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.
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.
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.
Just the Algerian government harrumphing. As GP says, Khelif herself has basically admitted to having the SRY gene in interviews, and has been notably tight-lipped about what medical tests caused her to be disqualified from women's boxing in the IBA.
Has Khelif published it? Otherwise, I don't think anyone's very personal information about their body should be on HN (or anywhere). If it doesn't violate a guideline, it should.
I find the Khelif debacle incredibly damning for anti-trans militants since she apparently was born as a woman and has this weird thing where she has male characteristics. The anti-trans hysteria at that point in time was super off-putting for me since she did nothing wrong but merely existed. Before this I was like... meh, have sex separated sports and be done with it, but this made me re-evaluate my views in sex in that it's much more fluid than I gave it credit for. And this, by "nature", without human intervention.
I don't see anyone ever going "oh, Michael Phelps has unfair advantages because of this crazy gene". Then, it's fair and square, just better genes life's not fair. No, suddenly the care now, eeeeveryone cares now about woman's sports because someone with a rare genetic disorder showed up in the spot light. Utterly bizzare for me.
You need to read up about XY 5-ARD (the condition Caster Semenya has and Khelif surely has). Being XY with active SRY means you're male. Khelif has admitted having the SRY gene (in an interview with L'Equipe). Males have very significant advantages (50% plus) in power sports such as weightlifting and, yes, boxing.
Sex isn't "more fluid". It's entirely binary, but DSDs (differences of sexual development) can make appearances deceptive - so an XY male can be wrongly recorded as female at birth, especially in countries with inexperienced medics and midwives.
Phelps's records have all been broken. By other males, of course - no female is getting close to his numbers. That's male advantage in action.
Sex is “entirely binary”, except for the ways that it’s not, which you’re going to squeeze into your binary definitions? Scientists update their models and definitions when reality shows itself to be more complex than initially thought. In terms of reproduction, clearly there is quite a bit of a sex binary going on. It’s not nothing. But it’s certainly not everything either.
Khelif has an uterus, breasts and any other characteristics associated with women. Conservatives calling her a man is pure insanity and just shows how limited their perspectives are and how confused they are about the subject.
Used to be that they'd ask in bad faith "what is a woman?" to trans advocates, but maybe it was a genuine question? Because they don't look like they could recognize one if they ever saw one.
Anti-transgender stance in sports doesn't mean anyone is doing something wrong, it's just that it's considered unfair to female women, and this includes various other conditions such as Khelif's.
As far as your other argument it seems to suggest doing away with the whole women's sports as separate.
> Anti-transgender stance in sports doesn't mean anyone is doing something wrong, it's just that it's considered unfair to female women, and this includes various other conditions such as Khelif's.
Right, but that's not what's going on here, it's used as a platform for bigotry under the pretense of protecting women. It's not only... we need clear ground rules for this thing in order to have a level playing field, it's "Look what the trans are doing! Oh, the decadence in humanity!"
I'm not saying about doing away with woman's sports, sure, do the separation n xy chromozomes if we converge on this. I'm saying that it seems that the arguments of anit-trans activists are inconsistent and, for me, personally, a dude that doesn't really care about these things, off putting.
I don't think it was ever "look at what the trans are doing" but much rather "look what these evil bastards in sports bodies are doing". Some think these evil bastards are part of a larger plot to ruin the western civilization, go figure.
Exactly, it just got to be fair for everyone. Can't make a woman with 'internal testicles and higher levels of testosterone compare against other women, that would be like accepting dopping.
If you divided the competitors into “has freakishly long arms” and “doesn’t have freakishly long arms” groups to compete within, and Phelps met the metrics for freakishly long arms, are you saying you think he should be free to compete in either group?
If so, there was no point in dividing into groups.
That said, I am sure athletes and governing bodies could agree on a better solution than outright banning- for example all it takes is a group that pairs a freakishly long armed swimmer with not, and they compete as pairs. Or an open group- maybe someone without freakishly long arms will find a way to win.
Anyway, it’s sports, people will min/max everything you let them, and we know from history they may bend or break rules as well. At the end of the day someone has to make a rule and enforce it, over time it will evolve.
Most testosterone values in PCOS will be ≤150 ng/dL (≤5.2 nmol/L).
Men, especially athlete, are around 30 nmol/l. At the very least 6 times over your weird case scenario.
I'm sorry but women don't have testicles so they can't naturally produce high levels of testosterone, you won't be able to twist stuffs enough and make scenario weird enough to prove that.
Oh, and Khelif chose to have a female phenotype so she could compete in the female category in the Olympics? Get real. There are many other women in the same situation.
> You will never find a woman that has the same testosterone levels that a man identifying as a woman
Uh, yes you will... The entire purpose of taking estrogen is to bring down testosterone to female-level.
Account made 53 days ago with sole interests being defending Palantir and Israel/US war. I love how highly organic and genuine the discussion of certain topics is here on HN.
Interpret: China is a CSIS project aimed at facilitating a more nuanced understanding of global strategic issues through a library of translated materials matched with expert commentary.
Americans are so propagandized and paranoid that they see a DC blob foreign policy think tank translating Chinese PLA source documents and start wondering if there's a nefarious plot afoot. "Understanding the enemy?! That sounds like an axis of evil conspiracy!"
As Buffett said, "only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked" - luckily, skimming the news, there's no obvious huge exogenous macroeconomic shocks on the horizon that could cause "the tide to go out" so to speak, so everything should be ok for now.
The real story is that the Patriot and other interceptor stockpiles Zelensky's asking for are now critically low, and tens of thousands of soft targets are hard to defend against cheap drones. This war is on course to set off a truly unprecedented global energy crisis within days, and the USA/allies don't currently appear to have any plan to fix it.
> on course to set off a truly unprecedented global energy crisis within days
That's not exactly how oil supply works. There's plenty of stockpiles which take months to burn through and only some places depend on Iranian oil. China is their biggest buyer and it's around 13.4% of China's oil imports.
it's not just about iranian oil. The strait is blockaded. Plus refineries in Kuwait, KSA and Bahrain were targeted. And LNG facilities in Qatar - which stopped and restarting will take ~1 month at least. Leading to this
To add to your comment, ~20%-25% of global oil production passes through the AG (Iran is only ~4% of current global production) @ ~21mbpd. The longer that oil can’t get out (Saudi’s have a 5mbpd pipeline to red sea, but only 2mbpd loading capacity), the quicker it will erase the current oil glut and eat into inventories. Most of the discounted oil China has been buying from Iran/Russia has actually been going into inventory. The strait itself is a narrow channel, and the main risk is mines and underwater drones. Sinking a few tankers in the strait would cause a lot of headaches.
>the USA/allies don't currently appear to have any plan to fix it
Their plan is to bomb Iran into the stone age so it can't produce any more drones or missile launchers. It's questionable whether they can succeed though.
> Credits (ꞓ) are the fuel for Clawsensus. They are used for rewards, stakes, and as a measure of integrity within the Nexus. ... Credits are internal accounting units. No withdrawals in MVP.
Thanks. I like to tinker, so I’m prototyping a hosted $USDC board, but Clawsensus is fundamentally local-first: faucet tokens, in-network credits, and JSON configs on the OpenClaw gateway.
In the plugin docs is a config UI builder. Plugin is OSS, boards aren’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026
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