Latest Caster Semenya Race

Please direct your sympathy to athletes like Lynsey Sharp who is unlikely to win any world-level medals competing against DSD athletes.

After decades of first shamateurism then drug-abuse, now this.

I wrote on another thread just now that I've read the full ruling statement by CAS and I think it's fair. It does make it clear that they and the IAAF regard her as biologically male, and to be sensitive they refer to "sports sex" and how hers is male, even though her gender identity and legal identity is female. They offered - and continue to offer - her choices for how to fit into the female categories, but CS has up to now rejected them all.

People who feel sorry for CS, have you actually seen her being interviewed, there are videos on YouTube ? As it's glaringly obvious from her physical body shape and demeanour that she is XY. She's known this for 10 years m, she's had plenty of time to think about it-she clearly has a massive unfair advantage.

Semenya has known she has had an unfair advantage since puberty at the very least. She's a cheater.

Binglebong - it's my understanding that Caster is treated as male in every other aspect of his life except for athletics. He wore a boys school uniform. He has officially known he is male for 10 years but unofficially I suspect he knew much earlier.

He has been exploited by the SA authorities undoubtedly but as an adult, he should take some responsibility.

My sympathies lie with all the women who have trained so hard and have been cheated out of medals

TigerCubScout

Trans women transitioning hormonally also take the pill. So we have a good idea of the effect.

Also, the pill was hardly actually “designed for women”, it was made with intent to be used by women, but a lot was lacking in research and design, but I know what you mean.

Those experimental drugs with the 'unknown consequences' would be the contraceptive pill which many female athletes take under TUE.
But what effect do these drugs have on the male body? I'd be wary of taking drugs designed for males.
What a farce letting these athletes compete as women in longer distances.

Those experimental drugs with the 'unknown consequences' would be the contraceptive pill which many female athletes take under TUE.

Exactly, Mockers. Almost all elite female athletes take the pill while they are competing to help prevent variations in performance caused by period pain, PMT etc.

I used to be hugely sympathetic to Caster Semenya but now I think it suits her and the South African athletics officials to keep being vague about her condition and what she is being asked to do. That way she can present herself as a victim of decisions made by countries with far better funded athletics teams.

I also believed she lived as a woman until I read more about her early life. I still think she was badly advised and exploited when she was young but she does have the power to speak her mind now.

To quote the article I posted below

"the primary reason for the sex differences in the physical attributes that contribute to elite athletic performance is exposure to much higher levels of testosterone during male pubertal growth. Those physical attributes include power generation, aerobic power, body composition and fuel utilization. Compared to females, males have greater lean body mass (more skeletal muscle and less fat), larger hearts (both in absolute terms and scaled to lean body mass), higher cardiac outputs, larger hemoglobin mass, larger VO2 max (i.e. a person’s ability to take in oxygen), greater glycogen utilization, and higher anaerobic capacity."

I feel very sorry for CS. It must absolutely rock your world to find out something so basic as your sex is not what you thought. I don't know the exact circumstances of her upbringing but she trained hard all her life (and it will still have been hard) and created a career. One that she was successful in. And then to be told that she was in fact male but for competing to be left so ambiguous is awful.

I do think CS was failed. She was, as she said here www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/48678230, used as a Guinea pig. Instead of someone standing up and making a decision she had people suggest unresearched medication to use on her to make it "fair". Even though it made her ill. And now, just to add to get fun, she is being used by people wholly unconnected to her in an argument as to if transwoman should be allowed to compete with females. A discussion intersex charities have repeatedly said is nothing to do with them.

She has been used her whole life and continues to be. I have sympathy for all the athletes involved, CS as stated above, and the athletes who have lost out as the result of her competing.

My personal feeling is that she should not compete as a woman and that she should have been stopped when she found out she is XY. I think asking her to make the decision at what must have been a very hard time, to give up her career and her future, was cruel. And I think that as she was raised with the honest belief that she was female (rather than wanting to be and in an obviously Male body) she should be treated as female for pretty much everything bar sport.

This is an excellent article for anyone interested

quillette.com/2019/05/03/a-victory-for-female-athletes-everywhere/

Latest word seems to confirm CS will be moving up to beyond a mile if the CAS ruling is upheld.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/48678230

Those experimental drugs with the 'unknown consequences' would be the contraceptive pill which many female athletes take under TUE.

CS is 46 XY DSD and so are the other two here on the podium at the Rio Olympics. So no biological born female who did not benefit from male levels of testosterone at puberty (and the associated benefits to their development) won a medal in the 800m at the last olympics.

This is the future of women's sport. Political correctness gone mad. The silencing that is the worst part - the other athletes having to try to make no possible expression of dissent lest they be lambasted as bigots.

From that link:

During puberty, an increase in the levels of male sex hormones leads to the development of some secondary sex characteristics, such as increased muscle mass, deepening of the voice, development of pubic hair, and a growth spurt.

5-alpha reductase deficiency is a condition that affects male sexual development before birth and during puberty.

That's pretty clear. How it can it possibly be justifiable for CS to compete in female athletics when their condition has apparently been known about for 10 years?

5-alpha reductase deficiency is a condition that affects male sexual development before birth and during puberty. People with this condition are genetically male

happydappy2 this explains the condition in layman's terms
ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/5-alpha-reductase-deficiency

Thats 163 pages of report- can anyone briefly outline what it means please?

Jacky thank you very much for that link to the Wise conference. It looks fascinating. Also saw the slide about how female athletes (anonymously) feel about transgender participation in female sports, very sad. So unfair that female athletes have been put in that position, also that they weren't informed of the rule changes, don't feel they can share their views on how unfair it is bit are extremely certain that it is unfair and the science does not support it.

Maybe someone else knows, how is it, if they don't know that testosterone gives an advantage, that it is a banned substance?

Yes, I always wonder why those who keep claiming it does not give an advantage aren’t campaigning for Lance Armstrong and the like to have their wins reinstated. I mean, if the argument is it does not offer an advantage surely you should undo all those disqualifications for its abuse so history is also in your favour.

Nobody had done any science on intersex athletes as few of them existed until a decade or so ago....

Apart from Stella Walsh. Tamra Press. Irina Press. Erik Schinegger, Foekje Dillema, Maria José Martínez-Patiño, Santhi Soundarajan. Zdeňka Koubková. Mark/Edith Weston.....

Maybe someone else knows, how is it, if they don't know that testosterone gives an advantage, that it is a banned substance?