Caster Semenya losses appeal against the restriction of testosterone levels in female runners

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[–]MarkTwainiac 50 insightful - 1 fun50 insightful - 0 fun51 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It galls and ENRAGES me that all the press is reporting this story as though the issue at hand is "testosterone levels in female runners."

The issue at hand is testosterone levels in male runners (and other athletes) who ID as female because they have DSDs that caused them to be born with malformed external male genitals, and who have used their atypical-looking male genitals an an excuse to compete in female sports.

The whole Semenya saga is a long con and a total insult to female humans. Girls and women are not simply men with missing or malformed dicks!

[–]ANIKAHirsch 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Yes. I'm shocked at how this article is framed.

Will they apply this reasoning to TIMs also, or are these rules only for intersex individuals?

[–]NecessaryScene1 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They have separate sets of rules for DSDs and trans. Although obviously there's a lot of overlap in analysis, for the DSDs where you've got XY genetics and androgen sensitivity. Does a 5-ARD XY male have any different performance to a normal XY male? The results of testosterone suppression are probably similar.

The current rules for both are basically "males can compete if they're legally 'female' in their country and their testosterone is 'low enough'", broadly. Ruling out XYs with DSDs altogether wouldn't have made sense while they were permitting XY without DSDs.

Actual females can compete without restriction - the "levels in female runners" is a lie.

[–]slushpilot 36 insightful - 1 fun36 insightful - 0 fun37 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

He could have stepped down graciously and applauded the women from the sidelines, or else competed with the men. Instead the issue had to be drawn out like this.

Caster Semenya is not the first intersex Olympic athlete, and likely not the last. The first, Erik Schinegger, did the right thing and is respected for it. Semenya's legacy will remain muddy and controversial at best.

[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is a good video about Schinegger: https://youtu.be/8mgQ97TKxc8

[–]BEB 26 insightful - 1 fun26 insightful - 0 fun27 insightful - 1 fun -  (18 children)

He also posted a picture of little baby running shoes on social media or somewhere, so the speculation is that his wife is pregnant.

It would be a trip, after all the years of people insisting he was female, if he were the biological father. And I'm not trying to harsh him, because he didn't know he was male until relatively recently.

[–]GConly 35 insightful - 1 fun35 insightful - 0 fun36 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

And I'm not trying to harsh him, because he didn't know he was male until relatively recently.

He knew.

He would very obviously have not gone through female puberty.. no breasts, no menstruation.

He obviously would have developed male height, muscles and a broken voice.

One of his family came out a while ago and admitted they knew he was male for years. Africans aren't stupid, they have doctors. He lived as a boy as a kid as well.

[–]fireweed 33 insightful - 1 fun33 insightful - 0 fun34 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There are photos out there of him wearing the boys' school uniform. His story about being raised as as girl is complete and total bullshit.

[–]MarkTwainiac 22 insightful - 1 fun22 insightful - 0 fun23 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

And South Africa specifically doesn't just have doctors, it has some of the best doctors in the world. South Africa is the country that pioneered the first heart transplants, after all.

Moreover the Africans in the ANC are some of the most politically astute and clever people ever. Not coincidentally, prior to, during and after apartheid, many men who were and are the powers in the ANC went to university and graduate schools in the US, Canada, the UK and other countries in Europe. As a result, they caught wind of postmodernism, queer theory, gender ideology, identity politics, critical race theory, intersectionalism and choice feminism early on - and they quickly saw how these ideologies could be used to their own advantage to challenge and thwart the powers-that-be in the Global North and basically stick it to the (white) man by hoisting Euroamericans by their own pomo/QT petard, so to speak.

And they were right! The whole saga turned out to be a brilliant PR move and long con that the entire world fell for and went along with for a full decade. Semenya was used by SA politicians basically to play out the story of "the emperor has no clothes" on the world stage. Anyone who dared to point out that the emperor (Semenya) was actually naked and clearly seemed to be male was derided as a racist, sexist, white supremacist trying to impose Eurocentric standards of beauty and femininity on poor poor Caster, who was portrayed not as a cheating male but as an exemplar of "strong black African women" whom haters, racists and sexists were out to oppress, bully and victimize.

[–]PenseePansy 16 insightful - 2 fun16 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Anyone who dared to point out that the emperor (Semenya) was actually naked and clearly seemed to be male was derided as a racist, sexist, white supremacist trying to impose Eurocentric standards of beauty and femininity on poor poor Caster, who was portrayed not as a cheating male but as an exemplar of "strong black African women" whom haters, racists and sexists were out to oppress, bully and victimize.

I recall reading precisely this sort of thing about Semenya on SJW-y type websites (before I wised up about wokeness): observing "looks like a man" can only mean that you think black women are UGLY! (i.e., they don't meet white beauty standards = not feminine = masculine = ugly women) So simply noticing this PAINFULLY OBVIOUS FACT makes one a racist, sexist creep! And shallow to boot! And so on and so forth ad nauseum.

But wait a moment... doesn't this very train of thought have some pretty racist, creepy, and shallow implications itself? Such as:

  • Doesn't buying Semenya's story mean that the one who believes black women are masculine is actually YOU? Since Caster is manifestly male... and you somehow see no contradiction between THAT and being a black woman?
  • Isn't treating women's looks as their most important feature-- so that an accusation of supposed ugliness becomes the worst possible insult-- the very DEFINITION of shallow/sexist?

Anyone else ever notice these inconvenient little hitches in the lefty pro-Semenya narrative?

[–]BEB 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I saw this whole piece, a while back, on how he lived as a girl as a child in a remote village where there was no medical care. It made it sound as if he, and everyone around him, didn't know he was male.

But apparently, many media outlets did not report accurately on Semenya (see the article I posted above).

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

AFAIK, the facts in this piece from late August 2009 - two weeks after Semenya had "sex testing" in Pretoria, but when SA sports officials were still lying that Semenya had not - have not been proven wrong; otherwise, it would've have been taken down already due to legal challenges. (The DM is a tabloid, but it does belong to and abide by to IPSO standards and governance, and it obeys legal rulings.)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208227/She-wouldnt-wear-dresses-sounds-like-man-phone-Caster-Semenyas-father-sex-riddle-daughter.html

But one important point this piece misses concerns Semenya's famous South African birth certificate that says Semenya is FEMALE in all caps and is often used as solid-gold "proof" that Semenya has always been seen as female.

In an attempt to end the controversy about her gender status, her family yesterday showed the Mail a copy of Caster's birth certificate. It backs what her friends, family and teachers insist is the case: that the 18-year-old is a woman, albeit clearly with some male characteristics.

The certificate confirms her birth date as January 7, 1991 and clearly states 'female' under the section marked 'gender'. Written in Afrikaans and English, the one-page birth certificate includes Semenya's full name, Mokgadi Caster Semenya. The document also lists her ID number and confirms her country of birth as South Africa.

Semenya's sister Nkele, 16, said: 'This is proof that my sister is a girl. She was a girl when she was born and she is a girl still. Hopefully this will stop people making rumours about her.'

Of course, these rumours have dogged Caster's athletics career - and the birth certificate had to be produced on numerous occasionsto assuage the doubts of other female competitors. 'More often than not, when we met other schools for athletics there would be some question about Caster's gender,' said one school official. 'We took to keeping a copy of her certificate so we could show beyond doubt that she is a female.'

If the DM reporters had taken a closer look at the birth certificate (photo in article), they would have seen that it clearly states it was issued in April, 2007 - when Semenya was 16. There is no evidence that Semenya received a BC or other identity document stating Semenya's sex as FEMALE or F before this; in fact, there is no evidence that Semenya's birth was entered into any official registry of births or other records when or soon after Semenya was born or at any other time prior to 2007.

Semenya only obtained a BC after Semenya started running - and winning - in female track events - and was so exceptional compared to the other female competitors that Semenya was brought to the attention of the honchos at the national body, Athletics South Africa.

Upon seeing Semenya compete, ASA officials immediately saw how Semenya could be used to obtain two objectives: a) obtain international athletics glory - and money - for South Africa; and b) challenge the hegemony, rules, and authority of the international sports governing bodies like the IAAF and IOC, and tarnish their reputations in the eyes of the world, by making them appear to be racist, sexist, colonialists from the Global North intent on unfairly discriminating against, oppressing and body-shaming a "strong black woman" from the Global South with the misfortune to have a DSD by expecting "her" to live up to archaic, Eurocentric definitions of biological sex and to conform to sexist, white supremacist notions of what a woman is and how women should (and do) look, sound like and perform in athletics and on the running track.

And who in 2007 issued the 16-year-old athlete a birth certificate saying Semenya is FEMALE in all caps? The very same government of South Africa whose officials realized all the mileage they could get out of running the long con that is the Caster Semenya story. Funny dat.

[–]blackrainbow 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Also, he said he "feels" like a male

[–]jet199 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Lived as a boy as a child, lives as a man now. Literally only IDs as a women to compete. He's actually worse than the delusional trans who really believe they are women.

[–]Shesstealthy 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Interestingly the article I read about this took great pains to say Caster was a cis-woman with an intersex condition. So... if she feels like a man perhaps they should be respecting her words and seeing her as a TIF.

[–]MarkTwainiac 26 insightful - 1 fun26 insightful - 0 fun27 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

he didn't know he was male until relatively recently.

BEB - Semenya has known for certain since August 2009 that he is an XY person with a male-only DSD (5-ARD), fully functioning testicles, and male levels of testosterone whose body responds to/uses the testosterone his testes produce in all the normal ways male bodies typically do, and that he went through male puberty and therefore has all the athletic advantages that male puberty confers.

