Who can seriously defend Semenya and the other intersex ?

exthrower wrote:

Liberals/progressive's will defend Semenya to the hilt....

Don't lie. I'm as liberal as they come and it's obvious that it's unfair to the rest of XX women.

Men's = Open category. Anyone can compete here if they want to.

Women's = Restricted category for XX, created because XX's have limited natural testosterone

I think this is how most fans of the sport think about it. The category labels have nothing to do with gender identity politics, and the sport would be better off if gender labels were not used.

there is a difference between disagreeing with the rules allowing Semenya to compete and disagreeing with her personal choice to compete.

I firmly disagree with the rules allowing her to compete (knowing what we know) but do not begrudge her personal choice.

So how does this play out ... chromosome and testosterone examinations ... when does an athlete who's competed in the girl's division her entire life cross a line to be tested and suddenly ineligible to compete in the same way she did since she was 5?

Wtfunny wrote:

She did come second in 2012, beaten only by the doping Saviniva. Wasn't that under the 'regulated testosterone' system?

His fastest time with only slight regulation, and not that long reduced was 2:04.

erik wrote:

there is a difference between disagreeing with the rules allowing Semenya to compete and disagreeing with her personal choice to compete.

I firmly disagree with the rules allowing her to compete (knowing what we know) but do not begrudge her personal choice.

But don't take it out on real women.

Oh shut your trap already! If Brittany Griner can compete for the us women's team than Caster should be able to compete in track and field. She can't compete in the men's division because she has a vagina! get it? She was born with a vagina instead of a penis. So what that she also has undeveloped testes inside her stomach and no uterus? That's not her fault. She was born that way. You don't like it? Take it up with the track governing bodies who made the ruling to let her compete. Caster is just following the rules as they are.

Now please start a thread with your outrage with Brittany Griner. What? Not a beep from anybody because she's from the us?

Whenever money / livelihoods are involved. Start in college in the US, and Junior Worlds (XC/T&F).I don't care if the intersex person's feelings are hurt. I do care if genetic women are at an unfair disadvantage by competing against men who identify as women. Let the men's division change to "open" allowing anyone, male, female or in between compete in this division.

wtfunny wrote:

So how does this play out ... chromosome and testosterone examinations ... when does an athlete who's competed in the girl's division her entire life cross a line to be tested and suddenly ineligible to compete in the same way she did since she was 5?

As many have said, those that are in favor are mostly clueless about sports.

I'm not sure what should be done, I do know the current situation/solution is not going to work.

25 yr ago all the way back to the beginning caster would be cheating. Now you're a scumbag if you say that.

Wtfunny wrote:

Halogene wrote:

...

This isn't even a case of an exceptionnal athlete. With a regulated testosteron rate, Seemenya was nowhere to be seen....

She did come second in 2012, beaten only by the doping Saviniva. Wasn't that under the 'regulated testosterone' system?

No it was not. That occurred after and she did not even make the South African team.

Exactly how I feel. The ruling allowing her to compete seems very wrong. Take issue with those governing bodies who gave her the thumbs up to compete. The landfill worth of personal attacks against her aren't painting you guys as a decent lot..

No, it was not wrote:

Wtfunny wrote:

She did come second in 2012, beaten only by the doping Saviniva. Wasn't that under the 'regulated testosterone' system?

His fastest time with only slight regulation, and not that long reduced was 2:04.

Really? The IAAF instituted the rule in 2011. In 2012 Caster came 2nd in London in 1:57.23.

"It is not known for certain what, if any, procedures were undergone by Semenya, who won a silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics. Nor could it be verified, as reported in 2009 in The Daily Telegraph of Australia, that Semenya had internal testes and three times the testosterone level of a typical woman." .. nytimes.com

"She ran 1:56 to 1:58 every year between 2010 and 2013."

Caster took 11 months off from Track, and ran slower when she returned .. hardly a surprise for anyone .. she still went on to get second in 2012, under the IAAF rule requiring artificially induced lower testosterone levels.

You don't believe there is any lasting benefit for taking steroids for 18 years and especially during growth and development? Let's say someone just trained taking steroids for 5 years then quit taking them but continued training - the following year all the muscle growth, training benefits, etc., would totally disappear? Don't be a fool.

The simple questions are 1. What is the testosterone limit and 2. what is her recent test result? If she passes the test (and if the test limits are fairly placed) she can compete. If she's over the limit then she can't.

Oh and stop called her a him. You sound like a child.

Uptown wrote:

The only thing that would be more appealing about Caster would be if he became a radical Jihadi.

