I agree it's a gray area, and that makes it difficult to draw the line. But seeing how competitive sports has always "drawn the line" between males and females, it seems entirely appropriate to use biological gender as the marker to draw that line. And what determines biological gender? It's whether your cells carry an XY chromosome pair, or an XX chromosome pair.
In Khelif's case, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that she has DSD, although there is inconclusive evidence to suggest that IBA might have said Khelif has DSD. This is why I said that everything hinges on whether Khelif (or any other female competitor) has DSD or not. If she does not have DSD, then obviously she should be competing in the female category.
But if she has DSD, then even though she has done nothing to "modify" herself to be a female, unfortuantely she does not meet the criteria to compete in the female category if we use biological gender (ie. the natural presences of XX or XY chromosome pairs in body cells) as the deciding factor.
The next step from here becomes even more complicated and messy. How would the IOC determine whether a female competitor has DSD or not? In the case of performance enhancing drugs, the solution is to test every single competitor to indicate there is no bias or discrimination. But if you adopt the same approach to test all female athletes for DSD, it is gonna be an absolute PR disaster in every imaginable way.
All in all, it's just one big giant mess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AzNightmare
But it's such a gray area. Some women are born with more testosterone and that's outside of their control. Where do you draw the line? If a person was born female and never did anything unnatural to her body, then how can she not be considered a female to compete as a female?
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