SEMENYA jogs 800m in 1:55

somewhataveragerunner wrote:

Men and women should compete against each other anyway.

Equal pay for equal work. A meritocracy.

Exactly! Enough with the divisive segregation and inequality!

Orwell's W800 wrote:

Semenya's gender is female.

Wrong, he's a male.

El Wrongo conclusionario wrote:

Orwell's W800 wrote:

Semenya's gender is female.

Wrong, he's a male.

Idiot, use a good dictionary. Look up "gender". Look up "sex". Look up "intersex". She identifies as a female, so she her gender is female. Biologically, her sex is neither male nor female. It is intersex.

I would be very interested in seeing some more discussion about ways to accommodate hyperandrogenic athletes and still be fair to those who were biologically women, since I doubt CAS will "go back" on their decision, although I understand it was only for two years, and I'm sure there will be enormous attention on this issue in the Olympics.

The one proposal I've read on this site that made sense to me involves testing for testosterone levels, but not requiring hormone treatment. This could either result in multiple winners for a single race, or adding a third race. But I recognize testosterone is not the whole story, and it would get complicated to run even an elite track meet on that basis.

Are there any other solutions?

The one thing that some of the less thoughtful posters on the board regularly propose that they'll do in response to the CAS decision--tape up their genitals and run in women's races--I don't think would work, although it would be pretty humorous to watch, especially if the tape was really tight.

The remarks about Caster Semenya on this site are so far out there; the fact that so many of these comments pass by the moderators seems to show how poorly equipped they are to identify hate speech. Semenya is not a man, as a few others have helpfully pointed out, and snide gendered corrections suggesting Semenya should go by the pronouns “he” or “it” when Semenya herself identifies as “she” display a disturbing level of callousness and ignorance that should probably violate community standards of civil speech. It amounts to suggesting that one’s identity ought to be fully determinable/controllable by others. Then there’s other really baffling concepts people apparently believe in here, like Omniscient’s “effective gender”—what the heck could that possibly mean? For clarity, gender is a social category constituted through culturally specific norms, which change across time and, obviously, space. Being a gendered subject is part of gaining social intelligibility since the world in which we live recognizes bodies in part through gender. To pull off social intelligibility, one must conform to gender norms, and make a choice. This state of affairs, suffice it to say, is actually quite violent for most people—though that violence may only be recognizable by some—since to conform to a norm is to allow one’s own body to become a site for collective control. Anyway, that’s your gender 101. Correcting Semenya’s gender, when she herself identifies as a woman, is to perform an act of social violence that assumes you have the power to name and identify her over Semenya’s own right to name and identify herself. In other words, you are subjecting her to a normative judgment that is meant to enforce and naturalize (through language) your own despicable ideas about gender.

The presence of intersex runners like Semenya does raise important questions, though; most folks on this board just aren’t asking the right ones, partially since they fail to consider either Semenya’s humanity or her right as an elite athlete to compete in the Olympics. If we take both of these things as given, I think the challenge set before any of us is to rethink the Olympics as a site where Semenya belongs (she has trained hard, is talented, has achieved all expectations set for her by her national and international governing bodies to be eligible to compete). To assume Semenya belongs at the Olympics means trying to unravel what makes her presence unfair to other competitors, and how fair competition might be made possible so as to respect the rights of other athletes she would be competing against. Failing to make the Olympics a site where Semenya belongs is to concede that our sport is built around certain kinds of discrimination. (Or so it seems to me.)

These questions are interesting because of the murkiness of the politics behind any possible answers. For instance, it seems to me that gender categories shouldn’t be undone in sport (despite Judith Butler’s great argument in “Undoing Gender”, although I do suggest an SF-style alternative below--perhaps a contribution to "janitors" thoughtful post) since it would effectively eliminate women’s sports. However, we are being asked to face a reality that isn’t new but is now becoming more obvious: our whole sports system is based on bogus but rigid nineteenth century European ideas about gender. And no one seems prepared to deal with that, or even to raise that question.

