Commonwealth Games website (re Caster Semanya)

Sad to see the Cambridge dictionary beclowning itself with a TRA definition.

The real tragedy is that Semenya has cheated around £5 million in prize money and sponsorship from women who have probably had a much, much harder life than he did.

Of course he's prepared to lie and pretend he identifies as a woman for that much money.

If nothing else, the voice breaking at an entirely typical age for male puberty must have been quite the giveaway.

In his autobiography he posts a full length picture of himself on a beach. Aged 15. Wearing only a pair of shorts. Which of course is what every 15 year old girl brought up in a conservative SA family wears on the beach.

And by 15 most parents in any part of the world would have worried about why their tall athletic daughter with no breast development had also not started her period. Apparently not Semanya’s family who were happy to allow Semanya to dress as a boy, play football with other boys and generally not behave like a rural SA teenage girl.

The saddest part of the whole story is that three young women were denied 400m medals at the Rio Olympics because three young African men, chosen specifically for their DSD status, stole the medals from them. Semanya’s only comment was “they should have trained harder”.

Newsflash, women can’t out train genetic men, elite women athletes times in track events are regularly beaten by good high school or college based male runners, it’s all in the pelvis, height, leg length, muscle development, heart and lung size.

Yes, Semanya was dealt a rough hand in his genetic heritage but his family , his national coaches, the governing body of SA Athletics, not to mention Semanya himself, knew exactly what the score was and chose to lie about it for years for financial gain and national medal tables. It was only when he had the brass neck to query an IOC ruling without realising that the challenge gave the IOC the right to publish his previously kept private medical history, which included the evidence that shows his DSD condition thus proving he is a man. And a cheat.

Actually trans activists tend to be more bio-essentialist, because bio-essentialism is the belief that certain personality characteristics and even social roles are directly conditioned by one's sex. That, for example, all women must do, or enjoy doing, the family cooking, or that there is no point in educating girls after puberty when their function in life is to have babies; or that men must never show softer emotions because this is emasculating and 'sissy'; or that males must always be the head of a family and whose word is law etc etc

Would you like to explain how telling the female Olympians that he beat to ‘just try harder’ is him responding with grace?

This male athlete is also a qualified sports scientist and therefore should absolutely have at his finger tips the evidence available to explain why he lost the CAS hearing he took the OIC to.

Can you then explain why this male athlete who has had definitive proof he was male since 2009 should be given a special treatment over the other female athletes who may have had very similar hardship stories but then lost any opportunity to gain recognition and sponsorship for her exception skill because Semenya, a male athlete, displaced her?

All you have done is put forth an emotionally manipulative plea for a male person to receive extraordinary treatment compared to every other athlete who has endured hardship and recieved the news that they are excluded through no fault of theirs from a protected sports category they are not eligible to compete in.

It is chromosomes that determine sex. The chromosomal blueprint is 'configured' to respond to sex hormones. Putting testosterone in large doses into a female does not make them male, plus the female body is not geared up to receive such large doses of testosterone, and this can cause ill health and other dysfunctions.

What absolutely emotionally manipulative twaddle!

his own autobiography highlights how he very much did not present as female

he's not a different type of woman, he's a man. A man who has made a very good living out of cheating women

I've known loads of people who grew up in large families in rural homes with no electricity or running water. That was common in many parts of Ireland until the 1950s. They weren't daft, and they knew men from women.

As Caster knew from puberty on. I'm sorry he was exploited so cynically when he was young, but also disgusted that he has continued to tell the profitable lie.

I boggle at those who are determined to pretend to believe the lie.

Don’t be silly.

His name.

Heaven knows where you got that interpretation from. I doubt that there is one woman on FWR who holds strict “bioessentialist” views, even among those who, like me, think that some aspects of behaviour are biologically driven, especially at particular life stages.

I think this is an extremely sad case .
Samenya was born in South Africa in a rural village far from a big city . She grew up in a large family in a home with no running water or electricity with a “long drop “ toilet . Her father was absent for lmonths at a time as he worked in Johannesburg as a gardener . She grew up identifying as a female who was a bit “different “ . Nature can be very cruel but SHE was born the way she is and she refuse s to take hormone suppressing medication. Why should she ? She is what she is .

In her autobiography, The race to be myself , She defends herself with grace and determination which in the words of the Guardian reviewer should be celebrated.
in the words of the Cas ruling : Natural human biology does not map perfectly on to legal status and gender identity.
Casper labels herself “ I am an African . I am a woman . I am a different woman .

the belief that people's most important characteristics are controlled by biology and cannot change particularly the belief that some groups of people are naturally less good than others because of this:

No, characteristics are not by controlled biology. Biology is controlled by biology. If you have a uterus you make the babies. If you have a penis you provide the sperm. Personality characteristics need don't apply to the job!

the belief that gender is controlled by a persons body being male or female and cannot change

Again, it's the opposite. Gender is imposed by society and absolutely can change. Of course it can change. It changes across geography, history. The biggest way it changes is with bloody feminism.

Hence gender critical feminism.

How can these people get it so wrong??

Guess who thinks characteristics make you a different sex? Trans ideology says that if a boy child likes dolls and dresses and sparkles he must be a girl. Gender reinforcement.

Not gender criticism.

Semenya also has university qualifications in sports science.