South African medical professionals gave Semenya a full workup in August 2009, before SA sports authorities introduced Semenya to the world as SA's new "golden girl" runner at the 2009 World Juniors the next month. Based on the results of all the testing done on Semenya in August 2009, leading SA medical doctors - including Nelson Mandela's personal physician - told SA sports authorities that Semenya is not eligible to compete in female sports coz Semenya is not female. But SA sports authorities went ahead anyway, coz they had already decided to make use of Semenya and Semenya's DSD to stick it to the international sports governing bodies with whom they had long been at war, due to the history of colonialism, apartheid and more recently the case of another SA athlete with physical differences, Oscar Pistorius.

If you examine all the material published about Semenya, it becomes very clear that the whole story about Semenya being considered and treated as female since birth is a sham - and a con. Semenya wore a boys' uniform to school, and played football (soccer) on the boys team - privileges unheard of for any female person in sexist SA. Semenya last year said Semenya's own sister always thought Semenya was a girl, and all of Semenya's life "everyone always knew there was something different about me."

Semenya in late 2014, whilst Semenya was still on medication to suppress testosterone that Semenya had been taking for several years at that point in order to meet eligibility rules for participation in women's sports:

https://youtu.be/Hvg50P4FwTk

Semenya in August 2019, after the details of Semenya's case, sex and physiology had been revealed to the world:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2019/aug/14/i-have-high-testosterone-so-what-says-caster-semenya-video

Everyone: please don't make statements like Semenya "didn't know he was male until relatively recently" until you've taken the time to look into the whole story from the beginning.

[–]BEB 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Sorry. I could have sworn that even a few years ago the media was still referring to him as a her.

OK, just looked - here is the May 2019 article I read about Semenya and it refers to him as a her. No wonder I was confused.

By the way, this is a very popular running blog (Let's Run) that is pretty fair about covering TIMs competing with women in track events.

From the article:

1) Caster Semenya Has XY Chromosomes

It’s absolutely mind-boggling that virtually every major outlet in the world reporting the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling yesterday has failed to mention one of the most important facts of the entire case. Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes.

...How the Associated Press, Reuters, NY Times, NPR, Washington Post, and BBC could all leave this CRUCIAL fact out of their reporting is beyond me. Not a single one of them mentioned it at all. It should have been in the lead paragraph of every story...Because of the glaring XY omission, many across the globe ended up reading opening paragraphs like this from the front page of the New York Times:

Female track athletes with naturally elevated levels of testosterone must decrease the hormone to participate in certain races at major competitions like the Olympics, the highest court in international sports said Wednesday in a landmark ruling amid the pitched debate over who can compete in women’s events..."

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/05/what-no-one-is-telling-you-about-caster-semenya-she-has-xy-chromosomes/

[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

LOL, I'm the one who alerted the author of that Lets Run piece to the existence of photos online of Semenya wearing a boy's uniform to school.

Although by the standards of the internet LetsRun (LRC) has tried to be somewhat fair about males with DSDs and trans identities in female sports, the site overall is very misogynistic, just like the rest of the internet. Many threads objecting to TIMs in women's sports get zapped immediately, particularly ones about Montana runner June Eastwood. I've started several carefully-worded threads there written in the most measured, balanced tones about the current status of the Title IX lawsuits in CT, the Idaho law, and World Rugby's soon-to-be-released rules saying it's a danger to women for TIMs to be in women's rugby. And they all got removed immediately.

The rules of Lets Run are that both TIMs and Semenya must be referred to with female pronouns. When I asked why this was the case about Semenya after Semenya's sex had been revealed, the author of that piece - Robert Johnson, aka rojo - emailed me to say that anyone who doesn't have a penis is a woman!

[–]MezozoicGay 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That how propaganda works. People who are not explicetely interested in this, are just hearing somewhere parts of information, read somewhere some other part, just pecause info-noise is that big and it is everywhere with key words, so they have some vague thoughts and ideaas in their head because of that - "that person is woman and had some cool heroic story, ah and terfs are just evil I heard, they did something evil, dunno what", and so on.

[–]peregrine_throw 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

u/MarkTwainiac suffering no fools in this post. Rock it!

Btw, where'd you get this?:

South African medical professionals gave Semenya a full workup in August 2009, before SA sports authorities introduced Semenya to the world as SA's new "golden girl" runner at the 2009 World Juniors the next month. Based on the results of all the testing done on Semenya in August 2009, leading SA medical doctors - including Nelson Mandela's personal physician - told SA sports authorities that Semenya is not eligible to compete in female sports coz Semenya is not female.

Can't seem to find any docs source relating to the 2009 full work-up male (non)recommendation as offically released, and the Mandela tidbit...

And yes, to assume SA had/has none but subpar, bumbling incompetents for doctors serving their elite athletes is smh. They had to know.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Sources below. But first: I erred when I referred to the 800 meter world championship Semenya won in Berlin in August 2009 as the Juniors. It was the Women's World Championship. Semenya had already won the Junior (girls) Championship in the 800 the previous year.

Video of the August 2009 800m Women's World Championship, which Semenya handily wins by a huge margin: https://youtu.be/MpblUehi9Dk

Now the (main) sources:

1) Associated Press report on the press conference the head of ASA gave on September 19, 2009 admitting Semenya had been medically checked out in Pretoria on August 7, and that he and other officials decided to lie about it:

South Africa's top athletics official admitted on Saturday that he had denied knowledge of gender tests done on runner Caster Semenya in South Africa, saying he had lied to protect the athlete's privacy.

Athletics South Africa (ASA) president Leonard Chuene told reporters in Pretoria on Saturday that his constant denials of the tests, which he said he was aware of when they were done in early August, were an "error of judgment" and he hadn't meant to deceive the public.

"At that time I was acting in the best interests of Caster Semenya, as a person. I believed at that time that my consistent denials would help to protect her, that's what I believed. I have however realised that it was an error of judgment and that I could have been more forthcoming with this information, even if it was difficult," he said.

South African officials had repeatedly insisted tests were done on the 800-metre world champion only abroad, not in South Africa.

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ordered more tests done on the runner in Berlin, saying questions had been raised about her muscular physique, running style and recent stunning improvement in times.

It has refused to confirm or deny Australian media reports that Semenya has both male and female characteristics, saying it was reviewing test results and would issue a decision in November on whether the athlete would be allowed to continue to compete in women's events.

Chuene admitted tests had been done at a Pretoria hospital on August 7 at the behest of the IAAF, adding that it was unclear whether Semenya was informed of the nature of the examinations.

Chuene said that despite medical advice and a request from the IAAF, he had refused to withdraw Semenya from the race because there were no results yet from the tests.

Video and text here: https://youtu.be/mLoTmod2jno

2)"Caster Semenya's Saga" by Ross Tucker, who is South African, published December 31, 2009 on science of sport:

Inside athletics circles, it has been widely known for about three years that all was not well with Semenya. In fact, three years ago, at the SA Junior Championships, ASA (Athletics South Africa, the official governing body) officials informed all competing teams that they knew of the problem and were investigating, so they should please not lodge any protests. Needless to say, nothing was done, until the IAAF acted on these reports, and requested an investigation from ASA (which is what they should do, according to their own policy).

ASA complied, under the guise of doping control, and Semenya found herself undergoing invasive physical examinations in South Africa, a few days before the team left for Berlin. Those results were enough to cause the ASA doctor, Harold Adams, to request that Semenya be withdrawn from the team. We may never know what was found by those tests. However, it is relatively easy to perform physical exams to confirm that an individual possesses no womb and has ambiguous genitalia. Genetic testing would follow and the picture would become clear very quickly. I would be very surprised if ASA did not know everything at that point. However, they refused to withdraw her, and the rest is history.

After a leading medical expert from a major SA university weighed in and told SA sports official to withdraw Semenya

Leonard Chuene (head of Athletics South Africa) publicly announced that he would not accept the opinion of a “scientist from some stupid university”, which tells you all you need to know about the now former president of ASA. Meanwhile, the Minister of Sport, our highest ranking sports official, declared that the questions about Semenya meant nothing. His words? “That means nothing. There are many hermaphrodites in the world so what does it matter. This girl is running as a girl who has been accredited as a girl. Nobody has questioned that (this comes after the whole world was questioning it, I might point out). She doesn’t have a womb, so what?”.

He went on to declare that if anyone tried to take her medal or stop her from running, it would be the “Third World War”. I was embarrassed to be South African, and wrote as much, for which I received a letter from the Minister saying that if I knew something he didn’t, I should say so. Perhaps the Minister will in future consult an expert endocrinologist, geneticist or doctor? Or maybe he’ll even read this website in 2010…

https://sportsscientists.com/2009/12/number-1-caster-semenya/

However, I would recommend reading all of Ross Tucker's posts on the Semenya case going in chronological order starting in August 2009. It's really an amazing story full of intrigue, outright lying, political bullying, PC posturing, and cowardice on the part of the IAAF and other sports bodies who to avoid charges of racism and sexism, backed off on the Semenya case in hurry then bent over backwards to come up with new rules to allow males with DSDs to compete in female sports.

3) "Semenya wins 800 meters" - report from ESPN, August 19, 2009, containing such doozies as:

South Africa team manager Phiwe Mlangeni-Tsholetsane would not confirm that Semenya was having a gender test, but said "there was no cheating on our part."

"We entered Caster as a woman and we want to keep it that way," Mlangeni-Tsholetsane said. "Our conscience is clear in terms of Caster. We have no reservations at all about that."

And this pack of lies from a spokesman for the University of Pretoria:

Morris Gilbert, a media consultant for TuksSport, the University of Pretoria's sports department, said the issue of Semenya's gender has not been raised since the 18-year-old freshman began attending the university.

"It's the first time in South African sport that we have had a gender issue," he said.

He said the university would not get involved in the recent controversy over her gender.

"We are all very proud of her and of what she's achieved," he said. "The university stands behind her all the way."

