Caster Semenya is delusional: "I can do anything from 100m to a marathon..I call myself 'supernatural'."

appleswan wrote:

Truth tellers wrote:

There are also man who are XX , the SRY gene can "jump" from a Y chromosme to a X chromosome.

Semenya is between a male and a female as she has a rare condition.... Genetically she was meant to be a male but something had a malfunction and she ended not being masculinized enough for her genitals.

It's unfortunate for her but she can't be allowed to compete with women. Women sports would be at risk to cease to exist if masculinized athlete can be part of them.

This isn't just about Semenya as there are many who are trans or intersex. It's a very small percent but we can't simply exclude them.

I think the posters on this thread are very telling. There are those that consider a "standard American" and everyone needs to be judged accordingly. This manifests whether the conversation is race, sex or trans.

People are considering the male, cisgender, dyadic body to be the baseline and everything is considered against this. Hence special consideration for women and intersex - they need special definition. No mention that maybe the men's category needs discussion about who qualifies.

Has anyone mentioned a minimum T level for the men's category? No. Because the male body is considered the "standard".

Stoppit Smith wrote:

I'll be brutally honest here. Now, of course, much of this is speculative, so it may go astray because sometimes I do that....

1. The Ivy League mentality: One has to only say Go Big Red to remember that he went to Cornell University. The problem with some Ivy League graduates is that it goes to their head. I think his sense of self compared with society is overdeveloped.

2. Privileged mentality: I don't gather that Robert had to struggle much growing up except for the common picking that goes on in school. I don't sense that he was abused, had food insecurity, was impoverished, was neglected, or had major setbacks. Ergo, anyone who has had to struggle is a freak because it's their fault.

3. Homogenized upbringing: I do not sense there were many around Robert who identified with anything other than Caucasian.

4. Resentment toward women: I sense he ran into some mean women, which subsequently morphed into the embittered personality and scathing rhetoric with which he addresses women.

5. A debilitating need to fit in. Remember, he has friends he needs to impress here. Imagine what would happen if he didn't come through. I remember a time around 2017 when people were all pretty much ignoring the Johnsons. The posts to capture attention got weirder and weirder.

6. A lack of respect for differences. The more that Johnson surrounds himself with only people who like him, the more ensconced he becomes with only those people. It becomes his bubble.

7 An antiquated, out-of-touch life perspective. People are trying to improve relations and his negativity is attempting to break them.

That's why.

RunRagged wrote:

No, many of us defending women's sports are lifelong feminists from way back when who grew up before legislation like the USA's Title IX gave girls and women a fair shot in sports. We're the ones who grew up with no opportunities for school sports because they didn't exist when we were kids. Many of us grew up without even being given the chance to take PE in school.

We all also know exactly what girls and women are. We are human beings who are female. Whereas Caster Semenya is a human being who is male. A male with a DSD that caused Semenya's external genitals not to form properly in utero, but still a male with fully functioning male testes, adult male levels of T and all the athletic advantages that male puberty and T levels confer.

Many of the women who are most adamant about wanting to preserve female sports for females are the ones who remember full well what it was like when American running authorities in the 1960s explicitly prohibited females from amateur road races in the USA, when authorities in the UK banned females from playing football (soccer) and cricket, and when women in the US were banned from all marathons and beaten up for trying to participate in them.

RunRagged wrote:

Many of us are the women who fought for the chance to create and compete in female sports in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and who've put enormous time and energy into establishing scholastic and elite-level sports for females over the past 50 years. All while getting educations, building careers, having babies, raising children and dealing with matters of female physiology that someone like Semenya will never ever have to contend with on or off the field - such as menstruation, ovulation, PMDD, pregnancy or fear of pregnancy, maternity, breastfeeding, abortion, miscarriage, the need for birth control, peri-menopause and menopause, a whole host of gynecological issues and diseases from the commonplace (ovarian cysts, fibroids, cramps, heavy vaginal/uterine bleeding, pre-menstrual breast tenderness) to the less so (endometriosis, gynecological cancers, female pelvic organ prolapse, pudendal neuralgia).

RunRagged wrote:

Nor has Semenya had to deal with the social consequences of having a female body and female reproductive capacity in a misogynistic world, such as enduring decades of sexual harassment and unwanted advances and creepy perving from men starting at age 11 or so, a lifetime of sex discrimination in academia and the working world, and vulnerability to - and fear of - abuse and violence at the hands of males who are naturally much stronger and faster than us even if we are the same height.

RunRagged wrote:

Many of us women who are fighting to preserve female sports are also the feminists who fought and lobbied for years to get the IOC finally to allow women to have an Olympic marathon - something that only happened for the first time in 1984. Some of us were at the 1984 summer Olympics to cheer the first women's marathoners on.

