Wikipedia:
Khelif was born female,[5][6] and no medical evidence that she has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone has been published.
The claim she has XY chromosomes appears baseless - unless you have a source?
(more later maybe)
Court documents recently released as part of the discovery process in a case involving youth gender medicine in Alabama reveal that WPATHâs claim was built on shaky foundations. The documents show that the organisationâs leaders interfered with the production of systematic reviews that it had commissioned from the Johns Hopkins University Evidence-Based Practice Centre EPC) in 2018.
From early on in the contract negotiations, WPATH expressed a desire to control the results of the Hopkins teamâs work. In December 2017, for example, Donna Kelly, an executive director at WPATH, told Karen Robinson, the EPCâs director, that the WPATH board felt the EPC researchers âcannot publish their findings independentlyâ. A couple of weeks later, Ms Kelly emphasised that, âthe [WPATH] board wants it to be clear that the data cannot be used without WPATH approvalâ.
I would note that you are making this accusation without citing ANY specific research yourself. So I Do. Not. Appreciate this accusation.
Have you researched this issue Andrew? Coyne clearly has â and I must admit heâs become so tedious on it that I had been switching off until this issue blew up here. If you seek to citicise him as taking views that are against âwhat the research showsâ it behoves you to demonstate at least the same depth of knowledge. This does not mean that Coyne is necessarily right on this, but does mean that Iâm resistant to knee-jerk condemnations of him until actual evidence (not mere rhetoric) is presented that heâs wrong.
That Dan asserted it does not make it necessarily true.
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The effect that it would have is a function of both the number of trans athletes and their (increased) probability of winning. If having gone through male puberty gives them sufficient advantage, then it would not take many competitors to serious disrupt things.
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It is not clear that trans participation in athletics has peaked.
There appears to be at least some evidence that they may be dominating cycling. It is however hard to get a good overview of how serious this problem is, given the level of grandstanding on both sides.
No, it is a Russian-dominated international organisation.
The International Boxing Association (IBA), previously known as the Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur (AIBA), is a sports organization that sanctions amateur and professional boxing matches and awards world and subordinate championships. It is one of the oldest boxing federations in the world, coming into existence after the 1920 Summer Olympics.
However, as their star has fallen since those days, I should not have taken their uncorroborated word for it. For this I apologise.
I would note however that her status as a âcis womenâ has been disputed â albeit, less-than-reliably so.
I should perhaps have stated:
(Parenthetically, I would note that it has been suggested that Imane Khelif has an XY chromesome â if this is true she may well be more accurately classified as âintersexâ than as a âcis womanâ.)
Stricken as both non-responsive to the argument I presented and an appeal to emotion.
Your diatribe failed to address either âwhether they entail a heightened potential for harm to their fellow prisonersâ or whether âa traumatised victim might view themâ negatively.
Therefore I would suggest that it contributes more heat than light to the issue.
I donât know. But then Iâm not the one condemning somebody for stating that it is an issue without solid data, or an irrefutable argument, that theyâre wrong.
And I âstrenuously object toâ attempts to shut down discussion lacking a demonstrated emprirical basis for concluding it.
âThe way I see itâ, you have attributed âfaulty conclusionsâ to me without evidence that I have made any conclusions at all â let alone âfaultyâ ones.
Thank you John for that trivial point â a very wide range of things âCAN be extremely ⌠harmfulâ in the right circumstances â including water, salt, sunlight, etc, etc.
Questions that arise are what research, how solid is it, what is the extent of its coverage, does contradictory research exist, etc, etc?
I donât know if Iâve researched it as much as Coyne. But here are a handful of studies that show how discrimination adversely affects trans peopleâs mental health.
Lin et al. 2021
Hughto et al. 2016
Wilson et al. 2017
And here are a handful more that point to the impact of state policy, including policies about sports, on trans peopleâs wellbeing.
Truszczynski et al. 2022
Barbee et al. 2021
Jones et al. 2017
I think itâs pretty obvious that discrimination hurts people and that discriminatory policies both hurt people and contribute to individual discrimination. But I anticipate that you wonât think this research is enough, or that itâs not as good as Coyneâs research, etc.
