to think Lynsey Sharp should keep her sour grapes to herself?

[WrinklyBathToes]

I can't help but feel for Caster Semenya, poor lass has been subjected to all sorts of medical interventions and whispers. It's not actually her fault, it's a natural blip, why should she be subjected to all this bitching from the losers?

But those who say it is fair and her intersex-ness (along with the silver and bronze medalists) is just a quirk in her biology. Would you be arguing the same if it were the three medalist positions in boxing?

Fallon Fox has been allowed to compete in MMA in the past. (not sure what situation is at present).

Fallon Fox has been allowed to compete in MMA in the past. (not sure what situation is at present).

Yes, and Fox nearly killed Tamika Brents.

but at the same time she does have a biological advantage

Any elite athlete has a bloody biological advantage!!! Michel phelps and his flipper feet etc

If we ignore biological advantages then women's sports will cease to exists without the biological divide of the sexes there is no space for women in the Olympics the same cannot be said for phelps feet.

No one even cared with Fox He went way fucking overboard on purpose.

Having big feet isn't really comparable...

Michael Phelps doesn't have flippers. He has feet. And a man's testosterone levels. And he competes against men.

Phelps would still be an elite athlete even if his feet were smaller. Semenya et al probably wouldn't be elite athletes if they didn't have their condition.

I think the testosterone levels are the crux of it for me. When Semenya had to take testosterone suppressing drugs, she started to slip down the field, now she no longer has to (presumably the same for silver and bronze winners) they have a huge advantage over the other competitors.

I have sympathy for both sides. What Caster has been put through is awful, but I can also imagine the devastation of female athletes who don't have hyperandrogenism and are watching athletes with biological male advantages sail past them to claim all medals.

But what do they do? I'm aware that not all intersex athletes competing in the women's events want to be outed as such, it could be dangerous for them, so it wouldn't be as simple as introducing an intersex/non-binary category.

I think it's as simple as saying 'you're not a woman, this is the Womens Sports, therefore you cannot compete.' Instead this is being praised and 'transgender' athletes can compete.

The only reason it isn't that simple is because it's about male feelings. Heaven forbid we forget about those, even for just one race.
Right?

Sorry that sounded much too blase.

What I mean is, technically it's as simple as caster isn't a woman, so she shouldn't be allowed in. I think if they'd known before she ever competed, they would have stopped her. But that ship has sailed. If they announce she can't compete - Then what? Do they reissue all the medals?

Bluntly, it's easier for them to just let biological women get the short shift and be self satisfied that they don't have to deal with an emotionally complex problem and they get to look very politically correct/sensitive.

repent they don't have to be 'outed'. There are 2 methods of reducing testerone to 'normal' levels - hormone therapy, and removal of testes.

SpecialAgentFreyPie - you mean Carter's feelings? The person who was raised as a woman, externally has an entirely female body, never knew she was anything but a woman until she had a test which showed she had elevated testosterone levels? She's a man?

That is a very brutal definition, surely.

I clarified my comment because i wasn't specifically referencing Caster with my last line, and I realised how it came across.

I do truly feel that it has a lot to do with men's 'feelings,' yes. The trans athletes - That's based completely on the man 'feeling' like a woman.

Not sure the relevance of Fallon Fox who was born a man and is transgender.

Where do you draw the line with testosterone levels? You cannot use an average as there will always be outliers with women who aren't intersex.

Caster Semenya is not a man. She was born a girl and grew up to be a woman. Some women with XX chromosomes like Semenya have abnormal hormone levels. She has been through sex testing, she belongs to the female sex. Testosterone levels are a crap way to decide whether someone is a man or woman. By that definition men who were born boys can compete as women if you suppress their testosterone levels but women born as girls in a natural, unmedicated state can't compete. There are very large numbers of women with hyperandrogenism. It isn't a vanishingly small minority of women. No way should they be forced into drug regimens to compete.

Yes, it's true that Caster has a higher testosterone level than most women due to being intersex. But her testosterone level is not anywhere near as high as a man's, Caster's running times are nowhere near an Olympic male runner's. Testosterone levels are not the only factor in being a successful runner there are thousands of other physiological factors that influence your ability. Caster is a woman - end of.
Sharp should've brushed off the question. She's a runner so she has no business making any comment. Her job is to shut up and run.
As for the silver and bronze medallists supposedly being intersex too, there is no proof of this and as far as I am concerned that is blatant slander. It was that sorry excuse of a Polish athlete (finished 7th I think) who started harping on about it and her comments had such racist overtones that I'm not even going to waste my breath with her.
It's a sad situation for everyone involved but I feel far more sympathy for Caster than Lynsey.

