ESPN: "Caster Semenya listed to run at worlds in Oregon" (5000m)

We are going on a tangent here.

This was brought up because someone mentioned that certain countries were actually banning their DSD athletes from competing (India, Europe…) and that certain countries (only in Africa coincidently) were encouraging these DSD athletes.

That is obviously false.

This article is simply a DT thrower who feels that it is unfair to compete against DSD athletes (even though they are allowed to compete presently). Irrelevant to the discussion.

Current reality is that:

DSD athletes are allowed to compete in all events (other than 400,800,1500)

Prevalence of DSD is high in sub Saharan Africa

Substantially all athletes implicated are black Africans.

Nobody here were able to name a single European in track and field in the last 50 years who had DSD

Banning the DSDs from 800 and 1500 opened the door to white Europeans to win medals at the last Olympics

It can therefore be perceived to be targeted

Caster is the poster child, but she is not alone and probably will be the least competitive of them at the WC (but somehow people care more about her than the other ones)

"Nobody here were able to name a single European in track and field in the last 50 years who had DSD"

Two days ago in post #58 - which was a direct response to a post by you - I said:

The last two Europeans known to be XY with DSDs to compete in elite level international women's sports were women's World Cup alpine ski champion Erika (now Erik) Schinegger of Austria and Maria Jose Martinez Patino.

Martinez Patino, who has AIS (sounds like pretty extensive AIS, but it might not be CAIS - the records are unclear) sued the IAAF and won the right to compete in women's sports. The loophole Martinez Patino's lawsuit created allowing athletes with one kind of XY DSD to compete in women's events has been opened up wider and wider to allow in athletes with a host of other, very different kinds of XY DSDs.

FYI: Martinez Patino, a former hurdler, is from Spain and has white skin.MP competed in elite women's international track and field in the 1980s and 1990s.

In that same post I also said:

The last time that the IOC did mandatory genetic testing on athletes seeking eligibility in women's events was at the 1996 summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. 8 athletes were found to be XY, DSD - but all were given clearance to compete. Six of them had already had their testes removed - which means their DSDs had already been diagnosed and "treated."

It's not clear whether the 8 XY DSD athletes who competed in women's events at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics competed in track and field or other sports. But since track and field is such a major part of the summer Games, it's likely some of them were T & F competitors.

More to the point: the 6 of the 8 XY DSD athletes in women's events at the Atlanta Games who had their testes removed were all presumably from and grew up in countries where they had access to regular medical care and sophisticated diagnostics, and where it used to be the norm or commonplace for medical doctors to recommend - and perform - gonadectomies on infants and children diagnosed with 46,XY DSDs like CAIS, PAIS and 5-ARD.

So more likely than not, at least 6 of the 8 confirmed XY DSD athletes in women's competition at the 1996 summer Games were not black athletes who grew up in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Those athletes might not have come from Europe. But they also probably didn't come from the particular countries in sub-Saharan Africa that over the past 15 years have been making a point of entering XY DSD athletes in women's competition not just in track and field but in other women's sports such as soccer/football too.

Runragged, your posts are excellent, thank you.

What is actually racist is the idea - which has a long history behind it - that African women are more masculine than white women. When people argue that the testosterone standards are racist and are about “European standards of femininity” what they are saying is that while white women are actually women, black women are men. It goes without saying that black WOMEN do not have different chromosomes, hormone levels etc than women of any other races. One of the most racist narratives against black women is that black women are not feminine and are naturally manly: a narrative used in slavery to justify forced labour (black women unlike white women are just like men and therefore can work in the fields) and justifying the removal and sale of children (black women don’t have the same soft maternal feelings as white women so taking their children from them is no different from taking them from an animal.) This still persists today, for example, the way Serena Williams or Michelle Obama are called masculine by racists. It is the most common dehumanizing attack on black women to say that black women are angry, manly, unfeminine, bad mothers, emasculating, etc.

Pretending that XY athletes are regular black women and that black African women are the same as men unlike delicate feminine European women is the height of sexism and racism. This is not a progressive narrative. Ironically, the “Hottentot Venus” (Saartje Baartman), a South African woman, was kidnapped and exhibited in Paris because of her large bottom and now we’re being told that it’s natural for African women to have male bodies.

