Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is a woman, sorta.
(media.conspiracies.win)
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The discussion online about this issue is borderline retarded. Women's rights, trans rights, yadda yadda yadda. The actual situation is a more interesting.
Imane Khelif was born a girl. She's not trans. Hormone replacement therapy and gender affirming care just isn't a thing in Algeria.
This isn't a situation like the college swimmer Lia Thomas who decided to change from male to female and compete against other women..
Now here is the interesting part: The olympic committee bases athlete eligibility on what gender their passport says and doesn't do genetic testing.
Another committee, the IBA tested her last year. She was disqualified from that tournament because it was believed the tests showed she was genetically male, but the IBA didn't release the results.
Here's the most likely situation:
She was born a girl, has a female anatomy, but also has something like Swyer Syndrome which gives her presenting female features, and male XY chromosomes. As she has grown, she didn't go through normal female puberty but instead exhibited more masculine development including more muscle and testosterone, etc. My guess is she doesn't have periods and is infertile. She's essentially a dude in a female body.
So, like 90% of the athletes in the olympics, she's a genetic freak. I mean Labron and Usain Bolt are both genetic freaks in their own right. Except we have a division for her type of genetic freakiness, it's called the male division.
If true, that would make her/him intersex. Not a tranny but not a female. This is not the same as 90% of althetes like you said. It would instead make her genetically abnormal. Most athletes may present more masculine than the average population but they aren't this kind of Abnormal.
So there are more genders than male and female?
It's important to understand this through the concept of "the exception that proves the rule." For instance, when a person is born with an extra arm or without a leg, we don't conclude that humans have anywhere from 0 to 5 arms and legs. Instead, we recognize these conditions as anomalies, deviations from the typical human anatomy due to genetic or developmental issues.
Similarly, intersex individuals are not evidence of a new sex category. Rather, they are either biologically male or female with variations that arise from genetic or developmental anomalies. These variations don't constitute new sexes but rather reflect atypical presentations of the two existing sexes. Just as having an atypical number of limbs is a medical condition, intersex variations are understood within the context of medical and genetic anomalies, not as indicators of additional sexes.
"Exception that proves the rule" isn't a law of nature. You cannot use it in a serious argument.
So, are intersex individuals men, women, both or neither?
Please give a clear answer instead of this noncommittal wall of text.
No, there are genetic mutation leading to abnormalities in males and females.
So, is this a genetically abnormal woman then?
My point was that many (not all) olympians while not intersex, are genetically special. There are not many humans that can run a top speed of 27.8mph like Usain Bolt or swim the 200m butterfly in 1:54 like Michael Phelps no matter how hard they practiced and trained.
I understand that Olympic athletes both lifted genetically and have worked hard enough to extend their genetic gifts.