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?

Why do people keep going on about Michael Phelps' feet?

Did Ian Thorpe not have a reporter sacked once for making comments about his feet in a live broadcast?

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

She'll need it. She nearly lost her sponsorship for some unsavoury comments last (?) year.

Blanche

I have checked back through the thread.

You say that Namechanger1981 had a post deleted but it is referenced by someone else a couple of posts further down. I can see the deletion message but honestly can't see a reference a couple of posts after it. Certainly can't see anyone commenting on 'ugly'.

Luna did respond to the "If Caster's not female, what is she" part of the question asked by Namechanger1981. Luna does not make a reference to ugly.

FriendofBill only had one post deleted, not some. I was following the thread at the time and I honestly don't think that the one deletion was because she called Semenya ugly. We could certainly ask MNHQ if you like.

The first time I saw the ugly reference is when you responded to a number of points made by different posters in the same post. This was on Sunday 21 August at 19:49.

You quoted three remarks in bold and then responded to them all in normal text. FriendofBill's point was the second point that you referenced - she said "because what I saw was a man winning the woman's 800 metres". You put that in bold and then you added "and all ugly ones too!". If you were quoting something that FriendofBill previously said (that has since been deleted) then you certainly do not make that clear.

If you are claiming that Namechanger1981 and FriendofBill both stated that Semenya is ugly (in posts that have since been deleted) then we can easily clear that up with the help of MNHQ. I joined the thread slightly late so don't know what Namechanger said but I was here when FriendofBill was posting and do not recollect any allegations of ugly. I was a bit taken aback when I saw it in your post actually and that's why I was surprised to see you quoting the ugly reference. Of course I could be mistaken and will gladly apologise if so.

As a general point, and this is not to be snippy, mixing selective quotes from posts that you say have been deleted and your own paraphrasing is always going to lead to confusion.

Genuinely hope you don't think I'm having a go here (I really am not). I think your comments on here have been really interesting and informative.

Don't apologise, I suspect the word 'ugly' was me paraphrasing all the 'looks masculine/has muscles/you can tell just by looking/it's really obvious' comments, not to mention the 'looks so masculine' comments!

I was annoyed by them... I paraphrased!

I even posted a picture of Fatima Whitbred in response to some such comments, including a 'witty' link to a picture of the 'obviously not a woman' athletes - she was the object of some nasty media crap at the time and, knowing more of her story now that all seems particularly unnecessary and hurtful

Not all of the more 'masculine looking' women are anything other than women who don't look 'feminine'. Intersex is a confounding factor that sport has to get to grips with. Transgender athletes is another.

But I do find it odd that I am being called to task for paraphrasing some fairly horrid posts and that those posts are being accepted at face value (Eurgh, sorry for that, totally unintended ).

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

She is not XX. She cannot be XX because, to have her testosterone levels, you must have testes to produce the testosterone (only very small amounts are produced in the ovaries and adrenals). Posters likening her condition to PCOS are talking total crap - a testosterone level of >5 nmol/L is considered very high in PCOS, the normal level for a woman being around 1 nmol/L. Caster's reported level is 30 nmol/L which is actually considerably higher than the average (24) for a man of her age. She is not a man or a woman; she is intersex.

It is posiible for people with internal testes to have XX chromosomes, as is the case for 1 in 2000 births

No. It is possible to have both testes and ovaries and to be XX/XY but it is incredibly rare- as in a few hundred cases in the world ever - and neither the ovaries nor testes work normally so someone with this condition would not have male testosterone levels, as Caster does.

No. It is possible to have both testes and ovaries and to be XX/XY but it is incredibly rare- as in a few hundred cases in the world ever - and neither the ovaries nor testes work normally so someone with this condition would not have male testosterone levels, as Caster does.

Bloody hell. It's a headfuck. How are the powers that be ever supposed to figure it out??

While you may feel that 'it's obvious' that semenya has an advantage due to higher than average testosterone, it was my understanding that the reason this does not exclude her, is that the the Court of Arbitration for Sport did not find conclusive evidence that there was any advantage:
www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/sports/caster-semenya-800-meters.html?_r=0

So it would not be fair to exclude based on just a feeling that she has an advantage, surely? I'm no expert, but have to assume that court looked at all available information, and made a rational decision .

Fair enough, Blanche.

Uglygate is now officially over.

Please don't stop posting though. I get that you are frustrated and I do think that there is a 'doesn't immediately conform to the media image of idealised white western female beauty standards so therefore a bloke' undercurrent to some of the rhetoric around Caster. Probably not much on here to be fair but certainly elsewhere.

For clarification, no I did not say Caster was ugly, the only time I have spoken of Casters appearance is to say Caster looks like a man, and later that the bronze medalist has male pattern baldness.

and later that the bronze medalist has male pattern baldness.

So do I, since my teens. And I am not a man. Nor do I have raised testosterone level/hyperandrogenism.

Androgenic alopecia is something that can happen to women who don't have hormonal issues too.