The first time I read this, I read it as "appalling".

is caster actually genetically male though?and francine niyonsaba,and margaret wambui? i know very little about hyperandrogenism,but i thought they were genetically female,with abnormal amounts of testosterone.if they are all hermaphrodites,then yes,theres a good chance they might be genetically male,but we dont know for a fact what they are.

jeff tallon wrote:

is caster actually genetically male though?and francine niyonsaba,and margaret wambui? i know very little about hyperandrogenism,but i thought they were genetically female,with abnormal amounts of testosterone.if they are all hermaphrodites,then yes,theres a good chance they might be genetically male,but we dont know for a fact what they are.

Agreed; they could choose to clear up this suppression of evidence by CAS by revealing their own biological composition. Clearly it suits them not to.

My understanding of the issue is that there are several conditions where genes do not develop in the standard way and varying responses as to how sensitive the sexual organs are in responding to those differences. Generally, what we regard as biologically male is the standard male sexual organs, even when they are internal. You can also get people who have male sexual organs but who are less sensitive to the effects of testosterone.

But Semenya's claim to be qualified to run in the women's race seems to be that she has been raised as a girl. She might or might not naturally have one female sexual organs, whether this is natural or achieved by surgery, we are not allowed to know.

Presently, as the interpretation of the rules stand, and awaiting CAS's final determination on whether testosterone makes a difference in performance big enough to justify separate categories, any man identifying and living as a woman can run in womens' races. So Catilyn Jenner could compete as a veteran female athlete, alongside other veteran female athletes. Any current male athlete could decide to identify as a woman and start competing against women. Athletes could presumably also change back and forth.

Furthermore, there are also other types of identification issues involving the other generally recognised categories of discrimination. Some people identify as disabled when they are not; some people identify with certain races when they are a different race. We don't currently afford them such generosity of choice but perhaps that's because the issue is at the moment less well known (as it was with intersex athletes 20 years ago) and we can look forward to able bodied athletes identifying as disabled winning in the Paralympics.

This is a tough question. I really do feel for the women Semenya steamrolled. They claimed it wasn't fair. It wasn't.

See, an Olympic gold is about a lot of things: hard work, an incredible performance, the biggest stage, and, YES, genetic advantages.

Before you tune out, I am not saying that being born a man in a woman's body de facto means that you get to be a dude, beat the girls, and get the gold . . .

Here is my short answer: there is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is genetic. If you have XY chromosomes, then you are genetically male, usually. Gender is different -- and not just because of the clothes you wear or the length which your parents cut your hair or whether you wore pink or blue as a baby. Gender is a social construct that is important in determining perceived sex.

That wasn't so crazy, was it? But if you're still with me, then you are either still unconvinced or you were already convinced.

So, here's the elaboration: [Don't worry, I'll include links below; quoted stuff in links.] About "1 in 15,000" people are born intersex. "These athletes have a genetic condition where the testosterone receptor has a mutation which means they are unable to obtain any benefit from it (or from injected testosterone)." "[T]hey have male hormones, but those hormones cannot act because of a mutation in the protein to which they are supposed to bind. They would look and behave like a girl, . . . [m]any models and film stars have this disorder."

Okay, so the idea is that, intersex women are different from non-intersex women, but the difference should not matter in practice for athletics.

"Apart from the fact that they can't bear children, they are completely female." Yet these women have XY chromosomes. If sex testing were limited to chromosomes, they would be declared male."

They cannot bear children, which might be a bummer for them, but irrelevant to our conversation.

But that's not the only possibility: "At the other end of the spectrum are those who . . . should be female, but have too much action from male hormones, because of a deficiency of the stress hormone, cortisol. Somebody with this condition, called congenital adrenal hyperplasia may look on the outside like a boy, but once a month they may have blood in their urine. The genitalia doesn't need to be completely male, it can be somewhere in between. These days, doctors would do genital corrective surgery quite early on."

This all blurs the line between genetic advantage and misplaced gender, I admit, but is this her fault?

If she is to blame for producing too little or too much of a hormone --naturally -- then where does genetic advantage end and cheating, doping, or gender begin?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/20/what-sex-is-caster-semenya

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/22/semenyas-gold-is-being-tarnished-by-hormone-row

Sources ^

I do not necessarily agree with everything I wrote above, but I feel bad for the girl and all of the controversy she has had to deal with for years. I also acknowledge that this is a tough issue that may take decades to solve.

(Also, I admit, she looks more like a man than the other girls; all that I think that means is that she is in the other, second, camp of women who look like men because of a cortisol deficiency. If she has this naturally, then that's about as unfair as having long arms or a crazy VO2 max.)