Hand her the gold medal now - Caster Semenya complete ridiculous 50.76/1:58.46 double in span of 50 minutes

It's not really fair for a Man Caster to complete against True Women in any sport let alone track and field.. I honestly feel bad for the Women that he runs against in Rio.

The IAAF should simply eliminate gender separation at athletics competitions. Everybody runs the same race.

MM,

We agree that criteria should be set based on science first. Who doesn't

We agree the there is not much direct evidence for or against Caster competing with females.

We have to fill in the gaps as logically as we can.

We know men are better than women athletically through natural biology. We know synthetic T is a performance enhancer to both men and women. We know the physical traits T causes. We know Caster has high levels of T and obvious male traits. We know the reason for this is her ambiguous gender. Applying the duck test to the above leads me to the opinion that Caster has exposed a flaw in the current system, that she falls too far toward the male end of the spectrum for it to be fair, and to not address it would be a disservice to the other athletes.

123 green,

We should certainly address it. This is something I have said throughout this thread. CAS made a blanket ruling which I feel was in good faith but perhaps short sighted.

With regards to T there is a wide spectrum of what is considered normal. It has been reported that many elite women generally have high levels of T naturally but there is little correlation between natural T levels and performance. It is very possible, and has been alluded to by CAS with this ruling, that synthetic testosterone causes different effects in the body than naturally produced testosterone. Homeostasis, and all that.

I don't know for sure, nobody does, but we have to think if we said Caster cannot compete and then it transpires with experiments that her condition has not raised her performance significantly above that of any other elite woman, then we will have for sure denied her an Olympic gold. Where is the fairness in that?

Testosterone is not the be all and end all of human performance. There are many other factors that set women and men apart when it comes to physical ability.

I'd like to add that the 'masculine traits' that Caster possesses begin and end with an impressive muscular physique. One I don't think I could achieve. Hence not likely to just be the T in her system.

Highly Bekelaselassie wrote:

The IAAF had ruled that she wasn't a biochemical female, and couldn't compete without T-desensitizing pharmaceuticals. The CAS ruling reversed this, but "as far as track and field (i.e. IAAF) is concerned", she is not a female unless undergoing medical treatment.

Wrong, IAAF avoids any suggestion they are ruling on whether someone is female. You have completely misrepresented them. The position is that females with certain T levels have to take drug therapy to limit T before they can compete.

It's nice to see the mentally deranged posting prolifically now on this thread. Natural testosterone confers NO advantage in athletics? Do you think this is going to become true simply because you write it over and over? Do you think that the 10% faster (probably closer to 15% if you rule out female dopers and intersex) performances of men over women at every level are because of "social conditioning"? You must live in some kind of post-rational fairyland if you can't see that the phenotypic male from South Africa is crushing highly-trained women on a hormonally-skewed playing field. It's like giving "her" a 160+ meter head start in every mile "she" runs.Testosterone is THE most proven PED, whether it occurs naturally (probably even more effective) or in synthetic form. It is the reason why we have separate men's and women's competitions in the first place.Just when we lose the freakshow posters like Jon Orange on PEDs, we get Metric Miler and his alter-egos on gender-doping. The IAAF tried to jury-rig the problem by coming up with a T-level standard (which 99.9% of women could never achieve naturally), so that gender was de facto defined by T-level. It at least made some sense biochemically, even if it wasn't fair to non-intersex, non-doping women. Now we have this debacle, thanks to the post-rational decree of the CAS.

The Scot wrote:

Highly Bekelaselassie wrote:

The IAAF had ruled that she wasn't a biochemical female, and couldn't compete without T-desensitizing pharmaceuticals. The CAS ruling reversed this, but "as far as track and field (i.e. IAAF) is concerned", she is not a female unless undergoing medical treatment.

Wrong, IAAF avoids any suggestion they are ruling on whether someone is female. You have completely misrepresented them. The position is that females with certain T levels have to take drug therapy to limit T before they can compete.

"I'm not representing my opinion here by saying she should or shouldn't, but there is no scientifically proven reason that females with androgen hyperinsensitivity syndrome cannot compete against other females."

