Caster Semenya has lost appeal

I, of course, agree that gender is usually a fair charactheristic to categorize athletes. But I am sure there are many other traits that do give unfair disadvantage.

Sports are segregated by sex not gender your desire to be nice confuses and conflates the issue with 'other advantages'. The biggest divide in advantages is sex. If you produce sperm you are male, if you have testes you are male, if you have a Y chromosome regardless of SRY function and regardless of genital development you are male. Males should not compete with females in sport due to the myriad of physical measurable advantages the male body has over the female body. Testosterone is a small small part of the advantage that males have over females in sport. Considering teenage boys easily outrun/outtime adult female professional athletes you'd think people would get this by now.

I have genuine compassion for people with DSDs but they are either male or female as demonstrable by testing. Facts aren't cruel or unkind they just are.

Money talks.

Grifters gotta grift.

The Olympics, and other top flight sporting events are now tainted and ALL medal awards for the last 60-70 years (?)* need investigating.

There's a Pulitzer prize in it for any writer worth their salt.

*There will be women still alive who may have been robbed of podium placements.

Bottom line is that birth certificate with female on was very valuable to a lot of people.

Minor observation from the photo in that article: Semenya is on the left, they look like they are wearing school uniforms but CS is wearing what boys would wear, the girl in front is in a skirt. Are we being fed a lie that CS was raised as a female? I'm having my doubts.

I've honestly no idea how CS's parents raised them in that sense, however based on interviews with CS it's clear they have never embraced female stereotypes even before their official diagnosis.

Now, that in itself isn't at all an issue.

Women who are gender non conforming are still women.

What is interesting when watching CS in interviews is the level of male socialisation - not how they dress but how they speak (especially about women which is my main concern) and also body language and gestures (things like man spreading and typically masculine gesturing).

It's obvious that CS feels more comfortable with a male social presentation.

Again - gender non conforming women exhibit some of these behaviours but rarely all of them and so overtly.

That combined with the fact that CS has known they are XY since at least 2009 makes claims that CS is fighting to empower women somewhat dubious.

CS is a person who knows they are male yet wants to compete as a woman whilst behaving as a "stereotypical" man and claiming they empower women....

Try again on that link: boysvswomen.com. It assumed https, which didn't work.

I am curious to know whether they could feasibly compete with other males.

I'm also curious - I suspect that 5-ARD is no particular disadvantage versus other males, but I don't know.

Semenya certainly could compete - they just wouldn't be competing at international, or even national level. Semenya's 800m best of 1:54 is some way off international qualification level for men - 1:44. Assuming Semenya hasn't just been running fast enough to beat females, and doesn't have more in the tank.

You can see Semenya in the 800m table at boysvswomen.com - The boys in positions 1 to 8 cover 1:49 to 1:52. Semenya and the other two DSD medal winners are the top women at positions 9 to 11 in that table, covering 1:55-1:57. The true females are in positions 12 to 16 from 1:57 to 2:00.

It's hard to say if Semenya might be capable of more. Maybe Semenya's has just been running hard enough to stay ahead of all women and 2 other less-good DSD males...

Given the controversy around them, I can imagine there being team orders, even among the 3 of them, to not look too out of place - like those boys competing in Connecticut. Who knows?

Thanks, DeRigueurMortis

CS is a biological male who has knowingly competed in women’s events since their diagnosis in 2009. It’s just cheating & it was done with the backing of the SA athletics body.
What is shocking is why it was allowed to go on for so long. Too many female athletes have been deprived of their rightful place on the podium, wearing medals, because of this.

Duh - suppress not surprise...

CS race times by male standards are not "elite".

This is a significant reason for CS fighting this case so hard. They would not be Olympic material and enjoy the sponsorships and other revenue generated by sports people at that level.

There is no evidence that CS (from a physical sporting point perspective) has been compromised by their condition wrt it adversely impacting their performance against other men.

Simply that CS is outclassed by other men at an elite level. However in perspective CS is a fast and accomplished runner and would beat most men - just not top flight.

Re: the stonewall thread.....

How the hell do they square the argument that it's a travesty to expect CS to take medication to surprise their testosterone to compete whilst simultaneously supporting the likes of Lauren Hubbard in being able to compete because cross sex hormones have negated their XY testosterone advantage....

PearPickingPorky

Thank you. So likely the same advantages.

I made the mistake of going on Twitter which I've been largely avoiding for months now, and found, amidst a lot of shit about Michael Phelps having a weird body (yes, a weird MALE body), some idiot claiming that CS should be allowed to race with women because they're only the fastest by a couple of seconds, and are a long way off the men's times. Which would be a great argument to let any mediocre men compete in the women's category

OhHolyJesus

Thanks for posting that link earlier. For anyone who has any doubts, all three athletes in that picture are intersex. Stonewall/BBC/Guardian etc will not tell you that, they will keep referring to them as "she". The Stonewall twitter feed has been an absolute car crash today. They are like a cult.

