chromosome based boxing for females

real_aurgathor

Partly because of some controversies in the recent past, World Boxing announced mandatory chromosome based sex testing for all female athletes.

“The introduction of mandatory testing will be part of a new policy on ‘Sex, Age and Weight’ to ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a competitive level playing field for men and women,” World Boxing wrote in a statement. The fighters’ national federations will be responsible for administering the tests and providing the results to World Boxing.

https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/boxing/olympic-boxing-champ-imane-khelif-must-undergo-genetic-sex-screening-f-rcna210055

Apparently, such testing was happening before but it was abandoned at the end of the 20th century.

Chromosome testing was common in Olympic sports during the 20th century, but was largely abandoned in the 1990s because of numerous ambiguities that couldn’t be easily resolved by the tests, collectively known as differences in sex development (DSD).

Somewhat-Reticent

Each human is unique, thus “competitive level playing field” cannot exist.

px_eliezer_

Just as one example…

Swyer Syndrome (XY Gonadal Dysgenesis)
People with this intersex condition have XY (male) chromosomes and functional female genitalia.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/swyer-syndrome

CONTRARY to some dogmatic elected officials, SOMETIMES GENDER IS MESSY.

real_aurgathor

“Uniqueness” is totally irrelevant in this respects. While some important details can only be inferred from the article, looks to me they are primarily looking for Y chromosomes, and people who have Y chromosomes may not be allowed to compete as females.

There are a number of syndromes where someone who clearly looked female at birth has XY chromosomes – those are the easy cases because of differences in some internal organs and the lack of menstruation.

However, there are some people with mosaic DNA, and that’s where things can get *exceedingly* tricky.

Context: We report herein a remarkable family in which the mother of a woman with 46,XY complete gonadal dysgenesis was found to have a 46,XY karyotype in peripheral lymphocytes, mosaicism in cultured skin fibroblasts (80% 46,XY and 20% 45,X) and a predominantly 46,XY karyotype in the ovary (93% 46,XY and 6% 45,X).

Patients: A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2190741/

I wonder what the remaining 1% was since 93% + 6% = 99%; or they just don’t know that:
1) percentages normally should add up to 100% (duh!!)
2) how to round numbers

HELLFIRE

px_eliezer_ CONTRARY to some dogmatic elected officials, SOMETIMES GENDER IS MESSY.

+1, and I’ll leave it at that…

Regards

WalterDnes

px_eliezer_ CONTRARY to some dogmatic elected officials, SOMETIMES GENDER IS MESSY.

That is true for a small percentage of people. I think that the real target of testing is men who’ve gone through puberty as boys, and then transitioned to “womanhood”. Going through puberty gives men more muscle mass and endurance, and an unfair advantage over XX females.

Example 1) Lia Thomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas Penn State swimmer. In 2018-2019 season as a man ranked…

554th in 200 freestyle
65th in 500 freestyle
32nd in 1650 freestyle

In 2021-2022 as a woman ranked…

5th in 200 freestyle
1st in 500 freestyle
8th in 1650 freestyle

Example 2) Tennis “Battle of the Sexes”. In 1998 Venus and Serena Williams were at their peak and claimed that they could beat any male player ranked outside the world’s top 200. Karsten Brasch, who was ranked 203rd on the men’s tour at that time, took up the challenge. He defeated Serena Williams 6-1 and immediately followed up with a 6-2 victory over Venus Williams.

Example 3) In 2023 Wrexham AFC (a Welsh men’s soccer team) obliterated a US women’s team 12-0 https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-k-mens-soccer-team-crushes-u-s-womens-players/

For strictly skill competitions like chess or archery or rifle target-shooting having men compete against women is OK. But where muscle and endurance count, separate competitions are necessary.

real_aurgathor

WalterDnes I think that the real target of testing is men who’ve gone through puberty as boys, and then transitioned to “womanhood”.

Usually there is no need for complicated testing to discover those. The main target of these are athletes who were classified and then raised as females in spite of having a proper 46,XY. One possible cause is androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) which affects about 1 in 20,000 to 64,000 XY (karyotypically male) births, and a subset of that (CAIS) will look female.

WalterDnes But where muscle and endurance count, separate competitions are necessary.

Actually, even though women are well behind with respect to raw power and muscle mass, their endurance is comparable or even better than men’s, according to many studies.

While men and women vary greatly in size and shape, women tend to have better muscle endurance than men. According to a 2010 study published in Exercise and Sports Science Reviews, women generally take longer to fatigue. The differences aren’t monumental, but they may explain why men and women gravitate towards different types of exercise.

https://www.sportsrec.com/5220003/muscular-endurance-in-men-vs-women
https://cathe.com/gender-differences-exercise-endurance/

Dks01

Sports insisting on binary gender definitions are doomed to failure. Or are stuck in the 19th century.

WalterDnes

Dks01 And any athletic sport that doesn’t draw a line in the sand is doomed to be dominated by “XY people”. The entire point behind “women’s sports” is to be a “level playing field” for XX women. You would basically be shutting half the population, i.e. XX women, out of competitive sports if you let former men into women’s leagues.

Men’s boxing has 17 weight classes for a reason https://www.britannica.com/sports/boxing/Weight-divisions If a mediocre heavyweight boxer “self-identified as lightweight” and was allowed in against lightweights, his ranking would probably jump upwards similarly to how Lia Thomas’ ranking jumped after switching from competing against men to competing against women.

