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?

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tensor 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To educate others reading this, it's far from "obvious" how to classify gender in sports. Checking if they have the right "parts" physically doesn't do it. Checking for hormone levels doesn't do it. Even checking for Y chromosomes doesn't do it.

In my opinion the way forward is to stop trying to find arbitrary ways to define gender, and just start making competition classes based on whatever factors are relevant to the event. E.g. a women with high testosterone? They can compete with men or women with the same testosterone bracket. This would also let men with low-T compete fairly rather then be excluded from the games.

It's also relevant at what point other genetic changes are "unfair." There are absolutely genetic traits that give people HUGE advantages in various competitions. Just like the gender-related properties, these are natural and yet result in unfair competitions.

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nickff 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem with your proposed 'fuzzy divisions' is that they're not compatible with the zeitgeist of 'seeing the best compete', and 'drug-free' sports, as there's no reason to disallow performance-enhancing-drugs if we're already splitting into divisions.

	▲	tensor 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Actually, you bring up an excelling additional argument for the sort of bracketing I proposed. It also works for drugs! There is significant grey area wrt to "doping" too in the sense that a performance enhancing drug may express as a larger than normal amount of a naturally occurring substance. So did the person dope, or is that their natural genetics? In my scheme, WHO CARES! Beyond that, I suppose there is the usual argument against more serious and non-natural forms of doping that it is physically detrimental to the competitors and by allowing it you are encouraging or pressuring people to essentially harm themselves. Still, competition classes could be helpful in some of the doping grey areas.

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cbnotfromthere 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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briandw 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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chrisnight 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you pay attention, your source has an asterisk of “typically” and “usually”, aswell as a distinction between phenotype and karyotype traits. While it is true that the majority of people with a Y chromosome are male, there are many people with Y chromosomes you’d call female because of their phenotype (which is what society primarily cares about), among other cicumstances.

	▲	briandw 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I specifically said sex. Gender is mostly undefined. If you say that gender is the societal presentation as male or female, but you can’t define male from female then what are you defining? Its the “trans women are women” contradiction.

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debugnik 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Since you trust Wikipedia over us:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_gonadal_dysgenesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

	▲	belorn 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For Swyer syndrome, A 2017 study estimated that the incidence of Swyer syndrome is approximately 1 in 100,000 females. Fewer than 100 cases have been reported as of 2018. For both the genetic disorders, they would have to be beneficial or at least not an disadvantage, for elite sport activity in order to be an issue for misclassification. For a sex-determination system, they could simply add an exception for Swyer syndrome and postpone the decision until such individual presented themselves at an Olympic competition.

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VirusNewbie 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>checking for Y chromosomes doesn't do it

Lol why does this not do it?

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joshuahaglund 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrom...

Among others

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hervature 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I am going to try to keep my response apolitical to try to avoid fanning a culture war. That Wiki is the exact reason we are in this situation because we are bringing up points for 1 in 20000 or 0.005% of the population. Any system designed around 0.005% edge cases is going to be so complex that it is functionally impossible to do in practice. That is why one side says the solution is "obvious" because we have a simple rule that covers 99.9% of cases and the other 0.1% is unfortunately effectively barred from high level competition. Note, high level competition already bars 99.9% of people. Even though the opposing side is correct in pointing out these edge cases, it does nothing to advance an actual solution.

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saalweachter 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are statistically around 15 women AFAB with XY chromosomes in the NCAA by those numbers (assuming no correlation between Swyer syndrome and athletic performance).

There are currently around 10 openly transgender women in the NCAA.

Small numbers either way.

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logravia 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure, it covers 99.9% of cases, but top elite athletes are the genetic exceptions, they are the genetic freaks. They are the top 0.0001%. You don't get to compete at the most elite levels without your body being exceptionally gifted and almost specifically shaped for the relevant sport, which inevitably means funky genetic traits and disorders, higher testosterone levels etc.

