Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events • Hacker News Board

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

#921

Post by lolc » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

mandevil wrote: post #676

dillydogg wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I would suggest as a pathologist who deals with diagnosing these: the incidence of differences of sexual development is somewhere between 1 in 1000 - 4500 births. So this policy will not unlikely diagnose someone with a DSD who didn't know.

It will certainly do that. Previous attempts at this (the Olympics did genetic tests from the 1960's through the 1990's, other organizations have done similar tests into the present) always did wind up discovering cis women raised as women from birth, with female presenting genitalia, who failed whatever genetic tests they were doing. At least one of these women even went on to give birth to a live human baby! You wo…

I wouldn't call it cheating. But I have no trouble drawing lines that exclude some people, if that levels the field for a bigger group. In this case the female olympics would soon be known as the intersex olympics given the selection pressure. I can understand the decision to make the competiton more interesting by barring intersex people. No need to frame it as cheating though.

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

#922

Post by whattheheckheck » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

testbjjl wrote: post #857

whattheheckheck wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask chat gpt how to increase your understanding using Blooms revised taxonomy of learning using college level textbooks and primary source information with Amazon purchase search links. And follow up every side with a steel man, good faith critical thinking summary with deep, cross cutting questions that strike at the heart of the arguments. Additionally follow up with which demographics and political class does each…

If the rules changed mid competition and I lost a race to someone who had been competing on a men’s varsity team and then shortly after competed on the women’s team, it would be very hard for me to just shrug and say they beat me fair and square. That reaction is not unreasonable. It may not justify sweeping laws, but it absolutely justifies having an honest conversation about fairness.

Welcome to name names instead of wacky hypothetical situations. Probably shouldn't be a national conversation for such a small percentage of people this affects. Like what less than 200 vs hundreds of millions for Healthcare or better labor laws?

Also rules for competition change all the time, random tariffs, random corrupt laws, tax changes, work from home policies, welcome to life, sorry its not fair.

Its unreasonable to get hung up on this trans athlete "problem" when there are so many other things the collective can pay attention to to try to solve

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

#923

Post by sporkland » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

My deeply naive take is all of this stuff should be done similar to weight classes. I'm not sure what key measurable testosterone or other doping effects but measure that and separate athletes into classes based on that. Want to do steroids? Fine but you just get to compete against other dopers. As a low-T male I can go get my butt kicked by women at athletic events if I want.

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

#924

Post by ahhhhnoooo » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

locknitpicker wrote: post #918

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not hard to understand how badly this would turn out to be if the same sort of unscrupulous regime could just abuse this loophole to seek the same benefit. Surely this is something that can be addressed if it ever becomes a problem. Surely we don't need to write rules for scenarios that aren't causing issues...

> Surely this is something that can be addressed if it ever becomes a problem. You're advocating to create pressure and incentives to commit this class of abuses, which have already been committed even at an industrial stage for decades, and your strategy is to ignore history and facts until the consequences of your actions catch up to you. And all this in exchange for which tradeoff? Even the fight against doping is…

Trans athletes at the Olympics are causing disruptions at an industrial scale?

There's been exactly one trans woman in the Olympics, Laurel Hubbards, competing for New Zealand. She won zero medals.

I'm advocating for "there is zero documented evidence this is a problem, the IOC should use their time and energy solving actual problems like doping."

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

#925

Post by ahhhhnoooo » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

ragall wrote: post #883

s1artibartfast wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "being the same" mean to you. A thought or expectation is not a chromosome. Gender having been derived from real sex historically and even predominantly today does not stop some people from redefining it otherwise.

Things that are dependent on each other are, essentially, the same thing. People can try to redefine whatever they please as long as the rest of society can point out the silliness of it.

What? Wearing skirts depends on one's biological sex? Explain how. Because that doesn't seem to follow up me at all.

