Roger: FYI, a UN reports over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.
They also write that: "Male athletes have specific attributes considered advantageous in certain sports, such as strength and testosterone levels that are higher than those of the average range for females, even before puberty,30 thereby resulting in the loss of fair opportunity. Some sports federations mandate testosterone suppression for athletes in order to qualify for female categories in elite sports. However, pharmaceutical testosterone suppression for genetically male athletes – irrespective of how they identify – will not eliminate the set of comparative performance advantages they have already acquired.31 This approach may not only harm the health of the athlete concerned, but it also fails to achieve its stated objective. Therefore, the testosterone levels deemed acceptable by any sporting body are, at best, not evidence-based, arbitrary32 and asymmetrically favour males.33 Females are usually tested randomly to ensure that they are not using performance-enhancing drugs, while males are often not monitored to ensure that they are taking testosterone suppression drugs.34 To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport."
If an infant, child, adolescent or adult has been exposed to enough sex-determining hormones (and functional receptors for these hormones) to create any confusion at any point in their lives about whether they are male or female, they likely possess the male advantages that justify separate competitions for women.
Roger wrote: "Though not typical, there are XY females and XX males from birth. No sport scientist or medical professional disagrees with this. Some XY women have given birth.
I respectfully disagree. Having read Alice Dreger's great book, I'd say that your XY females and XX males should be called Intersex individuals. They have the chromosomes/genes needed to be XY males and XX females, but one or more of the genes that produce sex determining hormone or (more likely) the receptors that mediate the actions of these hormones. When born, these individuals don't have a phenotype characteristic of men or women, so it is inappropriate to call them either men or women. Ms. Dreger advocating for letting these Intersex individuals grow up with ambiguous genetalia and letting them decide for themselves which sex they wanted to "present as" and what surgeries to have when they reached or neared adulthood.
IIRC,the "XY female" that you discussed didn't have ovaries and so couldn't give birth to a child without donated eggs.
In Chapter 8 of The Edge you write:
"A vocabulary has developed to describe different variations in biological sex: “disorders of sexual development,” “differences of sexual development,” “intersex,” and so on. Whatever term one prefers, the key point to comprehend is that scientific understandings of biological sex do not support a binary view of male and female, but a far more nuanced perspective."
Agreed, sex is not binary. However, anyone diagnosed as intersex should not be competing as a woman! Such disorders of sexual development are likely due to abnormal levels or responses to the sex hormones that are the reason men generally don't compete with women in sports.
Let's consider Caster Semenya. Her sexual phenotype (Internal testes) is due to differences in exposure to the biological systems that give men an unfair advantage over women in sports. Her external genitalia could have been surgically modified as Alice Dreger discusses in her book to "treat" her parents who are horrified by an abnormal looking child. In some societies, girls are mutilated to reduce sexual pleasure and preserve virginity, But even if none of these hypotheses are correct, she is a person with a disorder of sexual development due to hormones or other biological machinery that creat the difference between men and women.
Your article goes to great lengths to discuss absurd was of distinguish between men and women: Testosterone levels, chromosome tests and other sources of advantage. When we relied on sexual phenotype (particularly genitalia), we didn't understand that sexual phenotype wasn't binary. Now that we understand that sexual phenotype isn't binary, we refuse to use evidence of abnormal sexual development of genitalia to identify those who probably shouldn't be competing with other women. Phenotype integrates all of the exposure over a lifetime to the hormones that make men and women different.
I deeply admire Alice Dreger's integrity and contributions. She taught me that sex isn't binary and why. Now I may need to know why sexual phenotype (especially genitalia) is NOT the right way to distinguish those likely to have been over exposed to the hormones that give men unfair advantages over women.
I am a complete layman as far as this discussion goes, and I am fascinated by Roger's analysis, the podcast "Tested" that he recommended and the comments here.
Virtually all of the running events in elite competition are dominated by black athletes. Is it safe to say that these athletes have superior physical attributes, in spite of a modicum of social constructs, that lead to there domination? Should we consider "leveling the playing field" in these events to allow for more success for non-black athletes? Let me answer this question: Of course not!
"Virtually all of the running events in elite competition are dominated by black athletes. Is it safe to say that these athletes have superior physical attributes"
The 100 meters is dominated by black athletes, but in middle and long distance track, there is a mix of athletes, some black, some not.