Semenya has testicles. That is reason enough for me

Enough said!

Metric Miler wrote:

Not to mention you can't name THE factor that determines what makes someone a woman (hint, there isn't one).

You're right, there's no "THE" but there are THE FACTORS "that determines what makes someone a woman" and Semenya is missing many of them but

exhibiting (and not exhibiting) many FACTORS that goes towards making someone a man. It's a fact which some here find "morally wrong" to express, hard luck.

It's also unfair to women who don't exhibit "FACTORS that determines what goes towards making someone a man", hard luck on them too I suppose.

It is a complex issue for sure.

With regards to sport, having a womb or breasts or even a vaginal opening are not relevant to performance.

Metric Miler wrote:

It is a complex issue for sure.

With regards to sport, having a womb or breasts or even a vaginal opening are not relevant to performance.

By that post alone you've just reaffirmed you're a complete idiot.

Not true. She triggered a false positive for T by having more testosterone than the level set out by anti-doping regulations. They wanted her to have less T than the anti-doping limit and so said she has to take drugs to level her hormonal balance to a point set out by WADA. Nothing to do with gender testing. All about drugs.

Absolutely not true. They only wanted her to have less T than a man. She would have had to lower her T to less than 10nmol/l (normal range for females is 0.1-2.8, with 2.8 already being an extreme outlier).

The Duck Test

Does Semenya look like someone with male characteristics?

Does Semenya run like someone with male characteristics?

Does Semenya talk like someone with male characteristics?

Then Semenya is probably (is) someone with male characteristics.

And Semenya shouldn't be competing against women who don't.

Sorry if that hurts the sensitivities of some here.

Metric Miler wrote:

It is a complex issue for sure.

With regards to sport, having a womb or breasts or even a vaginal opening are not relevant to performance.

But having male characteristics and competing against women is relevant, a little remiss of you to leave that bit out.

Interesting assessment. Ever heard that appearances are only skin deep? Please give your no holds barred, straight to the point, no PC bullsh*t macho assessment of this lady:

http://s.ndtvimg.com/images/content/2015/jul/806/dutee-chand.jpg

400m negative split wrote:

Not true. She triggered a false positive for T by having more testosterone than the level set out by anti-doping regulations. They wanted her to have less T than the anti-doping limit and so said she has to take drugs to level her hormonal balance to a point set out by WADA. Nothing to do with gender testing. All about drugs.

Absolutely not true. They only wanted her to have less T than a man. She would have had to lower her T to less than 10nmol/l (normal range for females is 0.1-2.8, with 2.8 already being an extreme outlier).

Absolutely true, me and another poster have both said the IAAF was not conceded with whether Caster is classed as a woman or a man. You even said it yourself right there. She triggered a positive for T in a dope test and the IAAF decided it is unfair for her to have this naturally high T and so neutered it essentially.

By that post alone... wrote:

Metric Miler wrote:

It is a complex issue for sure.

With regards to sport, having a womb or breasts or even a vaginal opening are not relevant to performance.

By that post alone you've just reaffirmed you're a complete idiot.

It's called sarcasm...

Beat itt wrote:

The best suggestion so far: You cannot compete in women's athletics unless you have ALL, by birth, the internal bits to get pregnant and give birth.

5 sigma wrote:

There is no continuous distribution and Caster is an extreme outlier

larkimm wrote:

I don't disagree that there is an issue worthy of discussion. I just vehemently disagree with the abusive and intolerant way that this is discussed.

Well then stop being abusive and intolerant to all women who compete in athletics.

My personal view is that we have to accept some anomalies in the world, and to "force" someone to publicly compete as an alternative gender to the one that they would normally be categorised as simply for sporting purposes is morally wrong.

No one is forcing Mr. Semenya to compete as a man.

The issue is that he shouldn't be competing against women.

If that means that we end up with medals given out and records established by people over whom there are legitimate reasons to assume that their performance advantages is down to abnormalities in their biology, then I for one am happy to accept that.

Again you're being abusive and intolerant to all women who compete in athletics.