Caster Semenya

[LilaJude]

Is anyone else outraged that sports bodies are suggesting forcing Caster Semenyer to take medication to reduce her testosterone levels?

Caster has a naturally occurring phenomenon which gives her more testosterone than the average woman, and this has been deemed a competitive advantage that needs to be medically regulated.

How is this fair? We don’t handicap other athletes for having longer legs or more muscle mass. The nature of sport is that people with exceptional bodies triumph.

It’s like these sports governing bodies are saying ‘testosterone is a man thing, women aren’t allowed it.’ But Caster does have it, naturally, and it’s just part of who she is.

I just think it’s outrageous to force a woman to medicate just because a naturally occurring condition means her body doesn’t fit with what is conventionally seen as feminine / female.

If she is 46,XY then she’s genetically male.

In that case she shouldn’t be competing against women; but that’s because she’s male, not because she has high testosterone.

It’s the Y chromosome that matters.

So it would also be eminently apparent notbadconsidering that CA had this condition or the hard training regime without appropriate meds could have resulted in death.

Thanks NotBadConsidering. It's so useful to have an expert in the biology.

*CS obvs

Cs was misdiagnosed at birth and has been taken advantage of by promoters.

Is this really what's happened? What about other people with the same condition?

I'm struggling to accept that this could have been talked about and written about for so long, without the crux of the issue being that this is not a female person at all.

No, Semenya is unlikely to have congenital adrenal hyperplasia. That was just an example to answer Datun’s question about other ways you could have natural high testosterone and be 46XX. Now it’s confirmed Semenya is 46XY, the likely diagnosis is something like partial androgen insensitivity Syndrome, or more likely 5 alpha reductase deficiency. The hormone stress issues I described wouldn’t apply to Semenya.

Thanks for links Jacky and Barracker. I see the New Yorker article queries whether her condition would have been picked up earlier had she nor been born into a poor family. I still think she is probably under a lot of pressure to compete but I don't expect we'll ever know.

It depends on your perspective.
A boy, XY chromosomes, undescended testes, normal testosterone, male puberty and masculinisation BUT with ambiguous female-looking genitalia at birth.
Or
A girl, with male chromosomes, testes, no uterus or ovaries, male puberty etc.

It seems as if the presence of a pseudo-vulva/absence of a penis or possibly just genital ambiguity resulted in a female classification, rather than an investigation into the cause of the ambiguity.

My feeling is that a lot of this has been hidden from the public.

In the R4 interview just now, Sharon Davies showed she clearly knows the details.

She referred to the importance of now defining entry into women's sport by sex. In other words, if you have a Y chromosome you can't compete with women.

She also said that the top 3 in the women's 800m at the Rio Olympics had DSD.

And she said that agents from certain countries were actively going out to seek DSD 'females' for sport so they could make money off the back of them.

It’s dificult. Semenya has been aware of the diagnosis for a long time now. You have to assume that Semenya has made the decision to continue to compete against despite knowing of the diagnosis of 46XY, not someone else.

Thanks for the links Barracker XY was what I always suspected and I don’t think she should be allowed to compete with women, though I do feel very sorry for her.

I do think she’s been exploited, in more ways than one.

*compete against women, despite knowing

CS has moved to 5000m as this distance is not covered by IAAF regulations.

I don't think this ruling is enough and I don't understand why all of this is so difficult. It's really very simply XX and XY categories. A better ruling would have been to make every athlete have a test based on the above then we can be sure they are in the right category. What we have now is athletes being allowed to take drugs to lower their testosterone - cheating in effect. All this could have been put to bed by CS status as an XY or XX being released, the only person taking advantage of this siutation is CS.

What is very sad is that CS records will probably stand for a long time now, all those hard working athletes having missed out being on the record books. It's an absolute scandal.

And she said that agents from certain countries were actively going out to seek DSD 'females' for sport so they could make money off the back of them.

This is, of course, what is happening and will continue to happen.

Which is why there must be a ruling.

Hopefully, in drilling down into what constitutes male and female and why testosterone does or doesn't give an advantage, the whole trans issue will get cleared up in the process.

So, has it actually been confirmed that she has XY chromosomes?

It's really difficult, this is confidential information with life long implications. But, if she has a DSD that requires treatment in order to perform at that level then someone on a medical team knew she had a y chromosome, in which case she should not be competing against women.

As for transowmen can have 10ml of testosterone, CS can have 5, women can have 2 - fuck off.

CS has moved to 5000m as this distance is not covered by IAAF regulations

They apparently need evidence before they can even think of extending the rules. So the more 46XY compete in events the more likely if they have an advantage the evidence will be there to extend the rules.

According to Wikipedia, Semenya is 1.78m and 70kg. The women’s 5000m Olympic champion, Kenyan Vivian Cheruiyot is 1.59m and weighs 40kg! Very different builds, will be interesting to see how competitive Semenya is...

She also said that the top 3 in the women's 800m at the Rio Olympics had DSD. Wiki refers to a BMJ article about 4 elite athletes with 5-ARD in 2014.

And she said that agents from certain countries were actively going out to seek DSD 'females' for sport so they could make money off the back of them. This is not at all surprising - if a loophole exists, someone will exploit it.

This is the right decision, Caster Semenya is a biological male, so has a much large and more muscular physique than a biological women, it places him in much better advantage. Where a biological women is competing against him, they will never win.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caster-semenya-women-s-athletics-star-is-biological-male-zgzx2v2vd

*does (not 'dies'!)

All honours/titles/medals gained illicitly should be removed and the true winners honoured.

I feel bad for her, but allowing any testostrone level would just be used by the likes of McKinnon who think its unfair men have to lower their testosterone in the first place to compete with women. Intersex conditions are fuck all like 'trangenderism' but they get lumped together so often and TRAs use provisions that are meant for intersex people for their own ends.

With a bit of luck, what follows this is a ban on males declaring themselves women to compete with women, regardless of testosterone levels. Even if they lower it to under the level of an actual woman, there bodily advantages of being male are still there. I can hope anyway, while it seems some common sense is being applied!