To avoid derailing the Olympics thread…

[Currywurst and Chips]

Me seeing a gender row at the Olympics and using it as a perfect opportunity to summon Keef back to the board

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

I saw the tw*t Signal in the sky and had to return

[Mick McQuaid]

If it makes it clearer, what I’m saying there is that 5-ARD is the only known condition that would result in these things happening:

1: a sincere belief that the child is female based on observation of genitals at birth
2: masculinisation of the body according to a normal male pathway at puberty
3: being on the radar of sporting bodies actively looking for athletes with that condition
4: failing an eligibility test on the grounds of XY chromosomes and testosterone in the male range

The most likely thing that would give me pause would be if there was a serious suspicion that the test results were faked or corrupt.

I’d instantly change my opinion if a second eligibility test was done which did not find that Khelife has XY chromosomes, or if someone pointed me in the direction of a condition other than 5-ARD that would result in the failure of the eligibility test while also having met point 1 and 2 above

Again, what qualification do you have to make that opening assertion other than what you have read on blogs that align with your views? It's no better than chem trail spotters parroting what they heard on YouTube as science.

Given that you seem to accept the IBA is absolutely discredited as an organisation, your view that she has 'clearly gone through male puberty' is based on your judgement of her appearance and what a female should look like. I mentioned Serena Williams as she faced the same questions when she was simply too good and too strong for her opponents.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

1: What exactly are you taking issue with in my assertion that it seems that Khelif was brought up under the sincere assumption that Khelif was female?


2: I don’t accept that the IBA’s test results are discredited - what I accept is that it is understandable that due to the issues around them as an organisation, they aren’t sufficient to close the case. My position is that the existing results are sufficient to require further investigation by a trusted body. Pretending to “not know” that Khelif has failed an eligibility test and that because of the choice to disregard the IBA’s eligibility criteria there is no case to answer, is an obviously ludicrous position to take on the question of eligibility. Unless of course, your position is “it’s fine anyway”. I understand that that’s your position, so you should probably just own that, because you are grasping at straws here.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

My questions to you MM are these:

1: is it your position that regardless of any condition Khelif may or may not have, and regardless of Khelif’s sex, you believe that the right for Khelif to be included in the female category should not be in doubt?

2: do you accept that if there is a meaningful female category, a level of screening for sex is legitimate to ensure male advantage does not occur in the female category?

[Mick McQuaid]

It was your assertion that she must be diagnosed with 5-ard and there is no other known medical condition that could account for the outcome of the completely unspecified tests the IBA said they carried out.

I have no idea whether that is the case but I know for f*cking sure you don't either. You are relaying things you have no real understanding of as facts. That is my issue.

[Mick McQuaid]

My questions to you MM are these:

1: is it your position that regardless of any condition Khelif may or may not have, and regardless of Khelif’s sex, you believe that the right for Khelif to be included in the female category should not be in doubt?

2: do you accept that if there is a meaningful female category, a level of screening for sex is legitimate to ensure male advantage does not occur in the female category?

1.No

2.Yes

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

It was your assertion that she must be diagnosed with 5-ard and there is no other known medical condition that could account for the outcome of the completely unspecified tests the IBA said they carried out.

I have no idea whether that is the case but I know for f*cking sure you don't either. You are relaying things you have no real understanding of as facts. That is my issue.

I haven’t asserted that Khelif has been diagnosed with 5-ARD. I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that that’s the condition Khelif has, I would speculate that it’s unlikely that a diagnosis has been sought, because it wouldn’t be in anyone’s interests to gain such a diagnosis.
I’d maybe say that a diagnosis is lmore likely if male puberty kicked in before Khelif was on the radar of an athletics body, less likely if people around Khelif were already seeing Khelif as a potential elite athlete

You have no idea whether it’s the case because you don’t know what 5-ARD is and because you are working on tje basis that you have no right to speculate on it.

I am not stating it as fact, I am stating it as the only condition that would match up with what is undisputed about Khelif. I am not relying on things “I have no understanding of” - I am following the evidence, and I have laid out what is by far the most likely explanation for this set of circumstances, as well as made it clear what could come out that would make something else more likely.

