Culture Friday: Facts collide with ideology

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Friday the 9th of August.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

And I’m Myrna Brown. It’s Culture Friday, and joining us now is author and speaker, Katie McCoy …

Morning Katie!

KATIE MCCOY: Happy Friday!

BROWN: So, Katie, last week, I brought up the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and this weekend we can brace for the closing. Who knows what we’ll see?!

But I’d call your attention to the middle, to the actual games themselves, even there, there’s controversy. And I’m glad we have your credentials in women’s studies because there are questions!

Now, later this afternoon is the gold medal round of a women’s boxing competition that’s been turned upside down by an Algerian competitor named Imane Khelif.

It all blew up last week when an Italian competitor angrily bowed out less than a minute into a match with Khelif, saying she wasn’t going to compete with a man, however ambiguous the reports may be.

I know you’ve been following this closely Katie, but I must say, this is about as controversial an Olympics as I’ve seen.

MCCOY: You're exactly right. Myrna, I can't remember a time when the Olympics was so controversial. And it’s really sad, because this is supposed to be the all good news part of our world where we all come together and just celebrate sports and all of the best of humanity on display.

But one of the things we’re seeing is this collision between LGBTQ ideology and then especially related to the expression of religion. We could have a whole other conversation about how the restrictions on religion, and contrast that with some of the issues related to gender.

Now related to this particular athlete, here's where this all gets very confusing. We don't know the specific condition that he has, but it is overwhelmingly likely that he has something called a developmental sex disorder. What that means, and there are quite a few in the population who have them. It can affect your chromosomes. It can affect your internal reproductive organs or your external reproductive organs.

There are people who do this type of research for a living, and they have said that everything looks likely that this athlete has a condition where he had ambiguous reproductive sexual organs at the time of birth, and then upon puberty, it was revealed that he was, in fact, male. That was confirmed by the existence of XY chromosomes. One of my favorite people to look at on this is a researcher named Deborah Soh. And why I love Deborah Soh is she's a liberal atheist sex researcher, so she's not coming at this from a conservative or a religious ideology. And she posted on X, “Just your reminder that XY chromosomes make someone male.”

So, when we hear all of this conversation about the testosterone levels, which of course, can be varying in person to person that's very different from the chromosomal reality of XY chromosomes, in addition to that elevated testosterone.

We also note that there are two different International Boxing agencies, the International Boxing Association and the World Boxing Association, that disqualified this athlete from competing against females. And in fact, one of them warned the Olympics that there were, in fact, biological males trying to pass as women so that they could compete against females.

EICHER: Katie, if I could jump in here, I know you entered the social-media fray on this—and maybe it’s your reputation for writing the book on the confusion around male-female identity—but you took some fire on this. Are you sure you’re right about this boxer? I saw lots of people coming at you saying you’re wrong.

MCCOY: Yeah, one of the interesting responses in multiple platforms of social media was being asked, so are you going to walk this back or retract what you said. And Nick, I am certainly willing to if I'm proven wrong, but I have not yet been proven wrong on the basis of the facts. And the facts are that we do not have evidence that this person is female.

Now, part of why we don't have evidence is this is from another report that it was Algeria that refused to release the results of that gender test.

And this is something that, first of all, we need to always separate the individual who has a developmental sex disorder and the way that that individual might have been identified in a particular country, exploited, trained, and used to make a lot of money, which is some of what we're seeing as well.

Part of why this has exploded is the collision of facts with ideology. Now, it is true that when we get into developmental sex disorders, this becomes very complicated and a highly specialized field, but I would also note to our listeners that we're talking about a fraction of a percent of the population that is truly sexually ambiguous.

So, what are the odds? Now, certainly, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this particular athlete is genuinely in that fraction of a fraction of a percent. That doesn't change the fact that the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, really dropped the ball at protecting females in the women’s division of boxing, and so this does pose a genuine threat for women. Not only are we talking different testosterone levels, but someone with XY chromosomes is going to have the muscular differences, the fast twitch muscle fiber differences between male and female. So we're not just talking about hormones. We're talking about something that affects and pervades every cell in the human body.

It’s worth taking a step back and making sure that we speak with precision. I include myself in that too, because this is so often politicized. It’s very easy to just listen to the narratives that fit with the framework that we want to hear it from, but at the very least, what we can know is that this individual with XY chromosomes is—and I'm quoting from researchers and people that do this for a living—is male. And we can say that this isn't a transgender issue. This is a developmental sex disorder issue, and it is colliding with ideological confusion about what makes a woman a woman, what makes a man a man.

BROWN: Katie, you alluded to this a moment ago, referring to expressions of religious identity at the Olympics. I’m seeing that despite restrictions on the athletes, some gospel light has broken through. Bethel McGrew had a really good column on this at WORLD—and I’ll link to it in the transcript today—but I know you noticed this, too.

MCCOY: Some of the greatest stories we're seeing are brothers and sisters on the world stage giving glory to God. I remember one athlete recently posted, she was a track and field athlete from the United States who talked about how, you know, medals come and go, human glory comes and goes, but the glory of God is forever.

And then there was also an athlete who reportedly was not able to verbally talk about her faith, and so she communicated in sign language instead. And it's just a wonderful reminder that whoever we are, wherever we are, whatever platform we have—big or small—we can give glory to God right where we are.

And it's just wonderful to see these athletes take the moment when the spotlight is on them and turn that spotlight to the Lord Jesus.

EICHER: Maybe this is a tenuous transition, but I’ll try it, anyway, to move from the competitive sport of the Olympics to the blood sport of American politics. The fight card is all filled out and it’s Trump-Vance versus Harris-Walz. The idea apparently being to have a more moderate look on the Democratic side with the current governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. But he’s got a controversial track record.

MCCOY: Yeah, Tim Walz has this very kind of folksy grandpa vibes demeanor, and I hope that people will look a little beyond that surface to consider the policies that he advocates and in many cases enacted. Most notably, Minnesota became the first what's called Trans refuge state. And that means that under age children can cross state lines and get access to all of these so called gender affirming care that they would like to have, whether that's hormonal or surgical. And then even more, as an attorney was explaining related to this bill is that it conflates the right to gender affirming care with not only a civil right but an issue of child safety. So it at least opens the door for the courts to take emergency custody of the child. This is one of the ways that the gender ideology is driving a wedge between the child and the parent.

I think of researchers and thinkers like Stella Moravito who had been talking about this for since years ago, about how the confusion, the different definitions of sex and gender was paving the way for precisely this type of thing to happen. This is especially significant when we consider the contrast of states like Minnesota from other European countries, typically even more progressive than the United States that have been walking back, if not completely, reversing and halting their policies and procedures related to so-called gender affirming care for children. And you know, when I think about the difference between Europe and the United States, I think we could sum it up this way, Europe is going based on data. United States is going based on dogma, and it is the dogma that is being protected in states like Minnesota, not the data. If we were only going by the data in this country, we would have a federal ban on all of this by now. But instead, we're seeing state by state, governor by governor, state legislature by state legislature, different ideologies and dogmas play out in the form of language and law.

BROWN: Alright, author and speaker Katie McCoy … Katie’s latest book that we referred to today is titled To Be a Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond. Katie, thanks!

MCCOY: Thanks for having me.

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