By that definition men who were born boys can compete as women if you suppress their testosterone levels but women born as girls in a natural, unmedicated state can't compete.

That's exactly what is going to happen from now on. Yep, men can compete in the women's as long as they've been on hormones for twelve months.

Jamie - the details are in one of the links upthread. They based it on (IIRC) surveying several thousand female Olympic athletes (some with PCOS and hence raised T levels). The results came out at somewhere between 0.5 and 3 nmol/L. They then added 3 standard deviations to this upper limit. (Just by way of background, if you assume a normal distribution - which I guess this can't be because you can't have negative T values, but let's ignore this for the mo - approx 15% of people are more than 1 standard deviation above the mean, and approx 0.1%, i.e. 1 in 1000, are above 3 standard deviations from the mean). This gave an upper limit of 10 nmol/L.

There's also a complicating factor about whether the testosterone is functional or not - where it's not functional, because the athlete has complete androgen insensitivity, the athlete can have very high levels of T but it doesn't make any difference because they don't have any receptors. It's been suggested up thread that Dutee Chand is in this category. She has high T but it doesn't make any difference to her performance. Where the athlete has partial androgen insensitivity the raised T will improve performance, but not to the same extent it will in a male. Again, it's been suggested up thread that this second category is the one Caster falls into.

Men typically have levels between 10 and 30 nmol/L, averaging out in the low 20s.

Thread has moved since I posted - yes, Fuzzy, large numbers of women have some degree of hyperandrogism due to PCOS and the like - this accounts for most of the difference between the high end and low end of T values recorded in female Olympians. But the 10nmol/L limit will only be exceeded by a tiny fraction of intersex individuals, not by the much larger number of mildly hyperandrogenic women (among whom I count myself, PCOS and hairy chin and all).

Actually Kidnapped I am both directly quoting and paraphrasing the comments of others, on this thread... page 1, Namechanger1981, post now deleted, but you can still see what was said, via a response a couple of posts down

Luna you responded to that one too, on page 2

The questions, page 3 and on I have been wondering what makes her more of a woman than a man if she is intersex. sentences like competitors who biologically are not entirely female. The likes of Caster Semenya and YABU. she ran against someone who is not female. That is not fair.

Most posts by FriendofBill, some also since deleted. But the the constant equating of intersex and tansgender is still there.. and nasty little comments like Maybe they tested her feelings

JamesBlonde, She's not a bloody woman either - even if she identifies with it.... Those other lasses who didn't win medals. Did anyone see them? They're women. Follow up posts also deleted

I only got as far as page 8... but I can assure you I was NOT quoting myself to justify my being pissed off.

But if it can be proved that people like Caster Semenya have an unfair advantage over women who have none of the intersex characteristics then the only way forward is to ban them, or insist they lower their testosterone levels. Which is all CHhand asked for, the IAAF have until next year. As I said earlier, lets hope they make the best of their opportunity to quantify the advantage and prvide the gorunds for a sensible and infomred decision.

If they don't then this will just carry on for a few more years, getting ever more mixed up with the transgender issue causing ever more insult to many athletes.

FuzzyWizard you don't know that Semenya is XX, that information was not released or leaked. What was leaked is that Semenya is intersex not female or male with no ovaries and internal testes. None of this debate is cut and dried.

If she has internal testes then she cannot possibly be XX. She must be XY.

SirVixofVixHall - please google "intersex". It is posiible for people with internal testes to have XX chromosomes, as is the case for 1 in 2000 births.

Why do people keep going on about Michael Phelps' feet? If the IOC decided to have a million squillion categories for every sport (200m butterfly hand size 8 and under with foot size 8 and under, 8-10, 10+; hand size 8.5-9.5 with foot size 8 and under etc etc) then fine. But they have been pragmatic and chosen limited categories, like the boxing weights.This is tough on some people (Paddy Barnes struggled to make the weight this year, was tired because of it and lost, but if he'd decided to go up a category he may well have been beaten by someone near the top end of that category).
But it's tough, that's just life. They have decided to make women a separate category in almost all sports, to avoid effectively immediately ruling 50% of the world's population of youngsters of out of having a chance. Of course lots of other factors- money, training facilities, natural ability- whittle down the available candidates to a few per cent.
But if you allow intersex or trans people with testosterone levels way higher than that of women who don't have testes to compete in women's events, that will effectively lead to starting with a pool of 50% young sportspeople who have a chance of making it big in the men's competitions, but only something like 0.0001% who can even begin to think of being a really successful female athlete. It's sexist in that regard.

I hope that when it comes to continued lottery funding, Lynsey Sharp is treated as if she won a bronze medal.