Your argument is along the lines that women, those with an XX sex chromosome, and normal female puberty, are inferior physiologically, compared to XY individuals that have gone through a testosterone heavy puberty, and therefore should be be bludgeoned in the boxing ring.
Luckily for female athletes, Seb Coe, a real expert on track and field, and human physiology, will likely soon replace the hapless Thomas Bach. We will then no longer have to have these pathetic strained arguments about whether or not the current situation is fair.
Some basic research will also reveal that the 200, 400, and 800 metre event winners are dominated by black athletes. Certainly longer races show less dominance among black athletes. Finally we are talking about a handful of DSI athletes who have and will be subjected to hormone blockers and invasive surgery.
It's been well established that many athletes competing in shorter distance track events, for instance, the 100, 200, 400 and 800 meter races, have a higher level of fast twitch muscle fiber.
This is not a good analogy to the difference in physiology between male and female athletes where it is not just a matter of a difference in fast versus slow twitch muscle fibre, but a long list of differences.
It's no secret that men, for the most part, could care less about women's and girl's athletics, and could care less about the difference in male and female physiology. Sad to say, many men, often men who are not very good athletes themselves, are perfectly happy to see women bludgeoned in the boxing ring and forced out of sports competitions.
Too soon to tell if anyone covered by the regs can meet them. It is not clear how many athletes are attempting to or if they did, if we'd ever know (which is what WA promises).
What I have not seen or heard yet is a discussion of the zero sum nature of this matter. The DSD athletes that can no longer compete have very sympathetic stories, but there is also on the other side of each DSD athlete who has competed: a female non-DSD athlete who did not get a medal, or got a lower medal, or was not able to qualify for the Olympics when a DSD athlete has a superior time. Shattered dreams all around.
I have seen this more openly discussed with transgender women athletes but not DSD athletes.
The main difference is that DSD women are women (well, except according to a few of the most extreme gender warriors). The issue is whether their performance is a result of an unfair advantage. To date, no study has shown that.
For the most part, a person with a 5-ARD and a 23 sex chromosome that is XY will have gone through puberty with a level of testosterone that is significantly higher that that of persons with an XX sex chromosome.
Colin Wright discusses this extensively on his substack.
Bottom line:
Do we want those with an XX sex chromosome (51% per cent of the population) to engage and compete in sports, or
Do we want to give every opportunity and consideration to that tiny tiny minority of people with an XY sex chromosome, and 5-ARD who likely experienced puberty at a "male" level of testoterone?
Speaking as someone with an XX chromosome, I would drop out of any competitive sport where I knew there was even a remote chance that I would have to compete against someone being classified as a woman who had gone through "male" puberty.
Back in the 1980s, I competed in track when many women track athletes in Ontario (Canada) were doping with testosterone. As soon as I discovered what was going on, I decided to withdraw from track and middle distrance running competitions and direct my time and energy to endeavors were there was fair competition.
Yes, there may be a tiny, tiny minority of DSD individuals who superficially appear to look female. However, there are no non-DSD XX females who have testosterone that overlaps into the male range. To say so is highly dishonest.
Your current tact will discourage the vast majority of XX women from pursuing competitive athletics.
Has there been any study that showed no advantage? I doubt that there are enough people/data points today to conduct a meaningful study.
However, the example of Christine Mboma is instructive. Silver medalist in 2020, then reduced her testosterone levels and was unable to qualify in 2024. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that DSD is an advantage. Seems self evident to me.
Any woman who has XY chromosomes and one of a small set of DSD conditions is banned from competition unless she acts to reduce here testosterone levels to 2.5 nmol/L for a period of at least 6 months. Trans women are banned (in effect).
I may be simple minded, but this seems to me to be close to a no brainer. First, I don't care what gender you profess to be, I care what sex you are. Men are born with penises and testicles, women with vaginas. If you're born male based on this easily determinable criteria, then you compete as a man regardless of your professed gender or whatever post birth physical alterations you make to your body. You don't get to take your male genetic advantages with you to the other side of the line. That's cheating. Since no females are trying to compete as males for the obvious reason that they are ill equiped to do so physically, we need not deal with that possibility, but if we did, the same principle would hold. A tiny fraction are truly hermaphrodites (.018%) and are thus ineligible to compete. Sorry. You simply got dealt a bad hand if you had any athletic aspirations. Life isn't fair. Similarly, if you are a swimmer who had to compete against Michael Phelps you got dealt a bad hand. He is tall, has unusually long arms, short legs and big feet. Should he be disqualified because of the uniquely advantageous physical characteristics he was born with? Or, maybe we should have pre-competition body measurements and assign handicaps accordingly. See Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. Sorry if I wandered off topic.
