Transgender, Intersex, and the Olympics

Great article. I would say a large portion of the people that I knew lambasted IOC for being woke an all kind of crazy stuff without really understanding the situation. Furthermore, intersex can also have a mix of chromosomes. So while everyone wants to seem righteous in defining what a woman and a man are in all cases, there is a sliver where those definitions don't hold up at all. The IOC faced a tough decision in this case. I also don't have a clear idea what they should do in these types of cases. What was terrible were the number of Christians that called these two individuals disgusting in public forums.

I am glad that this issue is being addressed. The scripture even addresses that some are made eunuchs from birth (I do not mean to suggest that all the people with unclear sexual identity are simply eunuchs- just that Jesus acknowledged such people in Matthew 19). I warned years ago that all this focus on "choosing" gender really minimizes the real struggles that many people are going through. I fear that people on both ends of the transgender debate have harmed such people by lumping them into the same grouping as those with mental, emotional, and trendy motivations.

Of the intersex conditions, Wikipedia lists about 30, and the vast majority appear to be things where "you are definitely not going to the Olympics with either sex with that." The exception I know if is five-alpha reductase 2 deficiency, which is likely what the boxers had, what the 800m winners in 2016 had, and probably a few more things. It appears to be--cue "dueling banjos"--a recessive gene with XY chromosomes brought on by inbreeding. Some societies actually have names for it, indicating that more people than usual are getting it.

But if we assume that maybe one in a hundred thousand males have it, and that it's found in places with high inbreeding (low income, low sports availability), we would guess that maybe 500 people of "Olympic age" would have it and would have access to sporting activities. So if we get a few athletes in each Olympics with this disorder (and a few more like Caster Semenya and such rejected), we would guess that the Olympic level, we're selecting for about a two standard deviation advantage vs. the 5-a R2D mean.

If that's the case, what we have is that XY 5A-R2D performs at the level of top high school males, which means that it may be that the mean for XY 5A-R2D is approximately the same for males, and we're seeing two sigma because there aren't enough people with this condition to get the three sigma (D1 athlete) and four sigma (Olympic male athlete) examples.

It's irritating to women in the track & swimming events simply because they'll tend to lose--but it's not like Lia Thomas in the women's locker room. What would keep me up at night if I were an official in any of the combat sports would be the possibility that every once in a while, an XY 5A R2D athlete would come in to the sport not like Imane Khelif, but like Canelo Alvarez, and you would be likely to get fatalities.

More or less, I'm firmly in the "do the cheek swab if you want to compete with the women" camp because first of all, it appears XY-5A-R2D have an advantage, the the fans are paying to see women compete. Second of all, in sports where there is contact or combat, it will eventually result in serious injuries or fatalities.

is whether women should be boxing at all.

I can see that their is a need to decide about the controversial participants, but really... should women's boxing be allowed?

Second of all, in sports where there is contact or combat, it will eventually result in serious injuries or fatalities.

Although the answers are not always easy, shouldn't we try to show compassion to as many people as possible? Although we can sympathize with athletes who have this condition rather than vilifying them, we should also recognize the danger that other athletes could face.

Don, having read the autobiography of Dr. Bennett Omalu, the gentleman who discovered CTE in football players, it's hard for me to watch a LOT of combat and collision sports these days, regardless of the sex of the participants. You get one brain, that's it, and I don't want anybody's needlessly damaged.

And I should note that my calculations are a little bit rough; nobody has actually done the proverbial double blind study of XY 5a-R2D vs. XX of the same age, etc.. But the prevalence of this in the Olympics recently suggests that the distribution of athletic ability in this demographic is a lot closer to that of men than women. Ignoring this will not only cause women to lose, but get hurt.