It’s clear the governing body has acted barbarically in the past in order to stand by this system: requiring athletes like Semenya to take testosterone suppressants pathologizes her body and was just another attempt to yoke biology to the social category of gender and police it through science. It’s good that it is no longer being required. However, since this means intersex athletes now race against women, which seems unfair, we must contend with biological differences in conjunction with gender—and to do that, it seems to me, is to once again pay homage to the nineteenth century notion of gender as a natural and not social category. If we did eliminate gender altogether perhaps we could replace it with categories based on certain hormone levels or something—this might also solve doping problems since it would function like a weight class in wrestling, the most doped up athletes competing in a category against each other.

What I’m saying, I guess, is that I think the hateful speech against Semenya is over the top on these boards and gives an uncreative pass on a system that is discriminatory. I’m not sure there are any good “solutions” to the questions raised by intersex athletes in a system built to discount their reality. It seems like trans or intersex athletes and advocates might find their interests at odds with certain kinds of feminist advocates and athletes on this issue, and that makes it a really interesting and challenging problem. I’d love to see an intelligent article about all of this before the Olympics--and it seems like I'm not alone in that desire. Seems clear that kind of article—which would address a fundamentally important issue in our sport (who gets to compete, and under what conditions)—will not be written by letsrun.com.

fatguy wrote:

... Correcting Semenya’s gender, when she herself identifies as a woman, is to perform an act of social violence...

I made it this far, fatguy. I'm not reading any more of your insanity. Since you believe using a pronoun other than the one a person chooses for themself is violence, you are absolutely batsh1t crazy.

kasjdhf;kadshfadsf wrote:

Closed in low 28s for the last 200m.

Made it look SUPER easy.

My bet is HE/IT will break the WR this year if she gets good pacing thru 600m

FIFY

fatguy, your liberal arts education has failed you. I hope you drown under your student loans for decades.

Is it true that officials have never stated whether she has a Y chromosome? Is it known whether she has female hormones within the testing standard of females? I've read that she had undescended testes at birth and that a doctor surgically created a vagina for her. Besides the surgically created vagina, what genetic or hormonal indication exits that her sex is female? This is a serious question, and if I'm wrong about what I've read, please point me in the right direction.

just google it

it is out there

women and men work and compete against each other everywhere in life. why should sports be an exception?

That was funny.

Semenya should have to compete in the Men's races.

The Czech 800m world record holder looks just as masculine

why can't we just add a 3rd category of competition for intersex athletes? That seems like the only fair thing to do for all parties involved.

I'd be interested to hear a discussion about any barriers that exist to that solution. It might go a long ways towards decreasing the prejudices and stigmas directed towards intersex individuals.

Bonkers wrote:

why can't we just add a 3rd category of competition for intersex athletes? That seems like the only fair thing to do for all parties involved.

I'd be interested to hear a discussion about any barriers that exist to that solution. It might go a long ways towards decreasing the prejudices and stigmas directed towards intersex individuals.

or just one race for everyone. that would truely by a step towards decreasing the prejudices and stigmas

Bonkers wrote:

a 3rd category of competition for intersex athletes? That seems like the only fair thing to do for all parties involved.

I hope and expect this to eventually happen as society and the IAAF become more knowledgable.

What about 2nd and 3rd wrote:

The ladies 800m medal podium in Rio is going to be bursting with testosterone

This will be the last Olympics for XX athletes. Every sport that adopts the IAAF's broken ruling means the end of XX athletes.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

What about 2nd and 3rd wrote:

The ladies 800m medal podium in Rio is going to be bursting with testosterone

This will be the last Olympics for XX athletes. Every sport that adopts the IAAF's broken ruling means the end of XX athletes.

There he is. And his irrational hyperbole.

fatguy wrote:

The remarks about Caster Semenya on this site are so far out there; the fact that so many of these comments pass by the moderators seems to show how poorly equipped they are to identify hate speech.

Only intellectual weaklings want "hate speech" censored.

Thank god LetsRun is an American website so pussified European countries, and pussified Canada, can't have it removed.