It’s estimated that the value of a gold medal is around $1 million in terms of economic impact, considering factors like increased tourism, sponsorship, and national pride.

Your argument is, basically, that a man is better than a woman at sports, just because he’s a man.

No. Women should always have the option to compete against men, (and prove they are better), if they chose to. But just look at world records if you need concrete proof that males have an advantage.

Many sports there is no physical advantage and some (e.g. climbing) women have the advantage.

On the scale youre talking about, the government would be complicit in widescale corruption to rig a single event in an event where there’s no money involved for the winner,

Not a single event, this could be done for multiple events, even without the athlete’s knowledge. For the first decade only a few record keepers need to be in the conspiracy.

All for what reward? A single relatively worthless gold medal?

Why? You should ask cold war Russia.

Search the soviet unions athletic history for examples.

It’s so fucking ridiculous to me that people are suggesting fucking Algeria has a trans athlete. Where next, Saudi Arabia?

Yo mean xxy?

feeling is mutual.

Winding back to my first post. The Olympic committee has to decide. Decisions shouldn’t be adhoc.

Athletes spend time and effort. They shouldn’t have to prepare for a competition where they will be expelled.

Right. I was replying to a comment about trans athletes.

Not really. “the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.” is inadequate. For example this definition doesn’t cover intersex cases or state sponsored fraud.

Umm is the person in the correct weight class for this event? Yes. Okay next!

Do tell us what makes a woman a real woman.

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.

It’s crazy what an impact hormones have!

Thanks for clarifying :)

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.

yeah. what was i thinking. they all must be wrong, you must be right. may the testosterone fuel imane end the sport for good for all women.

To be fair, the Russians making the accusations are also malicious.

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.

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.

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.

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/

This is honestly an argument that I find very weak. I mean absolutely there are plenty of genetic advantages in general in sport. The problem is that not all sports have categories to isolate competitions for certain parameters. Swimming does not, so you could argue that is unfair by default, but that’s what it is right now. Fighting sports generally do have categories, both gender and weight.

If we leave alone gender, if someone had some condition (let’s imagine something that doesn’t exist) that would result in having muscle mass common for a 80Kg, but in a 70Kg body, that person would probably have an unfair advantage in the 70Kg category because weight is a proxy for muscle mass as well.

The only reasonable argument here is that the boxer, even if she has some genetic condition, still tested within the limits for female boxers. That is pretty much it, which means that whatever condition she has (if any), it’s not considered an advantage in the female category according to current standards.

Hold on, her testosterone levels are known? I haven’t come across them. What are they?

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.

So I think that you’re missing that this “controversy” started before this year’s Olympics began. In 2023, a boxing organization (IBA) based out of Russia flagged Khelif as not passing eligibility after she defeated a previously undefeated Russian boxer. Khelif’s disqualification meant the Russian woman kept her undefeated title. I’m lazy & going to copy from Wikipedia here:

The Washington Post stated, “It remains unclear what standards Khelif and Lin Yu Ting failed [in 2023] to lead to the disqualifications”, further writing, “There never has been evidence that […] Khelif […] had XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone.” The IBA did not reveal the testing methodology, stating the “specifics remain confidential”. At the time, Khelif said the ruling meant having “characteristics that mean I can’t box with women”, but said she was the victim of a “big conspiracy” regarding the disqualification. She initially appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but the appeal was terminated since Khelif couldn’t pay the procedural costs. After the appeal, Khelif organised her own independent tests in order to clear her name and return to boxing.

Alright back to my own words here. So the article goes on to say that in July of this year, the IBA said Khelif failed the test, but would not release the specifics about why exactly. The IOC said the ruling was “arbitrary” and “without due process”. That is the background that sets the stage for what happened when the Italian quit this year at the Olympics and everyone subsequently lost their shit.

Here’s the Wikipedia article, though feel free to check out other reputable sites for more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif?wprov=sfla1