Warning: this one’s political.

https://brettriley.substack.com/p/in-which-i-try-to-discuss-politics

ART STILL MATTERS.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a freebie “blog post” on my site, but I think it’s definitely time to sound off again. This one’s political, folks, and like most of my freebies on here, it will be lightly edited and quickly written. I am a professional writer, but these posts are much more informal than my pro work.

That said…

On social media, I’ve been seeing a lot of people comment on Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who recently made her opponent quit in less than a minute. Ever since, a lot of people who don’t have access to Khelif’s history or medical records have been saying a lot of things about a person they don’t know and her place in a sport they do not participate in. Some things you might want to keep in mind before you add your voice to this choir:

• Many of these posts are calling Khelif a “biological male.” A few points here: first, before you use an athletic governing body’s threshold for how much testosterone a woman can have in her system as a basis for imposing your own beliefs about human sex on another person, you might want to ask who sets those standards, and why, and how, and why they aren’t universal. You might also acknowledge that there’s much more to being “biologically male” than hormones. Do you apply that same standard to men who aren’t producing enough testosterone? Are they somehow “biological women”? Besides . . .

• . . . another marker of being “biologically male” are the individual’s primary and secondary sex characteristics. Do you know what Khelif has under her clothes and inside her body? If so, how? Have you considered your source for this knowledge? Are you assuming? Besides . . .

• . . . you might be surprised at how many babies are born with sex characteristics that are, to some level, indeterminate. For instance, back in 2011, the BBC reported that “ . . . babies born with some form of Disorder of Sex Development (DSD) happens in one in every 1,500 births, according to the support group Accord Alliance.”  You might also be interested in these statistics from the Intersex Society of North America. The point is that whether you are “biologically male or female” gets really complicated for a lot of people starting at birth.

• When a baby has indeterminate sex characteristics, who determines whether they are “male” or “female”? Far too often, it falls to the doctor, who sometimes recommends surgery to emphasize the sex characteristics that fit the diagnosis, which totally ignores how this child might feel in just a few years. See this old ABC News story for just one example. For those of you who are outraged due to your own certainty about who Imane Khelif is and how you know, you might want to think about all this. Of course . . .

• . . . all of that is really moot in this case, because Khelif is and, as far as I can tell, always has identified as a woman. She is not transgender or intersex. Just because her “male” hormones have risen above one athletic governing body’s threshold for competition does not somehow negate her identity. Here we should also consider that her hormones levels do not exceed Olympic thresholds. She was cleared for competition. But . . .

• . . . there is much more to sex and gender than hormone levels or sex characteristics. To understand these very complex issues, you also need to know about gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. Along with sex as assigned at birth, these issues describe how we form our sex and gender identities. Here’s a necessarily oversimplified primer that can help you begin to understand. Sex as assigned at birth refers to what is in and on your body—your primary and secondary sex characteristics. Gender identity refers to how you feel inside. Note that ABC story about an individual who was assigned one gender but never felt comfortable presenting that way. You might have been assigned to male sex by your doctor but, as you grow, feel in your heart and mind like you belong to the female category. In other words, your sex as assigned at birth and your gender identity might be aligned . . . or they might not be. This is further complicated by gender expression, or how you present to the world around you. Do you wear clothes, engage in activities and attitudes and professions, etc., that your society has deemed “male”? If so, your gender expression is male, whether or not that aligns with your sex as assigned at birth or your gender identity. Sexual orientation refers, of course, to whom you are attracted to and whom you enter willing sex/romantic relationships with. Again, these four elements of sex and gender may all be aligned—as with someone who was assigned as male, and who feels like a male inside, and who dresses like his society recognizes males dress, and who feels romantic/sexual attraction to women. Or they might not all align. You might, for instance, be assigned as female, and wear makeup and dresses and such (if only for reasons of survival), and feel attracted to men, even though inside you feel male.

• In short, being “biologically male” is much more complicated than some of you are making out, and there is much more to consider than just what kind of genitals a person has. Not that those genitals are any of our business . . .

• . . . because we don’t, and shouldn’t, get to look under anyone’s clothes and check their genitals before letting them in the door. Nor do we get to impose our own ideas about identity on anyone else’s life.

• Before you grab your torch and your pitchfork and join the crowd gathering at Khelif’s door, you might also note that she is Algerian, and if I am not mistaken, that country currently lists “changing gender” as illegal. Gender-affirming care is against the law (though intersex infant surgery is not). If you contribute to the perception that Khelif is a trans woman, you are threatening her freedom, possibly her life, in her home country. Your words and your posts have consequences. Please consider them.

• Of course, it’s silly to try to legislate different genders, sexes, and sexualities out of existence. You might as well make it illegal to have brown eyes or to be under five feet six inches tall. “Transgender” is a category of being, not something you can demand a trans person negotiate to make you more comfortable.

1. There is nothing wrong with being trans. When I point out that Khelif is not a trans woman, I mean only to say that a lot of people’s statements about her are wrong. We should all love the trans members of our human family just as much as we love anyone else. If you can’t do that, perhaps it’s time for some introspection.

This post is not meant to be all-encompassing. There are likely many more points to make about this situation and the arguments being posited. I do hope, though, that you’ll think about the issues related to sex, gender, and Imane Khelif before you use your public accounts to strike out at her, or against trans people, or against “masculine-looking” female athletes who are trying desperately to live their dreams.

Got questions, comments, or transphobic screeds you want to share? Send them my way at readersoundsoff@gmail.com. (Well, not the screeds. I’m not interested.)

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