Testosterone, intersex and women's sport

[LondonLax]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

You mean the boxing board whose only financial sponsor is Gazprom who banned her just after she beat a Russian?
(in addition to what was posted above)

Oh and the IBA themselves have been banned from the Olympics since 2019

She didn’t get disqualified after beating a Russian though. There is plenty of disinformation going around. 

[Chindie]

She was disqualified after having beaten a Russian, she just wasn't disqualified immediately afterwards. She fought the next 2 rounds and won, then was disqualified.

It's wrong to say she beat a Russian and they binned her, but it's also wrong to say she didn't beat a Russian. She beat a Russian in the round of 16, in the quarter final won against an Uzbeki, won her semi, and then was disqualified.

It's also worth noting that there was even confusion over why they disqualified her. Some reports say she was given a test that showed high testosterone, but others citing the IBA say they specifically didn't test for testosterone and did 'some other test'.

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, colhint said:

So why was she banned by the boxing board?

We don’t know.

Anybody offering you more of an answer than that is making some of it up to suit their prejudices.

Or, you can just use Facebook and Twitter and know it’s a cover up and she’s a bloke from Algeria where they are famously pro trans.

[foreveryoung]

I think you'll find she's been given the chance because of her ' condition '. Other than her strength, she's a pretty useless fighter. 

 

[choffer]

42 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I think you'll find she's been given the chance because of her ' condition '. Other than her strength, she's a pretty useless fighter. 

 

Funny. I watched the bout this afternoon and she didn’t look much bigger or stronger than her opponent. Still won easily. 

[rodders0223]

As a 37 year old man everytime I play football nowadays in a league I've got younger fitter faster guys running past me.

Don't worry though. I've complained to power and the leisure leagues to get them all banned.

[DCJonah]

56 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I think you'll find she's been given the chance because of her ' condition '. Other than her strength, she's a pretty useless fighter. 

 

Yeah athletes never get a chance in sport based on their genetics. 

[Lichfield Dean]

I find it interesting (but not surprising) that a lot people who have recently been stating vehemently that they "know what a woman is" seem to have changed their minds about what a woman is.

[foreveryoung]

12 minutes ago, Lichfield Dean said:

I find it interesting (but not surprising) that a lot people who have recently been stating vehemently that they "know what a woman is" seem to have changed their minds about what a woman is.

So you would 

[Marka Ragnos]

15 minutes ago, Lichfield Dean said:

I find it interesting (but not surprising) that a lot people who have recently been stating vehemently that they "know what a woman is" seem to have changed their minds about what a woman is.

I'm finding it neither interesting nor surprising.

[StefanAVFC]

Funny how her winning in the next round is barely a story because her opponent didn’t cause a fuss about being hit once. 

[Keyblade]

6 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Funny how her winning in the next round is barely a story because her opponent didn’t cause a fuss about being hit once. 

She beat and congratulated the woman who shared this picture of her yesterday.

[VILLAMARV]

was this thread previously titled as an intersex thread without the doff of the cap to the sports or am I imagining it?

Move this post if it needs it obviously mods if you feel there's a better home for it, but following on from a chat in the religeon thread earlier I thought I'd waffle at the clouds in here instead.

I'm sure I've mentioned on VT before about having to contend with a young male in my wider family who has a penchant for spending his time watching Andrew Tate content on the line. Rather than be dismissive, I'd genuinely like to confront this issue through discourse. I live in hope that we can talk through some of the ideas he seems to now espouse as a direct result of imbibing this drivel and create an environment where reasoned discussion can make him think logically about some of these issues. I think it's really important and feel that if he becomes ostracised from the family unit (whatever that is when I'm not talking about the same household, or even the same part of the country) he'll end up living the rest of his life with hatred of 'others' and bigotry defining the rest of his existance. And as a young lad in his early 20's - literally his whole adult life ahead of him.

On a fairly lengthy car journey when he found himself in the back of my car, perhaps a year or so ago, He came out with the oft heard nonsense about "You're either a man or a woman, right?" in a conversation that he himself had instigated around transgender people. So he ended up with responses from the rest of us in the car I'm not sure he would have had to contend with before and I pointed out to him it's a massive oversimplification of reality and that it was important to me to distinguish between the two different arguments, namely biological sex and gender. He was happy that this distinction existed, but when asked about the other 40odd different biological classifications we medically identify he seemed genuinely surprised that I wasn't making this stuff up and asked if that was a real thing that actually existed. Luckily for reasoned discussion one of the other passengers is/was a genuine statistician, specialising in health data, employed at a red brick uni as a researcher who routinely uses population level datasets and is always a fantastic sounding board in these sorts of conversations (and great fun at parties!) who could assure him I wasn't making this stuff up. So quite simply, no, you're not either a man or a woman in a truly biological sense. The sad end to discussing this topic came when confronted with having to reconsider his argument from a factual standpoint, uttered the rather unforgettable suggestion that his answer to this reality should be that this minority of the population should be, and I quote, "taken up the moors and staked down for the #**#ing crows."

Now the reason this particularly has stuck in my head ever since (other than the obviously pretty disgusting lack of empathy or care for other humans) is that unbeknownst to him he is related to one such individual. Someone he socialises with at weddings, funerals and other family gatherings without any issue. One of our female relatives suffers from Turners Syndrome - a chromosomal condition where there's a missing X chromosome - that means despite living their whole lives as a 'woman' and most definitely identifying as such, biologically speaking they fall into the classification of 'intersex'. Obviously it's not something I or any of the rest of the family has felt the need to share with him and ultimately on a social level what does it matter?

As for the chat earlier in the religeon thread I don't personally believe we are made by a God regardless of biological classification, (or indeed in God or that organised religeon is an important facet of our society) so whether other people believe my entire family - except the Turner's syndrome sufferer of course - were made by God is a matter for themselves.. I'm still intrigued as to where they think my Turner's suffering relative came from in their mind but I'm also aware I probably wouldn't much care for the answer. Any more than I did my young Tate-ified male relatives take on the matter. And I wonder how they (my relative not the VT posters) would react or act if they knew this little piece of information. FWIW even the hardcore Catholics including actual monks and nuns in my wider family believe(d) we were all God's children even if I didn't and don't subscribe to their views on creation.

In hindsight, I wished I had asked about where in his newly forming beliefs there was room for his highly autistic step brother who lives at home with his immediate family. And him, because despite his seeming alleigance to the notion of this nonsensical Alpha Male superiority as espoused by Tate, he hilariously (to me) still lives in his mums basement despite being a 20 something year old 'man'. I'm aware right-wing bigotry isn't usually that kind to the disabled community either. I assume by association Tate probably doesn't like them much although I am not going to listen to him to find out. Perhaps to the detriment of any intellectual conversation around it - know your enemy as someone said the other day in another thread. But I'm not subjecting myself to bigotry if at all avoidable - life's too short. And I get enough of it in an unsolicited manner anyway. As this tale shows.

I want to stress, if for no other reason than the miniscule chance he or his family happen to come across this post by some weird quirk of fate, that he displays the ability to love, to care, to think - and often quite deeply and introspectively. He's not all bad by any stretch and to my mind is far from a lost cause. But it worries me and hopefully most of you can see not without good reason. He's genuinely a bit of a lost soul.

I'm not sure if there's a reason behind sharing this story with you all, except to say any genuine heartfelt and meaningful advice on how to proceed would be gratefully received. I'd love to be able to help him out of the rabbit hole. Am I putting too much faith in logical reasoning fostering a more empathetic outlook on existance? And like I said at the start mods, if you think it would be better housed in a different thread do your thang.