The controversy about the Khelif-Carini fight is, I believe, a terribly missed opportunity for learning something about not just gender and sexuality but about how human practice and thought fits the world. Or at least, that’s my conclusion after reading and thinking a lot about it yesterday and writing down some of my thoughts today.
Given that I think I have learned something from some of that thinking, I want to share it here.
Four preliminary points
First, some of what I Iearned—about the biology of sex differences–comes from a post by the biologist Rebecca R Helm. You should read it. I don’t know much more about those issues so some of what I say can be a misinterpretation of what she wrote.
Second, this post is not about the Khelif-Carini case. At the end of it I make some suggestions about general rules for determining when women with an atypical biology should be allowed to participate in womens’ sports. But those are general observations not meant to apply to this case.
It seems obvious to me that, given what we know, Khelif has been unfairly criticized by people who think she is a trans-woman or who believe that she has some biological characteristics that disqualify her from participating in female boxing. She is clearly not a trans-woman. And we have no reason at this point to believe that she has any biological characteristics that would disqualify her from participating in female boxing. The IBA that disqualified her is apparently a corrupt Russian-controlled agency. And the IOC says she is eligible. That’s all we need to know at this point.
All the claims that she should not be fighting as a woman are based on bigotry and sad ideology not any knowledge. People who say this should be ashamed of themselves.
And third, the thoughts are very preliminary. I want to think a lot more about this. I’m posting these ideas here, of course, because I’m curious to learn from many of you.
Human Thought and Categorization
Human thought tends to be categorical because it is the simplest way to think about the world. And that kind of thought goes back a long way.
There is heaven and earth. Light and dark. Day and night. Land and water. Man and woman. Child and adult.
And, most problematic of all, us and them.
Yet if we stop and think about it, every one of those distinctions is far more complicated than a simple two-fold categorization.
To use statistical terms, our thought is mostly categorical but the most phenomenon in the world are interval in nature, where things are more or less not this or that.
Light shades into dark. Day shades into life. Child shades into Adult.
Once can be the product of two different cultural heritages. Most of us are mixed.
And animals are not as distinct from one another as we usually think. The central idea of one of the greatest human thinkers, Darwin, is that there is no hard and fast distinction between one species and another, or between one natural phenomenon and another. The gaps between species only exist because the intermediate creatures between them have die out. Rivulets turn into ravines turn into valleys in a gradual process and deciding which is which is not cut and dry.
That goes for the gap between human and animal. Our nature is highly distinctive from other animals because the intermediate creatures have dies out. And yet we still share much with other animals.
Man and Woman
And yes man shades into woman.
There are distinctions between men and women are a whole. But they are far more complicated than most of us recognize.
There are external structural differences found in the outward appearances of our genitalia.
There are differences in our typical size and weight and strength
There are internal structural differences found in the inward differences in our reproductive organs.
There are chromosomal differences between men and women, with women having two XX or men and X and a Y chromosomes.
There are genetic differences between men and women since the important SRY gene usually found on the Y gene turns on many other genetic differences.
There are endocrinological differences with regard to the concentration of testosterone, estrogen and progesterone circulate in our bodies.
There are differences in how our other cells respond to typically male and female hormones. Sometimes those hormones don’t produce the usual reaction.
There may be also differences in brains, although claims about functional capacities in this area typically go far beyond the evidence.
And there are probably others biological differences
Then layered upon them are social and / or cultural differences in the typical behavior of men and women with regard to many phenomenon such as aggressiveness, empathy and compassion and so forth not to mention differences in how we dress and adorn ourselves, and in our typical social roles.
And then on top of these other characteristics are issue of identity. Some people who have many of the biological characteristics of women do not think of themselves as women but identify as men. And vice versa.
Complexities
Now there are a few important complexities of all these distinctions.
First, many of these differences are not categorical distinctions but interval ones. Differences are not binary but a matter of degree. Men and women both have male and female hormones at different levels. They respond to those different hormones in various ways. At a more macro level they at have different degrees of strength and other physical abilities.
Second, with regard many of the interval distinctions, there is a large overlap between the people categorized as men and women. As Plato pointed out 2500 years ago, while on average men are stronger, taller, heavier and faster than women there are many women who are stronger, taller, heavier, and faster than many men. And there are other biological features in which where women on average tend to be physically more capable than men, such as certain kinds of stamina but in those cases are some men who are superior to some women. And, of course, there is a huge overlap with regard to the cultural traits I mentioned above. Men may be more aggressive than women but there are certainly many women more aggressive than many men, and so on with regard to all those other traits. The differences between the social roles of men and women overlap and in a just society are likely to overlap even more.
Third even with regard to the more categorical distinctions there are intermediate cases. There are people with outward or inward genitalia that mix those of typical men and women.
Fourth, the various ways in which men and differ quite often do not overlap.
For example, we saw men above that men have XY chromosomes while women have XX chromosomes. And the critical gene on the Y chromosome that makes a fetus a typical man is the SRY gene. But the SRY gene typically found on the Y chromosome is sometimes missing. So a person with XY chromosomes but no SRY gene on the Y chromosome will develop the external and internal characteristics of a woman.
Similarly a person with two XX chromosomes may have an SRY gene on the X chromosome and thus be chromosomally a woman but genetically a man.
And, while I’m not sure about this, the piece by Helm suggests that there may be people who are chromosomally and genetically male but whose body does not develop as a man because of an inability to respond appropriately to testosterone and other hormones found at higher levels in typical men
In addition are people with many of the biological features of women who are treated in some societies as women. And others who think of themselves, that is, who identify, as men. And vice versa.