However, the overlap shown in the chart rests on the low testosterone values for six children in two of the studies: 0.8 (14 F), 3.6 (13 M and 15 M), 3.7 (14 M), 4.5 (16 M), 5.3 (15 F-reassigned-as-M).
The authors never say that all the study subjects were post puberty as far as I can see. Quite the contrary.
The original article says
"Some of the reports included pubertal males for both 5ARD2 and AIS, and their ranges overlapped with the postpubertal males".
The erratum says
"To better clarify testosterone concentrations in postpubertal men compared with prepubertal boys with 5ARD2, patients in two studies were subclassified into those who were >18 years old and those who were younger, 12‐18 years old."
ending with
"a few boys younger than 18 years old who were prepubertal had testosterone concentrations which were only 2‐fold higher than the upper limit of the normal female reference range and only one 14‐year‐old patient (who was noted to have delayed puberty in the original report) had testosterone concentrations within the normal female range."
The most important question is how do we separate the female athletes so they only compete against other female athletes. We as free thinkers always add every variable we can think of to a discussion and then forget there exists the simplest most clear cut parameter to discern a male athlete from a female athlete. Chromosomes, yes there is a range disorder, however making the rules more complicated doesn’t achieve the goal of providing a female athlete with a clear picture of her competition. Every organizing principle excludes someone or thing from a category. Elite competition is even more exclusionary. What is fair is that a female athlete should be confident she is competing against a female athlete. As a retired athlete I feel for those who lose and those that can’t compete in the endeavor of their preference. Athletics are voluntary. But the simplest, clearest and best way to validate compliance exists in our technology presently. XX or XY, determines male or female for this thought experiment.
To me this is a brazenly political attempt to push a corporate American gender ideology which I utterly reject. There is a marked difference between British and American media coverage.
PBS
"Algerian boxer Imane Khelif will fight for an Olympic gold medal Tuesday night amid intense scrutiny over misconceptions about her gender"
This is typically scurrilous. The boxer failed a gender test which Americans have attacked as having been carried out by a Russian influenced boxing association. I would generally trust Russians before Americans and I have often wondered why Vladimir Putin makes American politicians sound like clowns at a children's birthday party.
My politics are somewhere around Malcolm X, Noam Chomsky and George Galloway. I have total respect for JK Rowling and Graham Linehan who are honest and decent human beings trying to protect women from corporate evil.
The procedures proposed in this article appear to leave designation of sex/gender at the discretion of the athlete (with additional procedures and policies only being applied in the case of a requested change). How does this help with the goal of preventing situations where some athletes have an unfair performance advantage relative to the category they have chosen?
Roger: FYI, a UN reports over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.
They also write that: "Male athletes have specific attributes considered advantageous in certain sports, such as strength and testosterone levels that are higher than those of the average range for females, even before puberty,30 thereby resulting in the loss of fair opportunity. Some sports federations mandate testosterone suppression for athletes in order to qualify for female categories in elite sports. However, pharmaceutical testosterone suppression for genetically male athletes – irrespective of how they identify – will not eliminate the set of comparative performance advantages they have already acquired.31 This approach may not only harm the health of the athlete concerned, but it also fails to achieve its stated objective. Therefore, the testosterone levels deemed acceptable by any sporting body are, at best, not evidence-based, arbitrary32 and asymmetrically favour males.33 Females are usually tested randomly to ensure that they are not using performance-enhancing drugs, while males are often not monitored to ensure that they are taking testosterone suppression drugs.34 To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport."
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/249/94/pdf/n2424994.pdf
If an infant, child, adolescent or adult has been exposed to enough sex-determining hormones (and functional receptors for these hormones) to create any confusion at any point in their lives about whether they are male or female, they likely possess the male advantages that justify separate competitions for women.
Roger wrote: "Though not typical, there are XY females and XX males from birth. No sport scientist or medical professional disagrees with this. Some XY women have given birth.
