Brave reporter undergoes inhumane sex test for sports. Brace yourselves.

I don’t think you’ve melted the brains of anyone who believes sex is not completely straightforward, have you. Why would that melt their brains? Your existence doesn’t preclude the existence of other variances.

Semenya knew that he was male at least a decade ago. And chose to continue to compete because he felt entitled to. He even took the case all the way to the highest court for sport to fight to keep his entitlement.

Knowing all along that he was male, with male levels of testosterone and male development and was winning against female people.

but you don’t think the fact that policy does need to keep changing points to complexity?

I hope you’re not a competitor in sports, if you can’t be gracious in victory let alone defeat

Semenya was not remotely gracious in stolen victories. We owe him no respect.

Sure. And pre 1999, a male athlete discovered during sex testing would have been excluded from the Olympic competitions.

Why is it ok for the regulations to have changed to allow in a male athlete but not ok to have that harmful regulation changed to protect the female athletes it was supposed to be protecting in the first place?

Yes, it's always the category of woman that has to cede ground to everyone else.

As an intersex woman who is actually born female and still female (46XX ovotesticular DSD), I enjoy melting the brains of people who try to use intersex as a trump card.

Any male person that has been excluded from the Olympic competition as per the new regulations is a male person.

You may choose to use whatever language you want in discussions about those people, however not one other person needs to use the same inaccurate language that you have chosen to use.

Well she WAS legally recognised as female by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF). She was ordered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to take testosterone-suppressing drugs or undergo surgery simply to continue competing, but she was legally recognised as female.

Many athletes at all levels experience the situation where they discover that due to a health condition or a change in regulation that they are no longer eligible to compete in a sport that they love.

Why should this group of male athletes should be treated differently? Why do they have gotten special treatment?

And the female sex category is defined by the category boundaries of having a body that is formed around the production of large gametes regardless of whether a person ever produces those large gametes. Genitalia is not the focus of that category definition.

😄My mistake. Fair play!
But you did double-down on insisting that he is a woman. And you've ignored everything else I said, which is quite a "teenagery" thing to do. I'll assume, therefore, that everything else I said was on the mark? Good. I can go do something else now. Thanks for that!

as I said to someone else, if you’re just concerned about fairness in women’s sport, you could be pleased she can no longer compete but still respectfully refer to her as she / her. But you’re making the choice to keep calling her a man. I hope you’re not a competitor in sports, if you can’t be gracious in victory let alone defeat! She’s not competing; leave her alone.

I just don’t believe this test is the holy grail and answer to all variances etc.
What, exactly, is wrong with it and how would you improve it?

I agree that there are some benefits to testing everyone -
as you say, so it doesn’t just become about who ‘looks masculine’ (which as we know, tends to become racist quite quickly).

I just don’t believe this test is the holy grail and answer to all variances etc. I don’t really think that’s as controversial as some people are pretending on this thread.

Why are males with DSD suddenly considered women?

I think in the very misogynist societies in Algeria (where DSD is common in certain regions, which I believe is linked to centuries of inbreeding), a boy born without a penis is not considered man enough and should therefore live as a girl.

"Semenya only spends 800m of their life as a woman"

Describes his situation perfectly!

Note how explicit the anti-female argument is here - proponents aren't always this explicit.

Athletes like Semenya 'don't fit in male or female boxes' yet they must be placed in the female category despite not fitting.

From developmental biologist, Emma Hilton:

Sex screening already happens in female sport, but the main approach is ethically indefensible. In practice, scrutiny is typically triggered when an athlete appears masculinised and concerns are raised by fellow competitors, coaching staff, or even the general public. This exposes individual athletes directly to suspicion, and sometimes to media attention, with serious consequences: humiliation, harassment, and psychological harm. This approach violates basic principles of dignity and privacy, and conflicts with a governing body’s duty of care to its athletes.
A more ethical alternative is a pre-competition, cohort-wide screen, applied to every athlete entering the female category, with no individual singled out on the basis of suspicion, and conducted discreetly before any public competition. This approach offers meaningfully greater protection of dignity and privacy.
Full medical testing of entire cohorts is not practical, however. Assessing sexual development can be lengthy, potentially invasive and expensive. A solution is genetic screening for genes involved in male-specific sexual development. This can be applied efficiently to large cohorts and serves as a robust initial sieve, identifying the near-100% of female athletes whose development is unremarkable, while flagging those for whom further investigation may be warranted.

https://fondofbeetles.substack.com/p/the-case-for-sex-screening-in-sport

So everybody wins with the new procedure.

I certainly did NOT say ‘oh what about CS’. Someone else bought her up - I would have much preferred to maintain a more general discussion that did not further violate an intersex woman by digging back into her medical history. I shared my opinion on her only when asked directly.

The medical community have been very aware of 5ARD since before Caster Semenya was allowed to compete in the female sport categories at the Olympics.

The decision was made knowing that these athletes with 5ARD were male because activists successfully campaigned to stop sex testing because they viewed it as being inhumane. Prior to that, 5ARD was recognised as being a male DSD and those athletes had been excluded. Testosterone was also very well recognised by the medical community as being a performance enhancer whether it was given as a supplement to female athletes or naturally produced by male athletes.

The decision was not made on 'medical grounds' but on a group's human rights campaign that ignored female athlete's voices who were clear that they did not want this change to happen to instead centre male athletes.

JB is a trans woman rather than a woman with DSD, which is what we’ve mainly been discussing here. She was never eligible to compete by the existing rules (so whether you think trans woman should compete alongside women or not, by the existing rules I think yes, the disqualification had to happen).

I felt a lot of sympathy for Andrea feeling her win was overshadowed (definitely different being awarded a title retroactively rather than on the podium); but I think it was also painful for JB.

…. Also it’s an untested comp - many of the female competitiors would have been taking testosterone and other performance enhancing drugs, which I think complicates things a bit too. It does make it a bit different from eg the olympics when we talk about fairness I think?

I think the community was fairly split on it.

Oh, @Deadlifter I do feel sorry for you. You see, we've seen all the arguments and tactics for years, we've seen them all. I can see that you're trying, but your lame arguments are so five years ago!

You started with "Sex is complicated, it's not always straightforward."

Then we showed you that sex is actually straightforward and binary.

Then "But what about DSDs?"

Then we showed you that DSDS are sex-specific, a disruption of sexual development, which occurs in either males or females. It doesn't cause some kind of mix or non-binary sex. It's just different development in boys or different development in girls.

So, then you said "Oh, but what about Caster Semenya?"

And we told you all about him, including his past and the court case.

So when you run out of "what abouts" you try to play the "compassion" card: "Why can't you be compassionate?" (Beee Kiiiind)

That's it. That's all you have. An attempt at emotional blackmail that we have heard a million times and have dismissed just as many times. We cannot be emotionally blackmailed.

The answer is NO. There are two sexes, female and male, and that's the end of the story. You really need to do more reading or watch the news or something. There's a wide open world out there and you are stuck in the past.

I think a positive thong about these tests is that female athletes wont be pulled apart on Social Media with wild speculation abput their sex. If they have been passed for female competiton scientifically, their appearance is irrelevant.

I have watched Semenya live and it didn't take a whole load of genetic tests to question their sex. It was pretty obvious to anyone watching.

Yet apparently we go through this whole facade of someone being so passable that only a very detailed genetic test can give the answer.

What? It's not our side obsessing about genital inspections. That's what's super weird. Bringing it up over and over when we've said a cheek swab will do.

It's odd how 'we haven't figured out the best solution yet' usually carries the under current of 'how much can we take off women to give more to men?'