Gosh, "OptionalExtras," that's one of the most ridiculous arguments ever put forth on letsrun, which is saying a lot.
Gosh, "OptionalExtras," that's one of the most ridiculous arguments ever put forth on letsrun, which is saying a lot.
I think that the only option we have is to create a third gender division that would include people like Semanya who can't be classified as a woman or man. This is the only thing that will be fair to both people like Semanya and "pure" women.
Either this or just throw all three genders into one race and forget seperating the genders because people like Semanya ,through no fault of there own, have blurred the lines of gender so much that defining what is a "man" and what is a "woman" will become increasingly difficult and close to impossible.
Talking about whether "whites" are competitive with "blacks" in the sprint or marathon or whatever is taking the social construct of race based on skin color and ignoring the real differences.
Skin color has nothing to do with the issue. Not all "blacks" are either great sprinters or great distance runners. I'm not aware of any great East African sprinters or any great distance runners of West African origin. There does seem to be a strain of people of West African ancestry with a higher than average incidence of great sprinters and a strain of East Africans (the Kalenjin, etc.) with a higher than average incidence of great distance runners. But just being "black" doesn't tell you anything about whether someone is more likely to have a genetic advantage. Even apart from the moral and historical issues, segregating sports based on skin color doesn't even begin to make sense.
But we do already know that women who start with the maximum genetic athletic potential are just not competitive with men who start with the maximum genetic athletic potential (or even with lots of men without so much genetic athletic potential). The bottom line is that the division of athletes by sex is based on physical differences that actually matter in athletic competition, unlike "race," which is a social construct based on mostly meaningless physical differences.
I suppose someday we might get to the point with genetic testing that a test could rate everyone on genetic potential for a particular athletic event and you could have a category for people who start with the maximum genetic potential, a category for people who start with the minimum genetic potential, etc. but we're certainly not to the point of being able to know exactly what is genetic and how to test for it, except for things like 6' and under basketball leagues or things like that.