I mean the word freak in the most loving and caring way possible, mind you.

What does fairness mean in that context?

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tensor 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except I proposed a solution, which you ignored (I'm assuming here that I'm your "opposing side".)

Also, there are a significant number of these sorts of arguments in high-level sports, probably precisely because these "0.1%" cases are exactly the ones that result in exceptional ability relative to norms. It's also curious that there is such obsession about naturally occurring genetic outliers with respect to females or gender but absolute silence about naturally occurring genetic outliers among men unrelated to gender. And surprise surprise the top athletes often have such outlier genetics!

If you're drawing a distinction between natural genetic difference related to only gender and no other factors then sadly it's exactly a culture war, not a war based in science or fairness.

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appreciatorBus an hour ago | parent [-]

> naturally occurring genetic outliers among men unrelated to gender

This is just not true. Many sports are categorized by weight for the most obvious example.

	▲	tensor 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. Which is what I proposed for all differences. Note that classifying by weight is not banning athletes like is happening in the olympics.

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manwe150 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because in a specific minority of the population it disagrees with the gender assigned at birth for obvious reasons. There are plenty of resources you could read on intersex instead of lol at something you don’t understand

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xvxvx 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Total nonsense. Sports are separated by sex, not gender. Sex is a biological reality, whereas gender is made up nonsense hiding behind the fact that many people equate the word 'sex' to sexual intercourse. That allowed 'gender' to flourish and confuse people.

'Gender' in it's modern form, was coined by John Money, the psychologist/sexologist responsible for the genital mutilation of many children, and the suicide of at least one of them due to his involvement of sexualized behavior during 'treatment'.

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putzdown 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why is checking for a Y chromosome not sufficient? This does not seem to me like an arbitrary definition. What am I missing?

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tensor 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It's in fact possible to develop a female body with XY chromosomes:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6586948/

Also warning that article has images that may be inappropriate in a public setting. I didn't realize when I linked it.

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putzdown 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thank you. But the Y test still seems sufficient. Every criterion will have false positives and negatives. With the Y test the false negative (you present as a woman but have a Y chromosome) is rare and the vast majority of cases are handled well. If you have this condition you must compete against men (given the Y chromosome test rule) or not compete. If you’re dying to be in the Olympics as a woman but have the Y chromosome, you’re just out of luck. Not everyone can be a concert pianist either. No rule makes things wonderful for 100% of humans. The Y test gets very close.

	▲	etherus 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		But that's a contradiction, no? We're saving women from other women and barring trans people also (ones we consider men) because of a perceived risk that I don't see evidence for (i.e. people choosing to compete as women on a malicious basis or with an 'innate advantage' that makes it dangerous - we've had a long time of running these sports without this sort of regulation, and it seems to be a political choice more than a reaction to evidence that women are being outcompeted by trans people). This is also assuming that having a y chromosome makes it fair for people with a y chromosome to compete against one another, but if you compare people's physiology these people who present as women often have low/no testosterone. Separating on the line of testosterone picks up a lot of female athletes (especially at the olympic level) that are not trans, and overall I just see this hurting women without evidence that it's actually a response to harm. In any case, trans people and gender non conforming women become the victims of this in the public sphere. It just seems very misguided.

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shrx 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There will always be outliers.

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hananova 6 hours ago | parent [-]

High level sports consists entirely of outliers. That’s kind of the point of the olympics. This newest rule is nothing more than a misogynist rule to turn the women’s division into the “no more than statistically average” division.

	▲	brainwad 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Almost every gold medal winner in the past games would not have been affected by this new rule, so that's a biiit hyperbolic. Those athletes are still far outside the normal performance of women (or men, for that matter).
	▲	fretboard 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[flagged]

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wasabi991011 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Why did it take so long for something so obvious to be acted upon?

A few reasons:

1. Sex is not as straightforward as most people think, and what to do with intersex people is not clear.

2. Trans athletes are underrepresented at pretty much all levels of sport, and aren't actually winning that much, making it not actually an urgent problem.

