This has given me a new perspective on why this happened. If he treated children with DSDs, especially 5-ARD, what was the treatment? Was his goal to turn these boys into girls, because a man can't be a man without a penis? Did he spend his career telling parents he could turn their boys into girls by removing their testicles and giving them estrogen? If that is what he did, to deny male transsexuals the ability to compete in women's sports because they're not women means he would have to grapple with the fact that he lied to parents and children, put children through unnecessary surgeries and medical treatment, in the belief that he could turn boys into girls. He can't admit that Semenya isn't female because that would mean he butchered little boys for a lie.
This article is so awful. It repeatedly conflates "femininity" with being female. It ignores that conditions like CAIS are not grounds for exclusion, and is incredibly dishonest about DSD conditions, having both testes and ovaries is practically unheard of. It frames a woman having testicles as just a normal occurrence.
Sorry for the late reply, but I think you're making a mistake in assuming that creatures like these have consciences capable of feeling guilt or remorse. They do not.
Another great article Sarah! YIKES! I guess I hadn't thought that there were Dr. Mengele-ish men on a world governing body medical committee pushing these horrific ideas. And that they had enough power to get the entire body of the IOC to buy into these disturbing ideas. I'm glad we are back on a path to sanity. But buyers beware: if it can happen once, it can happen again.
I still think that many elite men can't imagine why a man would choose to 'be a woman'. That it's distasteful and disgusting and that they must be so if they would cut their most sacred genitals off. I think there's an element of that. Women totally understand why a woman would choose this but for men, to choose lower status, is baffling and a little revolting I think.
A handful of extremely powerful men, loyal to, beholden to, dedicated to a small group of other men made decisions with zero regard for women. And maybe with conscious disregard for women. Disgusting. And then a sizable group of others down the line did nothing. Said nothing. Watched the female category cease to have meaning. Watched women lose to men.
A handful of powerful misogynists is sickening. A widespread organizational culture that participated in the harm is a whole other level of demoralization.
Hanlon's Razor is "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." It's strange how we always expect, and maybe in some weird ways hope, for malice when it comes to explaining things like IOC approval for men in women's sports. I think if it was part of some evil intentional plot towards malevolent means, we could at least explain in some sort of logical—if not rational—way. Bret Weinstein has a great quote along these lines: "Hitler was a monster, but he wasn't a madman."
And yet, I feel like more often than not, Hanlon gets the last laugh: it's incompetence, or ignorance, not malice. Or, as seems to be in this case, something in between and maudlin, like chauvinism or prejudice.
We expected a cabal of evil genius, but find a handful of full-of-themselves jerks.
Regardless, great reporting, my sympathies for having to endure that (better you than me!!).
I love that quote, and I'm sure it's usually right. I guess I was holding out hope that Myron might have even come up with a reasonable lie, or that he had since changed his mind. Nope. Another commenter mentioned they thought harming women was the IOC's aim. In my mind, even worse—they simply did not consider women at all. Whether it hurt them or helped them—women, half of the IOC's purview, did not ever enter the picture. That to me is harder to deal with than if they had acted with actual malice. I don't know if I could characterize Myron as a jerk or even a misogynist, because that would seem to require malicious intent, active hate. Nor were they incompetent. They were horribly competent as granting men whatever they wanted. This is more like atomic patriarchy—prioritizing the desires of men with singular focus. Stupid men, mentally ill men, two men, thousands of men, young men—just men. Malice would have required them to at least think of women as humans they wanted to harm, it would have required them to think of women in some capacity. I don't think they did. Women as chairs, furniture. Not human
I could characterize Myron as a jerk AND a misogynist.
Clearly, he lives his entire life this way. You couldn't *possibly* be the first woman he's yelled at for questioning his decisions about her own life.
Men like Myron marry handmaidens to violent patriarchy, raise their sons to be misogynist jerks and their daughters to be handmaidens, make friends with other men who are misogynist jerks married to handmaidens, and overall ensure that they will get their way over women in ALL areas at ALL times under ALL circumstances.
"That they didn’t, that instead they honored those unwell men’s demands, fully aware that this would harm all women, is really hard to comprehend." They did it because it would harm women. I was 11 when Title IX became law, and being a precocious feminist, I followed the hatred in the papers. What I didn't learn until fairly recently was that the NCAA tried for a decade to overturn Title IX as part of their zero-sum way of looking at life vis-a-vis men and women. They haven't gone away but have shifted tactics, and "trans" is the tactic. Thank you for the time you spend on exposing the misogyny.