(ignoring the fact that they might simply be too average when placed in the correct category, I mean)

Sorry if this has already been established - I've only skimmed the thread - but does anyone know if Semenya's DSD has given them the same advantages regarding physical strength that males typically get, or will it have disadvantaged CS in some ways?

Not, of course, that I think CS should be competing with females, but I am curious to know whether they could feasibly compete with other males.

I think we all felt sorry for Caster after that win where the tests came back as suspect and the world's eyes were watching.

But time passes, and Caster has had a good 10 years and the truth does out eventually. I think all the years of cover up have only made it harder for those with a DSD where testosterone does not confer advantage. It would probably be better if DSDs were properly explained and athletes could have access to proper testing and counselling before entering the big time in elite sport.

This has just been a long and confusing exercise in pushing boundaries, and as there is a lot riding on it in the background with money to be made, these decisions always get pushed and edged to where the power lies.

I did have a lot of sympathy for Semenya until I saw a television interview. After seeing that, I would not presume how Semenya prefers to term themselves off the race track, pronouns included without asking them. They certainly presented in the interview as physically and socially male, with opinions expressed towards female people were not flattering or feminist, and it changed my view of them quite considerably. Semenya is not female and is well aware they are not female; their interest in defending the rights of female athletes seems mostly about protecting their own choice of racing in women's categories for the success they can have within that category.

I'll just mention too: female athletes have been told they should race males and that they 'don't try hard enough' hence the poor results when competing in mixed sex categories.... However I haven't yet seen any suggestion that Semenya should move to the male categories and continue their track successes there. I wonder why this is?

If sports categories were separated by gender - and when I say gender I mean gender identity as we know where we are when we're being specific - we could have the Gender Olympics with a category for Netrois, one for Maverique, another for Demi-girl.

That could be interesting.

Semenya never wore dresses according to dad: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208227/She-wouldnt-wear-dresses-sounds-like-man-phone-Caster-Semenyas-father-sex-riddle-daughter.html (interview from 2009)

[quote DeRigueurMortis]@Scout2016

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

You might want to get your DH to read this...[/quote]
Minor observation from the photo in that article: Semenya is on the left, they look like they are wearing school uniforms but CS is wearing what boys would wear, the girl in front is in a skirt. Are we being fed a lie that CS was raised as a female? I'm having my doubts.

We can have fairness in sport without othering people who are different.

Do you consider it 'othering' to point out cheating?

do think it would be better if the athletics body changed the categories of male and female to testosterone below X amount and testosterone above X amount

That’s originally what they did and Semaya Castor filed an appeal because she didn’t want to take testosterone lowering medication. Her fighting that standard is what led to this outcome.

An entire decade, in which you cmpeted and everyone knew, but couldn't categorically prove, your genetic advantage.

Absolutely. I think it was the Rio Olympics where DS (then aged 7) glanced at the TV for all of about 2 seconds - long shot of the leading pack in the 800m, not even a close up - and immediately said "Why is there a man in that women's race?"

Who is female? Who is male? (In relation to sport in this case)

That is exactly the way the IAAF were putting it. In their evidence for the case, they said that the rules were to determine someone's "sporting sex" - specifically which of the two sporting classes they belonged to according to their XY DSD and the impact on their physical capability. And they tried to make clear they were not making a judgment on their sex/gender for any other purpose.

Perfectly straightforward, but so many people with a vested interest in obscuring it.

“I am very disappointed by this ruling, but refuse to let World Athletics drug me or stop me from being who I am,” she said. “Excluding female athletes or endangering our health solely because of our natural abilities puts World Athletics on the wrong side of history. I will continue to fight for the human rights of female athletes, both on the track and off the track, until we can all run free the way we were born.”

But now Caster, now we have a decade of specific sporting research into DSD and sporting ability we can say "Sod off!" based entirely on the science! We can say with 100% certainty and leave no wriggle room at all for you, and lay the foundations for telling TRAs to categorically piss off too, YOU ARE NOT FEMALE and cannot enter womens races.

No more with the levels of teststerone shite! Stop with the human rights piffle, you embarrass yourself. An entire decade, in which you cmpeted and everyone knew, but couldn't categorically prove, your genetic advantage. Well, it's all over now, baby blue! Accept it.

We can have fairness in sport without othering people who are different. Yep, of course we can. That's why sports are single sex, unless sex advantage is neglibgable. That's why we have paralympics with all the categories giving as level a playing field as possible. Why we have the Special Olympics, offering sporting opportunities for all.

Unless you want to stop all of those and have one big sporting category "Human"... do you think that would work? Or was there, maybe, a point to the 'Othering' of some athletes? Like it wasn't othering it was simply identifying differences and crafting solutions that allowed all to participate?