Since I apparently didn't make my earlier posts clear enough, I'll try again.

I brought up the issue of XY DSD athletes in Indian girls' and women's track and field to counter false statements which you made in your earlier posts - and which you are now doubling down in this new post of yours.

You say that because most of the known XY DSD athletes who are competing in elite women's international track and field (and other sports) in the current century are black athletes from sub-Saharan Africa, this must mean that 1) "prevalence of DSD is high in sub Saharan Africa" compared to everywhere else in the world; and 2) the regulations put in place regarding XY DSD athletes in women's international competition are "targeted" specifically against black Africans with XY DSDs for the specific purpose of eliminating them from middle distance women's running competition in order to enable "white Europeans to win medals at the last Olympics."

As has been explained in other posts on this thread, it's simply not true that DSDs are more prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the world. These conditions occur globally. Plus, the issue in women's track & field and women's sports isn't with athletes with DSDs generally, it's with athletes who have one of small number of XY DSDs that only affect males.

There's reason to suspect that the autosomal recessive condition 5-ARD - the enzyme deficiency behind Semenya's DSD - occurs with unusually high prevalence in some populations in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Consanguinity over many generations would explain why.

However, XY 5-ARD is well documented to occur at very high rates in various other parts of the world: Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan, amongst Arab Palestinians. But officials in those places do not "have form" for exploiting their XY youth with 5-ARD by training them as athletes and putting them on the world stage in elite women's sports under the pretense that they are "women with naturally high testosterone."

In the 21st century, the only countries that have made a point of entering XY DSD athletes in women's elite sports competition are countries in sub-Saharan Africa. But even in sub-S Africa, this is not uniform practice in all countries. Not all sub-Saharan African countries have supported and championed their XY DSD athletes in women's sports the way South Africa, Burundi and Namibia have gotten behind Semenya, Niyonsaba and Mboma and Masilingi.

Moreover, attitudes towards XY DSD athletes in women's sports vary widely amongst and within governments, societies and sports federations in sub-Saharan Africa. This recently was made clear by the decision of the Confederation of African Football to deny eligibility for the 2022 Women's Africa Cup of Nations to 11 athletes on various sub-Saharan countries' national women's teams because the athletes are XY DSD and were found not to be in compliance with CAF's rules putting an upper limit on their levels of natural T.

CAF denied eligibility for this reason to 4 athletes on the Zambian squad alone, including star striker Barbra Banda. Banda became world-famous at the Tokyo Olympic Games for scoring two hat-tricks, a feat never before accomplished by anyone in Olympic soccer competition playing on either a men's or a women's team.

As of 2021, the president of CAF is Patrice Motsepe, a black businessman and philanthropist from South Africa.

Second in charge at CAF as of 2021 is Augustin Senghor, a black politician from Senegal. AFAICT, none of the other officials at CAF are white Europeans.

Under the leadership of Motsepe and Senghor, CAF has decided to place stricter rules on the participation of XY DSD athletes in women's African football than FIFA does.

Does anyone on this thread seriously think these black men from sub-Saharan Africa are doing this this out of racist animus towards black people from sub-Sahara Africa? And to help white Europeans get a leg up in sport so they can win more medals?

Even if the black African men running the CAF have decided to clamp down on XY DSD athletes at 2022 the Women's Africa Cup of Nations out of racism towards black African XY DSD athletes, it's unlikely they are trying to rig the game to help white European women get some easy wins. Because AFAIK, there are no white European women playing in the Confederation of African Football or in the WACON. If there are any white women playing in the CAF and WACON 2022, they would have to be from Africa.

You were called a f_cking c_nt. At least you were not called a moran...

Appreciating these high-quality posts, RunRagged, but I am skeptical of claims that some nations are deliberately misrepresenting birth registration information and raising children with DSDs to become athletes that can be used to "game the system". Perhaps so, and I will keep an open mind, but it will take a fair amount of evidence to persuade me.

