Trans women have competed as women in the Olympics once ever and have 0 medals. By the numbers it's a non issue under previous rules (despite the incredible amount of ink spilled over it). People are talking about trans women here but the vast majority of people affected by this change are women who are not trans who have a "disorder of sexual development".
The IOC policy is specifically that athletes need to test negative for the SRY gene to be eligible to compete in the female category. Imane Khelif won gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's boxing event, and has since admitted to having the SRY gene. So it isn't a non-issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026
So it's the headline that's inaccurate. It should read "bars women with the SRY gene" rather than "transgender."
The ruling itself is much more nuanced and covers a lot of situations, including extremely rare disorders of sexual development (DSD) and their variations. The most recent controversies on this topic did not involve transgender athletes, but that's largely unknown or misunderstood by people who only know this topic by headlines and sound bites.
The headline writers are relating it back to the topic which brings the most clicks, which is transgender athletes.
The IOC didn't go on a crusade against transgender athletes specifically. They were refining the rules on sex-based divisions and included a lot of considerations and nuance.
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Not quite. Only male athletes who have male physiological advantage. A small subset of male athletes with specific disorders of sex development that preclude this advantage may still compete as female.
The page you link to doesn’t say that. “As of February 2026, Khelif had not described herself as intersex or as having a DSD.”
That page is at the center of a massive debate on Wikipedia for that specific topic.
Khelif responded to a question about having the SRY gene like this:
> In a February 2026 interview with L'Équipe, Khelif was asked: "To be clear, you have a female phenotype but possess the SRY gene, an indicator of masculinity", to which she responded: "Yes, and it’s natural. I have female hormones."
So she was asked if she had the SRY gene and she responded "Yes". That's also consistent with the previous issues with governing bodies excluding her under their rules, but they are not allowed to share test results for obvious reasons.
The debate now is down to technicalities. Technically the Wikipedia quote is correct in that Khelif has not described herself as intersex or having a DSD in those words but she has now admitted to having an SRY gene, which is the important part in the context of these competition rules.
There is a leaked medical report showing that Khelif has internal testes:
https://www.dw.com/en/algeria-condemns-baseless-imane-khelif...
The Talk page has extensive debates on whether this can be mentioned, and the current "consensus" is that it can't be.
The article is saying that there are fairly credible denials no?
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It’s incorrect to call this a “leaked medical report”. This is a document of unknown origin, widely shared by online grifters.
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The guidelines for trans female athletes for the 2024 Paris Olympics involved transitioning before the age of 12/puberty to be eligible.
There's more info at https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/paris-2024-olym...
Incidentally, many countries/states are working hard to make it impossible to transition that early.
At 12 you simply do not have sufficient capacity to make a good decision on the matter.
That subtilely implies it’s a decision to view oneself as a different gender from what was assigned at birth, but it’s not entirely clear it’s a choice in every case. Edge cases in biology get wild and sex assigned at birth can be a near arbitrary decision. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)
Parents making major medical decisions has a huge precedent in a wide range of procedures with significant risks and consequences. Separating conjoined twins for example.
Which is why puberty blockers are prescribed to transgender children, delaying puberty until later in life when a "good decision" can be made, usually closer to the mid to late teens.
Sadly, it's not possible to "delay puberty" until later in life without permanent consequences. Puberty cannot simply be resumed later. Puberty blockers alter hormones dramatically during critical growth phases. The changes can't be reversed later as if hormones were not altered during critical phases if the person changes their mind.
It is absolutely possible, and it has been done in cisgender children with precocious puberty for decades.
> Puberty blockers alter hormones dramatically during critical growth phases.
Which is generally the goal. It is of course not possible to retroactively have allowed puberty to progress as though the blockers had never been taken, but it is possible to cease the blockers and allow it to resume, again, as is done for cisgender children who take them.
It almost feels like you're arguing definitions.
> It is absolutely possible, and it has been done in cisgender children with precocious puberty for decades
Precocious puberty is a condition in which puberty happens earlier than it's supposed to.
The goal of puberty blockers in precocious puberty is to delay puberty until the correct age and physiological growth window.
Puberty blocker in precocious puberty are also not used to induce hormonal profiles that are different than the body's eventual genetic set point, just to delay them until typical puberty ages.
Delaying puberty until it aligns with the body's expected pubertal ages is completely different. You cannot extrapolate and claim this as evidence that we can safely delay puberty until adulthood, well beyond pubertal age.