A powerful statement Sarah, thank you and thank you for expressing what so many of us realize, that this travesty is only part of the huge assault on women that was building at the time and the IOC enabled because of the enormous profile of the Olympics. When we still have high school associations in large states like California and Washington that continue to discriminate against girls and women and shame and penalize them for speaking out about the injustice, lies and total lack of scientific foundation of letting males into female sports the battle continues.
You nailed it. What it comes down to is these men being unable or unwilling, when the circumstances and evidence demanded it, just to say “No, you can’t have that” to other men who really, really, really wanted it.
Liberals call this “being kind”.
But in reality it’s just being weak and permissive.
Especially the “in my gut” and “Their focus was, always and singularly, on the desires of men. “
“Myron never mentioned women in our conversation, and it’s clear that the 2003 Stockholm Committee never considered women, half the population, as “having rights.” I sort of knew that, in my gut—that’s the only way they could have come to the decision they did—but for Myron to flat out admit it, and angrily defend it, was shocking. I keep using that word; I can’t think of something stronger. Their focus was, always and singularly, on the desires of men. “
The horrible reality we’re seeing clearly. A belief by those on the left and right although they’d likely deny it but if I’ve learned anything from this journey of life through human interactions, trans, ideologies, religion, politics, astrology, unicorns, family etc is that people are willingly/willfully blinded by so much. Humans are weird and unstable critters.
Not only does it show his lack of thought for the rights of women, it also shows the complete failure of the media to hold him accountable for his decisions at the time.
Only a man completely unaccustomed to being questioned would see your questions as arguing. It reads as a man who has only ever been applauded his entire life, no-one challenging his assumptions and never, ever questioning himself.
“To say our conversation did not go well is an understatement of Olympic proportion.”
Ah well. At least you’ve taken part in a sort of Olympics. Kudos on doing the actual work of tracking one of these people down and trying to get them to account for themselves.
(As a tiny side note: 5-ARD is autosomal recessive - chromosome 3 or 5 - so women can have it, but its effects then are minimal because DHT isn’t used in the same way in their development. Besides the genitalia thing in males, it also means less body hair growth in both sexes.)
See, I was worried I was going to be talking with the likes of you and Charles Arthur. I was expecting to be corrected on the finer points of 5-ARD. Explaining to Myron that Semenya was not "born female" really pulled the rug out.
Incredible story, Sarah! I am speechless. Sickened. Thank you for writing it up. You are right: a colossal mistake was made in 2003 because they just did not care about female athletes.
Privilege can confer a sort of blindness in people. It can lead the privileged to assume that their worldview is the “norm” and so they lack the breadth they need to consider issues of deep import with any kind of wisdom (or compassion).
The irony is that most people in this position aren’t even aware of how limited their perspective is.
For some, the spirit of inquiry will drive them out of this cul de sac but for others, they are happy thinking the elephant is its tail. I’m not sure if this curated blindness is ego driven or laziness or what.
Well, 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦 this jerk isn't accustomed to challenging questions. He's not just a doctor; he's Herr Doctor Professor, and not at just any old medical school but the 𝘠𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦, for heaven's sake.
People think we hate trans people. We don’t. We hate that there are men and many, many doctors, teachers social workers and feminists who actually - yes, actually - think you can change your fucking sex.
And the lie that men have changed their sex virtually eliminates women's rights, to their own sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, prisons, rape shelters, domestic violence shelters, breastfeeding groups—anything that's reserved for women necessarily then becomes mixed sex. There is no more women's anything
Just, that I looked him up to find out what on earth this numbnuts does these days and couldn’t find anything.
The profound, unthinking, and continuing, misogyny of sports “experts”—national and international—is too demoralizing for words.
What a great question: why didn’t the IOC just say no?
But as you said, the question answers itself: the great man wrote an article wondering how can transwomen be accommodated in Olympic sports. Not “whether” or “why,” but “how.”
This has given me a new perspective on why this happened. If he treated children with DSDs, especially 5-ARD, what was the treatment? Was his goal to turn these boys into girls, because a man can't be a man without a penis? Did he spend his career telling parents he could turn their boys into girls by removing their testicles and giving them estrogen? If that is what he did, to deny male transsexuals the ability to compete in women's sports because they're not women means he would have to grapple with the fact that he lied to parents and children, put children through unnecessary surgeries and medical treatment, in the belief that he could turn boys into girls. He can't admit that Semenya isn't female because that would mean he butchered little boys for a lie.
I, like you, wondered about his "treatment" of 5-ARD boys.
