Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

Thanks for your input but your wild assumptions about what I do and don't take issue with are incorrect.

> How many instances of trans athletes in female sports have there been?

If it’s a small number, then presumably it’s not worth fighting over and sport can just have Open and Female categories?

> There probably have been more instances of furore over a _potential_ trans athlete who aren't trans

Actually, most of those "potential" trans turn out to be actual trans. That college volleyball athlete has even been sued by her own teammate.

> It's a "problem" way overblown by anti-trans activists.

I get that there are many loud voices on this topic right now. But I rather having this right now then later down the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong has become right.

You can find a list of trans athletes in women's sports here. I can't vouch for the site's accuracy or completeness, just providing a source for those who want to do further research.

https://www.shewon.org/

The inclusion of golf and poker makes me think this website isn't really concerned about women.

> That college volleyball athlete has even been sued by her own teammate.

And there has never been a shred of proof of her being trans. Exactly my point.

> et that there are many loud voices on this topic right now. But I rather having this right now then later down the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong has become right.

Yes, better for women with high testosterone to get death threats now for winning in the Olympics instead of thinking if this is really a problem.

These are still examples of males imposing themselves on what are supposed to be women's competitions. Every single one of these cases highlights an unwanted male intrusion.

That's a potential option, but a lot of anti-trans folks wouldn't be happy with that either. It also doesn't solve the theoretical problem of fairness, since trans men on testosterone (who presumably compete in the 'open' category in your model?) might have significant physical advantages over cis women in some sports. I don't think there are any glib solutions to the issue of gender in sport. The current moral panic about trans people certainly won't go any way to help with solving it.

So what do the prisoner advocate orgs you work with have as a statement or policy rec? The one I volunteer with has decided that it's not effective to have a specific policy about such a small group until meaningful measures addressing sexual violence in prisons generally (which again affects hundreds of thousands or millions per year) have been attempted.

There are a lot of other orgs though and especially if you're in an area with a lot of trans people and it's a more active issue, I'm interested in what other groups have had to come up with. Like I said if the goal is preventing sexual violence I can't imagine that moving trans women into the mens prison is going to be effective either.

Also, given that biological males dominate even for non-physical sports and esports like chess (talented women like Judit Polgar notwithstanding) or Starcraft, a biological male playing in a woman's-only league is a probably an unfair advantage even then.

Female athletes taking testosterone, regardless of if they believe themselves to be men or not, would be excluded from competition for doping.

Another layer of complexity to consider. Some of those rules may need to change to enable full participation of trans athletes. I do not have a fixed view on what the rules should be. I'm just saying it's complicated.

Her body has both male and female characteristics. If she'd been raised as a man, you could make an equally meanspirited comment about her body with reference to one of its female characteristics.

The fact that she was raised as a woman in Algeria (a notorious hotbed of wokeness) should tell you something.

Also, while it is gross to pick over people's bodies like this, I have to point out that you omit to note that her testicles are internal.

Or maybe those that take performance-enhancing drugs will just have to accept that their body modification choices preclude participation in competitive sport.

There are trans-identifying female athletes who don't take testosterone and compete in women's sports, recent example in the last Olympics being Hergie Bacyadan in women's boxing. There's no exclusion on participation as long as the same rules as for everyone else are followed.

Maybe, yes.

But what is "female"? The Algerian boxer was born female, but has high testosterone due to whatever medical condition, which ruled her out of some previous competitions that had conditions around that. Do you want sports governing bodies to inspect genitalia? Do blood tests? Especially when it gets into kids' sports territory, this gets very iffy very fast.

“Female” is well-defined for 99.99%+ of the population (and for most non-human species too, in fact). For those with DSDs, a judgement call can be made. For example, a person with XY chromosomes and the 5-ARD DSD (who was raised as a female due to the appearance of their external genitalia) has testosterone in the normal male range and thus is likely to have an advantage over females, and thus should not compete in the female category.

Cases of genuinely ambiguous sex are vanishingly rare, and are nothing to do with trans identities which are differences of social gender that do not change the underlying biology.

The available evidence indicates that Khelif is actually male: two blood tests from two independent labs revealing an XY karyotype, a member of Khelif's training team describing problems with hormones and chromosomes and that Khelif has been on medication to adjust testosterone to within the female range, and a leaked medical report which describes Khelif as having the male-specific disorder of sexual development 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD).

This implies that Khelif is not female but is male, and went through male puberty, therefore having the male physical advantage in sport caused by male sexual development.

So what you're saying is that she transitioned from male to female in Algeria? That sounds unlikely.

No, just erroneously assumed to be female and issued with identity documents stating this.

Same as has happened previously with other male athletes in women's sports, such as Caster Semenya who also has 5-ARD and also competed in the Olympics, back in 2016 in the women's 800m track event, winning gold. The silver and bronze medals were taken by males too.

Khelif does not identify as trans, and described such accusations as "a big shame for my family, for the honor of my family, for the honor of Algeria, for the women of Algeria and especially the Arab world."

Again, you’re just highlighting the fact that trans people’s bodies are very variable and that this is a complex issue. There isn’t a simple, obvious solution that everyone (currently) agrees is fair. The current rules around trans athletes receiving testosterone as part of gender affirming care are quite complex and variable. I don’t have a take on exactly what the rules should be. I’m just making the point that there are no easy solutions.

I don’t really have a strong opinion one way or the other about your overall point, but I just want to point out for clarity:

Examples like Judit Polgar (who was around the top 10 players in the world at her peak) do indeed prove that chess is nothing like (physical) sports in this way. In physical sports like basketball, soccer, etc. the best women in the world can’t compete against even moderately athletic amateur men. A famous example is the fact that the US women’s national soccer team practices against young teenage boys (and routinely loses). In chess it would be like if the best woman was rated 1800 or something.

This isn’t meant to disparage women in sports — they really do have a categorically different kind of body from men, and pushing those bodies to their limits is just as impressive as it is for men. But they don’t appear to have categorically different kinds of brain, at least insofar as it matters for chess skill.

You made your account 51 days ago and literally the only thing you've commented on since then is the anatomical details of this woman's body. What a strange and distasteful obsession. She has always been a woman and meets the criteria to compete as one under current rules (which long predate any changes made in relation to trans people).

> The Algerian boxer was born female, but has high testosterone due to whatever medical condition,

Imane Khelif has an X and a Y chromosome. She has 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which leads to the development of a pseudo-vagina and internal testicles. Crucially, though, the hormone levels are the same as typical males. In terms of upper body strength, red blood cell count, bone density, etc. Khelif is the same as other males.

She wasn't disqualified due to hormone levels. She was disqualified because the International Boxing Association's criteria for participating in the women's category is having a female karyotype (no Y chromosome).

> Do you want sports governing bodies to inspect genitalia? Do blood tests?

Chromosomes can be checked with just a mouth swab.

Still a male pummelling female competitors though. Who is being excused in this through the spread of a considerable amount of misinformation, your earlier comment being an example of such.

So you do not believe that a penis or vagina makes someone a man or a woman?