> but it is possible to cease the blockers and allow it to resume, again
I don't understand what you're trying to claim, but ceasing the medications does not reverse the changes they made during critical teenage growth windows.
You're making scientific claims, but with the only evidence that I'm aware of contradicting the claim. The usual approach with puberty blockers is prescribing them around the onset of natural puberty and one way or another stopping them around the age of 16. While there are sadly some cases of people who started hormone therapies and later regretted it, I'm aware of no cases of long term health impacts that are attributed to delaying puberty until 16. If you do know of some reports please let me know.
I asked Claude to see if it could find anything and the only reports it could find was some long term bone density issues, but only in trans women and it seemed potentially related to estrogen dosing
It's unclear what age puberty is "supposed to" happen. The age of onset of puberty has gotten substantially younger, even just over the past couple hundred years. If the "correct" age is what we see today, then there's thousands of generations of humans who had puberty naturally occur "too late" yet we're all still here to talk about it. If the "correct" age instead is when it used to occur, then everyone should go on puberty blockers for a few years to avoid this unnatural surge of precocious puberty.
> I don't understand what you're trying to claim, but ceasing the medications does not reverse the changes they made during critical teenage growth windows.
Puberty blockers do not themselves induce changes. They block hormones whose job is to trigger release of sex hormones which would induce changes. For young trans people, access to blockers can save them from a lifetime of dealing with the consequences of a puberty they did not want. Likewise, blockers can save a cisgender child from unwanted consequences of a puberty happening too early.
That doesn't mean "until adulthood", it could just be a few years. But even then, I think blockers are a compromise to appease people who doubt the ability of trans kids to make their own decisions about their bodily autonomy. I think trans people should be able to go on cross-sex hormones basically at will, but certainly after no more than a cursory chat with a therapist.
> It's unclear what age puberty is "supposed to" happen. The age of onset of puberty has gotten substantially younger, even just over the past couple hundred years.
The change over the past couple hundred years is measured on the order of a couple years at most.
This has nothing at all to do with hormonal intervention until adult ages. Once someone reaches adulthood the window for a lot of changes has closed.
> Puberty blockers do not themselves induce changes. They block hormones whose job is to trigger release of sex hormones which would induce changes.
You're either not understanding, or trying to avoid an inconvenient point: Once blocked during critical periods, many of those changes simply cannot happen at a later date.
Puberty cannot be delayed until adulthood and then resumed as if nothing happened.
I feel like you ignored my entire last paragraph. I don't know how to respond to this without just pasting it again.
I read it, but you keep moving the goalposts around so much and introducing irrelevant detours that I can't respond to everything you write, sorry.
I've been consistent about my point, but you've introduced so many other topics including the "maybe it's only for a year or two" point that this is just one big gish gallop
Your point about puberty happening earlier and earlier also contradicts your arguments about how it might only be for a year or two
But surely puberty, not just maturity, is necessary to fully understand the sexual experience and whether your feelings about yourself crystalise differently in the presence of sexual drive. Not to mention, the idea of delaying puberty seems like an invitation for unrelated and/or unforeseen downstream consequences on biological health.
It is not. Precocious sexual drive is possibly amongst the worst things there is for gaining sexual maturity. Also known as 'thinking with your dick'. CSA aside, you can do a ton of damage to your life by just going along with your sexual drive.
I am a virgin at 27 years old. What am I missing about the sexual experience? Is it somehow locked out to me? Or… can I access it intellectually, and reason about it with its ups and downs?
There's a reason the consent age does not start at puberty.
I’m really scratching my head at the response to this one. Do people around here really believe consent should start at puberty?
I’m aware that’s kind of a meme in certain highly religious and/or conservative communities but it’d be shocking if it were a mainstream position.
Yup. Absolutely insane that university "educated" people have been telling us that kids who believe in Santa Claus are capable of making decisions like this.
Have you considered that due to their education and research those people may know more on the subject than you do?
Regret rates for transition remain notoriously low (within 2%) with main reasons for regret stated to be transitioning too late or environmental lack of acceptance or support.
Besides, despite some orgs claiming there is a "transgender trend", we are just not seeing this in the data.
It's hard to impossible to go back. But the suicide rate is high.
It is high because primarily a minority stress of being a transgender person in unaccepting environment:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032...
