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?

I posted earlier in the thread that I'm very curious what Caster's mindset is.

That's such a shame to hear cara, that cheating is so rife so quickly. I'm obviously very naive about this, I assumed at these sorts of levels, the admiration of other athletes would matter more than the gold. Not more than money or anything, but more than a necklace.

user I think you're right that the Olympics would become more of a closed shop to women. As ever, poor women would suffer more. If Jessica's parents are rich they can push her towards equestrian sports or sailing, where the testosterone advantage is not so great and the pool of intersex athletes (mostly from countries with large populations, most of which are less wealthy than the UK) is whittled down by lack of money.
If Jessica is poor, especially if she is poor in a poor country, running might be one of the few athletic options open to her....but this sport is one which is likely to be dominated by intersex or trans athletes first. Ditto boxing.

Interesting points about how this will affect how girls think of themselves as athletes.

People confidently statief that CS is XY and/or has internal testes, I looked up that apparent leak. It also said that she had three times testosterone of an average woman. The average woman's testosterone is under 1 and the female standard range is up to 3. So if she had three times either the actual average of the top 'normal' range for a woman, she would always have had under 10 and would never have had to take drugs to lower her testosterone. Which makes me suspicious about the accuracy of the whole leak. It's just discussing stuff we don't have any accurate information about.

I suspect they mean 3 times the upper limit allowed for a woman ie 3x10=30.
Agree if it was 3 times an average woman she wouldn't have needed blockers as most women are under 3 with the average being well below 3..

I don't think you can fairly or legally strip a medal from somebody who is competing within the rules at the time.

I was wondering about this, too. The IOC has opened the door for people who are not biologically female to compete against women at the Olympics without even significantly lowering their testosterone levels. Let's say an intersex person or a trans woman breaks a world record. There's a backlash, and eventually the rule is revoked. This would solve the problem of future Olympics being dominated by intersex and trans people - but what about the new record that has been set? I don't think it would be fair to overturn it. After all, the athlete competed fairly under the rules that were in place at the time. You can't say, "Sorry, we've changed our minds, it was a mistake for us to let you compete, we're taking your medal back and we've decided your record doesn't count anymore either."

There's already a lot of resentment towards the fact that some records - Flo-Jo's, for example - are practically unbreakable, as the athletes in question probably doped extensively. If future women's records are set by athletes who aren't even biologically female, they could become even more unattainable.

What are the health risks to suppressing androgen production, I wonder? What are the health risks to not suppressing it?

I'm trying to imagine a situation where I'm told that I'm producing testosterone at 3/4 x the level of the normal/average woman.

I think my (possibly?) knee jerk reaction would be, "AAAARGH!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!"

If I were a professional athlete however, rather than a couch slob, perhaps I'd take a different attitude...

Most girls who identify as female would want the high testosterone level to stop if they hit puberty and didn't develop breasts but instead developed facial hair, male pattern hair distribution and a deep voice. If on investigation they discovered they were chromosomally male with internal testes and no way of producing female amounts of oestrogen they wouldn't be thinking "great I can still run faster than all the girlies" but "this is wrong how do I get to look like a woman?"
The only girls I can imagine wouldn't want to have their testes removed and take oestrogen supplements are those who were never that bothered about being female anyway and so not too upset at being intersex with male gonads.