Pretend befuddlement

Written by

April 22, 2026

Last month, the International Olympic Committee announced that transgender women athletes would be barred from competing in all Olympic events in the women’s category – but not the men’s events.

Er, yes, because they are men. What part of that is hard to understand?

In addition to trans women athletes, cisgender women with conditions known as DSDs – differences in sexual development – will also be banned from competition. The new rules effectively redefine womanhood – but not manhood – as a novel and previously unrecognized category consisting only of those with a specific set of genetic prerequisites.

Yes of course “womanhood” and not “manhood”: because it’s women who are harmed by letting men idennify into their sports, while men are not thus harmed. It’s really not that difficult to grasp.

To comply with this new requirement, women athletes – but not male ones – will be made to submit to genetic testing, to determine whether their womanhood meets the committee’s standards.

See above. It’s the pretend women who are a problem, not the pretend men.

The move comes as increased political and media attention to the issue of trans rights and visibility over the past years – along with pressure from the Trump administration – has led athletic federations to ban trans women from sports competitions, a demand that has largely not been made for transgender men in women’s or men’s sports.

Because it’s asymmetrical you damn fool.

The vitriol and intensity of this controversy has been acute. Twenty-eight states ban trans girls and women from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity; last year, the NCAA announced a ban on trans athletes competing in women’s collegiate leagues.

What’s vitriolic and intense about knowing that sports are based in bodies and not in “gender identity”?

No stupid is too stupid for this ideology.

Comments

7 responses to “Pretend befuddlement”

iknklast

Apr 22, 2026 11:44 AM

Umm…it’s not redefining woman. That’s what the ‘identify as’ or ‘live their life as’ attempted to do, so they could define men into being women.

It is simply excluding men from the definition of women, as has been the case throughout human history.
Southwest88

Apr 22, 2026 12:42 PM

If they are upset that male athletes are not having to do a cheek swab, that is easily fixed. Require it of all athletes and that is one less fake tragedy for the gender cult boosters to wail about.

I would be fine with every newborn getting a cheek swab done and having the results of the sex chromosomes put on official documents. All other DNA information from the swab would legally have to be deleted. Make a law forbidding that one thing from being changed ever on all official documents.

Doing this for a few years would certainly give us more information on how prevalent DSDs are and what types are most common. Finding it early would give parents more information about what their kid might deal with growing up.
Mosnae

Apr 22, 2026 2:51 PM

Another opinion column ran by the Guardian, on the very same day…

The IOC’s decision to protect the female category is a victory for fairness
Wes

Apr 22, 2026 5:09 PM

This essay was one of my biggest befuddlements! Glad you are commenting on it Ophelia.

1. Isn’t the writer referring NOT to “cis women with DSD” but to “men with DSD” ?

2. so that later when she claims “In the meantime, the vast majority of those who will be excluded from competition under the new ban are cisgender women. ” this is incorrect, it should state “the vast majority….are men with a DSD”???

3. Likewise, isn’t this befuddled or deliberately misleading? “Many cis women athletes – those who have female anatomy, were assigned female at birth, and who have lived their entire lives as girls and women – will be disqualified on the basis of organically occurring hormone differences” Isn’t the writer referring to men athletes with a DSD who have [some] female anatomy, [perhaps mistakenly] AFAB, have lived as girls/women…etc.

4. Of course it’s not just ”hormone differences” but different physical advantages?

It seems to me that this was either the product of the writer’s befuddlement or she understands quite well and is deliberately attempted to befuddle the reader. Either way, the Guardian fact checkers or editors should (?) have caught this and either corrected it or clarified it.
Artymorty

Apr 22, 2026 5:19 PM

As usual, an Editor at a liberal media outlet has waved through an article about trans that is completely full of lies. There is no other topic in which editors would consistently allow such shoddy reporting to pass. It’s the goddamned editors who are responsible for this mess. As I’ve argued at length before.

