To want to know it the IAAF are going to introduce upper levels of endogenous testosterone for male athletes?

[Namestheyareachangin]

Totally horrified by the ruling on Caster Semenya which essentially robs her off her career and penalises her for the strength and power that is her birthright as a human being.

The justification for this is that her testosterone levels put her beyond an acceptable upper limit to qualify to compete as a woman (while of course she remains prohibited from competing as a man).

So I want to know at what level of testosterone naturally present male athletes will be ruled out of the human race? Or is it only women who can be too strong,too fast, too good to be allowed to compete in their category?

Hotchox

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll - I am not an intersex specialist, so I don't know how many categories would be needed for fairness to prevail. You mention the paralympics as if it was a bad thing (sorry if I've misinterpreted your tone or intention) - but I think it's good example. In paralympic swimming, for example, people with missing/deformed limbs can be in the same race as people with dwarfism, or neurological conditions, because the categories are based on overall impairment. So possibly, transitioned athletes might fit into a category defined for some level of DSD. Also, some form of DSD is thought to be as common as 1/100, there might be more competitors than you'd think...? I am not an expert as I've said, but I would imagine something along the lines of what I've described would be seen to be fairer by everyone.

No, I'm definitely not saying that the Paralympics is a bad thing at all and you make some very good points. All I'm saying is that, owing to its very nature and just consideration of people's levels of disability, there will be far fewer competitors and thus the finest Paralympian will be the (very worthy) winner from far fewer people - who all qualify under category XX - than their able-bodied Olympian counterpart would be, whose category only stipulates that competitors must be 'male' or 'female', each of which could potentially include half of the world.

OP your posts give no consideration whatsoever to other competitors.

It is not transphobic to think that Caster should not be eligible to compete in the women’s category. Nor is it transphobic to think that transwomen should not be eligible.

And that anyone who disagrees with that is thick etc
It's not an opinion, it's a fact. CS is a man, not a muscular woman.

@Chickenlickenloo it has been said, but Caster is not a muscular women. Caster is a man with a DSD. Off the sports field Caster lives as a man, is married to a woman and has said some fairly misogynistic things about women.

It can't have been easy growing up where Caster did with this condition but it doesn't change biological fact - Caster is a man and should not be competing against women.

Chickenlickenloo

It’s bizarre you keep insisting something that is categorically, unequivocally not true. Whatsoever. Caster is XY and has known for sure for at least a decade, but likely longer. Caster is legally female but as already mentioned, is biologically male with an intersex disorder. This isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s fact.

To tell CS she is a man when she has lived her whole life as a girl
Actually OP, have you heard Caster respond to questions in interviews? Caster explicitly states ‘she’ has lived her life as a boy and never related to girls at all. In fact, can be quite derogatory about girls. The only time ‘she’ lives as a girl, is on the track.

Chicken, I understand your distress. In my opinion this entire disaster was caused because the sporting bodies knew full well that Caster was XY, but made the initial incorrect decision to hide this from the general public and allow CS to compete in XX competition.
I was as rabidly certain when she first raced as you are now. But we were all duped. CS is male, has always been male, and allowing CS to race as a female was the wrong decision.
Be mad. Be bloody furious that they lied to you, that the media continues to lie to you, and for the damage caused to women’s sports.
I used to spend hours banging out about how fucking outrageous it was that people were accusing CS of being a bloke. I desperately wanted a strong muscled non feminine female role model.
Yes, I’m pissed we were lied to.
CS is male with a DSD. Not female.
We need there now to be an investigation as to why scouts were allowed to deliberately track down males with DSD to train them for racing as females.
The whole thing stinks. It’s not Caster’s fault, although frankly there is no way she hasn’t known for years that she is XY, and that stretches my sympathy a little. Her ‘natural’ advantage is that she is male. We were all lied to. Be pissed about that, don’t waste time claiming that she’s female, because that’s completely inaccurate, whatever we have been told.
They are continuing to lie about it because they are claiming she’s socially gendered woman which gives her the right to compete as female. You know, like Rachel McKinnon, who at least is honest about being XY. Calling Caster socially female is also pretty sketchy if you actually know anything about her life.
Caster Semenya is male with a DSD. Caster should not ever have been allowed to compete in XX competition.

Caster has a Y chromosome
Caster has internal testes

These two facts probe Caster is male.
When you add all the other evidence, that she was brought up as a boy and her friends called her “he”, it seems to me she should never have been competing with women, ever.

Great post 50shadesofgreyrock

*prove

I think some posters, in wanting to be empathetic, are mixing up the facts. Some other posters, look like they are not being empathetic, by stating the facts.

This is the right decision, as sad as it might be for Semenya, for women’s sport.

She is biologically a male who was born with a vagina. She has testes FFS. She has an advantage over biological females because of this.

Can someone do a "would you like a cup of tea" explanitory meme for those in the back not getting it or why it impacts on women's sports?

Semenya IS a female with a medical condition that means she has higher levels of testosterone - SHE'S telling you she is woman. How about supporting that??

No one disagrees with that. Every, including the IAAF, says she is a woman and they have devised a mechanism that allows her to continue to compete as a women.

