351–360 of 960 posts
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The IOC policy is specifically that athletes need to test negative for the SRY gene to be eligible to compete in the female category. Imane Khelif won gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's boxing event, and has since admitted to having the SRY gene. So it isn't a non-issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026
So it's the headline that's inaccurate. It should read "bars women with the SRY gene" rather than "transgender."
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Here in the US a significant part of antipathy towards trans people is the deeply held belief that being trans in public is a kind of sex abuse to the public. If you listen to what much of the debate has turned into here, it has little to do with competition, and far more with the obsession over what genitals people have in locker rooms and bathrooms.
At the end of the day the number of trans athletes is so vanishingly small it's not worth caring about the impacts on competition, when the debate itself is another framing of the conservative desire to make being trans illegal.
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Is it fair to say that they can just compete in the men's division?
From a biological perspective, the women being banned here are not just men and as far as I'm aware cannot realistically compete in the men's division any more than any other woman. Practically these changes bar women athletes with certain medical differences from competing in the Olympics. I'm not an expert so idk whether that's fair or not but that's what this decision is doing.
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I would say that humans are sexually dimorphic in the same way that humans are bipeds. if you attempted to make a serious argument that limb agenesis implies that we’re a variable-limbed species it would be obfuscating rather than illuminating.
99.8% of all matter by count is either hydrogen or helium, are atoms dimorphic?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The IOC policy is specifically that athletes need to test negative for the SRY gene to be eligible to compete in the female category. Imane Khelif won gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's boxing event, and has since admitted to having the SRY gene. So it isn't a non-issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026
The page you link to doesn’t say that. “As of February 2026, Khelif had not described herself as intersex or as having a DSD.”
Khelif responded to a question about having the SRY gene like this:
> In a February 2026 interview with L'Équipe, Khelif was asked: "To be clear, you have a female phenotype but possess the SRY gene, an indicator of masculinity", to which she responded: "Yes, and it’s natural. I have female hormones."
So she was asked if she had the SRY gene and she responded "Yes". That's also consistent with the previous issues with governing bodies excluding her under their rules, but they are not allowed to share test results for obvious reasons.
The debate now is down to technicalities. Technically the Wikipedia quote is correct in that Khelif has not described herself as intersex or having a DSD in those words but she has now admitted to having an SRY gene, which is the important part in the context of these competition rules.
I wonder if anyone has measured the speed in which reality is codified into law or regulation. Women have been fighting against males in female sports for many, many years. Why did it take so long for something so obvious to be acted upon?
Because those 8 women at that one Games were a lot more than all transfem Olympic athletes in history combined, the danger of ruling people out is much greater than the danger of allowing someone in who doesn't deserve it.
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Because they're taking testosterone? Wouldn't they be barred based on using banned substances?
They're not all taking banned substances. Case in point, Hergie Bacyadan and Elis Lundholm competed in the last Summer and Winter Olympics respectively.
This would be like if two trans women, who has not undergone any hormone replacement therapy or surgery, would compete in men's divisions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The IOC policy is specifically that athletes need to test negative for the SRY gene to be eligible to compete in the female category. Imane Khelif won gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's boxing event, and has since admitted to having the SRY gene. So it isn't a non-issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026
So it's the headline that's inaccurate. It should read "bars women with the SRY gene" rather than "transgender."
The headline writers are relating it back to the topic which brings the most clicks, which is transgender athletes.
The IOC didn't go on a crusade against transgender athletes specifically. They were refining the rules on sex-based divisions and included a lot of considerations and nuance.
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Transition changes biology. We don't yet have the technology to fully reverse the effects of male puberty, so there can be reasonable debate about trans women who transitioned after puberty, but early transitioners have no meaningful advantage. Their bodies, in an athletic context, are female. This is also true for many cisgender intersex women with XY chromosomes. Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY chro…
There are athletic sex differences even amongst prepubescent children, mostly caused by the testosterone surge in utero. See https://womenssportspolicy.org/pre-puberty-male-female-child... .