3. The philosophical underpinnings that advantages due to differences in body development should be disqualifying is a little broken, since we do not consider Michael Phelps being double jointed as being an unfair developmental advantage.

	▲	appreciatorBus an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Being double jointed is something you are born with. Being male is something you are born with. Being male and competing against females is something you choose to do.

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mandevil 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Olympics used to do this. From as early as the 1960's they were doing genetic testing on female athletes. They stripped Polish sprinter Ewa Kłobukowska of all her medals and records in 1967, in spite of the fact that she gave birth to a child a year later, which would seem to indicate that she was a woman. The Olympics only abandoned this testing regime after the 1996 Olympic Games when 8 women who were cis and assigned female from birth to that moment were wrongly tested as male (7 AIS cases, 1 5-alpha-steroid reductase deficiency ). The uproar from that caused the Olympics to realize that this was a lot more complicated then they thought and abandon the idea of a strict genetic test.

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.

	▲	starkparker 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fascinating that this is being downvoted. Anyway, some more links to spread the getting-downvoted love: "Gender verification of female Olympic athletes" (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2002): https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/fulltext/2002/10000/gende... > The shift to PCR-based techniques replaced one diagnostic genetic test with another but did not alleviate the problems. Positive results still stigmatized women with such conditions as androgen insensitivity, XY mosaicism, and 5-α-reductase deficiency. Both sex chromatin and SRY tests identify individuals with genetic anomalies that yield no competitive advantage. Therefore, finally in 1999, the IOC conditionally rescinded its 30-yr requirement for on-site gender screening of all women entered in female-only events at the Olympic Games, starting with Sydney in 2000. Rather, intervention and evaluation of individual athletes by appropriate medical personnel could be employed if there was any question about gender identity. This change has not been made permanent. "World Athletics' mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990" (Andrew Sinclair, 2025): https://www.mcri.edu.au/news/insights-and-opinions/world-ath... > It is worth noting these tests are sensitive. If a male lab technician conducts the test he can inadvertently contaminate it with a single skin cell and produce a false positive SRY result. > No guidance is given on how to conduct the test to reduce the risk of false results. > Nor does World Athletics recognise the impacts a positive test result would have on a person, which can be more profound than exclusion from sport alone. > There was no mention from World Athletics that appropriate genetic counselling should be provided, which is considered necessary prior to genetic testing and challenging to access in many lower- and middle-income countries. > I, along with many other experts, persuaded the International Olympic Committee to drop the use of SRY for sex testing for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. > It is therefore very surprising that, 25 years later, there is a misguided effort to bring this test back. "Medical Examination for Health of All Athletes Replacing the Need for Gender Verification in International Sports" (JAMA, 1992): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/39507... > Even if a molecular method could be devised that had a very small error rate, it would still just constitute a test for a nucleic acid sequence, not for sex or gender. Although one can test for the main candidate gene for male sex determination, SRY, it still holds that most XY women test positive and some XX males test negative for SRY. It is possible that there will never be a laboratory test that will adequately assess the sex of all individuals. ... > (IAAF proposals held) that the purpose of gender verification is to prevent normal men from masquerading as women in women's comopetition was reinforced. Perhaps a genuine concern decades ago, this fear now seems to be a less pressing concern. One reason may be that routine drug testing now requires the voiding of urine be carefully watched by an official to make certain that urine from a given athlete actually comes from his or her urethra. Thus, athletes are already carefully watched in "doping stations". The likelihood of a male successfully masquerading as a female under such circumstances seems remote in current comparison.

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pasquinelli 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

how many actual cases does that amount to, i wonder.

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fn-mote 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you say more details? What are you talking about?

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happytoexplain 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	LunicLynx 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If anything your comment is trying to personally vilify someone. Something the other comment clearly did not.
	▲	moi2388 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What a ridiculous reply to a perfectly reasonable comment.