He attributed her recent success to hard work and rigorous training.

"She trains a lot," he said...

https://www.espn.com/olympics/news/story?id=4409318

4) "South African official lied about Semenya gender tests" - CNN report, September 19, 2009

https://edition.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/09/20/athletics.caster.semenya.chuene.oosthuizen/index.html

Some other relevant press reports:

https://www.espn.com/olympics/trackandfield/news/story?id=4489230

https://www.espn.com/olympics/trackandfield/news/story?id=6135110

Two corrections of errors I made in previous posts:

1) I believe the doctor I was referred to as Mandela's physician is Harold Adams (mentioned by Ross Tucker above). But it looks like Adams was the personal physician of two of the men who became President of South Africa after Mandela - Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma - not Mandela. Though my recollection is that Mandela's physician weighed in too - this was a BIG topic in SA medical circles back in 2009. My notes say he did, but I can't find the source at the moment, so maybe I got that wrong.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/mail-guardian/20090918/281535107030375

2) I said it was the head of Athletics South Africa who made the flip public statement about Semenya not having a womb, who cares? It was actually the SA Minister of Sport, as Tucker says. Not being from SA myself, I conflated the two positions. Apologies.

[–]jelliknight 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you! You're doing wonderful work.

Yet again, a man is being given the benefit of a sliver of manufactured doubt so he can screw over all women. Fuck this asshole, fuck the women supporting him and gaslighting other women.

[–]MarkTwainiac 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Semenya's wife apparently had the baby a year ago June, at the very time when the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in favor of the IAAF/World Athletics in the case - and the CAS released the full decision revealing that Semenya's DSD is 5-ARD, which is a DSD in male people only.

Female people can have 5-ARD, but since it's an enzyme deficiency that mainly impacts males' ability to convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, which plays a crucial role in the development of male genitalia in utero, 5-ARD does not impact sex development in female people. Most female people with 5-ARD will go their whole lives unaware they have the condition.

I imagine that Semenya and his wife kept news of the baby under wraps at the time of the birth and infancy because of the questions the birth would raise and the PR problems it would cause.

Semenya did a lot of videos from Semenya's home during lockdown, and it was very clear from the footage shot in April and May that he had a baby in the house, as items like toys and a walker were evident in the background.

[–]goobandit 7 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

It’s 2020. Women can be dads too, dontcha know!

[–]MarkTwainiac 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Below is the comment I wrote on May 1, 2019 in response to the story the NYTimes published that day on the Semenya case, "Caster Semenya Loses Case to Compete as a Woman in All Races"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/sports/caster-semenya-loses.html

Usually, the NYT does not publish my GC comments, but in this case they did - and it ended up being the highest-rated "Reader's Picks." Funny that.

Also, now that I know more about the case, I don't believe what I said back then about the appearance of baby Semenya's external genitals to cause Semenya's mother to "declare her child female for official purposes." Coz now I know Semenya's birth was not entered into any official register. The first time Semenya obtained a birth certificate was when Semenya was 16 and already had been singled out by South African sports authorities as SA's "golden girl" runner.

By not explaining or linking to the press release from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the NYT & other media outlets seem to be missing a crucially important aspect of this story. Caster Semenya, who has always refused to reveal the results of genetic testing, does not have XX or female sex chromosomes, as has been repeatedly claimed over the years in support of Semenya's supposed "human right" to compete as a female. Semenya, the Court makes clear, has XY or male sex chromosomes:

https://ewn.co.za/2019/05/01/must-read-the-full-cas-ruling-on-caster-semenya-case

Yes, Semenya has a DSD (disorder of sexual development) - specifically 46 XY 5-ARD - that apparently caused Semenya to be born with internal testes & external genitalia that looked different from the way newborn baby boys' genitals usually appear. This caused Semenya's mother to think Semenya was a girl & to declare her child female for official purposes, which eventually led to Semenya obtaining female ID documents & being considered legally female. But having unusual looking external genitals does not undo the fact that a person with XY chromosomes, testes & no female reproductive organs is a biological male.

I wish Semenya well, but think it would be more accurate if the press were to call Semenya & others with the same condition males with a DSD rather than females with a DSD.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caster-semenya-women-s-athletics-star-is-biological-male-zgzx2v2vd

[–]NecessaryScene1 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Isn't the headline totally wrong? The IAAF rules make clear they have NO restriction on testosterone levels in female runners. There is no need. There is no female DSD or disorder that would produce excess testosterone levels that would give a significant advantage.

What they have is a rule that will permit genetically male athletes with certain DSDs to compete in women's sport if they have low enough testosterone. (PAIS, 5-ARD etc).

So this is a limited inclusion rule to permit some intersex males who may be legally "female" to compete as women. Not any sort of restriction on females.

[–]Omina_Sentenziosa 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good. This Cheater needs to be booted out of women's sports Forever.

[–]wooger 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It’s good for sport to be inclusive in general, but at a competitive level, it’s an absolute joke to allow men & boys, (DSD or Trans identified or whatever) to compete against women.

There are multiple 14 or 15 year old schoolboys every year who run times in all the sprint races (100, 200, 400m) which are faster than the women’s world record in those distances.

Caster, as a male with deformed genitals, is actually not a very good athlete at all in the men’s category, and certainly wouldn’t qualify for any national level events if not classed as a woman.

[–]BEB 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Stonewall (former UK gay rights group, now pro-trans activist, anti-woman, anti-gay) is spouting its usual misogynistic blather now topping it with charges of racism.

Stonewall's twitter on the Semanya ruling :

“The (Semenya) ruling is racist and rooted in misogynoir. The athlete’s case proves that, in sport, all women have to adhere to the blueprint laid forth by the bodies of white European women in order to participate.”

https://twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1303628452793389056

[–]DetransIS 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (8 children)

Wow, this thread is honestly disgusting and a reminder why I sided with TRAs before. This is where I will question the lot of you who call yourselves gender critical and it makes me feel like crap as a woman with Swyer Syndrome a would you guess it, XY DSD that can rarely result in functioning ovarian tissue and a functional female reproductive tract. XY 5-ARD is a tricky case that I hate engaging with people on Twitter about and I hate to break it to you but not all 5-ARD ends up as "guavedoce." Now unfortunately speaking, the case against Caster is a confusing one but until I see decisive evidence that doesn't come from sites that feed off controversy and tries to pit people against one another, I have no interest in referring to her as a man. Also yes, I am aware Caster is a parent of a child but there's very little coverage about that and considering Caster herself has passed an intrusive female sports genital exam unlike others being accused of this same thing. I'd probably stay silent if it weren't for the fact PAIS got dragged into this and I've met some PAIS women who were subject to horrendous operations because of their supposed: "male chromosomes" that they are now traumatized and SUFFER from that tried to make them into boys. I'm talking cases that are virilized like CAH too but not to hypospadias point.

XY 5-ARD is under-researched and the only aspect of it that is developed are those born with it who adopt "boy gender identities" and their bodies seem to change with it, then you have the transgender ones who wish to suppress those changes. There's aspects of Caster's story that doesn't add up and it's being twisted the wrong way in this thread.

First, if Caster only ever took suppressant based HRT in the past as a late teenager, why did her genitalia never become more male like? Keep in mind that the "girls become boys" or guavedoce phenomenon takes place in younger puberty, meaning Caster had already basically been fully developed at that point in time. Also I'm aware of the leak, it states she had intersex genitalia and considering what news we're talking about and that clitoromegaly alone is enough to get you "reconstructed" I roll my eyes personally at that claim as someone subject to IGM. The bar for what gets you reconstructed for XY vs XX is telling of itself, given some "female "observed" CAH" literally have micropenis.

I understand this DSD feels unfair given what development it led to in her body, I've heard claims that her advantage is that of a biological male[MTT] while suppressed but I've also heard that the advantage is only 2% greater while not suppressed, although I'm against any athlete having to drug her body in the sake of fairness, especially when there are other such conditions leading to some of the greatest athletes like.. Oh I don't know, Michael Phelps? Also another thing, when Caster was suppressed she lost races did she not? Haven't there been trans athletes that have still dominated despite being suppressed due to their natural advantage in biology and development? Think about that one for a second. Plus she's lost to other female athletes who took steroids to increase their testosterone to male-levels, although obviously they got disqualified for cheating.

Also, you want to talk about male levels of testosterone in a DSD, let's tackle your precious XX chromosomes -shall we?- I have no issue implying certain women with DSDs are more "male-like" then I am, if they have no issue throwing me and others under the bus for their chromosomes. I'll go there, especially since I find a sex argument on chromosomes flawed and actually more in favor of the TRAs then the GC stance clearly held over here.

46 XX CAH, known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The untreated cases of it can easily result in more male-typical bodies then the like of un-suppressed 46 XY 5-ARD or PAIS cases that are observed female, not male. CAH's most common variant results in the CYP21A2 gene being affected. Due to increased androgens, specifically due to testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) exposure in utero, growth of the clitoris and atrophy of the vagina occur. The urethra may become displaced toward or into the clitoris in more severe forms, and in the most severe the vagina becomes fused with the urethra.. but look at that last part: " into the clitoris in more severe forms" - That's not a clitoris at that point, that's a penis. You know what the effect on 46 XY CAH is? More masculinization, larger and more pronounced genitalia.

Oh and don't even get me started on De La Chapelle Syndrome which is literally a condition where genitalia is clearly male, testicles are present although often reported small and they're infertile. Their bodies fall along the same development in sexual characteristics as male born people. It's called XX "male" for a reason. This isn't even factoring there could be many cases unreported on it, like the XY Swyer cases that were completely functional as standard females that found out they had Swyer due to a karyotype taken after pregnancy or something else. The only time one takes a karyotype is by choice in investigating an oddity, or fertility concerns.. and I don't know about you, but I've met quite a few men who wouldn't be upset about being infertile.