I respectfully disagree. Having read Alice Dreger's great book, I'd say that your XY females and XX males should be called Intersex individuals. They have the chromosomes/genes needed to be XY males and XX females, but one or more of the genes that produce sex determining hormone or (more likely) the receptors that mediate the actions of these hormones. When born, these individuals don't have a phenotype characteristic of men or women, so it is inappropriate to call them either men or women. Ms. Dreger advocating for letting these Intersex individuals grow up with ambiguous genetalia and letting them decide for themselves which sex they wanted to "present as" and what surgeries to have when they reached or neared adulthood.
IIRC,the "XY female" that you discussed didn't have ovaries and so couldn't give birth to a child without donated eggs.
In Chapter 8 of The Edge you write:
"A vocabulary has developed to describe different variations in biological sex: “disorders of sexual development,” “differences of sexual development,” “intersex,” and so on. Whatever term one prefers, the key point to comprehend is that scientific understandings of biological sex do not support a binary view of male and female, but a far more nuanced perspective."
Agreed, sex is not binary. However, anyone diagnosed as intersex should not be competing as a woman! Such disorders of sexual development are likely due to abnormal levels or responses to the sex hormones that are the reason men generally don't compete with women in sports.
Let's consider Caster Semenya. Her sexual phenotype (Internal testes) is due to differences in exposure to the biological systems that give men an unfair advantage over women in sports. Her external genitalia could have been surgically modified as Alice Dreger discusses in her book to "treat" her parents who are horrified by an abnormal looking child. In some societies, girls are mutilated to reduce sexual pleasure and preserve virginity, But even if none of these hypotheses are correct, she is a person with a disorder of sexual development due to hormones or other biological machinery that creat the difference between men and women.
Your article goes to great lengths to discuss absurd was of distinguish between men and women: Testosterone levels, chromosome tests and other sources of advantage. When we relied on sexual phenotype (particularly genitalia), we didn't understand that sexual phenotype wasn't binary. Now that we understand that sexual phenotype isn't binary, we refuse to use evidence of abnormal sexual development of genitalia to identify those who probably shouldn't be competing with other women. Phenotype integrates all of the exposure over a lifetime to the hormones that make men and women different.
I deeply admire Alice Dreger's integrity and contributions. She taught me that sex isn't binary and why. Now I may need to know why sexual phenotype (especially genitalia) is NOT the right way to distinguish those likely to have been over exposed to the hormones that give men unfair advantages over women.
I am a complete layman as far as this discussion goes, and I am fascinated by Roger's analysis, the podcast "Tested" that he recommended and the comments here.
Virtually all of the running events in elite competition are dominated by black athletes. Is it safe to say that these athletes have superior physical attributes, in spite of a modicum of social constructs, that lead to there domination? Should we consider "leveling the playing field" in these events to allow for more success for non-black athletes? Let me answer this question: Of course not!
"Virtually all of the running events in elite competition are dominated by black athletes. Is it safe to say that these athletes have superior physical attributes"
The 100 meters is dominated by black athletes, but in middle and long distance track, there is a mix of athletes, some black, some not.
Your argument is along the lines that women, those with an XX sex chromosome, and normal female puberty, are inferior physiologically, compared to XY individuals that have gone through a testosterone heavy puberty, and therefore should be be bludgeoned in the boxing ring.
Luckily for female athletes, Seb Coe, a real expert on track and field, and human physiology, will likely soon replace the hapless Thomas Bach. We will then no longer have to have these pathetic strained arguments about whether or not the current situation is fair.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/seb-coe-could-be-the-saviour-of-women-s-sport-and-put-an-end-to-the-ridiculous-gender-rows/ar-AA1oFxZm
Some basic research will also reveal that the 200, 400, and 800 metre event winners are dominated by black athletes. Certainly longer races show less dominance among black athletes. Finally we are talking about a handful of DSI athletes who have and will be subjected to hormone blockers and invasive surgery.
Paris Olympics 2024
1500 meter men
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sb32uxUO10
1500 meter women
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1tQAAcepPE
800 meter men
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPNM-W4YhGQ
800 meter women
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1xseOuvcSU
It's been well established that many athletes competing in shorter distance track events, for instance, the 100, 200, 400 and 800 meter races, have a higher level of fast twitch muscle fiber.