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

#926

Post by ahhhhnoooo » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #860

crote wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite common for babies to come out of the womb with blonde hair, only for it to darken to brown later in life. The baby isn't blonde, it just looks blonde right now. Same with gender. Doctors observe a flavor of genitals, make a reasonable assumption, and legally assign the gender which seems appropriate.

What? Hair color and gender are not the same thing. This is a bizarre argument.

Sometimes people use something called analogies or similar examples to help explain a foreign concept. In this case, the poster was trying to explain that our traits are birth do not always reflect who we are as adults. Gender is one such trait. Hair color is another.

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

#927

Post by dpd_dpd » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:09 PM UTC

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #924

locknitpicker wrote: post #918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely this is something that can be addressed if it ever becomes a problem. You're advocating to create pressure and incentives to commit this class of abuses, which have already been committed even at an industrial stage for decades, and your strategy is to ignore history and facts until the consequences of your actions catch up to you. And all this in exchange for which tradeoff? Even the fight against doping is…

Trans athletes at the Olympics are causing disruptions at an industrial scale? There's been exactly one trans woman in the Olympics, Laurel Hubbards, competing for New Zealand. She won zero medals. I'm advocating for "there is zero documented evidence this is a problem, the IOC should use their time and energy solving actual problems like doping."

All three medallists in the women's 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics were male. This was highly controversial, as having three male athletes take gold, silver and bronze in what should have been a celebration of female athletic excellence wasn't exactly a desirable outcome.

Although the headline of the linked article focuses on males with a transgender identity, the purpose of the IOC's new policy is to exclude all male physiological advantage from the female category, including cases like the above.

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

#928

Post by ahhhhnoooo » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

dpd_dpd wrote: post #927

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans athletes at the Olympics are causing disruptions at an industrial scale? There's been exactly one trans woman in the Olympics, Laurel Hubbards, competing for New Zealand. She won zero medals. I'm advocating for "there is zero documented evidence this is a problem, the IOC should use their time and energy solving actual problems like doping."

All three medallists in the women's 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics were male. This was highly controversial, as having three male athletes take gold, silver and bronze in what should have been a celebration of female athletic excellence wasn't exactly a desirable outcome. Although the headline of the linked article focuses on males with a transgender identity, the purpose of the IOC's new policy is to exclude all male…

I'm aware, but those women aren't trans. They have disorders of sexual development, were assigned female at birth.

Laurel Hubbard is trans, was assigned male at birth, and competed under hormone therapy. (Which studies have shown reduces or eliminates the biological male advantage for trans women.)

We can discuss DSD AFAB athletes as well, but I was focused on trans athletes.

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

#929

Post by lynndotpy » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #594

lynndotpy wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically recognized as intersex? Not all biological variation is classified as intersex. > What is that even supposed to mean? You can change a lot of your 'secondary sex characteristics' intentionally. This is much easier than removing a limb, and even easier than adding a limb.

> Not all biological variation is classified as intersex. Okay, but other biological variation is clearly not relevant to the discussion.

No, I am specifically talking about biological variation in sex characteristics. This is common, and it's not surprising if someone is within the range of "the opposite sex" for one or several sex characteristics.

There are men under 5'4", women taller than 5'9", women with high testosterone, men with low testosterone, men with breast tissue, etc.

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

#930

Post by lynndotpy » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

badc0ffee wrote: post #656

lynndotpy wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, I can't find any credible source saying they have XY chromosomes or internal testes. Further, they are women, and therefore their testosterone levels and muscle development are female. This just gets to a ludicrous place. These are women who are simply identifiable as so. Anyone throughout history would have identified them as so. Their biological metrics are within the variation of cis women, because t…

Caster Semenya: https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/67367157

This is fair, I didn't know about this, but this doesn't appear to be the case for Imane Khelif.

Either way, my point still stands. These women are women, would have been recognized as such by anyone throughout history, and it's simply the case that some women are born with XY chromosomes and testes.