The answer to all of these cases, whether DSD athletes or trans athletes, is to allow their category to be determined on a case-by-case basis by local, regional, and national stakeholders and authorities, as the definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport. And the determination of whether it is fair for such an athlete to compete at the highest international level can be based on whether the winning performances by this athlete left a trail of disappointed but accepting losing athletes in their wake at the local, regional, and national levels. That is to say, if a country's women athletes have sacrificed themselves to allow a DSD or trans athlete to compete at a higher level amongst themselves, they have earned the country's right to put her forward as one of them into international competition. If, on the other hand, the athlete was not allowed to compete against other women athletes, and did not work their way up in local, regional, and national competition, then they will not have earned that privilege.

What is always forgotten by pundits is that it is almost never the individual athlete's prerogative to join and compete in a sport. At all levels, an athlete must be accepted by a coach and a team and a league in order to compete. In some local areas, and depending on the sport, some DSD and trans athletes will not be welcomed by their local teammates, communities, and leagues. Coaches at the local level are always talking with each other and local officials, and it's not like a trans athlete can simply demand to race as a youth without local and regional support.

It is an important and necessary process for athletes like Lia Thomas to "test the system" and push norms to see whether she will be accepted by teammates and league officials, and it is ultimately up to them at the grassroots level to determine whether athletes like her can compete with them, and in what sports and/or events. The jury is still out, but my impression is the answer in her case, and others like her, will be no, at least at the collegiate level and given her high level of ability.

I don't think this "bottom up" process is a good idea. The eligibility standard at the global level should be determined by the global governing body (such as WA or FINA). Each national federation should be free to set their own standards, but that should only apply to the domestic competitions. Likewise, any rules determined locally should only apply to local competitions.

That means an athlete eligible at one level may not be eligible at the next level. But that is necessary to assure level playing field.

Neither Caster Semenya nor Lia Thomas never were ever denied a chance to participate and compete in sports growing up, though.

Semenya played boys' football/soccer as a child and teenager. If Semenya had been "raised as a girl" the way we're often told Semenya was, Semenya would not have had the kinds of sports opportunities Semenya enjoyed growing up - nor the free time to devote to sports, either. Coz when and where Semenya grew up, there were no sports opportunities for girls. Not a single one of Caster's sisters got to do sports.

Semenya only took up running competitively in HS after Semenya was apparently disqualified for the (boys') football team Semenya was on for playing too rough. It's not clear when it was decided that Semenya should start entering running competitions "as a girl."

Lia Thomas competed in boys' and men's swimming starting from the time Thomas was 5, and received enormous support from family, schools, coaches, community and sports authorities for doing so. Thomas followed in the footsteps of an older brother who was even more of a star in boys' and men's collegiate swimming than Lia competing as Will would turn out to be.

The right of Semenya and Thomas to participate and compete in sports has never been in question. Neither of these athletes experienced any discriminatory barriers, bullying or untoward treatment from teammates, coaches, officials or others in sports or related to sports when competing in the correct category for their sex.

The only bone of contention here is over whether Semenya and Thomas have - or should have - a right to participate and compete in the sports category established and meant for female participants.

There's no need to deliberately misrepresent birth registration information, though.

The XY DSD athletes from sub-Saharan Africa who've been such a significant and thorny presence in elite women's sports in the present century most likely all went through their childhoods and most formative years without their births being registered and without anyone obtaining birth certificates for them.

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have historically had very, very low rates of birth registration during childhood through even the teen years. This is particularly true in the case of black children born at home or in other non-medical settings, especially in rural areas.

When Semenya was born in a small, remote village in the rural province of Limpopo in 1991, hardly any black people South Africa registered the birth of their children. Traditionally, the vast majority of black people in small villages in rural SA provinces like Limpopo saw no reason to, whilst black people in more urban areas like the infamous townships purposely avoided letting the racist apartheid government know of their children's births.

reasonstobecheerful.world

How South Africa Ended Its Secret Births

Rashiq Fataar

Four generations strong, the Mahlase family has welcomed many babies into the world. And while each new arrival has been an occasion for joy, one major factor has differentiated them: some of the births officially happened, a...