Fifth, many of these characteristics are not fixed but can be changed. People can change their identity. They can change their hormone levels. They change their external genitalia. To this point they can’t change their internal reproductive organs but that might be possible at time in the future.
Some people call these changes unnatural. But I find it hard to understand why the drugs that regulate blood pressure and blood sugar do not make unnatural changes in a human body while changes in hormone level are unnatural. And the same goes for changes people make in external genitalia as opposed to other changes in human bodies made by plastic surgeons.
What conclusions should we draw from these reflections?
So sexuality and gender, from both a biological and cultural point of view, as well as the intersection between them, are complicated. What conclusions should we draw from them?
I think the most importance conclusion, in most circumstances, is simply accept all the variations and let people be themselves.
That is true for biological sex. While most of us are biological men or women without qualification and have a gender identity that reflects our biological sex, there are very many of us who don’t fall into those simple or categories or are typical. And there are a wide variation in differences from the norm. And while for one reason or another we may want to put people in different biological or cultural categories, there is no reason to think that these will always be binary categories or that it will make sense to categorize individuals in the same way in all these dimensions. For some purposes, such as treating diseases, it is useful to distinguish between someone who chromosomally or genetically male or female or something in between. For some purposes is useful to know that someone has male or female genitalia or something in between. For some purposes, again mostly with regard to medical treatment, it is useful to know if someone is born male or female or is trans-gender. But for most of us most of the time, we have no reason to know these things about others unless they tell us. For how we treat others should not be influenced by these factors at all.
Live and let live should be the rule for people who are biologically atypical. And, of course that is also true for social / cultural role . Even if biological sex were not far more complicated than we once realized, social / cultural roles are not in any way reducible to biology. The jobs we do, the clothes we wear, our responsibilities to others, and the personal traits we express are a matter of our traditions and, since we many of us are influenced by many traditions and can choose to accept or reject them.
What should know, however, and respect is how people identify themselves. Because one’s self-identification—whether as male, female, or other—is a legitimate claim on how we should be treated by others.
Biological sex and athletics
One circumstance, however, when some of these issues are important is in athletics. Because of the typical physical differences between men and women, in many but not all cases, men compete against men and women against women.
So this is one of the few cases in our lives where some decision needs to be made to take reduce the complexity of biological sex to a simple binary distinction. For when people are biologically different from the norm, we need some rules to classify people in order to make competition fair between men and women.
Given that neither biological sex nor cultural gender are binary, we should understand that any reduction of them to binary athletic categories is often going to be problematic in a way that does violence to the complexity of human experience. These decisions are are going to require judgment calls best made by those able to think clearly about how the variety of biological differences impact athletic performance in a particular sport.
There is no room for ideology in these judgement. So, simply put, folks like J.K. Rowling should just shut up about them.
In thinking about this, also keep in mind that there is a fundamental unfairness in athletic competition. While all great athletes all are dedicated to what they do–they would not be great without that dedication–and we often attribute their success and failure to how hard they work or how strong their will is, they almost all have certain advantages thanks to their biology which makes it possible for their dedication to result in the development of athletic skills.
But since that biological advantage is often associated with male and female bodies, fairness does require that, in general, people who have the physical advantages that comes with male bodies not compete in female sports.
But what exactly that means is not always clear or straightforward. We probably need to learn a lot more and think about these issues a lot more clearly before we can be sure that we categorize people appropriately. And our categories might change as we learn more about the biology and culture of sex.
Here, are some preliminary ideas about how to do this in general. And I want to emphasize in general because I suspect that the precise rules might differ from one sport to another. (I should also say that I might revise my views substantially as I think more about this subject.)
I would think that if a woman either because of some unusual feature of their nature or because they have transitioned from male to female has some biological qualities that place them far beyond the usual range of women—and that is relevant to success in a support— some question might be raised about whether it is appropriate for them to compete in women’s sports.
So, for example, if a woman by her atypical nature or because she is a trans-woman has testosterone levels far beyond the range of women with typical biology who participate in a particular sport, and those testosterone levels can be shown to be relevant to athletic performance in her sport, then her participation might be questioned.
Of if a woman by her atypical nature or because she is a trans-woman has physical characteristics—height or weight or the ability to develop strength or speed that are relevant to athletic performance in her sport,—that are far beyond the range of women with typical biology who participate in this sport, then her participation in women’s sports might be questioned.
But if because a woman has an atypical nature or her transition to female leaves her with an atypical nature but she remains with in the range of women who participate in the sport—even if she is at the far end of that range—her participation in women’s sports should not be questioned.
I say that the relevant range is not biologically typical women in general but women who take part in a particular sport, because great athletes are often biologically at the extreme on one and more characteristics. And I say “even if she is at the far end of that range” for the same reason.
In both cases I say “might be questioned” not “should be banned” because there may be offsetting reasons that I’m not now considering.
Conclusion
One of my favorite jokes goes like this: There are two kinds of people. Those who divide people into two kinds. And those whose don’t
I’ve always been someone who doesn’t like to divide people into two kinds—especially those who are good and those who are bad. Even more I don’t like binary distinctions because they encourage us to overlook the enormous variety and beauty of life
There are sometimes we need them. But we need to be really careful not to do so in ways that are unnecessary not to mention discriminatory or bigoted or unfair. I’ve made one suggestion about how to divide people in to male and female athletes that, I hope, does not do that.