Allez Imane!
I like to think that I’m a better critical thinker than most, but I fell for the initial news story about her being trans or intersex and the fight being unfair. Then I saw the pictures of her over the years and as a kid, and I dug deeper into what actually happened and I honestly feel dirty. I’ve since been unsubbing to a lot YouTubers.
Happy you did!
Also, afaik, there are guidelines for trans athletes in most major sports competitions, in terms of testosterone levels etc., to ensure fair play, so this wouldn’t matter anyway.
And also, Algeria is officially a Sunni Islam country where gender transition is outlawed.
Check out the podcast “Tested”. It’s three episodes and goes into the history of testing female athletes to make sure they are “female enough” to compete.
terms of testosterone levels etc.
So why is it if a man has elevated testosterone levels it’s allowed for him to have that advantage, but if a woman has elevated testosterone levels that’s not?
If we’re interested in fair play shouldn’t all competitors be tested and those with less testosterone be given more so that they are on an even playing field?Yes or at least organize athletes by testosterone like we do with weight if it’s truly that big of a deal. Then men with lower T shouldn’t be against men with higher T either.
if it’s truly that big of a deal.
That’s the question, is it? I believe in the podcast I mentioned they said the IOC’s (flawed) tests only showed an advantage in a few Track and Field events (I think it was mid length runs).
So let’s do some proper testing first to see how much of an advantage Testosterone actually gives, it’s entirely possible it’s irrelevant and we should stop testing for it all together.
If there is something that provides a noticeable advantage then just separating everyone by the “weight class” equivalent would be better than an arbitrary gender division.
Agreed. The book “Delusions of Gender” by Cordelia Fine points out that sexes are generally much more alike than different.
It’s a great case of how tempting doubt is, and how people will automatically believe that accusations wouldn’t be made if something were not happening, so we have a 55% starting bias to believe “guilty.”
In college I was once the object of a salacious rumor that was 100% fabricated by someone and spread throughout my circles in school. By the time I heard about it, friends-of-friends and the entire faculty in my department had as well. Closer friends said things like “I never bothered to ask you about it because I figured it wasn’t true. And if it was true I didn’t care. Is it true?”
It was very frustrating how ready everyone was to believe it. People not very close to me ALL believed it. To this day I bet some people I know doubt whether I have just been lying this whole time to defend myself. But I know what I did and didn’t do, and I learned that people will absolutely get up one day and decide to manufacture something out of thin air and then spend energy spreading it around as if true.
I no longer think “well something must have happened if there’s this much hubbub about it…”
Another misconception people have is that trans women are inherently stronger than cis women, which isn’t true. I know from anecdotal evidence, that it is extremely difficult for me to open jars now that I’ve been on estrogen and t blockers for over a year. My t is actually under the normal range for cis women, and usually I have to get my cis sister to open jars because she’s stronger than me now.
Also newer studies have shown trans women don’t actually have the competitive advantage conservatives say they have.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympic-trans-women-ioc-study-rcna148437
Would this be different if someone were to transition at a later age (say mid 20s - 30s)? Honest question, trying to learn something here.
I do think their muscle would still be significantly reduced by the hormones, but the older someone is the more their body is “set in place.” This means any changes will take longer to occur and they may not happen to the degree that they would have if they started younger. So someone starting mid 20s - 30s likely won’t have skeletal changes, since that part of their body has already finished growing. (Someone starting as a young teen definitely will have skeletal changes though.)
It’s crazy what an impact hormones have!
Thanks for clarifying :)
I have noticed that YouTube by default pushes a lot of right wing-esque stuff. My YouTube recommendations are fucked when I am not logged in, so much misinformation and clickbait all over the place. So I can see why it’s easy to fall for misinformation.
Youtube’s recommendation algo is insane.
I get 2nd amendment nutcases telling me the dems are gonna steal my guns and trans women are gonna rape all my family in public toilets.
I’m British, living in Britain, but I sometimes looking up what the best gun attachments are on call of duty…
Turn off having it track your browsing history, and subscribe and search to/for stuff you like.
I do not have that experience at all. Mine is all video games and science. Its based on what you interact with, even if its negative. Engagement is engagement. Even just hovering over a video can result in it being recommended again.
They literally said it pushes those things when not logged in. So when YouTube doesn’t know your tastes it pushes things like that.
