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A Carnival of Bad Sports Opinions
I'm sure by now everyone has seen the 43-second fight between Khelif and Carini. Full 43 seconds here and the money shot in slow-mo here.
What a ludicrous display. The bigoted opinion most supported by this farce of a fight isn't anything about Khelif's genital arrangement or chromosomes, it is that women's boxing shouldn't be in the olympics if this kind of crybaby shit is going down in there and no one is immediately calling it out. I spent some of my teen years being a weak, wimpy boxes (coincidentally at about that height and weight!) and this is just not how a fight goes when you realize that your opponent is much stronger than you and get scared when you realize you don't have a chance. You shell up and avoid leaving yourself open, you get on your bicycle and run away, you throw tentative tight jabs while keeping your hands up to keep them on the outside, if they get inside you immediately clinch to avoid further punishment. I was a teenager bad at boxing and working out with a lot of grown men much better than me, I was frequently in this position. What you don't do is what Carini did. You don't attack, extend yourself, drop your hands, get tagged, and tap out. I'm not an expert on Olympic boxing, but I've never in my life seen any male fighter, from the level of muay thai smokers up to the pros, surrender like that for no apparent reason. If a male fighter tried that, I would assume it was fixed.
Carini may have been outmatched, but she easily could have fought the round out defensively, run away, survived to the bell, and thrown in the towel between rounds. Minimal shame in that. I'd even be a little less judgmental if she truly took a dive and faked a "phantom punch" and just dropped to the ground to take a KO loss. But to give up not even halfway into the round after taking one punch, when she was clearly fully functional and unhurt? It makes a mockery of boxing. The majority of the felt force of that punch wasn't even relative to the strength of the boxer, it was the near perfect angle given by Carini with her hands low and her chin out.
One of Khelif's former opponents Irish boxer Amy Broadhurst has stepped up in her defense. In one of the funnier twitter exchanges I've ever seen, a random user asks Broadhurst how she would feel if she had to fight Khelif; Broadhurst has beaten Khelif in the ring multiple times in international competition. Here's footage of Khelif looking significantly less manly when someone has the guts to stand and bang. The mick keeps her hands up, gets inside, and punishes Khelif, who clearly gets gassed from the punishment taken from the stronger Broadhurst. This presumably settles the old North Jersey debate over whether Irish or Italians are tougher? Watching these fights I probably drop my opinion on women's boxing, Broadhurst is willing to tank a hit and get inside and go to the body hard, and wins the fight handily.
This is, in my mind, one of the great unsung tragedies of the rise of the trans movement. A woman, born female in a country where homosexuality and gender transition are illegal, raised as a woman, but born tall and with a face and body that is undeniably a bit masculine (especially by global and eurocentric standards), is now under constant suspicion of being secretly male. I have no idea what intersex condition Khelif might or might not have been born with, and no public statement has been made that confirms any testosterone testing. The presumption must be, absent testing, that a girl raised as a girl is a girl. There is probably an inappropriate level of testosterone at which a female competitor should be removed from competition or forced to suppress the level, but we still have yet to see evidence that Khelif is in that category. Further, there is a moral hazard created by normalizing edge cases, in that a competitor will accuse their opponent of gender-violations. Some of the more insane red-state laws allowed any parent of a competitor to require testing of any opponent, which I have to imagine would be abused constantly to try to demoralize one's competition by having a weird judge examine your vagina before the big game.
The takes on the "Defend Women's Sport" side of the debate have been degrading in quality, as TERFs like Rowling have risen in prominence. My problem with the pro-trans "there's no difference" side has long been that not one of them has any knowledge of or enthusiasm for sport. I feel like we're seeing more of that from the TERF side here, with the idea that Khelif is just SO MUCH STRONGER that Carini was forced to quit for her own safety being parotted across Twitter without any evidence. I'm embarrassed for my side of the debate, if this is made a serious test-case for trans bans it is going to harm the cause for reasonable restriction in sport.
At the end of the day, I don't really object to transwomen competing in women's sport, I object to them winning. If they lose, then clearly it was no big deal. It's only if they win that it presents a problem, we got the science wrong. Given that binary, it would benefit the trans movement if they avoided trans women in sport altogether. But alas, here we are, in the carnival of bad sports opinions.
ETA:
https://apnews.com/article/angela-carini-imane-khelif-boxing-63e9dbaa30f1e29196d4162c72c2babf
Poor girl. Doesn't deserve some fat asshole from Pennsylvania going off on her for something she says she regrets.
Like you, I kinda hate the whole conversation around this, but how sure are we of this? Everybody's screaming at each other with high amounts of confidence, and little evidence.