After reading the above I don't believe they concluded stress of living in a non-accepting world is the primary reason.
30% think about killing themselves and 4%+ try each year is shocking. I think whatever side of the debate you are on we can agree things aren't working out for too many people who go through this process. If this was a drug or vaccine or hair shampoo it would have been pulled off the market.
> people who go through this process
Through what process? This was a study about trans and nonbinary people, not specifically about people who have “transitioned”
I would imagine the rate of depression and similar disorders in trans people is extremely high. To be so unsatisfied with one’s own body that you consider (or go through) major treatment and surgery to change something so fundamental.
That sounds like appeal to authority, it is classified as a fallacy.
Why is it okay for OP to question authority in the subject matter while me pointing out they research it more isn't?
I have also pointed out that regret rates for transition are within 2%.
Demonstrably false. Transgenderism is a cult ideology intentionally inducing trauma to recreate multiple personality disorder in children. They are easier to abuse, and commit suicide.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200523211027/https://www.acped...
In 1979 Johns Hopkins Hospital had banned all sex-change operations permanently at their facilities due to rates of suicide having skyrocketed amongst transgender post reassignment surgery. Suicide is twenty times greater among adults who used cross-sex hormones and underwent gender reassignment surgery.
According to Johns Hopkins Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Paul R. McHugh, “Hopkins stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for amputating normal organs.”
John Hopkins concluded...
Transgenderism is a mental disorder
Sex change is biologically impossible
People who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder
The suicide rate among transgendered people who had the surgery is 20 times higher
*70%-80% of children who expressed transgender feelings, overtime, lost those feelings.
In 2017 Johns Hopkins Hospital has reopened its transgender care clinic as the Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender and Gender Expansive Health.
2022 research into Hospital's archives found the decision to cease operation in 1979 was political, not evidence based:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36191317/
> *70%-80% of children who expressed transgender feelings, overtime, lost those feelings.
This number most likely comes from a study that classified girls as transgender based on behaviors like preference to wear their hair short of wear pants instead of dresses or skirt:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21216800/
Those children did not self-identify as transgender and further more, research could not contact 41% of them for the follow up:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8...
I doubt that is the main reason why transgenderism has been promoted so much in recent years. Most of the ones pushing this ideology appear to fit the profile of autogynephilic males who wish to flaunt their paraphilia in public and gain access to the spaces of unconsenting women while doing so.
How old are kids when they get their foreskin lopped off?
Indeed, that’s a barbaric custom, akin to genital mutilation, that should be reserved for a real medical necessity, never for religious reasons
It is literally a form of genital mutilation. The foreskin is homologous to the hood of the clitoris.
Hey, you aren't supposed to question our glorious metzitzah b'peh!
They do not make that decision, and it is entirely irrelevant to the discussion.
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> At 12 you simply do not have sufficient capacity to make a good decision on the matter.
At 12 kids do not have sufficient capacity to handle any major decision, including any medical procedure.
That does not take away their right to see their best interests represented and defended.
And yet we cannot stop time, and a decision has to be made. It seems natural to involve the child in this decision.
Of course, the next best thing (if a decision can't be made now) after stopping time are puberty blockers. Which are not completely without risks, but this applies to the other two options just as well (if not more so).
You can't not make decisions, and to claim so is to frame choosing one particular option as not-a-decision.
and yet trans children exist and deserve medical care and social acceptance just like anyone else
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Then we should prescribe puberty blockers to everyone until they can make such a decision.
Is it fair to say that they can just compete in the men's division?
From a biological perspective, the women being banned here are not just men and as far as I'm aware cannot realistically compete in the men's division any more than any other woman. Practically these changes bar women athletes with certain medical differences from competing in the Olympics.
I'm not an expert so idk whether that's fair or not but that's what this decision is doing.
To be fair, that could be said of many other medical conditions as well, especially chromosomal abnormalities such as Down Syndrome. Many humans, from the moment they are born and through no fault of their own, have virtually no hope of ever competing in the Olympics let alone winning, just because at such competitive extremes, any significant genetic disadvantage takes you out of the running.
I'm barred from the Olympics, due to my too short legs and flat-footedness, for the high jump event.
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Like most things in biologicy, categorization is a nightmare unless you have a very specific use case in mind. In this case I'm talking about women phenotypically and socially (including self-identity) and especially athletes assigned female at birth. These women are clearly not just "males".