Caster Semenya is not a man who is infiltrating female sports, she is a woman who discovered she had a condition that gave her a biological advantage and questioned the ethics and fairness of having to suppress her natural body to compete. She is a woman who goes against the norm and has a pretty negative image of femininity. She's a woman who is likely heartbroken and has to come to terms with her position in sports and the fact that yes, her testosterone production does create an unfair advantage much like a woman taking steroids, as in those who beat her in the past but were disqualified.

Yes, she has internal testicles that do function but there is no record of her having a penis or the ability to produce sperm. In fact, virtually all DSDs that result in internal testicles cannot produce sperm, due to the internal body heat absolutely destroying that capability.

If you're going to die on the chromosome hill, I as a Swyer woman with a uterus, singular ovary, cervix and vagina will gladly dismantle your supposed "XX females" if you want to talk about male-biology....

Edit: Do you have even the slightest clue of how detrimental and earth shattering a girl or woman finding out she has PAIS or CAIS can be to her? How suddenly whenever she speaks, despite knowing she was a girl and didn't benefit off male privilege or socialization her peers are going to think of her as a defective male? This is the very mentality that justifies IGM and I am disgusted to see this here.

Edit 2: Given the responses to this, I originally was going to respond but deleted my old post but I'm just going to step away from this. This isn't just about sports and if that's all you think it is then you fail to understand the gravity of your actions given how other posters in this thread have been ragging on PAIS-and in connection CAIS, while also others stating that Y = Male. If you fail to see where this is an issue, then there was no point engaging you to begin with and I don't know why I bothered.

[–]MarkTwainiac 23 insightful - 1 fun23 insightful - 0 fun24 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is where I will question the lot of you who call yourselves gender critical and it makes me feel like crap as a woman with Swyer Syndrome a would you guess it, XY DSD that can rarely result in functioning ovarian tissue and a functional female reproductive tract.

This is a thread about the Caster Semenya case, prompted by the news yesterday that the Swiss high court has rejected Semenya's appeal in Semenya's long-running legal battle against the IAAF/World Athletics, not about Swyer Syndrome and the myriad other DSDs you mention and describe.

I am sorry you have Swyer Syndrome, but neither Swyer nor any of the other DSDs you bring up were or are at issue in the Semenya case. Semenya doesn't have Swyer, CAH, De La Chapelle Syndrome, PAIS or CAIS. Semenya has XY 5-ARD.

Each DSD is a distinct condition, with its own specific etiology, manifestations and implications. You're the one lumping them all together as if they were one and the same. Unfortunately, this only muddies the waters and promotes confusion; it doesn't advance greater awareness and understanding of these various conditions and the issues around them that people with said conditions seek and deserve.

I am also sorry that reading gender critical people's discussion of the Caster Semenya case causes you to "feel like crap." I am sure that is not the intent of anyone who has or will post here or elsewhere about the Semenya case. I do understand that it can be distressing to read/hear others' discussions of medical conditions that affect us personally. Many times in my own life I've seen/heard/been told many comments about and descriptions of my own medical conditions, and the genetic "defects" that cause several of them, that I've found hurtful and unsettling.

Now unfortunately speaking, the case against Caster is a confusing one but until I see decisive evidence that doesn't come from sites that feed off controversy and tries to pit people against one another, I have no interest in referring to her as a man.

In June 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, hardly a body that "feed(s) off controversy," released to the public its 163-page decision detailing the evidence provided by both sides and all the various witnesses in the proceedings of Semenya's specific case. You can read it here:

https://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/CAS_Award_-_redacted_-_Semenya_ASA_IAAF.pdf

The New Yorker ran a piece about Semenya in November 2009 that your might find illuminating:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/30/eitheror

Ross Tucker at Science of Sport posted at length about all the events in the Semenya case as they unfolded, starting in August 2009, before SA sports authorities put Semenya on the world stage, willfully exposing Semenya to so much painful scrutiny, by entering Semenya in the female category of sports at the World Championships in September 2009. Already by then, SA had exposed Semenya to much unwanted scrutiny and unkind commentary for three years running by entering Semenya in female junior events - and they knew the spotlight, pressure and questions would only be much worse in the Women's World Championships, coz most of the press and the world don't pay much attention to junior events, even elite-level ones. No one familiar with sports science generally or the Semenya case specifically can credibly claim that either Ross Tucker or his website "feed off controversy and tries to pit people against one another."

Also, like you, Tucker "has no interest in referring to (Semenya) as a man," so he can hardly be said to be amongst "the lot of you who call yourselves gender critical" whose discussion you unfortunately find "disgusting."

Here's the page showing the timeline of all the relevant posts, which makes it easier to read them all, and in the same chronological order they were posted:

https://sportsscientists.com/thread/caster-semenya/

[–]MarkTwainiac 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Do you have even the slightest clue of how detrimental and earth shattering a girl or woman finding out she has PAIS or CAIS can be to her?

Yes, many of us do have the slightest clue. I am sorry for the distress these individuals experience, as I am sorry for the difficulties and distress you have experienced due to having Swyer Syndrome. But this is not an experience confined only to those with DSDs. The fact is, a lot of individuals go through and have gone through the earth-shattering experience of finding out we have inherited conditions (and other acquired medical conditions) that make us different to others, and which have or can have myriad negative effects on our health, our life prospects, our ability to pro-create, our sexual functioning and relationships, and our sense of self. Some inherited conditions mean living with severe disabilities and a lifetime of poor health, and some (such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease) mean a great deal of physical suffering and early death, as do many acquired conditions.

But just because some of us have medical conditions that cause, or have caused, us to suffer physical or emotional distress, or both, doesn't give us a pass to participate in a sports category for which we are not eligible.

Also, why in convos about the Semenya case is there so much sympathy for Semenya and others with DSDs, but none for female athletes? Or for girls and women in general? Do you know" how detrimental and earth shattering" it is for girls and women to have to compete in sports against athletes who've gone through male puberty coz they have functioning testicles that produce normal male levels of testosterone and they have male-typical sensitivity to testosterone too?

This is the very mentality that justifies IGM and I am disgusted to see this here.

No one here has justified IGM. No one other than you has mentioned it. If you start a thread about it, I imagine you'd find that many posters are adamantly against it.

Wow, this thread is honestly disgusting

Again, I am sorry for your distress. But I don't think women frankly discussing the facts of the Semenya case is disgusting. People of both sexes - "gender critical" or not - have the right to discuss in full detail all aspects of a landmark legal case that has been used to try to open up the category of female sports to male people with medical issues and "gender identity" claims, thus effectively ending female sports.

The implications of the Semenya case go far beyond sports, because the arguments Team Semenya have used all along a) redefine what it means to be female, and b) say that in sports and all other contexts (such as access to sex-separated spaces and sex specific services, and eligibility for prizes and political positions based on sex) the only thing that matters is a person's legal and social "gender identity" and what his/her ID documents say, not which biological sex he or she is.

The people who've done the greatest harm to Semenya personally - and to people with DSDs - by intentionally lying about Semenya's sex in an attempt to try to make it appear that Semenya has some mysterious medical condition no one can understand, and which makes Semenya neither male nor female - are the South African sports authorities who in 2009 knew full well what Semenya's medical condition is, and understood completely what would happen if they put Semenya on the world stage as a female athlete - and they went ahead and did it anyway.

As Ross Tucker wrote in 2009, Athletics South Africa back then behaved in a "despicable" manner by "effectively playing Russian roulette" with Semenya's life, knowingly exposing the athlete to prying public scrutiny that was bound to be embarrassing and deeply hurtful and distressing. And to make matters worse, the ASA then turned around and castigated anyone who raised questions about ASA's decision to enter Semenya in female competition as not only racist and white supremacist, but as too uninformed about human sex differences and DSDs to have a say about whether someone with a male-only DSD should compete in female sports.

"ASA did the (medical) tests (on Semenya), they knew the problem existed, and they chose to enter her despite this. And then they launched a campaign of aggressive accusation, slander and denial. Among some of the gems we’ve heard was (ASA head) Leonard Chuene labelling entire nations as racist, calling entire universities stupid, and attacking anyone who dared suggest that perhaps ASA had not managed this situation appropriately."

I think Athletics South Africa, all the mass media outlets and all the the TRAs, MRAs and SJWs who've gone along with and perpetuated the Semenya long con are most deserving of ire - not people who've objected to it or who dare to discuss it openly and honestly.

[–]MarkTwainiac 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Caster herself has passed an intrusive female sports genital exam unlike others being accused of this same thing.

What is this "intrusive female sports genital exam" of which you speak? The one no others apparently have ever been subjected to.

The testimony given in the legal proceedings by Semenya, and by others who testified on Semenya's behalf, including Semenya's physician, as well as press reports from September 2009, say that on August 7, 2009 Semenya was seen by a South African gynecologist at the behest of Athletics South Africa, who in turn were acting at the behest of the IAFF. At that time, Semenya's court testimony reveals, the SA gynecologist did (or attempted to do) a standard pelvic exam on Semenya.

By standard pelvic exam I mean the kind of internal examination girls and women routinely get numerous times throughout our lives. Such as when we're being fitted for a diaphragm; getting an IUD; having a cervical/Pap smear, etc; or we have pelvic pain or vaginal discharge and we're being investigated for things like ovarian cysts, fibroids, endometriosis, infections, etc; or we're pregnant and getting our monthly checkup, we're in labour & our cervix needs to be checked to see how dilated it is, we've just given birth & there's a need to make sure the entire placenta has been expelled, or we're being checked 6 weeks after birth to make sure things are back to normal, as is customary.