This is not a good analogy to the difference in physiology between male and female athletes where it is not just a matter of a difference in fast versus slow twitch muscle fibre, but a long list of differences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology
It's no secret that men, for the most part, could care less about women's and girl's athletics, and could care less about the difference in male and female physiology. Sad to say, many men, often men who are not very good athletes themselves, are perfectly happy to see women bludgeoned in the boxing ring and forced out of sports competitions.
Are there any examples of an XY person that can nevertheless meet the WA criteria?
Too soon to tell if anyone covered by the regs can meet them. It is not clear how many athletes are attempting to or if they did, if we'd ever know (which is what WA promises).
What I have not seen or heard yet is a discussion of the zero sum nature of this matter. The DSD athletes that can no longer compete have very sympathetic stories, but there is also on the other side of each DSD athlete who has competed: a female non-DSD athlete who did not get a medal, or got a lower medal, or was not able to qualify for the Olympics when a DSD athlete has a superior time. Shattered dreams all around.
I have seen this more openly discussed with transgender women athletes but not DSD athletes.
The main difference is that DSD women are women (well, except according to a few of the most extreme gender warriors). The issue is whether their performance is a result of an unfair advantage. To date, no study has shown that.
For the most part, a person with a 5-ARD and a 23 sex chromosome that is XY will have gone through puberty with a level of testosterone that is significantly higher that that of persons with an XX sex chromosome.
Colin Wright discusses this extensively on his substack.
Bottom line:
Do we want those with an XX sex chromosome (51% per cent of the population) to engage and compete in sports, or
Do we want to give every opportunity and consideration to that tiny tiny minority of people with an XY sex chromosome, and 5-ARD who likely experienced puberty at a "male" level of testoterone?
Speaking as someone with an XX chromosome, I would drop out of any competitive sport where I knew there was even a remote chance that I would have to compete against someone being classified as a woman who had gone through "male" puberty.
Back in the 1980s, I competed in track when many women track athletes in Ontario (Canada) were doping with testosterone. As soon as I discovered what was going on, I decided to withdraw from track and middle distrance running competitions and direct my time and energy to endeavors were there was fair competition.
Yes, there may be a tiny, tiny minority of DSD individuals who superficially appear to look female. However, there are no non-DSD XX females who have testosterone that overlaps into the male range. To say so is highly dishonest.
Your current tact will discourage the vast majority of XX women from pursuing competitive athletics.
Don't think a study can show what is unfair.
No study has shown any advantage. Given that, there is no evidence of unfair advantage.
Has there been any study that showed no advantage? I doubt that there are enough people/data points today to conduct a meaningful study.
However, the example of Christine Mboma is instructive. Silver medalist in 2020, then reduced her testosterone levels and was unable to qualify in 2024. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that DSD is an advantage. Seems self evident to me.
from my layman's perspective, it looks like the WA 2023 rules are not the same is what is in the CNN article.
Correct
They have changed 4 or 5 times in recent years as WA has dodged challenges to the rules
I saw this from a CNN article in 2021 but maybe it's dated?
The restrictions apply to athletes who are "legally female (or intersex)" with all of the following:
Blood testosterone in the range of 5.0 nmol/L or higher
"Sufficient androgen sensitivity" (i.e., ability to use testosterone)
XY, and not XX, chromosomes
Testes and no ovaries
The 2023 WA rules can be found here:
https://worldathletics.org/download/download?filename=2ffb8b1a-59e3-4cea-bb0c-5af8b690d089.pdf&urlslug=C3.6A%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Eligibility%2520Regulations%2520for%2520the%2520Female%2520Classification%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520effective%252031%2520March%25202023
Not listed (that I can find) on their website
"can't" find the answer
Have just finished the "Testing" podcast. Very helpful to get a better understanding of the issues.
What are the criteria today for women getting into Track and Field in the Olympics? I can
find the answer and may have missed it in the pod cast.
Any woman who has XY chromosomes and one of a small set of DSD conditions is banned from competition unless she acts to reduce here testosterone levels to 2.5 nmol/L for a period of at least 6 months. Trans women are banned (in effect).