Logging in does affect it, but there’s many more factors that aren’t related to your login status.
yeah, no.
thing is: YT/google/the data kraken knows you regardless of wether or not you’re logged in.
they track everything from IP, to location (even just approximate based on IP), screen size, browser, OS, and sooo much more.
being logged in makes it easier to track you within a site, but you get tracked regardless.
I feel so sorry for this person. Dragged into the spotlight of the world where everyone’s got a say about their gender, completely forgetting that they’re human first.
The “for” and “against” using her are sociopathic. Nothing feels more alienating that strangers sending positive and negative things to you, like they know you.
Fuck every person who engaged in this shit. Lie after lie
Starting with that shitty Italian boxer who was a giant coward. She should be banned from boxing in the Olympics since this is a habit of hers. Basic decency and sportsmanship should be required.
Boxing is a combat sport. While she is a fucking idiot for suggesting anything was incorrect, if there is anything she is it’s not a coward.
She is just not very good at boxing. She got beat handily by a woman, and a woman that will likely go pro and absolutely dominate for as long as she wants.
She didn’t suggest anything was incorrect. She literally said that she is nobody to judge the match and that she gave up due to pain.
and then the Hungarian she was to fight after posted a picture depicting her as a bullman/minotaur, no actions were taken against either of them. goes to show most Europeans are shitty mannerless folks
“Europeans”, a notoriously homogeneous class of people, with a sample of size of 1.
When I watched the video, I was shocked this even was a thing that happened.
I heard about the controversy for a while, heard some people say when they saw the fight they “understood why there was questioning”, and heard something about a punch. As an avid MMA fan, I expected a scary knockout, like those where you hold your breath until you see the person start moving again.
Imagine my surprise when I finally saw the video, and watched an Olympic boxing fight for the first time. I see of them wearing headgear, one of them gets hit with a few good punches, gets to pause to adjust headgear, gets hit with a few more good punches and calls off the fight without her knees ever even buckling or getting stunned, and doesn’t even have a mark on her face. Perhaps the neatest, least harmful fight I’ve ever seen.
To be clear, I don’t hold it against her for realizing she probably won’t be winning and quitting before taking unnecessary damage, I’m just shocked anyone would think Imane is trans or a man based on that fight. Imagine if those people ever saw Amanda Nunes, or Dakota Ditcheva, or Zhang Weili. But I’d guess most of those people never actual watch women compete in any sports unless there is a controversy like this one, at which point they become experts.
I also love MMA and shared the same sentiment. I recall seeing this gallery of Joanna Jedrzeczyk’s opponents before and after.
Your opponent doesn’t need to be a man to break your face. Sometimes you’re just outmatched.
I’m just shocked anyone would think Imane is trans or a man based on that fight.
Fan fact: there has never been a single case of a man trying to compete in women’s sports by claiming to be a woman.
Transphobia and misogyny hurt all of us, not just the targets of the bigotry. I hope more people understand that now.
We have regulations for just about anything but not gender in Olympics?
Olympic committee should put forward specific classification rules for woman and man in a binary sporting event.
It’s a Olympic committee problem not an athlete problem. Don’t let them sweep this issue under the rug.
Except even if they had regulations it would not have changed anything since she is a ciswoman
We should expect Rules and regulations regarding a cis woman. The Olympic committee should either allow them as is or lay out specific rules. Decisions cannot be adhoc.
They have a specific rule: if your birth certificate and passport say you’re a woman, you get to compete as one.
What rule do you think they should be using?
If I’m understanding correctly the argument against her competing hinges upon a genetic test that the article provides no information for.
The evidence that she’s a woman seems overwhelming. But the article doesn’t provide the necessary information for an reader to understand and defeat the objection. We’re not to reason for ourselves. Instead, we’re to rely on ad hominem: The objection itself doesn’t matter because it came from Russia. The article also ignores fallacy fallacy: There’s also a very small possibility that Russia has reached the “good” conclusion for entirely “bad” reasons.
I know three things:
- She’s almost certainly a biological woman.
- She won.
- The author thinks you’re stupid.
There is no info, because it was just Russian misinformation from a former boxing org. boss. She was disqualified after beating a Russian. There is nothing more to this story, just the “West” again show its weakness and vulnerability for Russian news manipulation.
Repetition doesn’t break reason.
The author was right about you.
Arguments made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
If I made an absurd claim, such as: “Donald Trump was not born in the United States, he was born in Kenya.” Without any evidence supporting my claim, It doesn’t matter if a bunch of idiots jump on board agreeing with me. There is no moral imperative for Donald Trump to provide his birth certificate (good evidence) in order to dismiss my made up nonsense claims.