Many of the women fighting for female sports remember the 30+ year era when sex chromosome testing for all athletes competing in the female category in international events was mandatory. Female athletes back then had no problem this - it's just a cheek swab that takes two seconds, after all.

But some athletes competing as females who turned out to have XY chromosomes weren't happy with it, and several of them mounted legal challenges. To appease them, and without consulting any female athletes who hadn't failed the sex chromosome tests, the IAAF and IOC in the mid-late 1990s abandoned mandatory sex chromosome testing for everyone in female events and came up with a number of new policies that bent over backwards to accommodate males with DSDs who wanted to participate in women's sports. This paved the way for athletes like Semenya - and Wambui and Niyonsaba - to enter and clean up in women's events, riding roughshod over the principles of fair play for females that we women had worked so long and hard to put in place.

Once the IOC and IAAF opened up female sports to males with DSDs, the next step was for them to open up female sports to males who claim they have a female "gender identity" - and for other sports bodies like the NCAA and Swim USA to follow suit. Which has led to the situation we're in today:

Just 36 years after women finally got to compete in an Olympic marathon for the first time ever, full-grown males who've gone through male puberty and have adult male bodies in every respect right down their dicks and balls are using spurious claims of "gender identity" to horn in on - and clean up in - a wide array of female sports. This year, a 28-year old male who started claiming to be female at age 20-21 and took up running only a few years ago qualified for the US women's Olympic marathon trials - and was lauded by many for doing so.

Similarly, a male who decided to start competing in female sports senior year of college is now a NCAA Div 2 women's national champion. Another male who decided to compete in female sports senior year of uni age 21 was named the Big Sky Conference's "Female Athlete of the Week" earlier this year. In the UK, a male who started "identifying as" a woman and playing women's cricket in his 30s was named "Female Cricket Player of the Year" whilst he still continued to play on a male team at the same time. In international women's weightlifting, a man in his 40s who comes from a prominent, politically-powerful New Zealand family with a long history of opposing gay rights, and who competed in on the NZ male weightlifting team in his 20s, now routinely trounces female competitors less than half his age and holds many women's international titles.

I am sorry Caster Semenya was born with an inherited medical condition that affected the development of Semenya's external male genitals. Many people are born with inherited medical conditions that are hard to bear, and which limit life options. I have some myself. But getting dealt a raw deal or bad hand by Mother Nature doesn't give boys and men the right to participate in girls' and women's sports.

Female sports are not the consolation prize for males with genital birth defects, small or absent penises, testicles lost to disease or injuries, low testosterone, low sperm count, endocrine disorders, identity issues, self-esteem problems or male-only DSDs like the one Semenya has. And just as female sports aren't for certain subsets of males to take for themselves, female sports are also not for male sports officials, politicians, pundits or posters on social media to give away to some other males either.

They really that stupid wrote:

XX category will work. You can’t just throw the concept of being female, and processing the 30 trillion cells containing XX, by stating the rare exceptions to this biological fact because of rare birth defects.

The category is for XX women with the 30 trillion cells that make up a female human, including the biological makeup to became pregnant and develop a zygote, embryo, and fetus.

Real feminists understand the concept of biological female, and don’t want men with birth defects or mental health issues regarding their gender in female competition.

XX chromosomes make a female. It’s a biological fact. You can’t change a biological fact because of rare disorders that occur.

If I say a human has one head, you can’t refute that by stating, no they don’t, there are rare occasions when a baby is born with two heads. Then, you want every store in the world to carry shirts with two collars. EXCEPTIONS do not make the rule.

99.999 percent of the time a female human has XX chromosomes in the 30 trillion cells in her body.

99.999 percent of the time humans are born with one head.

If Semenya was an XX female, she would have settled her gender issues years ago. She isn’t, obviously.

The gender she identifies with or was raised as is meaningless, those are social constructs. She doesn’t even seem to identify as female. She dresses like a man, acts like a man and is married to a female.

If she was born without a penis, and her mamma tried to raise her as a girl, but really a birth defect caused her to have internal male genitalia, it doesn’t make her a female. She’s a male with a birth defect.

Semenya has not done everything asked of her. She hasn’t released a chromosome test result proving she is a female. I She isn’t a female. She does not have female DNA.

Personal belief cannot change someone’s chromosomes.

appleswan wrote:

RunRagged wrote:

No, many of us defending women's sports are lifelong feminists from way back when who grew up before legislation like the USA's Title IX gave girls and women a fair shot in sports. We're the ones who grew up with no opportunities for school sports because they didn't exist when we were kids. Many of us grew up without even being given the chance to take PE in school.

