Really good article re Caster Semenya outcome

[Raylas]

Apologies if already posted somewhere, couldn't find it. Really worth a read though.

quillette.com/2019/05/03/a-victory-for-female-athletes-everywhere/

Urgh here it is as a clicky link

From the article - arrows point to lifetime bests for three elite female 400m athletes. All other blue dots are times ran by elite AND non-elite male runners in 2017. You simply can't outrun biological advantage. The very best women can be beaten by fairly good men.

Yes that article says it all really and should be impossible to argue against.

Great article

My default setting has also been one of sympathy, until now. I think it's important this was bought to CAS so I'm glad it did, but I now feel a bit different about Semenya and the other 46, XY athletes who feel they have a right to continue to compete. Why would you want to win when you have a plain biological advantage over other competitors? I thought the pride of being a professional athlete was winning on a level playing field.

I also like how the author takes apart the article that high T is no different from the other biological advantages elite athletes have. Hopefully these two screenshots show in the right order.

Takes apart the argument not article. How I wish we could edit.

Superb article. Thanks so much for sharing.

Thanks for sharing! Especially useful to be able to refute the 'natural advantage like being tall' argument.

I have tremendous sympathy for Caster. As an intersex person she may not have been fully aware of it all at the start. I hope she is able to find a way to continue as an athlete fairly. However, it’s so clear from reading this article and looking at the facts that it simply isn’t possible to have female identifying people with high testosterone competing in women’s events. To claim otherwise is just calling the sun, the moon. It doesn’t fit with our current societal trans rhetoric but is the truth.

Good article. Thank you for posting. Some of the comments were a bit unpleasant though.

It's a great article because it points the finger directly at the atrocious news reporting which has actively obscured issues, leading to the debilitation of women's sport, the encouraging of corrupt sports authorities to further debase it, and completely misinformed the public.

I personally fail to see any circumstances under which it is reasonable for an XY human being who has undergone a virilising male puberty to be allowed to compete in any women's category in any sport.

I have limited sympathy for Semenya: I don't think healthy adults should be forced to medicate to compete (a ban is better than that) but, on the other hand, Semenya and all sports bodies have known Semenya's true status as an XY human being benefiting from virilising male puberty since at least 2009. The "graceful" thing to have done would have been to quietly retire from women's sport.

I’ve thought this all along. I couldn’t understand the up in arms outrage on Caster’s behalf but thought I must be missing something so kept quiet.

CarolDanvers exactly the same here.

I feel sympathetic in terms of yes she probably didn't know initially, and her whole sense of self probably rests on what a superb athlete she is, certainly she has likely worked as hard as other athletes, trained to ridiculous levels etc and I suppose the question marks over her testosterone level probably feel like all of that hard work and dedication is entirely negated. No doubt it would be frustrating to feel like your athleticism is being pinned entirely to your T if you feel you've worked hard to achieve what you've achieved too. But ultimately, even if she didn't know, she wasn't competing fairly and as pp have said at the point you do know that, you should step down, soul destroying as it would likely be.

I'm concerned that the emphasis on testosterone risks the fact that male puberty confers advantages is lost. I can imagine a future where everyone concedes testosterone is important so trans athletes suppress their levels - but continue to do well due to the biological advantages of a testosterone fuelled puberty, at which point their success is used by activists to show "see, T doesn't mean anything". I need to read up more on the lifetime effects of T and how much these are diminished by suppressing it.

I don’t understand why the IAAF haven’t applied these new rules across all track & field events. All that is going to happen is that CS is going to move up to the 5000m. CS has no intention of taking testosterone reducing meds “hell no” was the reply when asked the question.
CS has every intention of continuing to enter women’s races.

Hi Clare, I follow you on twitter and find your posts so useful and eye opening. I've been interested in your feelings around this. I see the conflation must be frustrating and when TRAs use intersex people to further their agenda it's pretty much never in good faith.

I wouldn't say she's less of a woman or should be ridiculed or othered. But the facts remain regarding her testosterone levels. Am I right that some intersex conditions testosterone isn't processed at all? So in that case it's different. Is it hard to have intersex conditions lumped together? Some intersex athletes don't look unambiguously female. I've thought that for a long time. I recognise outward appearances depend on the specific case.

I guess it's unfortunate that this particular case is relevant to/overlaps with the current trans discussion but it's hard for it not to. I don't want anyone to feel ridiculed or ashamed for what they are... I just think sports particularly needs to have biological based boundaries which affects both some intersex and all trans athletes. That fact is certainly no reason to feel nothing but empathy for people with intersex conditions and I certainly feel that for Semenya. But hard as it is her likely distress doesn't mean the floodgates should be opened, difficult and sad as that might be for her.

ClareCAIS it must be incredibly hard to read. I think this is a very specific area where there is conflation between the two since women’s athletics relies on athletes not having male advantages.

I think most women whether trans affirming or the most gender critical, would fully acknowledge that it is an entirely different thing to be born with intersex conditions and raised female than to be a biological male who has chosen to identify as female. Even if in this specific scenario of sports the two situations are being lumped together.

Do you have anything more you want to say about it? Your perspective is invaluable.

I said I don't see her as less of a woman but I should qualify that, if she has always seen herself and been seen as a girl it wouldn't be fair to insist she's not or she's some weird in between. But biologically it remains that she is outside of normal female ranges. That's why intersex conditions are so complex and why they differ wildly to trans cases where it's unambiguous. That TRAs try to use the ambiguity of intersex conditions to claim they too are ambiguous is bullshit.

I didn't realise she could compete in other events. That's bizarre.

I still think testosterone is being treated as if it is sex instead of a proxy for sex.

Testosterone plays a huge role in making men stronger and faster but reducing testosterone does not make someone a woman.

A woman is not a man with something taken away. A woman is not a disabled man.

And a woman with high testosterone is not a man. You don’t become a man because your testosterone levels are elevated because, for instance, you have a testosterone-increasing cancer.

It’s the Y chromosome, or more specifically the SRY gene, that matters.

Just to be clear as I've seen this confusion repeated a few times on here in the last few days - ClareCAIS on MN is not MRKHVoice (who is Claire with an I) on Twitter. They are different people (with different DSDs).

I think that's s a really good article. And no, intersex and transgender are not the same thing at all but we have to acknowledge that TRAs are exploiting of athletes DSDs that give a physical advantage to argue they should also be able to compete against women with no artificial reduction in their T levels.

That's why this ruling is so important.

I found the bit about Title IX in the US really interesting:
“Title IX … requires us to invest in male and female athletes equally. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance"

Surely the girls in Connecticut could argue that allowing boys to compete against them is in contravention of Title IX?

I didn't realise she could compete in other events. That's bizarre.

Yes. I don’t understand how someone’s sex can change depending on the distance they are running.

Is it some strange Lorentz transformation Einstein failed to account for?

Surely the girls in Connecticut could argue that allowing boys to compete against them is in contravention of Title IX?

Not since Obama changed it to gender.

Thank you for sharing that.

The other events thing is a sop. I suspect if they didn't let Semenya compete at all, there would be a push to have their records overturned.

And I'd forgotten about Obama and his misguided enthusiasm for gender