It just bugs me the wording “wrongly questioned” - it’s never wrong to question, you just have to be prepared to accept answers.
Prove to me that you’re not a rapist right now. I’m just asking questions, but you better come back with proof fast before I start spreading the word.
Come on, this is a complete fallacious argument… Being a rapist is connected to actions, which can’t be proven that didn’t happen. This is completely different from measurable and observable properties like “being blonde” or “having certain chromosomes”. You can 100% disagree on having to prove anything, but your example is completely wrong.
But it’s never wrong to question, you just have to be prepared to accept answers.
With that said, this wasn’t a denial.
I was not the person you were answering too. Just a random observer that has underlined the fallacy of that particular argument (it’s hard or impossible to prove things are not or did not happen).
I was being tongue-in-cheek and you still walked right into a hypocrisy trap.
NBC News - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
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MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/olympics/algerian-imane-khelif-wins-boxing-gold-rcna166029
wrongly questioned
Were the allegations actually disproven? What I’ve read is that the IOC chose not to investigate.
Yes. She’s female and was born female.
It’s illegal to be transgender in Algeria, and the only complaint came from a Russian boxing body with a history of making suspect claims in the past.
the only complaint came from a Russian boxing body with a history of making suspect claims in the past
And that was only after she defeated a previously undefeated Russian. Sounds an awful lot like sore losers making up excuses.
The claim is not that she was initially considered to be a man by the Algerian government and then changed her public identity to that of a woman, but rather that she has some sort of intersex condition that elevates her testosterone levels into the masculine range.
All Olympians are genetic outliers. Do you really want to be the DNA police? Then every Michael Phelps medal should be returned because that man is naturally different from the rest of us. But he’s a man so we’re not talking about him.
https://www.biography.com/athletes/michael-phelp-perfect-body-swimming
Seriously. Phelps is pretty much genetically ideal for a swimmer, but nobody claimed it was “UnfAiR!!” when he swept the board multiple olympics in a row, garnering more gold medals than anyone in history, before or since.
One female boxer looks a bit “too” muscular and the bigots are up in arms. Fucking assholes.
And Khelif lost plenty of bouts in her career, but somehow, those aren’t relevant because, “I know a man when I see one.”
I actually encountered someone a couple of days ago herr on Lemmy that said it was unfair of Phelps to compete because he was too genetically superior. It was bizarre. Course it was on a thread about Phelps criticizing Chinese athletes who were doping so I imagine it was just a tankie trying his best.
And yet Katie Ledecky beats Michael Phelps on long distance swims.
And Simone Biles is arguably the greatest athlete of all time.
Here’s a source for Katie Ledecky beating Phelps: https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-news-olympics-news-swimming-news-is-katie-ledecky-faster-than-michael-phelps-answering-the-burning-question-of-the-swimming-community-before-us-olympic-trials/
Simone articles:
https://www.upworthy.com/simone-biles-deserves-goat-status
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNswsHfp/
https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/nov/05/simone-biles-world-gymnastics-championships
https://www.msn.com/en-ie/sports/other/simone-biles-the-greatest-athlete-of-all-time/ss-BB1qLsIQ
https://asdnext.org/blog/the-return-of-the-greatest-athlete-simone-biles/
https://www.sbnation.com/2019/10/13/20912350/simone-biles-medal-record-gymnastics-greatest-ever
https://www.msn.com/en-my/sports/other/simone-biles-the-greatest-athlete-of-all-time/ss-BB1qLzmw
And yet Katie Ledecky beats Michael Phelps on long distance swims.
She doesn’t. Phelps when he was 15 made a time 9 seconds slower than the record established during these Olympic games (although in 25m pool) by Ledecky in the 1500m. He, still at 15, swam 5 seconds faster than the 800m time Katie Ledecky just did in this Olympics (although in 25m pool), only 2 seconds slower than the record she established in 2016. See this.
Despite Phelps being a completely different athlete, not training for it, it’s quite reasonable to assume that once he was not a teenager anymore he could easily beat Katie (especially since long distance swimming requires maturity and experience to dose energy etc.). I think this reinforces the obvious fact that men do have advantages, and I really don’t see the point of trying to deny it.
If you want even more info, look at juniors (under 18) records:
- for 1500m a 16 years old swam more than 30seconds faster than Ledecky’s record.
