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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

401–410 of 960 posts

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#401

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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…

> Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth

People with androgen insensitivity syndrom (AIS) have XY chromosomes but no uterus. So, no, they cannot give birth.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very fun way to think about it, but it’s far more effective in a semantic debate than a serious one. I also don’t for a minute believe that the goal here is some broader reform of how the world talks about statistical distributions. I’d rather not have discussions in bad faith.

It was intended in good faith, to make the point that rarity alone is not a good metric for salience. In my experience, most trans people have no problem with the statement "humans are sexually dimorphic" in a biology context. They (and I) have issue with it when its used in a debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and therefore trans and intersex people are irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)".…

To add to this, I want to stress on the point of rarity. Variations within sex metrics are not the uncommon fringe case people make it out to be, they're actually common and expected.

Within biology, we'd see a number of metrics (like height) which would usually appear bimodal (like two bell curves added together). We might identify at least two latent variables here: A real-number 'age' (which can be observed) and a binary 'sex' (not directly observed). But it's worth stressing that these implied underlying curves overlap, and any given metric is not strictly correlated with the others. (Commonly, one might be on the lower end of some distributions and the higher ends of others. Someone can be 5'3" tall, have red hair, and a high body-fat percentage while also having testicles, XY chromosomes, and dying at the age of 62.) (We should also note that the 23rd chromosome just another observed variable, starting after ~1900.)

Some causes of variation that we know about are fraternal birth order, or endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, conditions like PCOS, etc.

Case in point are all the cis women who are impacted by the ever-stricter testosterone guidelines in the Olympics. Further is the effect of fraternal birth order, or the endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, or the intentional introduction of hormones and hormone blockers. (If certain industries are to be believed, soy milk has a similar effect.) These are all variations and things which impact what we understand as "biological sex".

Folk gender theorists tend to consider sexuality, identity, biology, and expression as orthogonal axes. But these are clearly also correlated among people. (Stretching the definition of "correlated" to include qualitative metrics like 'expression' using the usual methods.)

An information-theoretic framework would inform well an "optimal" way to talk about this, using a one-bit string for most people and increasingly more bits when more information is needed. This is roughly how people already talk.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#404
post #396
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that due to their education and research those people may know more on the subject than you do? Regret rates for transition remain notoriously low (within 2%) with main reasons for regret stated to be transitioning too late or environmental lack of acceptance or support. Besides, despite some orgs claiming there is a "transgender trend", we are just not seeing this in the data.

It's hard to impossible to go back. But the suicide rate is high.

It is high because primarily a minority stress of being a transgender person in unaccepting environment:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032...

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

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It’s incorrect to call this a “leaked medical report”. This is a document of unknown origin, widely shared by online grifters.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#406
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, many countries/states are working hard to make it impossible to transition that early.

At 12 you simply do not have sufficient capacity to make a good decision on the matter.

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Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#407
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, many countries/states are working hard to make it impossible to transition that early.

At 12 you simply do not have sufficient capacity to make a good decision on the matter.

Then we should prescribe puberty blockers to everyone until they can make such a decision.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#408

My two cents as a transfem athlete: The attention this topic receives is disproportionate considering how rare we are, especially close to the Olympics level. Most of us do sports for fun/friends and don’t care how they rank us, but would be sad to be banned. There might be more “biological advantage” nuance with people just starting their transition, but by this many years in it feels silly. I registered as a man fo…

> but would be sad to be banned. Enforcing the existing and long-standing sex-based classification is not a ban; competition within one’s own sex category was always and remains permitted.

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Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#410
post #399

The only reason is topic is even on the table is the sheer amount of political grifters riding the trans “panic” for many years, trying to rile up a mob. This is a non issue, and online trans investigators and people like jk Rowling so far managed to only hurt multiple (assigned at birth) women in sports, whos looks don’t conform with traditional femininity.

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