#it isn't a condition we typically investigate. improving. but still very restricted to São Paulo City. expensive diagnosis and treatment

[envolvenuances]

This mentioned Caster Semeya. I mentioned our Edinanci Silva in another post. A poor brazilian woman born in the dictatorship to whom judo was everything. And who did not know she had inner testicles until sport opened the door to that kind of fancy healthcare for her. Because, as she puts it: "The exams, that I was only able to do once I moved to São Paulo, showed I did somewhat benefit from the production of male hormones, but that in 15 to 20 years it would turn into a cancer. So I said 'What? Let's do it right now!!'. The surgery and hormonal treatment weren't for the Olympics, they were for my health. Sport was giving me an opportunity to discover a matter that, had I stayed living in the interior of Paraíba, I would had never found out".

But the sensationalistic news and the public spectacle around the national club disputes and her nomination for Olympics had already done its damage. The brazilian media had covered her original case with headlines such as "Is it a man or a woman? You decide!". Edinanci did compete in four Olympics, including Atlanta-1996, the last one in which the IOC made women stript before the committee as part of the sex tests. On Beijing-2008, she even caught fourth placement, losing the bronze dispute to the korean judoca. But in all instances, media and the public gave her hell. She had fallen from a woman previously considered a pride and our best shot of a medal in judo, such a traditional and important sport here due to japanese immigration, to someone who was constantly harassed and humiliated anywhere she went. It was an incredibly dehumanising treatment to watch. Her masculine appearance, something quite common to rural women, was always the most obvious factor, although other prejudices contributed. This is an article in which she tells her story, including a bunch of health complications her hormonal condition caused, from a labyrinthitis diagnosis as a teenager that was her reason for starting judo to multiple tendons injuries, and the mental tool from the media exposition and exploitation of her medical history that made her call her family thinking of suicide. She asks precisely that question: "Did I deserve to go through all that?"

Edinaci is also not the only case of an intersex woman who has represented Brazil. I saw someone here ask if there was ever a case of a white athlete who had to undergo similar testings. Éricka Coimbra, brazilian volleyball player, also only discovered she had Morris Syndrome/AIS because of her career and the IOC. In this article she retells a story to support a woman from Togo who was receiving death threats for the same condition.

IOC and the "pink wallet" have been under multiple controversies and academic debates by specialists. Whether or not women with intersex conditions/high testosterone should be allowed to compete is an open debate. But the amount of calling them men or animals...

the whole Khelif thing is such a nightmare, like the IBA has been found to have severe ethical issues that prompted their ban by the IOC and are unrelated to the sex testing issue so perhaps this is not a credible source and a bitter IBA is using this as a pretext to damage the IOC’s reputation like please do some research 😭.

Worst case, the IBA is being responsible about raising safety concerns in the sport (doubtful) and the two boxers in question have XY DSDs, ie: they are technically biological males but are observed and have lived their lives as women and are no doubt not intentionally cheating in the sport. Caster Semeya, another prominent intersex athlete assigned female at birth, has been banned from competition due to her high testosterone levels. It remains to be seem whether or not that decision by world athletics will stand.

But why do I call these people women when they are biologically men? Because these are intersex people who were raised from birth as women. By calling them women I’m not making a statement about biology or indeed the factual definition of “woman” or female. I’m recognizing that for all and intents and purposes, these people are socially women who have a DSD. They not ethically culpable for “violating” women’s spaces and deserve to preserve their dignity. Even if their DSD means they might not be eligible to compete in elite athletics. Or maybe they will, other athletes have bodily advantages that also make them faster. It remains to be seen what will happen.

So how!! HOW!! Did the conversation become about how these women are really trans women? Was it because Trump lied about them? Was it because JKR supported an assertion from an extremely dubious organization and called a woman with a potential DSD competing “male violence”. Or was it because thousands of women have been living in an echo chamber around trans issues that encourages invasive “transvestigations” and a destructive sense of personal persecution. Controversy around female sex at the Olympics is actually not a product of the trans issue and is in fact much older. The truth is, it’s a gray area around whether or not it’s ethical to allow women or biological men who outwardly appear as women with totally naturally occurring DSDs to compete. Biological difference among elite athletes is common and natural sex variation is a difference where the science is not always settled. Michael Phelps, for example, has several biological abnormalities that make him a better swimmer. No popular movement has been launched to bar him from competition.

Please take a breath and get out of the GC echo chamber, if you seriously consider yourself a radical feminist and an ally to intersex people, women and LGBT people, this is the wrong path to go down and the wrong issue to stake your reputations on. Most importantly, Carini, Yu-Ting and Khelif do not deserve to become symbolic faces of a debate they have nothing to do with. Khelif in particular is very vulnerable in a country, which is hostile to gender nonconformity/sexual difference, the public outcry could have negative repercussions for her at home.