Semenya's testimony and that of others testifying on Semenya's behalf make no mention of any additional "intrusive female genital exam" being done on Semenya afterwards. Ever. No mention is made that the IAAF further "sex testing" done on Semenya in Europe in the fall of 2009 involved another internal pelvic exam. The only such exam mentioned in the court proceedings is the one done in Pretoria, SA in August, 2009 (which in the court proceedings Semenya complained about as though it were an egregious human rights violation, and as though it was a highly unusual procedure that virtually no other human being has ever undergone).

Males with 5-ARD tend to have external genitals that vary widely. Some are born with micro penises and/or hypospadias. Others appear to have a vulva, and are assumed to therefore have a vagina and female urethra. But in fact, what these individuals with "apparently female genitals" actually have instead are blind shallow skin pouches (usually an inch or less in depth). Often, the urethra empties into the skin pouch, giving the impression that these persons "pee from the vagina." Any trained gynecologist doing an internal pelvic exam on someone with XY 5-ARD would see right off from the start that this person does not have an actual vagina or a female urethra - which in girls & women is entirely separate from the vagina. (Contrary to what Jazz Jennings has claimed many times on TV, women do not pee from our vaginas.)

When examining the internal skin pouch of an XY person with 5-ARD, there's no way a standard gynecological speculum could be employed in the customary way it is with girls and women. I imagine that if the doctor who examined Semenya's genitals in depth tried to insert a speculum, it would have been quite painful to Semenya. And I imagine Semenya was quite embarrassed. But tons of girls and women find pelvic exams painful and embarrassing too! And we have to get these sorts of exams all the time as a matter of course. But when female people get pelvic exams and cervical smears, no one ever says it's a "human rights violation" - and the UN doesn't step in allege that having our "privates" probed is an affront to our "human rights" and "human dignity" (as it did against the IAAF on behalf of Semenya).

Since Semenya's chromosomes are known to be XY, presumably when Semenya was given a workup by the gynecologist in SA in 2009, Semenya also had a standard blood draw taken from the arm or a buccal swab inside the cheek to get genetic material to be sent to a lab for genetic testing. (The genetic mutations responsible for XY 5-ARD were found and genetically mapped in 1992, and by 2009 commercial assays were available.) I'm guessing Semenya probably had blood testing in 2009, coz the physicians would have wanted to get as much information as possible about Semenya's overall health, as they normally do on all patients, but especially elite athletes - and there are many tests that can be run on blood, but not on saliva or skin cells. Such as ferritin and testosterone levels. But whatever methods were used, there's nothing particularly intrusive about getting vials of blood taken from your arm or a cotton swab brushed against the inside of your cheek in a two-second swipe.

Presumably during Semenya's workup in South Africa in 2009, Semenya had some kind of scan or scans as well (probably ultrasound or sonogram, but perhaps MRI or X-rays, or a combo of them). Coz that's the only way it could've been determined that Semenya has undescended testes and no female reproductive organs, which the court proceedings show was indeed determined at that time. Also, back in August 2009 the head of Athletics South Africa indicated Semenya had gotten scans of internal organs when he - very cruelly and callously, IMO - made a public statement that Semenya "doesn't have a womb - who cares?"

Whichever method of scanning was used on Semenya, all are standard, and most people don't consider them particularly "intrusive." The only "intrusive" method would be a vaginal ultrasound, but that method would be an impossibility in the case of someone with XY 5-ARD even if that person has external genitals that appear to be female at first glance. The pelvic skin pouches of some with XY-5ARD that get referred to as "vaginas" are way too shallow to allow for use of a vaginal ultrasound device, and since such skin pouches are not muscular organs like vaginas are, they are not capable of naturally/automatically stretching to accommodate a probe (or speculum - or penis or other penetrator) the way a highly-elastic vagina can.

My guess is that the IAAF/World Athletics probably did their own bloodwork on Semenya, and perhaps their own scans too. In May 2019, when all the press was still erroneously reporting that Semenya and the other DSD athletes in women's sports affected by the new rules pertaining to their testosterone levels were "females with hyperandrogenism," the IAAF/World Athletics released a document stating very clearly that the rules only apply to XY athletes with testes and no ovaries. I doubt the IAAF would have put out this statement if they had not run their own tests. But at the same time, the only tests required to get that info would be standard ones that most people would not consider particularly "intrusive."

However, I've not found any evidence that physicians working for/with/on behalf of the IAAF/World Athletics did an additional internal pelvic exam on Semenya. In the court case, out of respect for Semenya's privacy, everyone on all sides steered very clear of giving details about the exact configuration of Semenya's external genitalia and urethra - which I think was the right thing to do. They simply said they didn't develop in the customary way, so looked different to how most male genitals look - and left it at that. So I dunno what this "intrusive female sports genital exam" that "Caster herself has passed" might have involved, or when it supposedly occurred.

But anyone who is leery of having "intrusive sports exams" that involve having someone else see their genitals would be well advised to steer clear of elite-level international competition. Coz all athletes in elite world sports are subject to the same WADA anti-doping rules that require each and every one of 'em to routinely and regularly give urine samples under the eye of a sports' official - meaning they have to pee in front of an official in such a way that the official can see where the urine is coming from. Serena Williams has to do this. So did Usain Bolt - & everybody else in top-flight sports. It goes with the territory of being a world-class athlete participating in international events.

Is it pleasant for these athletes to have to drop trou and pee in front of a sports official? No, of course not. But they all put up with the momentary indignity for the sake of fairness. Coz fairness is supposed to be one of sports' most fundamental governing principles.

If I've overlooked the evidence that

Caster herself has passed an intrusive female sports genital exam unlike others

I apologize, and I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me what on what page in the CAS decision - or other documents - so I can learn more about it. I've followed the Semenya story and case carefully since 2009, but I'm sure there are aspects I've missed.

[–]Omina_Sentenziosa 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

She's a woman who is likely heartbroken and has to come to terms with her position in sports and the fact that yes, her testosterone production does create an unfair advantage much like a woman taking steroids, as in those who beat her in the past but were disqualified.

If Semenya realizes this, why the fuck are they still trying to push to be included in those categories? Why can' t they accept that they can' t compete in women' s sports and use their visibility to start another league, for example, or simply accept that they can' t compete against other women because it' s unfair?

Do you have even the slightest clue of how detrimental and earth shattering a girl or woman finding out she has PAIS or CAIS can be to her? How suddenly whenever she speaks, despite knowing she was a girl and didn't benefit off male privilege or socialization her peers are going to think of her as a defective male?

Why exactly the feelings of these people should be taken into consideration when it comes to defining their sex? I am sure that many TIMs feel the same when they realize that they are not women or that the people around them don' t see them as women and consider them failed men. Why should their feelings be ignored, but people with CAIS/PAIS' s feelings should be taken into consideration? Just because you feel closer to them? What does male privilege have to do with this anyway?

This is the very mentality that justifies IGM and I am disgusted to see this here.

Yeah, no. The mentality that justifies IGM is that intersex people should conform physically to one sex, forcefully if necessary. Nobody here is saying that, and I am pretty sure nobody here is even thinking it. Nobody here is saying that Semenya should undergo whatever medical procedure sport committees have suggested either, and I frankly think that putting the option out was incredibly gross (I am talking about the commitee). They shold have banned Semenya regardless and move on.

Personally, I do believe that chromosomes should be the base to define sex, because those chromosomes are the ones that give a person their sex to begin with and cannot change. Intersex people suffer from conditions, without that condition, they would have developed as their chromosomes dictate. Regardless of what I think on the matter, no person with functioning testicles is a woman. Semenya is a male with an intersex condition, and as such they should be considered in regards of sport leagues. Not that I believe they didn' t know for decades, but even if they found out yesterday, the right thing to do would have been dropping out and find alternatives, not pushing continuously about being included when, you say it yourself, they agree and understand that they have an unfair advantage.

[–]zephyranthes 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Nobody here is saying that Semenya should undergo whatever medical procedure sport committees have suggested either, and I frankly think that putting the option out was incredibly gross of them.

It's also still unfair to women and girls.

What is "fair" in sports, anyway?

Imagine there's a man who can win 100% of women's sports events, and you have perfect data on the humiliation, torture and medical malpractice that could be inflicted on him and the percentage of events he will win afterward. When will it be "fair"? When it's hormone blockers and 75%? horse piss and 50%? silicone ZZ cups and 25%? barely able to walk after installing a horror tube and 0% but still taking up a woman's spot?

What about other "unfairness"? Like, my lung volume isn't up to snuff, can I dope to compensate? My dad has leg problems, can he drive his car? Can I run against a 4-year-old but backward?

The simple math is that there's no "fair" handicap that a judge can impose on someone who doesn't qualify because the expected effect of said handicap is totally arbitrary. If we're talking fair redistribution in the context of social justice (imagining for a moment it applies to pro sports, which it doesn't), the amount of professional athletic victories the average woman has is close to zero (I don't mean like "three", I mean like 0.00001). If you don't qualify, you don't get to participate, end of discussion.

[–]Omina_Sentenziosa 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you don't qualify, you don't get to participate, end of discussion.

I agree completely. Semenya shouldn' t be allowed to compete in women' s leagues regardless of what they do to their own body.

The point I was making was that I find it gross that anyone would tell someone to alter their body for sports. I remember a conversation I had in the old debate sub about the legitimacy of breast reductions to play sports. I think if you need to go under the knife to play a sport, you should find another one, not decide for surgery. Similarly, Semenya shouldn' t get this surgery fo a ton of reasons, and they should still be banned from women' s sport regardless of their decision.

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Edit 2: Given the responses to this, I originally was going to respond but deleted my old post but I'm just going to step away from this. This isn't just about sports and if that's all you think it is then you fail to understand the gravity of your actions given how other posters in this thread have been ragging on PAIS-and in connection CAIS, while also others stating that Y = Male. If you fail to see where this is an issue, then there was no point engaging you to begin with and I don't know why I bothered.