How is that anything but supportive?

Bald facts are that when the playing field is levelled she isn't good enough. Feeling sorry for her isn't sufficient reason to allow her to compete without the extra medications.

"Semenya IS a female with a medical condition that means she has higher levels of testosterone - SHE'S telling you she is woman. How about supporting that??

No one disagrees with that. Every, including the IAAF, says she is a woman and they have devised a mechanism that allows her to continue to compete as a women."

I'm disagreeing with that. CAS disagrees with that. They have clearly stated that Semenya has XY chromosomes ie is genetically male. The medical condition is having testes.

Genetically CS is much closer to male than female.

CS can compete as a man, just wont be winning anything.

Why do people keep saying Caster is chromosomally male (XY)? The results of previous testing have never been made public so this is pure speculation.

Why do people keep saying Caster is chromosomally male (XY)? The results of previous testing have never been made public so this is pure speculation.

It’s clear from the CAS ruling, which is explicit that it applies to athletes with 46XY with DSD

The more I find out about this the angrier I'm getting, it seems that Caster and Caster's team have always known damn well that Caster is male, but due to lower-than-average testosterone decided to have Caster competing against women, rather than men where they would be at a disadvantage.

Time to stop ALL males from cheating in women's sport.

Everyone on Caster's team should get a lifetime ban from being involved in sport.

It’s clear from the CAS ruling, which is explicit that it applies to athletes with 46XY with DSD

For those who haven’t read the rule and keep contributing that Caster is female, please read the ruling before coming in to repeat a falsehood. Caster is Male and everyone on her team knew this for at least 10 years.

I want to correct a few misapprehensions which seem to be rife on this thread.

1. If you have a DSD, then having a Y chromosome does not automatically equal male. The Y chromosome has to be activated to create male sex characteristics.
2. If you have a DSD you can present as female with a uterus, a vagina, unambiguous external genetals and zero testosterone (in fact less testosterone than a woman without a DSD). In other words, when there is a DSD in the mix you cannot simply say Y = male. That's the whole point of it being called a disorder.

If your Chromosomes are XY and you have a DSD then genetically you are a MALE with a DSD.

Nobody is disputing the fact that some Males with a DSD were raised as female or present as female or that life is very hard for them, but the cold hard fact is that XY does = male.

^BlueberriesAndCream Thu 02-May-19 21:44:20
Why is she prohibited from competing as a man?

Erm, sorry to state the bloody obvious - because she's not a man? Seriously? Are you so uneducated? This is NOT a trans issue - This is a woman issue who has has a medical condition whereby that condition means she has more testosterone than the norm.

I'm not clued up enough to go into the rights or wrongs of whether she - SHE - should be made to medicate herself to lower the testosterone but ffs! have a word with yourself^

I'm not uneducated, no. I have had several words with myself, and they tend to say the same thing. She isn't prohibited from competing as a man, because they have not banned her from doing so. Nobody is forcing her to compete with the men, but she is not prohibited from it, and I wondered why you thought she was.

Whether she should compete with the men is a different story. it's up to her, and there are various options.

yes, genetically she is a man, with a Y chromosome and at least a partial response to testosterone, with a disorder that meant this was not initially obvious when she was born. It has been known for a while. It's not a woman with a condition that means she has more testosterone than the norm, but a man who has normal (I believe, though it could be on the lower end of normal) testosterone levels for a man. It's not a medical condition that means excess testosterone at all. Rather, it means her body didn't respond properly to the testosterone, and/or there were other issues with the physical development of genitalia so that the male body wasn't initially clear. It would have become more obvious later that something was wrong.

I entirely agree with you that this is not a trans issue, and I made no reference to that.

They have clearly stated that Semenya has XY chromosomes ie is genetically male. The medical condition is having testes.

They're also saying she is a woman and can compete in women's athletics

Haven't read the thread, as don't care enough, so sorry if this has already been said.

It might be helpful to think of competition categories not as "men" and "women" but "open" and "restricted", where the definition of "restricted" can be anything the sports organiser deems appropriate. In the past sex and age have been used to create restrictions, but there's no reason why different criteria shouldn't be used in future. For certain athletic events they have now replaced the "woman" category with one for people who don't have typical male levels of testosterone.

So what the rules ought to be now (no idea if they are) is that anyone, including "women" by any definition of that word, can compete as "men", and in the particular athletic events being talked about here, people with the right testosterone levels (including possibly men with abnormally low testosterone) should be able to compete as "women."

It's not intrinsically wrong or unfair to exclude an unusual category of woman from women's events. The word "women" in a sporting context was being used to identify a large set of people who would have been at a disadvantage if forced to compete in the open category and give them their own space. In the same way that children and older people and disabled people might be given their own competitions where they're not expected to compete with able-bodied twenty-something men.

So OP is being unreasonable, the point of the "men" category is that it is (or should be) completely unrestricted. It's only other categories that have restrictions in order to create various alternative spaces. No matter how many categories you have, it's always going to be the case that 99.99% of people haven't a hope of competing at the top level, so a change in rules that knocks someone out of competing, while harsh on that individual, is not unreasonable, in the sense that it only puts them back into the same position as almost everyone else.