If you don’t have a substantive engagement with something I’ve asserted (“I don’t know and I bet you don’t either” isn’t substantive) then all you are providing is snark, on the basis that you fundamentally disagree with my opinion on anything that relates, even tangentially, to the trans issue. Really you should apologise for the baseless suggestion that I would question the sex of a black woman when there’s no suggestion at all that I would question the sex of anyone where there wasn’t a legitimate reason for doing so. You won’t do so, because (as with your early doors defence of puberty blockers and your dismissal of boarders other than me who raised concerns) your position is based on a certainty that you’ve achieved through vibes alone.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

My questions to you MM are these:

1: is it your position that regardless of any condition Khelif may or may not have, and regardless of Khelif’s sex, you believe that the right for Khelif to be included in the female category should not be in doubt?

2: do you accept that if there is a meaningful female category, a level of screening for sex is legitimate to ensure male advantage does not occur in the female category?

1.No

2.Yes

Cool. So feel free to tell me what you disagree with here:

1: the IOC’s criteria of “check passport” is not fit for purpose
2: there is legitimate doubt over Khelif’s sex because of failing an eligibility test elsewhere, and as a result a need for further investigation to determine eligibility in the female category
3: policies need to be introduced to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future, for the safety and dignity of athletes in Khelif’s position AND athletes who want the female category to be free of male advantage

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

For the record, I haven’t reached my view that Khelif was sincerely believed to be a girl in childhood from “reading blogs”, and certainly not from reading blogs I agree with.

It actually stems more from steelmanning the baseless assertions from activists that “Khelif was born a girl, has always lived as a girl, and is female”

Other factors in my take are that there are lots of photos of Khelif as a child that demonstrate that Khelif was indeed raised under the assumption of being a girl, and that, considering trans identity is illegal in Algeria, it’s very unlikely that Khelif’s parents affirmed such an identity as stated by a male child.

I would instantly revise my opinion of this from “sincerely believe to be a girl” to “correctly observed as female” if there was credible information that there is a specific problem with the eligibility tests that were carried out.

However it does not appear that the results of the eligibility test are disputed. So I am confident that Khelif has XY chromosomes and a DSD that exclusively affects male people, and provided the most likely one. And, again, my rationale is there to be questioned. The strongest line of questioning is “but the IBA is discredited” - and that argument is why I’m clear that everything I claim is based on the idea that the results are legitimate, but that I would welcome a test from an organisation that is trusted

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

(Also, I would welcome robust analysis from any source that contradicts my take)

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

It was your assertion that she must be diagnosed with 5-ard and there is no other known medical condition that could account for the outcome of the completely unspecified tests the IBA said they carried out.

The tests aren’t unspecified.
The statement didn’t clarify the grounds on which Khelif failed the eligibility test - nor should it, it’d be a gross breach of privacy to publicly do so; “failed to meet the eligibility criteria” is sufficient. Here’s the relevant part of the statement.

“On 24 March 2023, IBA disqualified athletes Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif from the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships New Delhi 2023. This disqualification was a result of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA Regulations. This decision, made after a meticulous review, was extremely important and necessary to uphold the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition.”

Their eligibility criteria is freely available.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Your problem Mick, is that in your occasional contributions to debate on these matters, is that you have made an error in assuming that on any subject where you believe yourself to be self evidently right, you’ve seen “doing research” as a euphemism for “going down rabbit holes to affirm existing prejudices”

With respect, that’s why you’ve ended up demonstrably wrong on virtually every aspect of this debate into which you’ve had an opinion.

“Research” is only a bad thing if in doing so you’re attempting to reinforce your existing beliefs; my approach to the trans debate, ever since I realised that going to bat for Frank Maloney was ludicrous, was to scrutinise arguments for weakness, and go where the stronger arguments are.
(For what it’s worth it’s why I believe 95% of the gender critical movement is worse than trans activism on every measure aside from “knowing that sex exists and matters”)

You are no doubt coming from a well meaning place, but it’s fair to say that actually all you’ve done is parrot the nonsense that Mermaids and latter day stonewall, and ridiculous comedians with pronouns in bios have presented as self evidently ethical. I don’t think you can honestly say you’ve ever looked carefully at how justified your position is.

And that’s also fine - you don’t HAVE to be invested in the subject: but you should maybe be a bit more wary before assuming that you know your stuff or are able to credibly take apart what I articulate here. Especially since, at absolute worst, I’ve addressed speculation based on nothing at all except for rumour, with a considered, thoughtful take based on a coherent understanding of the big picture around this.
I don’t see you criticising those who said “she’s a girl and was born one!” which is highly speculative and in direct contradiction of what isn’t in dispute.

[Mick McQuaid]

I haven't mentioned anything about trans rights here, you are the only one doing that.