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Semenya didn't get a birth certificate from the SA government until April 2007 when Semenya was 16. By then, SA authorities had already set their sights on Semenya representing the country on the world stage as South Africa's "golden girl."

Semenya not getting a BC until age 16 wasn't unusual. Traditionally, a majority of the black population in countries like SA only obtained official ID documents once they "came of age" and had a pressing reason to do so - or they were forced to do so. One of the aims of Nelson Mandela's presidency was to convince the black people of SA to trust the government enough to start registering their children's births and obtaining BCs for them. Mandela largely succeeded. Birth registration in SA is now nearly 95%. But the opposite was the case years ago when 31-year-old Semenya grew up.

Francine Niyonsaba''s situation is similar, only with some added twists. When Niyonsaba was born in 1993 and for at least the next 13+ years, very few people in Burundi would have been able to register births and obtain BCs for their kids because for all that time the country was engulfed in the brutal conflict of the Burundian civil war - the same sort of conflicts that led to the Rwandan genocide in next door. During Niyonsaba's childhood and early adolescence, there was no or little functioning government administration in Burundi to do things like record births and issue BCs. Plus, militias on all sides were taking the little boys in Burundi away from their homes and forcing them to become boy soldiers. This provided families with good incentive to try to pass off even boys who don't have DSDs as girls.

For decades, governments and international NGOs like UNICEF and World Bank and WHO have been campaigning throughout sub-Saharan Africa for to convince people of the merits of registering their children's births and obtaining BCs for them when they are still young children. Despite the success of these campaigns in some countries like South Africa, in other countries birth registration of children is still very unpopular and relatively uncommon especially for poor people and people who live in rural areas.

In 2019, World Bank reported that "in many Sub-Saharan African countries rural birth registration for children under 5 is less than 50 percent."

blogs.worldbank.org

Birth registration is less than 50% in many African countries

@worldbankdata

Birth registration refers to the permanent and official recording of a child's existence by a country’s administration or government. In many economies in Sub Saharan Africa, as well as some countries in South Asia, birth reg...

Open link

The low rates of birth registrations in many African countries in the past when athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma and Maslingi were born and growing up - and the low rates continuing to this day - provide a lot of cover. There are usually no birth records for the athletes dating to childhood to check - or if there are records, it's easy to pretend otherwise. Given the levels of corruption and bribery in many of the countries under discussion, it's also relatively easy to make any records that do exist disappear. All it takes is some cold hard cash to grease the right palms.

The two statements I've bolded really take the biscuit.

The definition of a woman, or of a female, will vary slightly from country to country, culture to culture, and even sport to sport.

I think you will find that the majority of the worlds's women - and men, midwives, biologists, medical specialists, farmers etc - disagree that there are no consistent, distinctive biological characteristics which define the terms woman and female.

I think you will also find that a great many women consider this statement and your view to be insultingly misogynistic.

If a country's women athletes have sacrificed themselves to allow a DSD or trans athlete to compete at a higher level amongst themselves, they have earned the country's right to put her forward as one of them into international competition. If, on the other hand, the athlete was not allowed to compete against other women athletes, and did not work their way up in local, regional, and national competition, then they will not have earned that privilege.

It's hard to get what you are really saying here, but it sounds like you are saying that female athletes should only be allowed to represent their countries in international competition if they first "have sacrificed themselves to allow" a Caster Semenya or Lia Thomas "to compete at a higher level amongst themselves" - and that if they fail to do this "in local, regional and national competition, then they will not have earned that privilege."

So in other words, female athletes have no inherent human right to sports participation or to fairness in sports. On the contrary, for female people, sports is a "privilege" that we/they must "earn" - and the only way we can earn this privilege is by allowing XY athletes with testes and male sports advantage like Caster Semenya and Lia Thomas to compete in the women's category; accepting that those XY athletes will naturally "compete at a higher level" than us when competing amongst us; and being willing to "sacrifice ourselves" so that the Caster Semenyas and Lia Thomases of the world get their way - and so athletes with testes and male sports advantage have free rein to garner as much gold and glory in women's competition as they can grab.