- for 800m another 16 years old swam more than 20seconds faster than Ledecky’s record.
Was it him or Lance Armstrong that ended up getting caught doping? Pretty sure it was the latter, but also recall Phelps getting accused of something. If could’ve even been something irrelevant like marijuana.
Agree with your point, though.
It was pot for Phelps
What’s interesting is Katie Ledecky can beat him on long distance swims, if we go by their times. So how much of an advantage is gender in many sports at this level? And let’s look at disability - Usain Bolt had/has scoliosis, Ledecky has POTS, and many other athletes have “disabling” conditions. So why would intersex get a special category that isn’t allowed? It’s just transphobia.
Here’s a source for Katie Ledecky beating Phelps: https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-news-olympics-news-swimming-news-is-katie-ledecky-faster-than-michael-phelps-answering-the-burning-question-of-the-swimming-community-before-us-olympic-trials/
Looking at the other comments, you are clearly not here to discuss, but I will make a good faith attempt and play devil’s advocate.
The difference between intersex and other conditions you mentioned is that it blurs the lines of a specific set of parameters that are specifically used to create categories between sports. Men and women are not fighting each other for more than anagraphic reasons (I hope we can all agree on this), and if a condition invalidates that distinction (I.e. gives some advantages that men have over a women), then it breaks the boundary of such categories in a similar way as it would be having someone from a heavier category fight in a lighter one (BTW, this is routinely done by having athletes go in terrible dehydration regimes).
Now this has nothing to do with this specific case, as there is no any objective proof for any of this, nor that she is intersex nor that she does have any advantage, but it’s purely a way to frame the answer to the question “what’s the difference between having scoliosis and being intersex”.
Edit:
I will add one more thing, comparing a sprinter to a long-distance swimmer is exactly like comparing someone who runs 100m with those who run marathons. Clearly there is an advantage, considering that Katie Ledecky is an absolute monster, but she would have beaten the 3 worse times only that men did in this Olympics, and that she would have been almost a minute behind the winner, meaning almost 2 full lengths. Of course men have an advantage…also if you took the time from https://www.worldaquatics.com/athletes/1001621/michael-phelps, you probably have seen that he was 15 at the time…
The thing is, other hormones can give advantages too. That people put so much stock into testosterone alone is bad science. That intersex conditions that involve testosterone are so hated is transphobia. Women should be in their neat little boxes and men in theirs and any anatomy that changes that is taboo and should be banned. Like where should an intersex fighter compete? If this woman was intersex and had LOCAH or PCOS or other conditions, should she not be allowed in any division of Olympics?
Why don’t we have testosterone classes instead of (or in addition to) weight classes, if it matters so much? All athletes with the same level of testosterone can compete, just like athletes that weigh the same compete against each other. Why dont we organize it that way instead? Isn’t that more exact and fair?
I didn’t mention testosterone at all. I am not a specialist and I mostly don’t care about the details. I specifically talked in functional terms: if whatever condition gives you some advantages that men have, then it breaks the categories that are established. In this way, that condition would be different from -say- having huge feet like Phelps, even if they give you an advantage, because there are no categories based on foot size in swimming.
Everything else is an interesting hypothetical discussion, and maybe one day categories will be based on more parameters. Fact is, today they are like this, rough and using proxies such as gender and weight to make fights that are more-or-less fair.
She is a woman who was born a woman and happens to have high testosterone for a woman, just like some people are taller than others. She just happens to be at one end of the testosterone spectrum.
Just because you want baseless rumors to be true doesn’t make them true.
Hold on, her testosterone levels are known? I haven’t come across them. What are they?
“Higher than average.” Hence the upper body muscles being larger that average for a female boxer.
It isn’t rocket surgery.
So they’re not known.
Why would they ever make that known to the public. Would be a huge invasion of the competitors privacy. Kinda weird.
I haven’t seen any evidence that you aren’t a Russian bot.
There seems to be little credible hard evidence on either side, so anyone claiming to know the real truth here is just talking out of their ass.
That’s the point I was originally trying to make. This article is written as if the question has been conclusively answered, but it hasn’t been.
You’re making it sound like whether she’s trans is a valid question, which it isn’t
Her testosterone treated within the allowed range.
1, trans women are actually at a competitive disadvantage since hormone blockers also nullify the low levels of Testosterone that women produce naturally.
2, of all the fucking countries to suspect of “cheating” by fielding a trans woman, ALGERIA‽
Good points. And everyone should always upvote proper use of an interrobang.