My original comment about being so far down the rabbit hole is based on you arguing in exactly the same manner as a conspiracy theorist, dropping in spurious 'scientific' facts and pointing out how much time you have spent understanding the subject. Anyone who disagrees with you just hasn't got the in depth knowledge you have. You define yourself by your expertise on the subject.

You can't see this because you are so deep in it, but it is absolutely ridiculous for you to state, as if it is your own considered opinion, that you have spotted the signs of a particular rare genetic disorder in someone, with the only caveat that it would have to be something previously unknown to medical science if you're wrong.

Maybe I'm mistaken and you do actually spend your free time down at King's where leading geneticists come to hang on your every word, but I think it's more likely you read about DSD's on a blog, and a blog that already aligns with you views. Almost certainly written by someone who has done their best to read a scientific paper but has done so with aim of proving the point they wish to make.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

There’s nothing “spurious” about anything I’ve said, and the only reason I claim more knowledge than you is that you haven’t put forward a substantive counterpoint to anything I’ve said.
I’ve set out what I think, why I think it, what the weakest part of my position is, as well as what I’d do if it turned out that the weakest part of my position turned out to be incorrect.

Your position remains a shrug and a sneer.

I haven’t claimed to have “spotted the signs” of a rare genetic disorder. What I have done is read a range of sources, with a range of biases, and looked for credible claims and good arguments that stand up to scrutiny.

I maintain that as a result, what I’ve argued here stands up to scrutiny. You can’t scrutinise my position, so you instead scrutinise my motives for doing so, and unsurprisingly conclude that they must be a result of conspiracy theorising.

It’s unconvincing, and dishonest stuff. And your dishonesty became clear to me when your initial stridency on the adjacent topic - I remember your advocating for puberty blockers and dismissing the concerns of others out of hand - evolved into sub-Mat R***r evasiveness when it turned out that you backed the wrong horse.


In short, what characterises conspiracy theorising is resistance to evidence based arguments. Point me to an evidence based argument against my position and I’ll engage with it.
Or snark about it. It’s actually quite bizarre to see someone literally parroting every trans activism trope, then not actually have enough knowledge to deal with the obvious counters, while claiming that it’s someone else who isn’t open to different opinion.

I have no doubt that you haven’t moved your position an inch on this though, nor will you.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Tweet thread that pretty much encapsulates my position as stated here



Interested to hear any analysis as to how this guy’s thread (or agreement with it) indicates conspiracy theorising (as opposed to piecing together legitimate inference from what’s actually known)

[Rich Tea Wellin]

Me seeing a gender row at the Olympics and using it as a perfect opportunity to summon Keef back to the board

When done Michael, he’s 43.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

And here, the IOC, after making a mess of this, all but confirms that Khelif has a DSD



Examines back of nails…

So what we know is:
1: the IBA president has stated that Khelif has XY chromosomes
2: the masculinisation that Khelif clearly underwent rules out the DSDs plucked out of the air to support claims that Khelif is female
3: the IOC has conceded that it was wrong to suggest that this is not a DSD issue.


I mean, my position isn’t quite “chemtrails only melt steel beams if the Jews did the architecture”, is it?

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Me seeing a gender row at the Olympics and using it as a perfect opportunity to summon Keef back to the board

When done Michael, he’s 43.

In comparison with PJ’s tap in, that was a worldy worthy of Michael himself. You even took a year off my age. Cheers mate

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Khelif wins another match against a female boxer, and will now medal in the female category.

I almost hope he wins, because the tedious “he didn’t win gold therefore where’s the male advantage?” takes will be unbearably tedious

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

incredible stuff. Best not speculate about what’s actually happening, the IOC clearly have this all sussed

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/20 ... lown-cart/

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Poor old Nicola Adams OBE, went down the same conspiracy rabbit hole I did
Hopefully at some point someone will intervene and bring both of us back to sanity and reason where it’s OK for men to punch women in the face

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Further to this; this article encapsulates a lot of what’s wrong with (red flag for Mick!!) mainstream coverage.

This purports to be a fact check, but is nothing of the sort. It contains genuine errors, misrepresentation, disregard of evidence, misleading language and omission of relevant facts.
This is demonstrable.

[CEB2ElectricBoogaloo]

Ahem

https://www.3wiresports.com/articles/20 ... aneccoqueq

[Currywurst and Chips]

Poor old Nicola Adams OBE, went down the same conspiracy rabbit hole I did
Hopefully at some point someone will intervene and bring both of us back to sanity and reason where it’s OK for men to punch women in the face

Is that Dr Nicola Adams?

No? Well shahtup!!