If this really is your view, I repeat: this really takes the biscuit.

But I'm not saying or suggesting that parents are "raising children with DSDs to become athletes" so they can "game the system."

I am suggesting that in some specific countries in sub-Saharan Africa, some unscrupulous men who work as sports talent scouts, coaches, sports managers, sports federation honchos and government officials have decided to seek out teenagers with disorders of male sex development and athletic talent for the purpose of grooming and training them to compete - and clean up - in elite girls' and women's sports by engaging in the charade that they are females who for some mysterious reason just happen to have "naturally high testosterone."

I believe that men like Leonard Cheune of Athletics South Africa - the corrupt sports official responsible for putting Semenya on the world stage in 2009 - and Henk Botha of Namibia - the man who much more recently discovered Mboma and Masilingi and is their coach, mentor and ever-present guardian - are the ones who have set out to game the system. Not the athletes involved and their families.

I don't believe Semenya or any other XY DSD athletes who've made it big in women's sports in the past 15 years or their families set out to take advantage of these athletes' rare and unusual medical conditions to game the system. I think Semenya et al and their families originally went along with what the men who groomed them told them with a fair amount of innocence. I think they were bamboozled by the BS men like Cheune and Botha and other handler told them - and dazzled by the stars and huge dollar signs writ large in neon lights and day-glo glitter dangled in front of in their eyes.

The young XY DSD athletes involved - and their families - were offered opportunities too good to pass up. Going into girls' and women's sports provided them not just with a way to escape grinding poverty - it gave them a very good shot at becoming big name, world-famous sports sensations, Olympic medalists and world champions. Moreover, it gave them a shot at becoming esteemed as national and pan-African heroes who would be showered with praise and riches AND lauded as civil rights leaders. Ticker tape parades. Headlines. VIP treatment. Being likened to Mandela. What naive, poor, starry-eyed teenager with ambition, drive and guts could pass up a chance at all that?

I believe that when they were first scouted and tapped as teenagers, most or all of these XY DSD athletes and their families did not have a good understanding, or perhaps much of any understanding, of their DSDs and what they meant. Confusion and misinformation is common people with DSDs, even those whose DSDs were medically diagnosed when they were babies or young children. One reason is that doctors and parents used to lie to kids with DSDs about their conditions and their sex, telling themselves that this was “for the best.” Another reason is that the literature on the topic is full of obfuscating terminology and inaccuracies.

Because they most likely had little or no understanding of their DSDs and what they meant when they started out in women's sports, the XY DSD athletes at issue here were probably easily convinced by educated, smooth-talking, self-assured flimflam artists like Cheune and Botha - and all their other handlers and PR people over the years - that they really, truly, genuinely are just "girls/women with naturally high testosterone.” My hunch is that even when they came to understand their medical situations more, some/all these athletes might actually have believed that they have disorders of female sex development rather than disorders of male sex development.

Even Semenya and Niyonsaba might once have believed this. But if they did believe it once, that was years ago. Now at 31 and near 30, Semenya and Niyonsaba have to know the score.

Semenya especially. After all, Semenya’s wife Violet Raseboya has gone through two pregnancies and given birth twice since 2019 - and both children are girls. There’s no way to be party to human pregnancy, labor, childbirth and all that goes with it - and to be involved in the diapering and bathing of two baby daughters - without twigging to what the words woman and female mean. Then there's the matter of paternity...

If you go by what "the majority of women and men" think, then I bet they think the biological characteristic that separates men and women is the external genitalia. That would make all people with DSD discussed here women. What percentage of global adults know about XX and XY chromosomes? I would think less than 50%.

In both Chand v. IAAF and Semenya v. IAAF, CAS explicitly states the following.

Human sex is not binary.

There is no single physical marker that separates men and women.

Who is or is not a woman under any jurisdiction is irrelevant in the case.

IMHO, insisting on the strict binary of human sex makes this issue harder than it should be. You either have to make an argument that anyone who is ineligible to compete in the women's division is a man by defnitition, or an alternative argument that some women are ineligible to compete in the women's division. CAS took the latter position in both cases, because they considered it to be an easier argument to make. IAAF explicitly took the latter approach in the Chand case, while they never mentioned Semenya's sex or gender in the second case.