Which is why I went on to say âif and when it becomes [an issue], it should be decided on a case-by-case basis, not by eliminating all trans people from sports.â
What? Your entire concern was about safety (âharm to their fellow prisonersâ), and I pointed out that trans women in male prisons are at a hugely increased risk of sexual violence. Itâs weird that youâre not worried about the safety of trans women, to the extent that youâre not even considering that data. Once again, the way that right-wingers have framed the conversation is making it so that trans people, who are far more often victims of violence, are being made out to be the bad guys.
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This seems to just push the problem further down the road and into a situation where the possible harms it can do have just become worse.
In that case you could just as well argue on the same basis as the studies you refer to, that all the more trans people stand to be harmed by discriminating against them, if more of them have begun participating in sports of different sexes, and are suddenly told they no longer can.
And the problem is trans people in sports isnât happening in a vacuum (itâs not like Iâm saying, or Coyne for that matter (that I know of) are saying trans people arenât welcome to do any sports). We have to also consider the potential harm (including psychological) it can have on all the people who are potentially facing unfair competition.
Iâll happily join you in calling out bigots who actually want to harm trans people, or who think they are bad people, or child molesters and whatever the hell else it is they claim. I just donât buy this idea that because such people exist, people like Coyne or myself need to shut up and not call it out if we think the pendulum is swinging too far in certain situations. That seems to me to be letting only the extremists dominate the debate.
I would hope that the people on this particular forum would be above citing the Cass report. Itâs just bad.
Donât take it from me. Take it from a bunch of actual experts in that particular field
From the introduction:
Unfortunately, the Review repeatedly misuses data and violates its own evidentiary standards by resting many conclusions on speculation. Many of its statements and the conduct of the York SRs reveal profound misunderstandings of the evidence base and the clinical issues at hand. The Review also subverts widely accepted processes for development of clinical recommendations and repeats spurious, debunked claims about transgender identity and gender dysphoria. These errors conflict with well-established norms of clinical research and evidence-based healthcare. Further, these errors raise serious concern about the scientific integrity of critical elements of the reportâs process and recommendations.
Emphasis in original.
As for the number of trans athletes, I got that from the head of the NCAA testifying before congress a few weeks ago. He said there are less than 10, out of over five hundred thousand. Less than 0.002%.
I say again, this is a fake issue.
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So we are barred from considering any other implication of trans rights? That seems to be what you are saying. Because trans people are being demonized and attacked by extremists, I shouldnât say I think trans women in, say, armwrestling, is a bad idea?
I donât know man, I just think itâs possible to simultaneously reject violence and demonization of trans people, and that there are some few rare instances where there are good reasons for not giving trans women rights as if they truly were biological females.
Iâd appreciate and support you making that case to the people who actually do that.
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Youâre most welcome. You were, however, misrepresenting Andrewâs position, which is very common when discussing issues with no easy answers.
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Possible? Maybe.
Likely to work in practice? Unlikely with such a difficult issue.
Letâs see if there can be some agreement:
- Coyne should never have used those lousy UK prison statistics.
- No one should have called Coyne a bigot for doing #1.
- FFRF should not have taken anything down.
- Oneâs personal experience is not necessarily applicable to those of a large number of other people.
- Gender is not binary.
- Sex is not binary either, just much closer to being binary than gender.
- Oneâs right to fair competition in sports is not as important as oneâs basic right to life.
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As far as sports are concerned, there are solutions to encourage a safe and level playing field. Many sports have weight classes, in the future we may have testosterone classes. The smoke and fury surrounding this is far greater than any problem, real or perceived.
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Your list is great. Thank you.
It seems to me part of the difficulty is that too much ground has been ceded to extremists on both sides the issue. And no I donât think the gender extremists are remotely as dangerous or numerous as the fundamentalist bigots that genuinely want to ruin other peopleâs lives.
I just think they too (the gender extremists) need to be called out, and I think the otherwise entirely reasonable concern for the potential for harm against trans people inadvertently serves to give too much space for the gender extremists. The opinions of which are then used and exploited, deliberately, by the fundamentalist bigots who highlight them (the statements of the worst of the gender extremists) as if they are typical left wing positions. And that this actually seems to be working (it appears to affect public opinion), because (among other things) a lot of much more reasonable (but otherwise pro-trans) people are afraid of speaking up on the topic out of fear of being called transphobes and considered bigots themselves if they donât cede on literally every single trans-related issue. Itâs a viscious cycle.