But we are not talking about you.

If the 4th 5th and 6th placed athletes went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport claiming loss of the potential earnings which a medal would have brought and citing the IAAF's lifting of the testosterone ruling as the reason for this loss, would the onus be on them to prove that they were disadvantaged (as the onus is on the IAAF to prove disadvantage rather than Duttee Chand to prove there's no effect?)

But we are not talking about you.

My point was, androgenic alopecia can happen to any woman, regardless of hormone levels, chromosomes etc. It doesn't necessarily indicate anything.

Why bring up the fact that bronze medalist (may have had) AA?

VBRF, I bought it up because it's more likely typical male pattern baldness than AA.

You are not under scrutiny for claiming an award that I believe rightfully belongs to someone else.

VBRF, I bought it up because it's more likely typical male pattern baldness than AA.

Androgenetic Alopecia IS male (or female) pattern baldness.

It is perfectly possible to have either form of pattern baldness as a young female w/o having any hormonal/testosterone issues.

I share your scepticism about the medalists btw, I just don't think referencing male pattern baldness is a great indicator.

Thanks for your smile VBRF

I raise you

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.

That's a point powershower. I suppose it's a bit like Mo Farah deciding to dip his toe in the water of marathon running and not being able to make it yet. But at least Mo Farah competes as a man against other men.

Caster Semenya could compete with men, I suppose. She chooses not to.

Did Ian Thorpe not have a reporter sacked once for making comments about his feet in a live broadcast?

Much as I admire Ian Thorpe's performances in the swimming pool, the day an interviewee gets someone sacked for his or her job asking a question in the conference room is the day we should all pack up and go home.

FriendofBill, when the Semenya stuff was first discussed a few years ago in the media, the story was presented as if she was very much a unique case. That her condition was incredibly rare, although the exact details were never known.

And whaddaya know? Now we have all 3 medallists who apparently have the same rare medical condition. And we don't know if any of the three medallists are biologically female (and who the fuck knows what that means if XY chromosomes can mean that you are woman with no questions asked and how dare you even pose the question), if they ever lived as men, or are men, if they have ever had surgery, if they ever took hormones.

That's why some people only want to talk about Semenya, not the other medallists. Semenya is a one-off, it's a rare medical condition, it's not her fault, why should she suffer? It's only when you bring in the other 'intersex' athletes that a quite different picture emerges.

This rare condition seems to be getting less rare by the day, particularly since the IAAF changed its rules last year. My prediction is if that the IAAF don't get their act together soon, then this rare condition will be pretty common by the time Tokyo comes round.

Good point Kidnapped. There should be more scrutiny of the other two medallists as it is widely reported that they are intersex too. In fact, thanks to the new OC ruling on testosterone they could be actual born men for all we know. This was what many of us foresaw a few months ago and we were told no you're paranoid, a bigot, how can you be so meean? Because women don't matter.

I have the solution.

The fair thing to do is to give over the women's 800m to intersex athletes, but not any other events. You can't argue that there would be no real competition since the 'intersex' athletes have swept the board in the women's 800m in Rio.

Of course, in order to be fair to women, the men would also have to give up their own 800m event or perhaps open it up to paralympian runners with running blades in it.

And those existing 800m runners, male and female? Ah, fuck em.

It is a ridiculous proposition of course. And why is it ridiculous? Purely because the men would never give up their event or allow paralympians in it. Seb Coe would never go for it; he'd be blustering about the integrity of the event and the need to ensure a level playing field and all sorts.

Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

I suppose the IAAF couldn't present evidence at the Dutee Chand hearing that high testosterone confers an athletic advantage because a study has never been done to prove that bears usually shit in the woods.
I understand why they have to let everyone race pending evidence collection. Presumably some number crunchers are busy trailing through thousands of lists of times and testosterone measurements and trying to weed out confounding factors to make their scientific study legally watertight, a condition which doesn't normally apply to studies.
The timing is a pity in that one Olympics fell within the two year timeframe. I hope the deadline doesn't have to be extended and extended.

A third gender category for racing sounds great but has a couple of problems:

• logistically tough- you would need to accommodate 50% more athletes and events at the Olympics and other big meets
• intersex seems to be a really broad spectrum. So people with almost complete androgen resistance would probably realise that there is no point in their even trying to compete with athletes who only have a mild degree of AR. Who in turn would discover that they cannot hope to win against preop unmedicated MTF trans people.

"Sharp is no worse off than any male sprinter whose career coincides wth Bolt, tennis player with Sampras etc, rowers and Redgrave, swimers and Phelps, etc."

No, completely facile. It is not a usual variation between women for some to have a body with only male reproductive organs producing male levels testosterone and virilizing the body and musculature. A variation between women would be the same sort of things as between men, within their own respective parameters.

Some having only male gonads producing male level testosterone would not be one of the variations between female athletes. It would be a difference between male and female athletes. It is not the fault of anyone. However, because of it's huge advantage, people with the male bodies and male gonads compete against others with this advantage.