We all also know exactly what girls and women are. We are human beings who are female. Whereas Caster Semenya is a human being who is male. A male with a DSD that caused Semenya's external genitals not to form properly in utero, but still a male with fully functioning male testes, adult male levels of T and all the athletic advantages that male puberty and T levels confer.

Many of the women who are most adamant about wanting to preserve female sports for females are the ones who remember full well what it was like when American running authorities in the 1960s explicitly prohibited females from amateur road races in the USA, when authorities in the UK banned females from playing football (soccer) and cricket, and when women in the US were banned from all marathons and beaten up for trying to participate in them.

I don't know if you've written parts of your post for a publication but I appreciate such a detailed reply.

I can't dispute much of the history of what's said here but I do strongly disagree as ultimately it's undeniable trans and intersex people exist. And as an inclusive sport (and you've listed many feminists achievements within the sport) we need to find a way to accommodate them into competition. I don't have all the answers but it's certain that trans/intersex women want to compete in the women's competitions and trans/intersex men in the men's. While we have a distinction it's wrong to deny them equal access.

RunRagged wrote:

Many of us are the women who fought for the chance to create and compete in female sports in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and who've put enormous time and energy into establishing scholastic and elite-level sports for females over the past 50 years. All while getting educations, building careers, having babies, raising children and dealing with matters of female physiology that someone like Semenya will never ever have to contend with on or off the field - such as menstruation, ovulation, PMDD, pregnancy or fear of pregnancy, maternity, breastfeeding, abortion, miscarriage, the need for birth control, peri-menopause and menopause, a whole host of gynecological issues and diseases from the commonplace (ovarian cysts, fibroids, cramps, heavy vaginal/uterine bleeding, pre-menstrual breast tenderness) to the less so (endometriosis, gynecological cancers, female pelvic organ prolapse, pudendal neuralgia).

You see this is the part where you've lost me. I don't recognize how you can call yourself a modern feminist with these views. The idea women are just bodies is something feminists should fight against however for some reason you've resorted to biological essentialism and literally reduced women to pregnancy and vaginas.

RunRagged wrote:

Nor has Semenya had to deal with the social consequences of having a female body and female reproductive capacity in a misogynistic world, such as enduring decades of sexual harassment and unwanted advances and creepy perving from men starting at age 11 or so, a lifetime of sex discrimination in academia and the working world, and vulnerability to - and fear of - abuse and violence at the hands of males who are naturally much stronger and faster than us even if we are the same height.

Trans and intersex people face continual harassment and discrimination - where have you been? Do you not think Caster Semenya has been the subject of numerous invasions of privacy regarding her body?

People discussing every small detail about her as if she's a collection of body parts - surely you can see the similarities between that and everyday harassment and objectification cisgendered women face? They are frequently stared and pointed at in the street; and the target of verbal abuse and physical assault. They are routinely groomed into sex sex work and sexualized as a "category" on a 3X website.

As well as this they are often denied workplace rights such as access to a suitable bathroom facilities and end up the butt of many jokes. These are people who clearly do not enjoy any of the societal privileges associated with being a man.

RunRagged wrote:

Many of us women who are fighting to preserve female sports are also the feminists who fought and lobbied for years to get the IOC finally to allow women to have an Olympic marathon - something that only happened for the first time in 1984. Some of us were at the 1984 summer Olympics to cheer the first women's marathoners on.

Many of the women fighting for female sports remember the 30+ year era when sex chromosome testing for all athletes competing in the female category in international events was mandatory. Female athletes back then had no problem this - it's just a cheek swab that takes two seconds, after all.

But some athletes competing as females who turned out to have XY chromosomes weren't happy with it, and several of them mounted legal challenges. To appease them, and without consulting any female athletes who hadn't failed the sex chromosome tests, the IAAF and IOC in the mid-late 1990s abandoned mandatory sex chromosome testing for everyone in female events and came up with a number of new policies that bent over backwards to accommodate males with DSDs who wanted to participate in women's sports. This paved the way for athletes like Semenya - and Wambui and Niyonsaba - to enter and clean up in women's events, riding roughshod over the principles of fair play for females that we women had worked so long and hard to put in place.

Once the IOC and IAAF opened up female sports to males with DSDs, the next step was for them to open up female sports to males who claim they have a female "gender identity" - and for other sports bodies like the NCAA and Swim USA to follow suit. Which has led to the situation we're in today:

Just 36 years after women finally got to compete in an Olympic marathon for the first time ever, full-grown males who've gone through male puberty and have adult male bodies in every respect right down their dicks and balls are using spurious claims of "gender identity" to horn in on - and clean up in - a wide array of female sports. This year, a 28-year old male who started claiming to be female at age 20-21 and took up running only a few years ago qualified for the US women's Olympic marathon trials - and was lauded by many for doing so.