Perhaps Jerry Coyne just isnât very good at being the more reasonable voice on these matter. I actually donât go hunting for every trans-controversy news item that crops up, preferring to mostly stay away from the topic to be honest, out of⌠I dare say it, self-censorship. I heard about the recent boxer controversy but never looked into it. I donât care about bathrooms, pronouns, clothing, names, drag-queens, pride flags, etc. etc. At all.
- I have no idea, havenât looked into it at all.
- Strongly inclined towards agreeing, though Iâm mindful I donât know the details about those prison statistics and what Coyne might or might not have known about them.
- Agreed.
- Agreed.
- Depends on what you mean by gender of course, but yeah generally agreed.
- Unsure. I donât know enough about what the possible exceptions could be to say that I strongly disagree (in other words Iâm leaning towards sex being binary), as from what little I have read Iâm inclined to consider any deviations from the gametic sex definitions as developmental disorders (or something like that), rather than true/third sexes of their own.
- Agreed.
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Yes, and my sense is that some of the sports organizations are trying to address it, though they are falling under fire in some cases for doing so. One of the swimming organizations, if I recall correctly, not long ago set a criterion that one could not compete as a woman if that individual had gone through a particular phase of puberty as a male â recognizing that this isnât just about hormones in the here-and-now, but that it is also about development. Treatment of intersex individuals, though not about transgenderism as such, is also something that has raised concerns â the case of Caster Semenya is an interesting one there.
Ultimately some determinations need to be made about fairness, and thatâs the core issue. I would point out that rarity of an issue isnât an excuse for unfairness â nobody would tolerate cheating, or using performance-enhancing drugs, if the only defense of that practice was âwell, it doesnât happen very often, so itâs not a real issue.â But the fairness issue is liable to work out differently according to different sports. In chess, obviously men have no physical advantage in the sense of muscular strength, lung capacity, and whatnot â but the rather autistic nature of a lot of the best players, together with the persistence of a sex disparity even in countries where women are quite active in chess, does suggest that there might be neural development issues at play which are hard to isolate. Something like archery, dependent heavily upon muscular strength and arm size, might be very different from something like soccer, where speed and endurance are important.
Ultimately all of that is best left to the various organizations which run these sports, as theyâre in a better position to determine what the criteria ought to be for specific activities. There is, however, frequently very little existing research, and very little ability to fund it.
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Please be specific. What are âgender extremistsâ pushing for thatâs a real, verifiable problem?
Iâll also point out that this conversation is playing out exactly like literally every other conversation about civil rights ever. âSure the extremists who oppose protecting basic rights for [group X] are wrong, but there are also advocates for [group X] who go too far/want to move too fast/are too loud/aggressive/etc and that hurts the cause overall. The correct answer is somewhere in between.â
Has that ever been correct in retrospect, ever? (No.)
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I tried to qualify for advanced placement credits but didnât meet the prerequisites, especially the androstenedione. (Itâs been a while since I tried so I couldnât tell you exactly âY.â)
Canât seem to muster up as much 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase as I used to.
To get specific, I think islamic extremists, their statements and behavior, and the terrorism they do is functioning counter to the integration and acceptance of muslim immigrants in most parts of the west. I think if the muslim community didnât have their share of extremists expressing extreme views on women, religion, jews, gays, and so on, and didnât engage in terrorist violence against caricature artists etc., then thereâd be much less of a concern about muslim immigration.
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In fact I think extremists have probably hurt the vegan and climate change causes. A lot.
Of course one problem is we donât live in a counterfactual world where various forms of civil rights causes did not have their share of extremists, so we donât really know to what extent the absence of the more extreme members could have helped or hurt their various causes.
It is entirely possible that the statements of some of the more extreme members of some groups have slowed down adoption of the societal changes they advocated for. The fact that some movement eventually succeeded in effecting societal change does not somehow prove that the extremists did not work to itâs detriment.
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That biological males who identify as women should be considered equivalent to (if not truly and actual) biological females in literally every possible respect, including but not limited to their participation in womenâs sports.
Yes. Here in this instance, right now.
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