But you haven't responded to/engaged with any of the many substantive points I and others have made in response to what you've said. We addressed specific issues you raised, and did so respectfully. Kindness and sympathy for your personal situation and that of other persons with DSDs has been expressed too.

You started out your earlier post by saying this thread is "disgusting," implying the posters - and "the lot of you who call yourselves gender critical" are too. That's a slur. Nobody has called you names. All the name-calling, censorious finger-wagging and attempts to shut down the convo by using shaming, blaming, special pleading and manipulative (and transparent) appeals to emotion, have come from you.

Now as a parting shot you deliberately chose to use a specific slur - ragging - that when used against female people has extremely misogynistic connotations. Employing a term that has historically been used against girls and women to mock and impugn us for menstruating, and to suggest that because we menstruate/have menstruated, then whatever we think and say must be irrational rubbish - well, that's surely a novel and telling way to prove your "womanly" bona fides! It's akin to when Trump responded to being challenged by journalist Megyn Kelly on TV in 2015 by saying "She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off base."

This isn't just about sports and if that's all you think it is then you fail to understand the gravity of your actions...

But no one here thinks is "just about sports" - though even if it was "just about sports" it would still be a important to discuss what's going on. Coz though sports might seem trivial to some, sports are of central, primary importance to a majority of the human race, either as participants or fans. Sports constitutes one of the human race's major endeavors, interests, and industries/businesses. Which is why women fought so hard to get and build sports for our own sex.

As I've explained in one of my earlier responses to you several days ago:

The implications of the Semenya case go far beyond sports, because the arguments Team Semenya have used all along a) redefine what it means to be female, and b) say that in sports and all other contexts (such as access to sex-separated spaces and sex specific services, and eligibility for prizes and political positions based on sex) the only thing that matters is a person's legal and social "gender identity" and what his/her ID documents say, not which biological sex he or she is.

The Semenya case is not just about the issues of people with DSDs, it's about the basic human rights of female people. Female people make up 51% of the human race. And 100% of the human race through the entire course of history were grown in the wombs and came out of the bodies of female persons. The kind you find so "disgusting" for "ragging."

Sorry that you don't like what some of us female people say when we discuss human biology and the realities of our own bodies. But no matter how much you tell us to STFU, we're still going to speak.

[–]luckystar 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

I'm confused -- is Caster Semenya biologically male or female? I thought their condition made them technically female but effectively male. Does anyone know the name of the condition?

[–]MarkTwainiac 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Semenya is a XY male with 5-ARD, an enzyme deficiency that prevents testosterone (T) from being converted into dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT plays its most important role in the development of the external male genitalia in utero.

Males with 5-ARD are often/sometimes born with external genitalia that at birth looks atypical for males, or perhaps more like female genitalia than male genitalia. But males with 5-ARD have fully functioning testes, and go through normal male puberty (as well as the mini puberty that occurs in the months after birth).

In the court proceedings and decision that were upheld today, Semenya was said to be a normal biological male in all ways except for the appearance of Semenya's outer genitals.

I thought their condition made them technically female but effectively male

I don't get this distinction. What does "technically female" and "effectively male" mean?

[–]luckystar 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Thanks for clarifying. I am no expert on sex or DSDs. I meant I know that some people's sex as determined the scientific way (gamete production) is at odds with most of their physical traits. So I thought Semenya had ovaries but then otherwise a very high testosterone male-ish body. It sounds like in reality it's sorta he other way around - Semenya is biologically male but has some physical traits of women. If (s)he has testes and can produce sperm then that sounds pretty conclusively male to me!

[–]NecessaryScene1 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The media seem determined to lie/mislead about this. They keep saying Semenya is a "female with high testosterone". No, Semenya is a male with atypical genitals. It's just wilful at this point - they're trying to make out that the rules are bizarrely arbitrary.

(I agree that they are somewhat arbitrary - why certain sports, and why let any 5-ARD person in? Is lowered testosterone really enough to offset the advantage for 5-ARD any more than it is for any non-DSD trans-identifying male? To some extent the testosterone rule is making a rod for their own backs - it allows it to be reported as "restriction of testosterone levels", rather than simply "restricting certain XY DSDs".)

Semenya could possibly successfully father a child (has he already?) - Erik Schwinegger did, after surgery.

[–]kwallio 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The media have been straight up lying about Semenya, they say she is an intersex woman with higher than normal testosterone when in fact she is intersex MALE who has gone through male puberty etc.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

If (s)he has testes and can produce sperm then that sounds pretty conclusively male to me!

Whether or not a male person (or plant or animal) can produce sperm isn't the issue. What confers males their huge advantages in sport is not sperm count. Lots of males have low sperm count or are infertile. Lance Armstrong has one testicle. Doesn't make him half a man - or sort of a woman.

What matters for sport is being able both to produce and utilize levels of testosterone as males do, especially going through male puberty that happens in early adolescence (starting age 10 or 11 on average) as well as the male mini-puberty that begins at approximately four weeks (when newborn boys' testosterone level surges to pubertal levels and stays there for approximately 5 months).

Semenya is biologically male but has some physical traits of women

My understanding is that males with 5-ARD do not have any "physical traits of women." The only way such a claim can be made is to define women so as to include all/any men whose external genitals didn't form properly in utero, or are missing due to accidents, injury or disease. Bet all the men with groin injuries like Jake Barnes in Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" had would be surprised to hear that in losing their dicks they acquired "some physical traits of women."

[–]luckystar 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

For the first part, my understanding was that sex is determined by (potential) gamete production. Obviously it's not the sperm itself making them run faster lol.

As for the second point, that is interesting. I mean CS had some sort of sexing test done by some sporting organization and passed it, so there must be SOMEthing that makes them think CS is female?

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Yes, gametes are key, and human gametes come from one of two types of gonads: testes or ovaries. However, sex is a category - a plant or animal is male or female depending on whether they belong to the category that has the potential to produce sperm or (mature) eggs at some point in time. But not all individuals within each category will have that potential themselves coz there could be problems with their gonads or all the other reproductive anatomy and systems involved in actually producing

I mean CS had some sort of sexing test done by some sporting organization and passed it, so there must be SOMEthing that makes them think CS is female?

I don't know what this mysterious "sexing test" is supposed to consist of, and where this claim that Semenya somehow "passed it" comes from. Also, medical tests don't really yield results that say pass/fail, LOL; a condition/disease/mutation/physical parts/anomalies/signs and symptoms are found, or not found, and recorded - or lab values/measures are obtained and recorded.

The diagnostic workup for XY 5-ARD is straightforward and clear-cut, and was in 2009 as well. Since the genetic mutations that cause it were identified and mapped in 1992, and assays for testing have been available since then as well, in 2009 it was not a difficult condition for medical professionals to ascertain with 100% confidence - as remains the case today.

The fact that Semenya has functioning testes, no ovaries (or other female reproductive organs), XY sex chromosomes, male levels of T, and male-typical sensitivity to T has been known since 2009. But South Africa and Semenya have chosen to undertake a long, costly legal battle against the international sports bodies, and to mount a worldwide PR campaign, to establish that Semenya nevertheless has a right to participate in female sports because Semenya has legal documents that say in all caps FEMALE and supposedly has a "female gender identity." They have argued that when it comes to sport and sex, what should matter most is an athlete's belief/claim of what sex he is, not the actual demonstrable provable sex of his body.

Also, it appears that Semenya did not actually "pass" the "sexing test" the IAAF put Semenya through in Europe in the fall of 2009, or the ones that were done in SA in early August of 2009. Coz in September 2009, the IAAF suspended Semenya from competition. The suspension remained in place through the first six months of 2010.

How/why Semenya got back into female sports is a longer, more complicated story. I'll make a separate post about what happened exactly (or at least the broad strokes).

But the salient point is that the Semenya saga is more about international politics, identity politics, and public relations than about the facts of Semenya's physiology and endocrinology. It's about the extent to which having a body that has gone through male puberty and has normal male levels of testosterone gives XY athletes physical advantages over XX athletes that matter in competitive sports; and it's about whether participation in female sports should be based not on being biologically female, but only on an athlete's assertion that he is a girl or woman coz he says he has a female "gender identity" and claims he "feels like" the opposite sex, and/or he can produce legal ID documents that say "female."

The core bone of contention in the battle between Semenya and the IAAF has has never been over whether Semenya has a male body - the facts of Semenya's biology have been known to the IAAF since the fall of 2009 - but exactly how much of an advantage Semenya's male body gives him in female athletics. And the boner of contention (sorry, couldn't resist, LOL) in the case of athletes like Semenya, Wambui and Niyonsaba (the three XY DSD winners in the women's 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics) against the IAAF/WA is whether males with DSDs that led their external genitals to develop atypically/improperly in utero should be allowed to compete - and win - in female sports as a consolation price for having male genitals that are malformed or stunted, and for growing up very poor in places where as children they didn't have access to medical care that would have allowed them to get their DSDs diagnosed earlier in their lives.

so there must be SOMEthing that makes them think CS is female?

Semenya's SA birth certificate, which wasn't issued until Semenya was 16 and already had been selected by SA officials as the country's "golden girl" athlete, says FEMALE - in all caps too. So presumably does Semenya's South African passport. That and Semenya's assertions about self-concept and gender identity are the only things that "make CS female."

The IAAF argued in court that Semenya is a healthy biological male who apart from the appearance of Semenya's external genitals is like any other healthy male athlete. This apparently has been their position all along, but they kept it under wraps out of respect for Semenya's privacy - and to placate and accommodate males who believe they have a "human right" to participate in female sports coz they had the misfortune to be born with DSDs that left their external genitals malformed or severely stunted.