As mentioned on another thread previously, some legally disabled persons are ineligible in any para category. There are some naturalized athletes who are ineligible to represent their adopted countries in international competitions. So it is not impossible to argue that some women are not eligible to compete in the women's division.

However, I think it makes the argument easier if we simply accept that human sex is NOT binary. Instead of having M and F as only legal categories, we should have M, F and X. Then we can make an argument that people in X either compete in their own division or they compete with people in M, while people in F only compete among themselves.

You have to love PC trolling....

There is a lot of food for thought here and great leads to follow up on. I know a little about Semenya but not very much of the others and the officials that surround them.

I'm not quite sure why you emphasize the birth certificate issue so much. The implication seems to be that some of these women would have been assigned as males at birth, and that this is somehow being deliberately obscured by officials and their parents. I am perhaps a bit old-school, but find the presence of female genitalia a very convincing argument for someone claiming to be female. I could see the deliberate misrepresentation of sex by unscrupulous doctors and officials as a possible danger going forward, but don't feel like that's an issue in the current crop of DSD athletes.

I agree that sport governing bodies should be prudent, though, as such a program (or far worse) would not be without precedent. One might recall the Catholic Church's barring of women from singing in church and, as a result, the much worse practice of castrating boys to reproduce their vocal sound and range as adult singers. It was ostensibly illegal, but at its height, approximately 4000 boys were snipped each year, with many of them (perhaps 20%) not surviving the operation. The successful ones were absolute rock stars in their public and personal lives, but it was obviously a horrendous practice that should not be echoed in any way by nations wishing to improve their women's sporting success.

It should also remind us that birth records should be kept strictly private, lest a government decide to make a database of such individuals to develop them as athletes or for other nefarious purposes. At the same time, it would be very helpful to these children and their parents if their sex wasn't recorded solely in simple binary terms, but allowed flexibility to describe their precise makeup. Of course, none of this can be enforced internationally or in areas where babies are born outside of the system.

Well, the first biscuit I'll eat, because it is plainly obvious the great majority of people have only a simplistic understanding of gender and sex. 98% of the time (or so), the common heuristics work, but nature's reality is that the associated characteristics are rarely but occasionally ambiguous, not just in humans, but in other species as well. How we precisely view such characteristics as chromosomal makeup, genitalia, and hormones, etc., depends in part on one's cultural background and beliefs. It would be a hopeless overreach for a sporting authority to impose one definition of male and female on the entire world.

The other biscuit you can have because what I actually meant was that if a country allows an ambiguous athlete to compete successfully as a woman inside their country, and thus prevents other star athletes from achieving various national medals and records in the process, they will have paid the price necessary to allow her to compete fairly in international competition. However, if the country (including its spectators, women participants, coaches, officials, etc.) believes it is unfair for this ambiguous athlete to compete against other women in their own country, they shouldn't then be allowed to put her in international competition as a member of their national team, which would obviously be hypocrisy.

When Semenya was added to the 5000m entry list, she did not replace another runner from South Africa. She replaced the runner next on the world rankings. (The next highest South African is outside of top 100.) So South African runners have less incentive to object, because they have less to lose from including Semenya. The runner next on the rankings has more to lose, and her opinion is more important than those of other South African runners who couldn't have competed at the World Championships anyway.

Two Namibian sprinters with 200m PB in 24s won silver medals at World U-20 as members of their 4x1 team. They would have had no chance to qualify for World U-20, let along winning medals if not for Mboma and Masilingi. So I bet they are quite happy that they had the two sprinters with DSD as their teammates. But the athletes from Poland who finished 4th in that relay might have different feelings. Which opinions should matter more? The two Namibians who piggybacked on Mboma and Masilingi, or the four Poles who didn't get their medals?

The opinions that should matter the most in each case is the ones held by those who have the most to lose by the inclusion. And usually that's not the domestic competitors. The opinions of domestic competitors are important when it comes to deciding whether to include DSD athletes in the domestic competitions. But their voices are not the most important in the international competitions.