Poor Semenya

'Intersex' is a very old-fashioned term now.

It used to be common to call people who suffered from spasticity of their muscles 'spastics', for example, people with cerebral palsy. There was 'The National Spastic Society'. It is outdated now and considered unkind. The NSS is now called SCOPE to specifically remove the term 'spastic' from the name due to this change of terminology.

Intersex was revived for a political cause - to try to erode the idea that there are only two sexes and that sex is somehow incredibly complex. Articles in Nature also pushed this idea.

Biology doesn't really care for politics, though, and people who have DSDs have asked not to be called 'intersex' as they find it insulting, as it implies that they are somehow neither or between male and female. It is inaccurate.

I do find it interesting that the people I know who use 'intersex' would consider themselves to be progressive and terribly kind.

His full medical history has never been disclosed, yes I agree, and it would be indeed be interesting to know exactly when it was realised that this child who was assumed to be female was not female at all. I suspect it was a lot earlier than his family, his sports coaches and his National Sports bodies that gave him financial and training support so that he could cheat internationally, would be willing to admit. However, the relevant part of Semanya’s medical history, the exact nature of his DSD which conclusively records that he is genetically male IS , as previously stated, in the public domain.

What female traits does Caster have??

No breasts, no uterus, no ovaries.
Caster does have testes (from where the male level of testosterone are produced).

Male /female at its most fundamental means “is the persons body geared up to make eggs or sperm?”

I am not seeing a mixture of male and female body parts here.

This is from Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:
"One common misconception is that Caster Semenya, the 800 metres champion, whose victory would prove a trigger for Coe’s rules rethink, simply has abnormally high levels of testosterone. But a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling in 2019 delivers a stark truth: that Semenya’s condition of 46XY 5-alpha reductase deficiency means the South African has the circulating testosterone of a man. The clue is in the letters XY. This helps illuminate the uproar over Khelif and Lin. Given that their chromosomes are said by the IBA to be XY, any female boxer facing them is left exposed to the full spectrum of performance disparities between the sexes. And when academic literature establishes that the average man punches 2.6 times harder than a woman, these mismatches are not just irresponsible, but potentially lethal."

How an intersex person is raised , especially pre puberty, can be an error.

What sex you are is not a feeling.

I, like everyone else on this thread, would have utmost sympathy for him when he hit puberty and realised he wasn't a girl/everything he knew was different. However that sympathy disappeared when he , as a grown man, chose to exploit being a man in women's sport and to take medals, places and prize money that women had spent lifetimes training for.

His full medical history has been exposed by the Court of Arbitration in Sport. You really don't seem very up to date.

When you say intersex it doesnt actually mean they are both male and female at the same time
It is an outdated term and DSD is usually used (disorder of sexual development). You get DSDs in females and DSDs in males as they are sex specific.

This is an article about the 'Guevodoces' - boys with 46 XY 5ARD.

Although DSDs are rare, only affecting arond 0.018% of the population, they are more common in areas with consanguineous marriage. These boys were mistaken for girls at birth but they all realise they are boys aged around 12 and grow up to be like any other men.

Guevedoces: The 'girls' who grow penises at the age of 12 | The Independent | The Independent

Intersex does exist and is recognised by world health organisation - saying it doesn’t exist is denying biological variation

you are confusing traits you would normally equate with being male making her male but they don’t. It’s not just about chromosomes - there is an unfolding picture of development and casters has not followed the usual binary path - it’s biologically variable - she has both male and female traits was raised as a women and that is how she identifies even though she has a complicated biology

her full medical history has never been disclosed

you don’t need to keep up with the “he” pressure now but I can see why you were doing it when she could compete

Top right of the flowchart I posted, it states 'often fertile'.

Is it time to wheel out Professor Lord Robert Winston, you know, the world renowned expert to reiterate once again that for humans sex is binary?

As for that matter is sex and reproduction for every living creature on this planet, including plant life, though excluding some single celled organisms. So the mammals, insects, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, all the weird and wonderful creatures that live in the depths of the oceans, the cold blooded, the warm blooded, the crawlers, the slitherers, the burrowers , climbers, flyers, hoppers, the two legged, four legged,six,eight and ten legged, the multi legged and the no legged. All binary. We live on a binary planet, it is how we have all evolved for millions of years. Large and small gametes. Female and male.

Speaking as a woman who's purchased tickets to see women compete in multiple sports at elite level, this is complete and total shit.

No. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species. We are either male or female. If someone is born missing a limb then that doesn’t mean it’s perfectly normal to only have three limbs. It’s not.

Semenya’s genitalia didn’t develop properly. There are scouts who scour developing countries looking for men like him because it’s a very good way of making money.

All three people on the podium in the women’s 800 metres Rio Olympics in 2016 were male. They all have 5-ARD. https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/rio-2016/results/athletics/800m-women

I know that because I watched that race live and the semi finals because Lyndsey Sharp was the UK’s great medal hope. But like Melissa Bishop and Joanna Jozwik, she missed out on a medal because three men were running in the race.

Some men with 46 XY 5ARD can definitely father children. A colloquial name for this DSD is 'penis at 12'.
Erk Schinnegger has this DSD and he had an operation to descend his testicles and became something of a playboy before settling down and naturally becoming a father.
Sperm needs to be cool for good motility, so undescended testicles are not great for fertility, but it's clear that men with this DSD can become fathers.

Eh?
Are we to assume you do care about women and sports, given your position, commenting on an online thread about women and sports, which apparently all contributors don't care about women and sports?

🤡🤡🤡

You can't start a thread if you're not sure of your sources, it's ridiculous.

Only the activist ones who are lying to support their agenda. The others acknowledge that sex is a binary, male or female. People having abnormalities does not negate that binary.

He absolutely is he. He has a dsd that only males have. And please stop using the deeply offensive term intersex. I am sorry you still feel the need to use it in this day and age

Stop talking rubbish
Humans arent an amalgamation of sexes but are one or the other

But it won’t - it can be what it is in all its complexity

Women can obviously inherit this "condition" as it's genetically passed on (an autosomal recessive condition, not sex linked). So a woman can inherit the affected gene from both parents and be XX 5ARD.

In reality, she remains asymptomatic aside from reduced body hair, but she will obviously pass the gene on to all her offspring.

She is entirely healthy and her fertility is unaffected.

If her male partner is a carrier, her sons have a 50% chance of developing the disorder.

Might be more complicated but will still end up being one of the 2 sexes

It’s a picture of two ladies from Limpopo wearing some very pretty pink dresses. Not a bare boob in sight.

Nobody is suggesting a third sex

but a more complicated picture for some individuals

Agreed.

Semenya has a Y chromosome and testicles, making him male. We don't know whether he happened to use those attributes to biologically father children or not, and it doesn't matter either way. He shouldn't be in the women's race regardless. I'm also uncomfortable speculating about his children, who are very young, didn't choose any of this and deserve their privacy. There is more than enough in the public domain that Caster himself has chosen to put there.