The bit about women athlets “but not male ones” being tested is, of course, a lie. Every single person who attempts to compete in the female category is tested to prove that they’re female — we don’t know for sure what sex they are until after the test, because, duh, that’s the point of it — and exactly no one who doesn’t attempt to compete in the women’s category will be tested. It’s really incredibly fucking simple. It’s like nightclubs: if you wanna get in, you have to be old enough to drink, and the bouncer’s gonna demand your ID. They don’t know how old you are until they verify it by checking. That’s the fucking point. And only the people trying to get in get carded.

Imagine some jackass carping that only the people who actually wanna go inside and drink liquor are the ones being forced to suffer the terrible indignity of proving they’re old enough to legally drink, while everyone else is spared such terrible abuse!

But there’s a far bigger lie in that piece: the bit about “cisgender women” with DSDs being banned from female competitions.

Nope. Flat-out false. Another outright lie. It’s just males who are banned from female sports — and here’s a surprise: not all males are banned under the new ruling!

Here’s another thing that might surprise you: I agree with the ruling, even the part about not all males! I’ll get to that in a second.

The IOC tests for XY (male) chromosomes. Every single person who has XX (female) chromosomes instantly passes the sex test. It’s as simple as that. Because virtually all XY chromosome havers have athletic advantages in line with their biology, which is male in all the senses that are relevant to athletics.

Social, cultural, identitarian, subjective questions of “cisgender” and “transgender” are completely absent from the decision. The IOC explicitly separates “gender identity” out from its definition of biological sex, which is objective, material, and binary, and it’s the only thing that matters here.

But, as I noted, virtually all chromosomal males are banned — not all of them. About that.

There’s one exception that the IOC allows: XY people with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

These are an extremely rare group of individuals who do indeed have XY (male) chromosomes, but they have a condition in which their body cannot process testosterone, so their bodies develop with a total absense of male physiological advantage.

No testosterone absorption = no male advantage = biologically all but identical to a typical female athlete = fair to compete against females.

(It probably also means they look female, have female external genital appearance, they were probably raised as girls and believed themselves female growing up, and probably didn’t even discover they were XY until puberty, when they were sent for medical tests to see why menses wasn’t coming on… But such things as upbringing, appearance, and self-belief are, strictly speaking, social, circumstantial stuff — closer to “gender identity” than the hard, cold fact of their biological sex, so they’re not really relevant in pro athletics.)

So it’s not really complicated at all. The males with DSDs are treated like any other male, and the females with DSDs are treated like any other female. The only exception to this are the rare few males (chromosomal males or karyotypic males, if you insist on specificity) whose bodies are more-or-less identical to female bodies (in terms of athletic ability, if not in terms of reproductive function) because they literally cannot process testosterone.

I argued for more-or-less this outcome a couple years ago during the Algerian boxer controversy. I’m glad to see that the Olympics has sorted itself out.

And you know what? I hate to be blunt, but I kinda doubt we’ll see very many people whose bodies literally cannot process testosterone at all competing at the Olympics. Individuals with CAIS struggle to build strong muscles, and they even struggle with bone density issues. Testosterone is muscle juice, and most sports require muscles.
Jim

Apr 23, 2026 9:23 AM

In a sport in which female anatomy and/or physiology provided a competitive advantage, testing competitors in the male division to determine they were actually male would make sense.
Mostly Cloudy

Apr 23, 2026 3:31 PM

Hold on, isn’t this the Moira Donegan who compiled the controversial “Shitty Media Men” list (and got sued over it)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitty_Media_Men

Isn’t this the same Moira Donegan who tweeted “Normalize women’s quest for revenge?”

So I wonder why Donegan’s modern-day Valerie Solanas act stops when the sexist men she dislikes don frocks, adopt feminine names and muscle in on women’s sports.

I suspect if Donald Trump reinvented himself as a sundress-wearing “Donna Trump”, Donegan would scream herself hoarse supporting the “stunning and brave” Mrs. Trump.