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If we accept--as I think it makes sense to do--that Khelif was mistaken for female at birth and raised as a girl until puberty, whereupon it would have become clear that he was male, there's no contradiction here. Mistakes like that happen, and always have, and people know this.
Algeria doesn't see him as trans, nor do they see him as a woman. His country sees him as exactly what he is--a man with a medical condition that gives him an unfair advantage, which can be exploited for gold medals and prestige. Countries have been doing that for decades before the trans athlete debate was ever a thing.
And the solution is as simple as it always was. Do cheek swabs on every athlete, test their DNA, and disqualify anyone with a Y chromosome from competing against females. I'm sorry that it will be upsetting to the athletes with Y chromosomes, but their feelings are not more important than the female competitors'. It is what it is.
And wouldn’t they still be able to compete with men? So it’s not actually excluding them from competition just from competing with women.
Anybody can compete with the men (except athletes caught doping). Men's divisions in general are de facto "open divisions", in the sense that their rules do not bother to articulate any sex restrictions (let alone any testing or documentation procedures to verify sex).
This is so strange. I wonder why the governing bodies aren't concerned about women competing in the men's divisions and taking medals. Also, since women are allowed in the men's/open divisions of many sports, how come we never hear about women medaling in those open divisions?
upsetting to the athletes with Y chromosomes, but their feelings are not more important than the female competitors'.
very well put
What happened to “ASSIGNED male at birth! Not actually male! You just assume but you don’t actually know!”? Now that people are pointing out this man (and why is the media everywhere staunchly claiming this is a woman and that everyone is insane who holds that it’s a man?— it feels almost conspiratorial) being “a female at birth” was a mistake are being ridiculed with “SHE WAS BORN A FEMALE AT BIRTH IDIOTS!”…
So, when someone in unambiguously female as a newborn and then grows unambiguously into a woman, it’s just a cultural “assignment”, but when someone is born seeming to be a female but later on grows into a man the assignment at birth is set in stone? And every single news outlet I follow online along with 95% of the acquaintances I have are in agreement that that makes perfect sense.
Not to mention that these types of DSDs—in which a child's sex rlly does have to be guessed at birth (at least in poorer countries with less medical technology), and therefore where that "assignment" may actually turn out to be wrong—are the original domain of the phrase "assigned at birth", and will forever remain the only situations in which that phrase can be used in good faith.
It's also the original domain of the phrase "gender identity". Psychologist needed a term to describe the phenomenon of persons with a DSD changing their sex identification upon learning about their DSD during puberty. Which in some forms of a DSD used to happen in the majority of cases. Used to, because it's a lot rarer now due to genetic testing before/after birth.
This case perfectly illustrates what women's rights activists have been talking about all along, which is that men need to keep out of women's spaces. Those on the other side have disingenuously always characterised that view as transphobic. Now, you can see responses to people like Navratilova saying "she's not even trans, why are you talking about this?!". None of them seem to be able to connect the dots about what women have been saying from the beginning. Whether someone has dsd or is trans is neither here nor there. If they are male then they don't belong in women's sports. End of.
Nobody with a Y chromosome should be allowed to compete against women. Period.
It's so frustrating seeing people say that because he's not being called trans by the majority of people criticizing him, he's being called MALE. There's so much misinformation coming from people defending the two athletes too, like saying they were definitely 100% born with vaginas (how would they even know? I'm pretty sure neither have spoken about their genitals?) or showing a picture of the Algerian one wearing purple as a child as proof he's female.
That just makes it more clear why his documents still say female. He has a DSD and his sex was incorrectly recorded as female. So even if it was later discovered that he was actually male, the fact that Algeria's laws do not allow trans likely meant that he couldn't correct his documents to accurately say "male."
Then I guess I was never a junky, or a street walker at 15 years old. I guess the men who helped me into that life were never pedophiles and rapists. Thank God all these things are illegal where I live!
He's a man . That is all. Algeria felt like cheating so they're using the intersex bullshit to justify it.
Who cares what he considers himself to be? If he considered himself to be a gold medal gymnast, no one would take him seriously. Why should we care if he thinks hes a woman when he is clearly male?
Breaking news: people still do things even if they are illegal
(I get that he’s not trans but still lol)
He isn’t trans. He’s a male who was born with a dsd (likely malformed or missing penis) and so was raised as a girl. Like Caster Semenya. He went through normal male puberty and is a man. He knows he’s a man, his country knows he’s a man, even the Olympics knows he’s a man. Some countries recruit these boys to train them to compete in women’s sports because it’s lucrative.
Perfect succinct explanation that cuts straight through the BS and the obfuscation.