Semenya in 2014 whilst taking meds (BC pills) to suppress testosterone in order to comply with the IAAF rules that were then in place: https://youtu.be/Hvg50P4FwTk

Semenya in August 2019, a couple of months after the CAS and IAAF had released to the world the info that Semenya is a male with a male-only DSD, XY 5-ARD: https://youtu.be/HPNPi_NFpHE

Clip from interview Semenya gave in late June 2019, again after the world learnt of Semenya's sex and particular DSD, in which Semenya complained of being "crucified" and said "I am a savior... I compare my life with Jesus": https://youtu.be/B5OLayzga_o

[–]luckystar 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Hi this is a lot of information so it is going to take me some time to go through it. But you asked about the sexing test of IAAF and I found this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8272686/ Semenya was allowed to keep the medals they won so I don't understand how they could fail the test and still be allowed to do that?

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That 1993 article is about the realization/discovery that sex cannot be determined solely and entirely based on whether a person has XX (female) or XY (male) sex chromosomes. Turns out, a/the key determinant of sex is the SRY gene, which is usually located on the Y sex chromosome, but on very rare occasions gets relocated to an X sex chromosome; hence there are people who are XX males. More rarely, there are some individuals who have sex chromosome mosaicism - in which the cells of different parts of their bodies have different sex chromosomes. Which might be because of incorporating a twin fetus in utero, or because some cells belonging to the mother (or to previous children the mother gestated) have been transferred in utero.

But there are many DSDs that do not involve the sex chromosomes. For example, CAIS and PAIS - individuals with these conditions have XY sex chromosomes - there's no question about that - but they have defects/anomalies in the genes that control for/shape an XY person's androgen receptors, which make them more or less able to utilize testosterone in the ways that non-affected males normally do. XY individuals with CAIS develop in ways that make them appear to be fully female. In fact, they are not fully female, but they are raised and socialized as females, and many of us with "rigid" ideas about biology would consider them to be female in most life situations.

But Semenya's DSD has nothing to do with sex chromosomes, a misplaced SRY gene, faulty androgen receptors or an endocrine system that's atypical or has gone awry. Since Semenya had full medical workups in 2009, Semenya's entirely normal male sex chromosomes, and normally functioning male gonads, male endocrine system and male androgen receptors have never been in dispute.

Semenya's condition -5-ARD - is an enzyme deficiency that affects people of both sexes. The genetic mutations/defects that cause it are not located on the sex chromosomes.

But it's only in males that 5-ARD is a DSD. 5-ARD only causes a disorder/difference of sex development or DSD in people who have XY sex chromosomes with a SRY gene located where it normally is - on the Y.

5-ARD prevents the conversion of T into DHT, and since DHT is crucial for the proper development of male external genitalia in utero male fetuses are most affected by it. Typically, they are born with male genitalia that look ambiguous, under-developed or stunted, or appear upon cursory glance to look more female than male.

DHT plays no part in female sex development, so girls and women with the very same genetic/inherited enzyme deficiency that Semenya has are unaffected, and most go their entire lives unaware they have the condition.

[–]luckystar 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm rereading your posts & the links you sent and... Yeah, I was never very good at biology class I must admit. To me it basically sounds like CS is male in every meaningful sense (chromosomes, hormone levels, even has testes) EXCEPT the testes are internal & their external genitalia looked like a large clitoris? But where did her "vagina" come from? I know that surgical mutilations at birth are sometimes carried out on intersex people.

CS can't menstruate, right? Wouldn't CS and family have wondered what was going on in her teen years, when all the "fellow girls" are getting their period?

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

LOL, don't blame yourself - most of this stuff is not taught in standard biology class.

Dunno what Semenya's external genitalia looks like - that info has been redacted from the records released to the public. Which I think is the correct thing to do....

But generally speaking, males with 5-ARD are born with external genitals that can vary widely in appearance: some have micro penises (w/wo hypospadias) that get mistaken for enlarged clits, along with empty scrotal sacs that are assumed to be floppy and baggy labia. Others have scrotal skin that looks more like "normal" female labia (though interestingly, it's often fused).

Many males with 5-ARD do have pelvic indentations that are assumed to be vaginas at birth, and which are later referred to as vaginas. But usually these are just "blind pouches" of flaccid penile or scrotal skin that's been inverted; the pouches go nowhere and are of very shallow depth (usually less than an inch). There is nothing muscular or elastic about them like with real vaginas! Often, the urethras of 5-ARD males empty into the shallow skin pouch, giving the impression that these individuals urinate from their vaginas.

Anyone who has cared for babies knows that infant girls (or females of any other age) don't pee from our vaginas; the female urethra is entirely separate from the vagina. But because medicine and biology are so male-dominated and male-centric, the entire focus in determining neonate and adult sex traditionally has been on, and remains on, whether a baby/person has what looks to be a dick. And whether the child whizzes from out the end of a dick.

If midwives/doctors looked for where a newborn's urethra is, and where the pee comes out, rather than just for the presence of a penis, I suspect there'd be fewer claims of children being born with "ambiguous genitalia." Traditionally in many cultures males with hypospadias (urethra that empties out the side rather than the end of the penis) were considered to be some kind of girl/woman!

CS can't menstruate, right? Wouldn't CS and family have wondered what was going on in her teen years, when all the "fellow girls" are getting their period?

No, CS can't menstruate. Yes, CS and family would have wondered in CS's teen years, as would have been the case with any girl and any family on planet earth... And they sure would have noticed that whilst CS's same-age classmates were becoming clearly feminized in puberty, CS was becoming clearly masculinized.

But this is where all the lying and conning come in. Team Semenya say there's no way Semenya and Semenya's family and community possibly could have realized that something was awry with Semenya's sex development coz in the poor rural township in South Africa CS grew up in, nobody had access to modern medical care - which is true. But at the same time, they claim that without access to modern medicine, no one in Semenya's township had a clue about basic biology - which is false.

No matter where on earth people are from - or what their race, skin colour, ethnicity, class, level of schooling, religion, political persuasion is - people who live(d) in "primitive" conditions and pastoral and agricultural communities have always been the world's greatest experts on biology - coz their daily bread and survival depend on it.

In fact, it was in poor, rural, "primitive" parts of the Dominican Republic that the male DSD that Semenya has - 5-ARD - was first reported on and explored. The people who recognized, described and brought the condition to world attention were not male medical doctors from rich European countries of the Global North, but female midwives from the DR who had noticed the condition and become concerned about it. They reached out to a female endocrinologist in the USA who spoke Spanish, Julianne Imperato of Cornell University, who in 1974 published the first research about this male DSD in a Western scientific journal.

CS can't menstruate, right?

Of course not, coz CS has no ovaries, Fallopian tubes or uterus. But this still hasn't stopped Semenya from being the public face and celebrity spokesman [sic] for a South African brand of menstrual cups - Princess D.

In the past year, most of the evidence of Semenya being the public face of Princess D menstrual cups has been erased from the internet, but some evidence remains:

https://twitter.com/caster800m/status/829011501012893696

https://www.swdcricket.co.za/news/article/1666

The fact that Semenya can't menstruate also hasn't stopped Semenya from being one of SA's leading "menstrual educators" who has been showered with awards for Semenya's "campaigns to distribute menstrual cups to disadvantaged South African girls, supporting them to remain in school during their menstrual cycles."

http://www.twohundredwomen.com/castersemenya

One of Semenya's main tactics as a "menstrual educator" to/of disadvantaged girls in SA seems to be shaming those who are unable to use menstrual cups and instead must rely on pads or tampons

https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/semenya-to-continue-efforts-to-distribute-menstrual-cups/

[–]jelliknight 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It's a known fact that Caster is XY (these rules do not apply to any XX woman) and has very high levels of testosterone, i.e. functioning testes. His wife has also given birth to their child. No mention of a sperm donor and it is possible for males with many intersex conditions to be fertile.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Just to clarify: Semenya can only be said to have "very high levels of testosterone" if it's presumed Semenya is a female, which Semenya is not.

Semenya has normal-high testosterone levels for the sex category to which Semenya belongs, which is male.

The position of IAAF/WA, which now has been upheld by both the CAS and the highest court in Switzerland, is that Semenya is a robustly healthy biological male athlete who differs from other robustly healthy male athletes only in the appearance of the external genitals.

[–]ZeWombat 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

NPR chimed in on the ruling today. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911188426/south-african-runner-loses-appeal-over-restriction-of-testosterone-levels-in-ath NB writer, Katie Barnes from ESPN.com is interviewed.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I'm South African, and so we are all very proud of Caster. But even WE don't know the whole truth. Is s/he intersex? Is s/he trans? Does s/he have XX or XY chromosomes? I wish I knew, because then I would be able to form an opinion about the fairness of her competing in women's athletics.

[–]MarkTwainiac 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

https://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/CAS_Award_-_redacted_-_Semenya_ASA_IAAF.pdf

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm South African, and so we are all very proud of Caster. But even WE don't know the whole truth. Is s/he intersex? Is s/he trans? Does s/he have XX or XY chromosomes? I wish I knew, because then I would be able to form an opinion about the fairness of her competing in women's athletics.

Why other than knee-jerk nationalism would you be proud of Semenya? And why don't you know the whole truth? Info is not so hard to find... The facts were widely reported in SA back in 2009.

The docs from the long battle SA and Team Semenya have waged against the IAAF/WA make it very clear that Semenya has XY sex chromosomes and a male-only DSD (5-ARD, an inherited genetic condition related to consanguinity) that causes males to be born with external genitals that look atypical for their sex. Semenya has fully functioning testes, male sensitivity to testosterone, and has gone through male puberty.

There's nothing fair about Semenya competing in women's athletics.

[–]kwallio 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Why are you proud of a cheater? Because imo thats what she is. She should never have been allowed to compete. And if the rumors are true, "she" has a wife and has fathered a child, what do you say then? How can you be proud of CHEATING?