More comparisons…

The women’s world record time for 100 metre dash is 10.49 sec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_100_metres_world_record_progression
The “Entry Standard” for men to compete in the 100 metre dash is 10.00 sec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_2024_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Qualification

That’s right. Someone who tied the women’s world record wouldn’t even make the cut to get on the men’s team! This is just one example. I could go on and on, but people would get upset about “a wall of text”.

Dks01

WalterDnes Sports are completely free to set their standards. At the same time, by acting in an arbitrary and exclusive manner, they run risks. NASCAR, for example, knows this very well. Most recently they banned the “Hail Melon” wall riding move (https://www.espn.com/racing/story/_/id/35564905/nascar-bans-chastain-hail-melon-move-2023-changes), confederate flags and the Chrysler 426 Hemi and the Ford SOHC engines (https://www.hotrod.com/features/nascar-bans-426-hemi-sohc-ford-launch-wild-1965-racing-season) in 1965. Biology-based rules are no different.

Donoreo

My take: overall this is sports. Games. Nothing important, really.

Somewhat-Reticent

Dks01 insisting on binary gender definitions

May be primarily economic - it is cheaper to provide group facilities.
Few schools want to provide individual locker rooms or bathrooms.

( Add some mental laziness - the seductive appeal of simplistic notions )

Dks01

Somewhat-Reticent And a “sense” of competition. And that makes money.

HELLFIRE

Dks01 Sports are completely free to set their standards. At the same time, by acting in an arbitrary and exclusive manner, they run risks.

+1 to this. Does competitive chess or poker split into “male” and “female?” Last I checked, what plumbing between the legs or chromosomes inside cells didn’t matter who won in either case.

My Cynical / Sarcastic 00000010bits

Regards

InternetJeff

HELLFIRE Does competitive chess or poker split into “male” and “female?”

I believe the topic is about athletic competition, specifically boxing.

If any man can arbitrarily identify as female and compete in various female athletic competitions (such as boxing), so be it. But we should not later pretend to be surprised when biological women are shut out of top rankings.

The vast majority of the current debate is about men who stated out as clearly (physically and genetically) men, and not the tiny percentage with genetic traits that diverge from the majority.

Also interesting is the asymmetry of this phenomenon. There does not appear to be the same amount of females identifying as men seeking to compete in men’s athletic competitions. Curious.

InternetJeff

real_aurgathor Actually, even though women are well behind with respect to raw power and muscle mass, their endurance is comparable or even better than men’s, according to many studies.

Running would seem to be a good real-world proxy for endurance. All the real-world records in running as described below go to males.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8764368/

ugly95

InternetJeff If any man can arbitrarily identify as female and compete in various female athletic competitions (such as boxing), so be it. But we should not later pretend to be surprised when biological women are shut out of top rankings.

The vast majority of the current debate is about men who stated out as clearly (physically and genetically) men, and not the tiny percentage with genetic traits that diverge from the majority.

I think this comment sums up the moral panic of this topic.

Look at the language being used. “Any man can arbitrarily identify as female and compete”. “Biological women are shut out of top rankings”.

Is the implication here that a bunch of dudes are just running around pretending they are women so that they can win athletic competitions? Like I got cut from a mens hockey team so I’ll decide to be a woman so I can make it in the grand stage that is competitive women’s hockey?

These aren’t people gaming the system for a competitive advantage. At least not the way that the athletes that have lost against trans athletes have gamed the system for clout on the influencer circuit.

And if you’re going to claim that the real issue isn’t the “tiny percentage” with genetic trants that diverge from the majority, then you might want to consider the tiny percentage of competitions that are being dominated by those that started out clearly as men.

real_aurgathor

HELLFIRE Does competitive chess or poker split into “male” and “female?” Last I checked, what plumbing between the legs or chromosomes inside cells didn’t matter who won in either case.

I do not know anything about competitive poker, but in chess there are a separate female tournaments and a championship only for females. However, females are usually allowed to play in general tournaments, although the overwhelming majority of players are male. On the other hand, males are not allowed to play in female tournaments. Even though chess is not a physical games, on average, males are noticeably better than females, though by not nearly as much as in physical sports. So the Y chromosome somehow provides some mental advantage, too.

Judit Polgár is the only woman to have been a serious candidate for the World Chess Championship, in which she participated in 2005; she had previously participated in large, 100-player-plus knockout tournaments for the world championship. She is also the only woman to have surpassed 2700 Elo, reaching a peak world ranking of No. 8 in 2004 and peak rating of 2735 in 2005. She is the only woman to be ranked in the top ten of all chess players, first reaching that ranking in 1996. She was the No. 1 rated woman in the world from January 1989 until her retirement on 13 August 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

WalterDnes

real_aurgathor Even though chess is not a physical games, on average, males are noticeably better than females, though by not nearly as much as in physical sports. So the Y chromosome somehow provides some mental advantage, too.

I’m not sure about that. Social environment seems to play a role. According to a research paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0147596720300688 for every 100 males at “Candidate Master” rank, the number of females at “Candidate Master” rank in different countries are…

Vietnam 48
Georgia 47
China 38
US (and japan) 4
France (and Sweden) 3
Denmark (and Finland) 2

In the west, girls/women who take up chess are considered weird geeks.

HooRU

I don’t think there are hard and fast rules that can be made.

I have friends that are trans but they’ve never brought up this issue. I’ve learned that there aren’t just xx an xy peoples.

Wherever the rule is based upon kindness, that’s where I’m at.