Similarly, a male who decided to start competing in female sports senior year of college is now a NCAA Div 2 women's national champion. Another male who decided to compete in female sports senior year of uni age 21 was named the Big Sky Conference's "Female Athlete of the Week" earlier this year. In the UK, a male who started "identifying as" a woman and playing women's cricket in his 30s was named "Female Cricket Player of the Year" whilst he still continued to play on a male team at the same time. In international women's weightlifting, a man in his 40s who comes from a prominent, politically-powerful New Zealand family with a long history of opposing gay rights, and who competed in on the NZ male weightlifting team in his 20s, now routinely trounces female competitors less than half his age and holds many women's international titles.

I am sorry Caster Semenya was born with an inherited medical condition that affected the development of Semenya's external male genitals. Many people are born with inherited medical conditions that are hard to bear, and which limit life options. I have some myself. But getting dealt a raw deal or bad hand by Mother Nature doesn't give boys and men the right to participate in girls' and women's sports.

Female sports are not the consolation prize for males with genital birth defects, small or absent penises, testicles lost to disease or injuries, low testosterone, low sperm count, endocrine disorders, identity issues, self-esteem problems or male-only DSDs like the one Semenya has. And just as female sports aren't for certain subsets of males to take for themselves, female sports are also not for male sports officials, politicians, pundits or posters on social media to give away to some other males either.

Feminists are supposed to challenge people's expectation of who you should be according to the circumstances of your birth - boys wear blue, girls wear pink etc. These social norms were constructed to dominate women and freedom is based on deconstruction of these norms. Transphobia (and arguably homophobia) is present princibly because of the subversion of gender roles and trans and intersex people clearly face consequences of inforcing such a binary as cisgendered women do. Feminists should be allies.

appleswan wrote:

I do understand that and I promise I'm not trying to be deliberatly obtuse. Your senior/junior analogy is not valid simply because a junior us below 20 and a senior above it. This is a two-way definition and defines both juniors and seniors equally.

I think the last sentence of your post is what I'm referring to - the discussion is NOT seeking to equally define non-women (men). It's very conviently about discussing what women are or should be. And quelle surprise it appears a LOT of people have very strong opinions on it.

People are placing strong emphasis on defining what women are but men are "absolutely anything else". Women have always been restricted by being told what they are and who they should be while men can do or be anything they want.

See the posters on here announcing they are defending women's sport. I'd bet my bottom dollar these posters do not usually care at all about feminism and are actually quite antithetical root.

Viking21 wrote:

appleswan wrote:

I don't know if you've written parts of your post for a publication but I appreciate such a detailed reply.

I can't dispute much of the history of what's said here but I do strongly disagree as ultimately it's undeniable trans and intersex people exist. And as an inclusive sport (and you've listed many feminists achievements within the sport) we need to find a way to accommodate them into competition. I don't have all the answers but it's certain that trans/intersex women want to compete in the women's competitions and trans/intersex men in the men's. While we have a distinction it's wrong to deny them equal access.

You see this is the part where you've lost me. I don't recognize how you can call yourself a modern feminist with these views. The idea women are just bodies is something feminists should fight against however for some reason you've resorted to biological essentialism and literally reduced women to pregnancy and vaginas.

Trans and intersex people face continual harassment and discrimination - where have you been? Do you not think Caster Semenya has been the subject of numerous invasions of privacy regarding her body?

People discussing every small detail about her as if she's a collection of body parts - surely you can see the similarities between that and everyday harassment and objectification cisgendered women face? They are frequently stared and pointed at in the street; and the target of verbal abuse and physical assault. They are routinely groomed into sex sex work and sexualized as a "category" on a 3X website.

As well as this they are often denied workplace rights such as access to a suitable bathroom facilities and end up the butt of many jokes. These are people who clearly do not enjoy any of the societal privileges associated with being a man.

Feminists are supposed to challenge people's expectation of who you should be according to the circumstances of your birth - boys wear blue, girls wear pink etc. These social norms were constructed to dominate women and freedom is based on deconstruction of these norms. Transphobia (and arguably homophobia) is present princibly because of the subversion of gender roles and trans and intersex people clearly face consequences of inforcing such a binary as cisgendered women do. Feminists should be allies.

Run ragged put you in your place, but you lack the perspicacity to see it. You are absolutely clueless, and not worthy of engaging in debate.