Let’s not forget that he knows exactly what he is doing.

Caster, who is entirely male btw, certainly did get exposed. And I have a great deal of sympathy for the 18 year old he was in 2009, exploited by the people and power structures around him. Yeah ok you're an adult at that age, just, but I'm not convinced a person of that age could meaningfully consent to what he was getting into. It is, of course, the fault of the people who facilitated him competing in the women's race and lied through their teeth about nobody having the faintest idea.

Caster's own actions later on, once he was older, were worthy of criticism in their own right too, of course. Nobody is making him be a twat now. But he certainly was treated appallingly by the older adults around him when still a teen.

Second one isn't applicable either, the opposite actually. Gender isn't controlled by someone being male or female. Someone being male or female just is a fact, gender is a mix of cultural and biological. The fact pink used to be a colour for boys and boys wore dresses when they were toddlers is a great example of that.

Sport categories and sex based services being based on sex has nothing to do with bioessentialism. We are not limiting based on gender, we are protecting based on sex.

I agree with you.

But I also wonder if some people realise what their position reveals about their views. It is not just sympathy for finding out that the person discovered they were not the sex they believed they were. It is them advocating that because a group of male people were categorised in error as being female, that this group deserve some kind of special compensation.

And then you start to unpick it. Should Lyndsey Sharp be expected to call her abuser ‘she’ ?

@Hellebore

"Is it because they believe that being categorised as female at birth in error when they were male is a situation so horrific that these male people deserve special treatment that no other athlete who has a condition that excludes them from a protected sports category has available to them?'

I think some people believe there is nothing as terrible for a man as to not have a penis (Semenya and other DSD males like him), or to have acted to remove that penis (the small minority of trans-identifying men who go so far to have genital surgery).

And men "we feel sorry for" attain a very special status. Above any woman, no matter her life experiences.

Edited for clarity

It is an everyday occurrence that athletes around the world are told that they don’t qualify for a protected category they wish to compete in due to a medical condition that is beyond their control.

Why do some posters believe this group of male athletes deserve special treatment to be able to compete as a female person when those athletes are not female?

Is it because they believe these male people have been given a special ticket into the female category?

Is it because they believe that being categorised as female at birth in error when they were male is a situation so horrific that these male people deserve special treatment that no other athlete who has a condition that excludes them from a protected sports category has available to them?

On pronouns.

This thread, by the way, was in answer to beccajiggens posting:

"Deliberately misgendering trans people in such aggressive ways is conduct unbecoming of a barrister. Again.
@ barstandards"

(my edit to remove auto formatting, but the barstandards was a tag on twitter, intended to bring Naomi's post to the attention of the regulation board)
Naomi's answer:

https://x.com/LoudBonnet/status/2079302831215902930?s=20

" Because I am a dissenter from gender ideology, the pronouns I use are almost invariably determined by the sex, not the gender identity, of the person I am referring to.

I understand that some people think my choice in this is unkind, or rude. I might have thought that myself a few years ago.

I no longer think that, for a number of reasons.

The first is that courtesy is freely given. A "courtesy" demanded with menaces loses its quality as such, and becomes a gesture of submission to bullies.

The second is about truth. If I say "she" of a man, I am implying that he is female. Men aren't female, so I am saying something untrue.

We all tell polite lies sometimes when it doesn't matter much. I think back when I was willing to tell this one, I thought it didn't matter much.
I know better now. What I know now is that many of the men who want to be referred to by feminine pronouns also want everyone to be forced to treat them for all purposes as if they were women, to the detriment of actual women's privacy, dignity and safety.

I think it matters a lot that we should be able to say "no" to those men, and to explain in plain words why we say no (because they are men).
The third is about clarity. Even if everyone knows in theory that the man we're all referring to as "she" is a man really, referring to him as "she" is confusing.

Clarity is fundamental to my job as an advocate: I need to be able to put my arguments as clearly and vividly as possible.

The fourth and perhaps the most important is about what's known to propagandists, advertisers and psychologists as the "repetition effect." People will believe almost any lie, however obviously untrue, if you repeat it often enough.

Lies don't get much more obviously untrue than "trans women are women."

It is repeated like a mantra by trans activists and those who see themselves (or want to be seen) as "allies."

But this lie has a superpower. The superpower is pronouns.

The near-universal compliance with "preferred pronouns," even by many of those who dissent in other ways from gender ideology, means that the lie is repeated with almost every utterance about a man who says he is a woman (or a woman who says she is a man).

And it's repeated not as an assertion, but insidiously, subliminally, by the use of little grammar-words that are normally handled on autopilot and barely registered by either speaker or listener.

It's brilliant propaganda. It's especially brilliant that so many dissenters have been induced to reinforce the lie in this way.
I'm not prepared to.

end/ "

Except we are discussing sex categories of human. You seem to think gender is somehow relevant to this discussion if you are relying on meaning two.

As I said, you don’t seem to understand the discussion here

‘male features”

FFS!

What actual female ‘features’ does Semenya have?

What ‘features’ do you think a female person has?

You seem to be interpreting what I said as the first part of this definition, rather than the second:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bioessentialism

No but it would make them ineligible to compete in the womens category as well as that would be doping.
Hence the female swimmer who identified as a transman in the team Lia Thomas also swam in, delaying her medical transition to finish her swimming career first.