t know about them.

But yeah, what he probably really meant is that he preferred watching the sport when there were more expectations about players conforming to conventional gender norms of appearance.

157

I don’t follow your line of thinking here. If there is no conceivable problem with trans women competing in women’s sports, why do most major sporting organisations have policies addressing the issue? I do agree with you that it hasn’t happened yet, but I can easily imagine (say) a male tennis player ranked around 200 in the world deciding they are fed up with barely making a living on tour, declaring they identify as a woman, and cleaning up on the women’s tour. The best time to put a policy in place is before that happens, in order to prevent it - which seems to be the case.

None of that is to say that transwomen should be barred from women’s sports. My point is that I think there is a genuine concern here, unfortunately it often becomes a transphobic talking point under a veneer of plausible deniability. This particular case has been helpful insofar as it has removed that veneer, as explained in this thread.

158

It made sense to me. I read his logic as this: Whatever issues actually exist, they have already been dealt with.

159

Ah - in that case, seems we’re in agreement.

160

Well, as I said in the post to which you’re responding:

The “fairness in sports” question is not being raised in good faith, because it was a problem that had already been solved.

You are incorrect. This debate exists solely as an excuse to undercut trans rights. Which is not to say that everyone voicing concern on the issue is a transphobe, but they all have been duped by transphobes into thinking that there is. They mistake the existence of a debate for the existence of a problem, and every time they bring up the subject unwarranted (such as in this thread) they further the transphobes’ agenda by legitimizing the debate.