I may be simple minded, but this seems to me to be close to a no brainer. First, I don't care what gender you profess to be, I care what sex you are. Men are born with penises and testicles, women with vaginas. If you're born male based on this easily determinable criteria, then you compete as a man regardless of your professed gender or whatever post birth physical alterations you make to your body. You don't get to take your male genetic advantages with you to the other side of the line. That's cheating. Since no females are trying to compete as males for the obvious reason that they are ill equiped to do so physically, we need not deal with that possibility, but if we did, the same principle would hold. A tiny fraction are truly hermaphrodites (.018%) and are thus ineligible to compete. Sorry. You simply got dealt a bad hand if you had any athletic aspirations. Life isn't fair. Similarly, if you are a swimmer who had to compete against Michael Phelps you got dealt a bad hand. He is tall, has unusually long arms, short legs and big feet. Should he be disqualified because of the uniquely advantageous physical characteristics he was born with? Or, maybe we should have pre-competition body measurements and assign handicaps accordingly. See Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. Sorry if I wandered off topic.
Or you are lucky to have advantageous attributes and should be able to compete.
You posted a chart in https://x.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1819870371526344791 supporting that "The claim of no T overlap between men and women is false according to the peer-reviewed literature"
However, the overlap shown in the chart rests on the low testosterone values for six children in two of the studies: 0.8 (14 F), 3.6 (13 M and 15 M), 3.7 (14 M), 4.5 (16 M), 5.3 (15 F-reassigned-as-M).
Ignoring those children the chart changes drastically: https://imgur.com/a/Ly9E319
All study subjects were post puberty according to the authors
Small Ns regardless
Fact is that 5ARD individuals (whether male or female) are not well studied
Anyone making certain claims about performance advantage is doing so without evidence
The authors never say that all the study subjects were post puberty as far as I can see. Quite the contrary.
The original article says
"Some of the reports included pubertal males for both 5ARD2 and AIS, and their ranges overlapped with the postpubertal males".
The erratum says
"To better clarify testosterone concentrations in postpubertal men compared with prepubertal boys with 5ARD2, patients in two studies were subclassified into those who were >18 years old and those who were younger, 12‐18 years old."
ending with
"a few boys younger than 18 years old who were prepubertal had testosterone concentrations which were only 2‐fold higher than the upper limit of the normal female reference range and only one 14‐year‐old patient (who was noted to have delayed puberty in the original report) had testosterone concentrations within the normal female range."
The most important question is how do we separate the female athletes so they only compete against other female athletes. We as free thinkers always add every variable we can think of to a discussion and then forget there exists the simplest most clear cut parameter to discern a male athlete from a female athlete. Chromosomes, yes there is a range disorder, however making the rules more complicated doesn’t achieve the goal of providing a female athlete with a clear picture of her competition. Every organizing principle excludes someone or thing from a category. Elite competition is even more exclusionary. What is fair is that a female athlete should be confident she is competing against a female athlete. As a retired athlete I feel for those who lose and those that can’t compete in the endeavor of their preference. Athletics are voluntary. But the simplest, clearest and best way to validate compliance exists in our technology presently. XX or XY, determines male or female for this thought experiment.
I'd love to engage a discussion of this podcast here at THB.
So well done, start to finish:
https://www.tested-podcast.com/
Biologist Colin Wright explains the apparent reasons for Imane Khelif's stark physical advantages in an article published in the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-imane-khelif-belong-in-the-womens-ring-olympics-boxing-transgender-ideology-b227f2cd?mod=opinion_lead_pos8. The most likely explanation is that Khelif is "biologically male," with XY chromosomes, and went through some version of male puberty which produced her greater height, reach, and musculature.
To me this is a brazenly political attempt to push a corporate American gender ideology which I utterly reject. There is a marked difference between British and American media coverage.
PBS
"Algerian boxer Imane Khelif will fight for an Olympic gold medal Tuesday night amid intense scrutiny over misconceptions about her gender"
This is typically scurrilous. The boxer failed a gender test which Americans have attacked as having been carried out by a Russian influenced boxing association. I would generally trust Russians before Americans and I have often wondered why Vladimir Putin makes American politicians sound like clowns at a children's birthday party.
My politics are somewhere around Malcolm X, Noam Chomsky and George Galloway. I have total respect for JK Rowling and Graham Linehan who are honest and decent human beings trying to protect women from corporate evil.
The procedures proposed in this article appear to leave designation of sex/gender at the discretion of the athlete (with additional procedures and policies only being applied in the case of a requested change). How does this help with the goal of preventing situations where some athletes have an unfair performance advantage relative to the category they have chosen?