As far as I understand the ontology of human phenotype, it is unchanged by use of cross-sex hormone therapy.
what is your expertise in this area? fox news?
It would not be fair, because the point of having divisions is allow women to compete in a competition that is not dominated by men.
> It would not be fair, because the point of having divisions is allow women to compete in a competition that is not dominated by men.
Really, what it is is being dominated by Testosterone. Also why we ban steroid use, and many other things along the same lines.
I would suggest that most Olympians - both female and male (whatever your definition) likely have a higher than normal amount of that hormone.
I think you're falling for Sticker Swap Fallacy. The goal is to have fair match-ups in sports. Gender and sex are two possible labels to use to assist with this, but they're imperfect enough that we probably ought to not use them as the primary differentiator.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/C7LcpRtrHiKJRoAEp/sticker-sh...
The solution is simple: class every sport like boxing.
Pick a sports-relevant metric and split into divisions. Some sports will naturally fall into gendered divisions, while others will have varying degrees of co-ed competition among competitors of similar ability.
The way out of this is not to pick a better scissor of sex or gender, it's to pick a better scissor of ability.
This "solution" can really only be proposed by someone who has not played sports. This would simply result in women being unable to compete in sports professionally, outside of a couple small niches like ultra long distance swimming and a couple sub-disciplines of gymnastics.
I do not consider that to be a good thing.
It really depends on the way classes are divided. Dismissing the general concept demonstrates a fear of change rather than a legitimate openness to fair play.
No it doesn't, and no it doesn't. Proposing this concept demonstrates a profound ignorance of what competition at the top level of sports actually looks like.
The concept is just bad, unless your goal is to prevent women from being able to make a living playing professional sports.
The thing is, we're already using a scissor for ability, just a poor one with the exact problem you describe - it renders trans women unable to make a living playing professional sports. Throwing one group under the bus for another cannot be avoided so long as sex or gender are part of sports divisions.
Please let go of the need for this.
You are clearly out of your depth. Have you ever competed in high level sports? Please don't speak on things you know nothing about. It takes a lot of gall to tell someone 'please let go of the need for this' when they are pointing this out. I will do no such thing, but I likely will give up trying to educate you.
I won't respond further unless you pick an example sport, and propose how your "scissor for ability" would work, in concrete detail. If you do this, I will be happy to explain why this would result in neither women _nor trans women_ having any chance to make a living as professional athletes.
I have competed in reasonably high level sports, and my wife was US Masters duathlete of the year a few years ago (with me as her coach). I think you're wrong, though it's easy to see why.
Currently, with sex-based categories, a woman can be declared "the best in the world" and most people won't waste much time on the question "yeah, but could she beat the best men?" (granted, some will). They will accept that, e.g. she has the fastest time over 26.2 miles in the world right now, even though a few hundred or a few thousand men worldwide are faster.
If you use performance based metrics to create the categories (the way that road cycling does, for example, though still within gender divisions), that "title" would go away, and likely a woman would only be "the best in the world in division X", other than in (as you noted) some endurance, climbing and gymnastics sports where an elite subset of women could potentially be the best of "top" category.
It isn't completely obvious that this is a negative - how much of a change it would be would depend on a lot of other changes (or lack thereof) in how sport was organized. Certainly if it continued to focus on only the top division, then women would be shut out of most opportunities to be professional. But that's not inherent in the design. I do concede, however, that it is quite a likely outcome of such a category structure.
Let's use the present scissor and the current state of affairs, which at present excludes some women for the sake of others. Which, I'll remind you, comes with all of the problems we currently experience.
Doesn’t Boxing use weight classes?
Weight classes within gender classes. Women would have no chance to compete against men of identical weight, all else equal. Men have more lean mass.
Sounds like lean mass would be the right way to structure divisions then.
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No it is not. They vote for Trump simply because they are assholes.
Considering his party plans for women as such, none of them cares about women, actually
For most of the sports there is no men's division - it's open for everyone.
Almost every single person on Earth is not built of the right genetic stuff to compete with male Olympic athletes, me and you included. Why do we need a carve out for one particular group because of their genetic bad luck?
The Olympics are looked up to by a large range of people and organization that don't actually participate in the Olympics.
This goes beyond just affecting the Olympics, but setting an example for the world to follow and gives other organizations the cover and courage to follow while being able to deflect to simply setting the same standards of the Olympics.
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