Excellent questions. Perhaps another John Money.
The article (linked) from 1988 discusses some of Money’s ideas, which no doubt had influence at the time. The author Alison Carlson became involved with the campaign to stop sex verification testing at the Olympics, same a Genel, and this group was successful in 1999. https://msmagazine.com/2024/08/12/women-athletes-sex-change-trans-olympics-imane-khelif-intersex/
This article is so awful. It repeatedly conflates "femininity" with being female. It ignores that conditions like CAIS are not grounds for exclusion, and is incredibly dishonest about DSD conditions, having both testes and ovaries is practically unheard of. It frames a woman having testicles as just a normal occurrence.
Sorry for the late reply, but I think you're making a mistake in assuming that creatures like these have consciences capable of feeling guilt or remorse. They do not.
I don't think it is about guilt or remorse. It is about not flushing their life's work down the drain. It is ego.
Another great article Sarah! YIKES! I guess I hadn't thought that there were Dr. Mengele-ish men on a world governing body medical committee pushing these horrific ideas. And that they had enough power to get the entire body of the IOC to buy into these disturbing ideas. I'm glad we are back on a path to sanity. But buyers beware: if it can happen once, it can happen again.
I still think that many elite men can't imagine why a man would choose to 'be a woman'. That it's distasteful and disgusting and that they must be so if they would cut their most sacred genitals off. I think there's an element of that. Women totally understand why a woman would choose this but for men, to choose lower status, is baffling and a little revolting I think.
I think men just see females and trans as the “other” category and think it’s ok to lump us together as the “non-men” group.
Absolutely
My thoughts exactly!
A handful of extremely powerful men, loyal to, beholden to, dedicated to a small group of other men made decisions with zero regard for women. And maybe with conscious disregard for women. Disgusting. And then a sizable group of others down the line did nothing. Said nothing. Watched the female category cease to have meaning. Watched women lose to men.
A handful of powerful misogynists is sickening. A widespread organizational culture that participated in the harm is a whole other level of demoralization.
Hanlon's Razor is "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." It's strange how we always expect, and maybe in some weird ways hope, for malice when it comes to explaining things like IOC approval for men in women's sports. I think if it was part of some evil intentional plot towards malevolent means, we could at least explain in some sort of logical—if not rational—way. Bret Weinstein has a great quote along these lines: "Hitler was a monster, but he wasn't a madman."
And yet, I feel like more often than not, Hanlon gets the last laugh: it's incompetence, or ignorance, not malice. Or, as seems to be in this case, something in between and maudlin, like chauvinism or prejudice.
We expected a cabal of evil genius, but find a handful of full-of-themselves jerks.
Regardless, great reporting, my sympathies for having to endure that (better you than me!!).
I love that quote, and I'm sure it's usually right. I guess I was holding out hope that Myron might have even come up with a reasonable lie, or that he had since changed his mind. Nope. Another commenter mentioned they thought harming women was the IOC's aim. In my mind, even worse—they simply did not consider women at all. Whether it hurt them or helped them—women, half of the IOC's purview, did not ever enter the picture. That to me is harder to deal with than if they had acted with actual malice. I don't know if I could characterize Myron as a jerk or even a misogynist, because that would seem to require malicious intent, active hate. Nor were they incompetent. They were horribly competent as granting men whatever they wanted. This is more like atomic patriarchy—prioritizing the desires of men with singular focus. Stupid men, mentally ill men, two men, thousands of men, young men—just men. Malice would have required them to at least think of women as humans they wanted to harm, it would have required them to think of women in some capacity. I don't think they did. Women as chairs, furniture. Not human
I could characterize Myron as a jerk AND a misogynist.
Clearly, he lives his entire life this way. You couldn't *possibly* be the first woman he's yelled at for questioning his decisions about her own life.
Men like Myron marry handmaidens to violent patriarchy, raise their sons to be misogynist jerks and their daughters to be handmaidens, make friends with other men who are misogynist jerks married to handmaidens, and overall ensure that they will get their way over women in ALL areas at ALL times under ALL circumstances.
And if they don't, they LIE & YELL UNTIL THEY DO.
That's the essence of violent patriarchy.
Yes, I'll sign on to that! I like the term "passive malice"—I'll definitely make use of that one.
"That they didn’t, that instead they honored those unwell men’s demands, fully aware that this would harm all women, is really hard to comprehend." They did it because it would harm women. I was 11 when Title IX became law, and being a precocious feminist, I followed the hatred in the papers. What I didn't learn until fairly recently was that the NCAA tried for a decade to overturn Title IX as part of their zero-sum way of looking at life vis-a-vis men and women. They haven't gone away but have shifted tactics, and "trans" is the tactic. Thank you for the time you spend on exposing the misogyny.