Interrobang sounds like a genre of porn.
“Where did you hide the secret documents?”
" I’ll tell you, but first…"
*unbuttons blouse*
*funky seventies bass guitar and synths sounds*
What I’m going to say has nothing to do with the Algerian boxer, she was born a woman and if we started banning athletes from the Olympics whose rare genetics gave them an advantage, there’d be no reason to watch.
trans women are actually at a competitive disadvantage since hormone blockers also nullify the low levels of Testosterone that women produce naturally.
That is objectively false for combat sports. Blockers do not reverse the years of effects that testosterone has on their bodies development, such as skeletal structure and bone density.
I don’t understand this insistence on denying reality for the very niche topic of trans women competing in combat sports, it is dangerous.
If you don’t believe me, go listen to the interviews of female MMA fighters who Fallon Fox destroyed, and I’m talking like fractured skulls.
You just pulled the case of the single most violent form of combat sports out of your ass to justify being a discriminatory fuckwad.
How hard is it to just stop being a fuckwad? Why do people keep insisting on making “I want to keep being a fuckwad!” their hill to die on?
Do you get some kind of high from this dumb shit? Does it make you feel big to know that you’re just pissing all over people trying to live their lives for no reason except that ya just don’t like them for some fucking reason with no basis in any form of reality except the one you made up for the purpose of getting to keep hating them?
The claim is not that she is taking hormone blockers, and not that whatever condition she may have is known to the Algerian government or even to herself.
Bro please just fucking stop being such an insistent dumbass.
The article says the IOC honored what was on her passport. I don’t think there was any valid concern raised, it was just the Russian body doing Russian things.
Yes, they chose not to investigate. I suppose one might call the allegations unfounded, but without evidence to the contrary they can’t reasonably be called false.
The whole world:
“There is no evidence that shes is anything but a natural born woman. It’s clear this is fabricated outrage.”
You:
“They didn’t provide evidence of no evidence, so I am going to keep believing this fabricated outrage because I like being angry and refuse to stop.”
There’s a teacup orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. There’s no evidence to the contrary, so it can’t reasonably be called false.
That’s not comparable here. Chromosomes and hormone levels are easily testable. (I don’t know what the IOC’s actual policy is, but I’m sure it’s something measurable.)
There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. Teacups are man-made objects, rocket launches are closely monitored, and no rocket is known to have launched a teapot into that orbit. It isn’t absolutely impossible that something very much like a teapot formed there spontaneously, that a teapot was secretly launched there for no apparent reason, or that extraterrestrials placed a teapot there, but again there is evidence that these events are very unlikely to have happened. Russell’s goal was to illustrate that the burden of proof should be on the one making unfalsifiable claims, but he didn’t pick a good example - the lack of a plausible mechanism for the teapot to arrive in that orbit was even stronger evidence before spaceflight.
There’s a manhole cover out there that isn’t on a single NASA manifest either.
That’s an urban legend.
Does snopes have anything about a teacup?
China launched the teapot on a rideshare rocket that delivered 60 other payloads. It’s top secret, and the US Gov doesn’t want to publicize that the Chinese have developed a space tug capable of inserting a 200g teacup into a mars transfer orbit.
There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. Teacups are man-made objects, rocket launches are closely monitored, and no rocket is known to have launched a teapot into that orbit.
None of that is evidence that the teapot doesn’t exist.
Reread my post. I understood the reference.
Do you? Because you are making arguments he refuted decades ago.
Research the SRY gene. It’s why she “failed” a test that wasn’t looking for it. She was born female. She is female. Her passport says she’s female. The IOC says she’s female. The ONLY people making the claim are Russians and their bad science and conservatives and their bad faith.
To be fair, the Russians making the accusations are also malicious.
They can reasonably be called false just as they are about any other Olympian. They verified she was born a woman, same as they do with any other competitor.
Just because someone makes an accusation with zero evidence doesn’t mean there needs to be any sort of investigation.
There is not really a need to. The allegation comes from the IBA which is unrecognized by the Olympics and is a Russian propaganda organization. A Russian boxer lost to her and an official who is now fired for corruption disqualified her. Her birth certificate and passport say female and her testosterone is within the range for women. You can’t just give extra screening to women you don’t find attractive.
Women do not have to prove that they’re women. The IBA didn’t even say what test they gave her who administered it and who analyzed it. All they said was it wasn’t for testosterone.