[–]crodish 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I remember something from a video that said only male intersex people had the SRY gene anyway, so couldn't they just test for that?

[–]NecessaryScene1 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

It's sufficient to detect that an athlete is male or male-genetic intersex, and hence should be subject to the extra determination. Main problem is that they don't want to rule out everyone with an SRY gene. Certain disorders like CAIS have the SRY gene and produce the testosterone, but it has no or negligible effect due to other genetic problems. So it's deemed fair for CAIS athletes to run as women (regardless of testosterone level).

Certainly anyone without an SRY gene is definitely eligible as female, though.

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Certain disorders like CAIS have the SRY gene and produce the testosterone, but it has no or negligible effect due to other genetic problems. So it's deemed fair for CAIS athletes to run as women.

Actually, there is evidence that individuals with CAIS might have some physical characteristics that could give them advantages over XX female people in sports, such as height. Also, they will be advantaged over XX females in sport coz they don't have to contend with a whole host of physical issues that come from having female biology that often serve as real drawbacks and detriments in sports.

A competitor with CAS will never have to deal with periods and period pains, and the anemia many girls/women are prone to due to menstrual blood loss, or contend with all the hormonal changes that occur during the menstrual cycle - which not only affect mood, sleep patterns, motivation, but make girls and women much more prone to injuries at certain time of the month coz of how ligaments, cartilage & muscle are affected. An athlete with CAIS will never have to worry about birth control or use hormonal contraceptives, an IUD or the MA pill; will never spend a moment fearing she might have gotten pregnant accidentally; will never have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy and contemplate or obtain an abortion, desperately try to find an abortion provider and the $$ to pay for an abortion, or suffer embarrassment and shame entering and exiting an abortion facility whilst religious zealots are screaming abuse at her. If god forbid, an athlete with CAIS is raped, she won't have to spend a moment worrying that the rapist impregnated her as well as assaulted her.

An athlete with CAIS will never have to deal with all the issues around pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and trying to get back in shape afterwards that female athletes like Serena Williams have faced - and which have really reduced SW's athletic abilities and knocked her off her game. An individual with CAIS will never have to contend with any of the serious female specific health issues that often sideline female athletes - like ovarian cysts, fibroids and endometriosis. And an athlete with CAIS who competes at the masters and senior levels will never have to deal with all the physical symptoms of peri-menopause and menopause that the XX female athletes she's competing with will.

I think people with CAIS should be considered girls & women in most/all circumstances - but think there's lots of grounds to argue that they might have unfair advantages in female sports.

The assumption that XY people with DSDs across the board are so similar to XX women that none of them can be assumed to have a leg up over XX athletes in sports is what got the sporting world into this mess in the first place. With the Semenya case, all the sporting bodies have been put on the back foot - having to provide proof that Semenya (and similar athletes like Niyonsaba and Wambui, the two other XY runners who got medals with Semenya in the women's 800m at the Rio Olympics) do have an advantage. When in fairness, it could be argued that XY DSD athletes should have to be the ones providing proof that they don't have advantages.

[–]jelliknight 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

We don't know for sure what advantages CAIS might confer, over being female. It's irrelevant anyway. Women are not defined by weakness or slowness, we are defined by being FEMALE and no one with CAIS is female.

The purpose of womens sports is to see how good WOMEN can be, to give WOMEN and GIRLS something to aspire to. It's more important than an individual success.

The answer is simple, Caster and people with CAIS can campaign for an all inclusive sports event, akin to the paralympics. We've fought to hard and long for womens sports to cede them to the .001% of males being discussed.

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I agree with your POV wholeheartedly, and I wish the issues of what advantages CAIS might confer over being female were irrelevant.

But according to the IAAF/WA, XY athletes with CAIS and PAIS can be found in the female division of elite international athletics at much higher rates than the conditions CAIS and PAIS occur in the the human population overall.

[–]NecessaryScene1 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I agree CAIS is borderline - I wouldn't like to draw that line. I was just noting where the IAAF have drawn it.

Thinking more deeply, I agree that it's likely that they have competitive advantages, but I doubt it reaches the point of being "unfair" enough to exclude them. It's not the fundamental male/female physique difference as in Semenya's case that led to the creation of the other split category in the first place. And I don't think we're seeing podiums full of CAIS athletes.

It feels to me more like a place where the whole "big feet/lungs/whatever" argument used to support including Semenya would actually apply. It's that scale of advantage. We don't have separate athletics categories for any advantage smaller than sex, as they're not so large that they're an absolute requirement to be competitive at all. I feel that a CAIS vs non-CAIS competition is still meaningful, as Ross Tucker might put it.

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thinking more deeply, I agree that it's likely that they have competitive advantages, but I doubt it reaches the point of being "unfair" enough to exclude them.

Not to belabor the point (LOL), but while I get where you're coming from, I think it's worth mentioning the extent to which sports scientists and sports governing bodies long have been, and now still are, hyper-concerned with trying to gauge and eliminate any/all unfairness - even the most infinitesimal - within each sport, and within each sex category. In sports like track & field, the difference between winning and not is usually a tiny fraction of a second. Look how close this race from more than 35 years ago was: https://youtu.be/vZSsoNhjYVk

What's more, the margins in sport are getting slimmer all the time, which is why today's standard sports chronometers break down seconds not just into 100ths, but into 1,000ths - and the official ones used by the IAAF/WA now must be able to measure in increments of 1/10,000th of a second, whilst at the Olympics since 2012 the official timing and recording devices measure in increments of 1/1,000,000th of a second.

Used to be, athletic competitions like track & field and swimming races used starting guns to tell athletes when to "go!" But extensive & expensive research was done that showed that in track & field (and other events like swimming) the farther an athlete was from the starting gun when it went off, the longer the sound took to reach him/her - meaning the closer an athlete was to the gun when it went off, the more of an advantage she or he would have. Now these were teeny-tiny advantages measured in milliseconds (millionths of a second), but athletes and all the sports governing bodies still found them significant enough that the various elite-level sports where every fraction of a second counts and every athlete is supposed to start off at the same time got rid of starting guns. Now in track & field and swimming, the sound of a starting gun is sent to electronic speakers set within each athlete's starting blocks so that every competitor hears it at exactly the same time.

https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/olympic-timing.htm

If you look at the business of modern day sports, there is a vast emphasis on identifying and eliminating anything that might provide even the slightest advantage, no matter how small. In sports today, the prevailing belief is that that no unfair advantage is too small not to be banned and excluded. Except, that is, in the case of girls & women's sport, where now athletes with the biggest unfair advantage of all - being male - are being allowed to compete if they have DSDs and/or an opposite sex "gender identity."

As much as I feel for persons with CAIS, in an era when sports clocks measure in increments of 1/1,000,000ths of a second, I don't think it's fair to girls & women's sports - or consistent with the ethos of modern sports in general - to tell CAIS or other athletes with DSDs, in essence, "even though you have an unfair advantage in female sports, you still get to compete anyways coz in the grand scheme of things, your advantage really isn't all that big - plus it would be mean to exclude you, what with you having a DSD that evokes special sympathy."

Also, all this current-day emphasis on "not excluding" anyone is BS - and sexist BS at that. Women were excluded from sports - and a zillion other endeavors and places - since the dawn of human history. But boys and men have never been pressed to see how "mean" and "unkind" it was of them to be so "exclusionary," or to get all sad, guilty, teary-eyed, pouty-faced about how bad all those billions of excluded girls and women must've felt as a result. The pressure to be "inclusionary" nowadays is being put almost exclusively on girls & women. And it's no accident that it's happening at a time in history when for the first time ever girls and women have managed to carve out/create some female-only areas that exist exclusively for our own benefit. From rape refuges and shelters where women subjected to sexual violence by males can find safety and healing amongst others of our sex; to loos, locker rooms and changing rooms where we can be away from prying, perhaps pervy, male eyes and predators when in states of undress and vulnerability; to sports where females can compete fairly with/against other female people and finally get a taste of what it's like to reap some of the rewards.

[–]NecessaryScene1 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good effort, but I can't quite buy it.

identifying and eliminating anything that might provide even the slightest advantage

But those "things" are equipment issues, not physiological attributes. No-one is busy trying to exclude the people who are just too unfairly tall or whatever. Closest I can think of is Oscar Pitorius, but that was still equipment, albeit prosthetic.

I think I would basically say that Semenya clearly has the male advantage, and we have the category for that, so Semenya falls into that category.

It's far from clear that the "CAIS" advantage is the male advantage. It may be an advantage, sure, but if the sports population were made up of just CAIS and normal males, the first thing you'd do is separate the CAIS from the males for fairness. Given sufficient numbers, there's no way you'd force CAIS to compete against normal males. Whereas if the population were made up of 5-ARD and normal males, it's not clear whether there would be any point having separate classes. I don't think there's any reason an elite 5-ARD runner couldn't be up on the male podium. (Insert bad quip about being more streamlined here).

Lots of people assume that athletes like Semenya can't compete with males, but there seems to be no real logical basis to that aside from "she's a woman". But a CAIS athlete couldn't compete with a male any more than a standard female, what with not having undergone virilisation.

So the remaining question is, if there were no males, and the population was just normal females and CAIS athletes, would we create a category split just for CAIS? In a CAIS versus female field, is the CAIS advantage so huge that it overrides everything else? Surely not.

We really don't try to identify and eliminate every physiological advantage. We only do the really big ones. Sex in most sports, and weight in a few. And that's it. It really doesn't seem like CAIS gets anywhere near the level of a requiring a new category split.

I'd be interested to see more stats for comparison though - I've seen the thing about CAIS being dozens of times overrepresented (IIRC), but how does that compare to, say, certain heights, or weights?