Nature Journal accepts that people with Y chromosomes have vaginas

So I got deleted for mentioning the fact that someone who is identified in the article byline as an Expert Witness for the the Semenya team is paid for this opinion by the team. This job title is disclosed in the article for all to see.

Do people think expert witnesses do their work for free? They don't.

The refusal of some people on this site to refer to CS as a woman using female pronouns is sickening. She was raised a woman. She has a complex medical condition. I doubt very much she would have been ‘raised a boy if she had better healthcare’. She has no penis. Sex is partly about genetics but genetics are not visible so someone who appears to be female (ie female genitalia) would always be identified by others as female rather than male, regardless of genetics. It makes zero difference in day to day life other than for things like sport. However, being raised male but lacking in male genitalia would have been unimaginably difficult I would guess.

Doctors over here wouldn’t do internal x rays on a baby for no reason so I can well imagine this situation occurring here too. Caster is not a man just because she discovered at age 18 that she has undescended testes. If you have an issue with her competing in the women’s race, that is one thing but leave off with the ‘they’ (and ‘he’ on other threads).

Nature is not a magazine 😲 It's an extremely prestigious journal (with many offshoots) and as a pp said, careers are made on a Nature publication. And like all journals, of course they want to publish articles people will find interesting and want to read, because that's how they make money.

However, this piece is not an article. It's a 'World View', therefore an opinion piece. They're used to start debate about difficult topics and are by their definition often controversial.

We know Semenya is XY with internal testes.

How? I haven't seen anything which gives her medical details.

as are the other men with XY DSDs with testes and androgen sensitive.

So do you mean that anyone with XY DSD is a man? Even with a vagina, uterus and undeveloped gonads? Or only XY with internal testes and ambiguous genitailia?

I'm confused by what people who complain about Semenya being allowed to complete want.

Easy, for Semenya not to be allowed to compete with women. As it is, they are still allowed to compete with women in certain events, or if they lower their testosterone to what is still much above the range for women in their usual events.

We know Semenya is XY with internal testes. We know they are sensitive to the testosterone their testes make. Semenya is male and has known they are male since at least 2008/2009 (if not before) and is yet allowed to continue competing with women, as are the other men with XY DSDs with testes and androgen sensitive.

Why? Because apparently it comes down to visible penis = male and everyone else = female. Women aren’t just non-men.

Another aside: the twisting of language has now made this statement ambiguous:

”The IAAF estimates that 1 in 20,000 people assigned female at birth have a Y chromosome,”

Were some of those 20,000 women without DSDs?

Or were the 20,000 actually ASSIGNED female at birth (ie all were people with DSDs)

Beat me to it!

They may be deterring to XX male syndrome, AKA De la Chapelle syndrome.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

It’s really the SRY gene that matters. That’s the part of the Y chromosome we are referring to when we say the Y determines sex.

As far as I know, there aren’t any people with penises with no Y chromosomes, as the author states.

I believe that XX males can have perfectly normal male genitalia (crossing over of the SRY gene onto an X chromosome). Rarer than XY females I think (both are rare) but a I'm sure google will tell you the details.

The point is that this being in Nature (especially as an Op Ed) is perfectly reasonable.

I'm still puzzled by all the hand wringing within sporting bodies about CS. Y chromosome, receptive to testosterone - compete with men. It's not like CS can't partake in sport at all. Of course, there wouldn't be the glory of winning the Olympics, but heh, I'm not good enough either.

National Geographic seems to be on a mission to make up for decades when it seemed to be targeted at schoolboys looking for pictures of ‘exotic’ breasts.

Where on earth does this idea that Nature is 'a popular science magazine' come from? It is bloody heavyweight -- at least once you've got past the front puff pieces into the actual science.

(Tip: if it says Letter or Article it's proper peer-reviewed science. Ditto if it has multiple authors, sometimes going on for pages.)

Maybe this is an aside, but a lot of popular science and social science magazines seem to have really gone downhill. Nature, Scientific American, some of the psychology ones, National geographic. It's not just this issue ether, I've notices it across a spectrum of questions.

From what I understand, Semenya knew of their 46XY condition and internal testes as of 2009. From what I've read from endocrinologists, the internal testes are the ONLY way Semenya's T levels could be as high as they were. And we know the T was efficacious because when forced to lower it, Semenya's times dropped.

I don't feel sorry. From 2009 on, Semenya made a choice to compete with male advantage over females and has profited enormously from that choice.

The honourable and sporting thing would have been to bow out. Unfortunately, we live in a society that now privileges and rewards dishonourable conduct, and every single day, rewarding choices like Semenya's teaches exactly that to our children.

The people who object to XX/no testes/female-reproductive-class common or garden women having their own category are deserving of as much sympathy as they offer those women.

Won't acknowledge that a class of people exist that are physically different from you?
Won't extend the principle of fair play to others, and by others I mean 'just women'?
I won't be feeling especially sorry for you.

If you have the integrity to first acknowledge that the existence of others precludes you from certain classes, then we've started from a position of fairness and mutual respect.

I think sadly the testosterone limits on DSD women are necessary; but I don't really get the argument of OPs like this one if the point is not to conflate the issue with self ID.
It wasn't self-ID was it? It was and is sex determination on external genitalia at birth, followed by lack of disclosure on becoming aware that genetic and internal anatomy were not in alliance with external genitalia, which both Semenya and Chand would have found out in their teens. This is nothing to do with self-ID or transgender athletes. It is to do with what is fair or acceptable regarding sex-selected sports events.

That isn't a science piece, it's a legal argument/opinion piece.

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/6170229/Caster-Semenya-is-a-hermaphrodite-tests-show.html

www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/sports/international/dutee-chand-female-sprinter-with-high-male-hormone-level-wins-right-to-compete.html

These cases are terribly complex and terribly sad but a) have no bearing on the discussion for trans athletes, and b) are still worthy of review.

It's not us doing the appropriation. Take it up with the TRAs on twitter, not with feminists.

Indeed not, it's regularly shot down.

I think sadly the testosterone limits on DSD women are necessary; but I don't really get the argument of OPs like this one if the point is not to conflate the issue with self ID.

It's not us doing the appropriation. Take it up with the TRAs on twitter, not with feminists.

No need to try make this anti-trans.. This.

I'm confused by what people who complain about Semenya being allowed to complete want.

Let's assume that someone has Swyer syndrome (we don't know Semenya's medical history and it's none of our business). This hypothetical person would have been born with a vagina and womb and have been raised as a woman. They could become pregnant with donor eggs.

Women with DSDs like this are phenotypically female. This is a million miles from the problems of self ID. We should not help TRAs appropriate the issues over DSDs.

Why is he bringing PCOS women into this?

PCOS makes you gain weight! Hardly turns you onto an elite athlete. In fact the complete opposite!

And if you can lose that weight the testosterone goes down to normal ranges. So no advantages at all.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17980364/

What is wrong with these people? Is there nothing they won't try and use to perpetuate their bollocks?

allmywhat it wasn't any old 800m event, it was the Olympic final in Rio.