Homosexuality and gender transition are definitely illegal in Algeria. It's not an Iran situation where Persians are weirdly fine with transition as a solution to Homosexuality.
It's not technically impossible that it's a birth certificate identity fraud or Balls-at-twelve situation, but I'm pretty comfortable putting the onus on those looking to disqualify. The assumption should be that someone who was born as female is female.
None of which changes the outcome of the Carini fight.
Irrelevant. Figuring out whether this is a dude or not is a simple question, and should not require going into the legal status of homosexuality or gender transitions in Algeria.
I disagree, any argument that relies on trust in mainstream institutions in politically fraught cases is inherently flawed.
In any case I did not ask about assumptions and what they should be, I asked for evidence. It's downright absurd how both sides are Leroy-Jenkinsing into this, on the basis of absolutely nothing.
What evidence am I supposed to have if we're not trusting institutions? Am I supposed to go grope her? The evidence I offered was the analysis of the fights she was in, if you want to dispute that evidence it is on you to offer evidence that she is intersex.
Just so we're clear, I'm talking about "benefit of the doubt" arguments, like yours above. There should be no assumption of "someone would have noticed by now" or "let's go with the passport / birth ceritificate". This is a very easily testable thing, and she should be made to take such a test (a chromosomal one, for example).
You were putting the onus on the disqualifiers a second ago, are they supposed to grope her?
The results of the fight do not prove anything one way or the other, so I have no idea why you even bring it up.
My claim isn't that this person is either male, female, intersex, or something else entirely, my claim is "we don't know", and my evidence for the fact that we don't know, is that no one can seem to come up with any specific evidence in either direction.
There is a non-invasive test for having a Y chromosome (you just need a DNA sample, and before DNA testing there was a histological test for the presence of multiple X chromosomes which could be done with a cheek swab). The IOC used karyotype testing from 1958 to 1999 - it was abandoned after a small number of false positives of which the famous ones were cases of Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome - CAIS women have XY chromosomes and testicles which produce testosterone, but their body doesn't respond to the testosterone so they develop female external genitalia in utero and female physiology after puberty. Everyone agreed that in principle CAIS women should be allowed to compete as women because they don't have an unfair advantage, and people who opposed sex testing used this as a lever.
But the practical protocol of "include a karyotype test in the standard battery of medical tests that elite athletes undergo, and discretely make further enquiries about XY women" works if you let it. The problem is that you have to adjudicate borderline cases like Caster Semeneya, and in the rare genuine intersex cases people will hate you for good reasons whichever way you rule. If you say "no gatekeeping - anyone AFAB can compete as a woman" then you are giving the competition away to countries willing to modify birth certificates.
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The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If she has overwhelming physical advantages, such that they are unfair to allow in competition, then it would show up in her fight with Broadhurst. It doesn't, Broadhurst bullies her around the ring. I've never heard of a hormone that doesn't work against the Irish. That's the most objective evidence we can have about unfairness in boxing: the boxing!
I guess I see your point that we could all refrain from any discussion on the topic absent personal knowledge, but the standard of proof has to place the onus somewhere, and there's significant moral hazard in a "believe all women accusers" standard. It seems morally obvious to me that the requirement should be on the party crying unfairness to offer evidence of unfairness. Given that the record in the ring is mixed at best and offers no clear support for disqualifying Khelif, additional evidence must be offered on that side.
I think there's limitations here in the sense that if a random average 5'3 male were to play in the WNBA they'd have a noted baseline advantage but they still wouldn't be the best player in the league due to height handicap.
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The way this works is a lot more complex than you're describing, and the question of whether Khelif is a woman is very simple, that's why I asked for evidence, and you're doing everything you can to avoid providing for some reason.
No. If you're going to say something like "Am I supposed to go grope her?" and act outraged at someone asking you for evidence, you have no right to demand it.
My request is simple - make her take a chromosomal test, and publish it. Until then, stop making confident claims about her being a woman.
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Lance didn't win every race, doesn't mean he didn't dope. Card counting doesn't allow you to win every hand, but it still gives you an advantage. All that that Broadhurst's win reveals is the advantage of her opponent isn't insurmountable, not that it doesn't exist or that it isn't unfair.
Basically everybody Lance competed against at the highest level was also doping.
It radically changes the debate to say the advantage is routinely surmounted. It also undermines Carini's testimony that "she's just too strong."
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They're medics in a sports eligibility testing org, they draw her blood and look at her piss in a lab. Yes, it is reasonable to expect them to grope her more so than a poster here.
Ok, and what do they say?
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