A powerful statement Sarah, thank you and thank you for expressing what so many of us realize, that this travesty is only part of the huge assault on women that was building at the time and the IOC enabled because of the enormous profile of the Olympics. When we still have high school associations in large states like California and Washington that continue to discriminate against girls and women and shame and penalize them for speaking out about the injustice, lies and total lack of scientific foundation of letting males into female sports the battle continues.
You nailed it. What it comes down to is these men being unable or unwilling, when the circumstances and evidence demanded it, just to say “No, you can’t have that” to other men who really, really, really wanted it.
Liberals call this “being kind”.
But in reality it’s just being weak and permissive.
This⬇️ yup.
Especially the “in my gut” and “Their focus was, always and singularly, on the desires of men. “
“Myron never mentioned women in our conversation, and it’s clear that the 2003 Stockholm Committee never considered women, half the population, as “having rights.” I sort of knew that, in my gut—that’s the only way they could have come to the decision they did—but for Myron to flat out admit it, and angrily defend it, was shocking. I keep using that word; I can’t think of something stronger. Their focus was, always and singularly, on the desires of men. “
The horrible reality we’re seeing clearly. A belief by those on the left and right although they’d likely deny it but if I’ve learned anything from this journey of life through human interactions, trans, ideologies, religion, politics, astrology, unicorns, family etc is that people are willingly/willfully blinded by so much. Humans are weird and unstable critters.
Not only does it show his lack of thought for the rights of women, it also shows the complete failure of the media to hold him accountable for his decisions at the time.
Only a man completely unaccustomed to being questioned would see your questions as arguing. It reads as a man who has only ever been applauded his entire life, no-one challenging his assumptions and never, ever questioning himself.
“To say our conversation did not go well is an understatement of Olympic proportion.”
Ah well. At least you’ve taken part in a sort of Olympics. Kudos on doing the actual work of tracking one of these people down and trying to get them to account for themselves.
(As a tiny side note: 5-ARD is autosomal recessive - chromosome 3 or 5 - so women can have it, but its effects then are minimal because DHT isn’t used in the same way in their development. Besides the genitalia thing in males, it also means less body hair growth in both sexes.)
And no male-pattern baldness in males with 5-ARD.
See, I was worried I was going to be talking with the likes of you and Charles Arthur. I was expecting to be corrected on the finer points of 5-ARD. Explaining to Myron that Semenya was not "born female" really pulled the rug out.
Yes, good point.
Incredible story, Sarah! I am speechless. Sickened. Thank you for writing it up. You are right: a colossal mistake was made in 2003 because they just did not care about female athletes.
Privilege can confer a sort of blindness in people. It can lead the privileged to assume that their worldview is the “norm” and so they lack the breadth they need to consider issues of deep import with any kind of wisdom (or compassion).
The irony is that most people in this position aren’t even aware of how limited their perspective is.
For some, the spirit of inquiry will drive them out of this cul de sac but for others, they are happy thinking the elephant is its tail. I’m not sure if this curated blindness is ego driven or laziness or what.
Well, 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦 this jerk isn't accustomed to challenging questions. He's not just a doctor; he's Herr Doctor Professor, and not at just any old medical school but the 𝘠𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦, for heaven's sake.
People think we hate trans people. We don’t. We hate that there are men and many, many doctors, teachers social workers and feminists who actually - yes, actually - think you can change your fucking sex.
And the lie that men have changed their sex virtually eliminates women's rights, to their own sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, prisons, rape shelters, domestic violence shelters, breastfeeding groups—anything that's reserved for women necessarily then becomes mixed sex. There is no more women's anything
Women cannot be a protected class if they are just one of the many genders.
Isnt the name “Myron Genel”?
I couldnt find any result for Myron Gelen.
Oh holy mother of god, I transposed the n and l. Thank you so much for pointing this out. Yes, It's Myron Genel. I hope I corrected it throughout
Just, that I looked him up to find out what on earth this numbnuts does these days and couldn’t find anything.
The profound, unthinking, and continuing, misogyny of sports “experts”—national and international—is too demoralizing for words.
What a great question: why didn’t the IOC just say no?
But as you said, the question answers itself: the great man wrote an article wondering how can transwomen be accommodated in Olympic sports. Not “whether” or “why,” but “how.”