Nature Journal accepts that people with Y chromosomes have vaginas

[NotAnotherJaffaCake]

Not editorial, but on the front page:

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01606-8

For the uninitiated, Nature is one of the top science journals. Articles in Nature make and break scientific careers. It is supposed to be a bastion of the most rigourous scientific thought.

We're fucked.

Given how Semenya was raised: very differently to all the girls around, the only girl to wear boy's school uniform in a rural S.A. school, etc
Given Semenya's own words: girls are boring and soft, identifies with boys
Given Semenya's wife's heterosexuality
Given that Semenya was not seen by a doctor at birth, and was decided to be female by the village elderwomen
Given that in another country, or time, Semenya would most likely have been correctly assigned male with PAIS at birth

I think it feasible that a very compelling pressure holding Semenya to a female identity is the desire to compete in women's sports.

I think it not unlikely that Semenya may, when career is over, quietly 'become' male.
Perhaps not. But I would not be at all surprised if Semenya discards all claims over being female eventually. And if this happens, it will be done not on the basis of Semenya's male chromosomes, testes, or testosterone levels. That would be a tacit admission that such objective characteristics ARE indeed evidence of maleness. And that admission will not be made.
No, I imagine if Semenya in the future ever decides to identify as male, it would be done under the cover of 'identity', not biology.

So I am wary. Maybe I'm wrong. But we're living through an era where many people choose their 'gender'. It's not an impossible scenario.

But in the meantime, many elite female athletes have lost out, because the desire to accommodate Semenya has outranked the desire to be fair to women.

I think it not unlikely that Semenya may, when career is over, quietly 'become' male.

I think that should be respected also, if it turns out that way.

I agree: the main thing is to ensure that sport is fair for women and girls. And that media orgs report accurately so that the population is not misled.

The difficulties and choices faced by intersex males and females are an entirely separate issue.

You can separate the sporting issue with the question of asking someone who was, with no malice, recorded as a female at birth, deciding to carry on living in the same way, with the same name etc.

What people imagine in their heads the individuals in question might do later, or whether they liked to play with boys or what they wore is really quite irrelevant. And in the end so is whether or not people think the sporting regulations are being pushed in unfair ways, which has more to do with politics than individual athletes, in all the sports. International elite sports worships at the altar of nationalism and capitalism, and most of its decisions are made on that basis.

Nature is no longer a respected scientific magazine, but a mouthpiece for the trans lobby. Letting this dude with his background in social sciences write an ill-informed article about genetics shows how Nature has put ideology and dogma ahead of scientific integrity, facts and truth. Semenya is a male with a DSD, and has gone through male puberty. The OP by saying 'we are fucked' means that if even scientific journals are willing to sacrifice their integrity to push this ideology (and the infuriating conflation of trans and intersex), then it shows we really are well and truly fucked.

It's really rather relevant in this case, where frequently the basis of the claims to compete with females are based on

1. Assignment at birth
2. 'Raised as female'
3. 'believes self to be female'
4. 'identifies with female sex class'

None of those, in my opinion, should carry any weight in such a decision. The only relevant fact should be genetic, reproductive, biological, anatomical class.

But so long as they are part of the many, oft repeated defenses of why Semenya should be considered female, they'll be subject to test and rebuttal.

If people desist using "raised as a girl" as justification I'll cease pointing out that Semenya was raised very differently from other girls in South Africa, for apparently inexplicable reasons.

Perhaps it would be much better if sporting bodies all agreed that it's irrelevant how everyone is assigned at birth, or raised, or identifies. Then we could all stop wasting time on such factors. No more declaring 'but at birth' or 'but raised this way' with the necessary scepticism that such claims incur.
All that should matter is biology.

But right now, that isn't how the rules have been constructed, and 'identity' is playing as large a part in Semenya's case as it is in trans cases. So my concerns endure.

Al of which is why it is important to separate out these questions carefully. The fact that other people are inappropriately conflating does not mean we should accept that state of affairs.
Sports are segregated for biological reasons, so biological reasons ought to be the criteria. Any other questions are mainly practical, like - where exactly will we draw the lines.
Telling people who are intersex and who were accidentally mixed up at birth that they have to use different pronouns than they ever have is not about sporting criteria. It should be possible to understand why it makes sense to do this, without saying that there is no such thing as biological sex.
Dumbing things down never turns out well in the end, if it isn't a problem immediately it becomes one later when the same logic is applied to another issue. And it doesn't make people sympathetic and more likely to listen.

Has anyone insisted Semenya should change pronouns?

I haven't seen that.

But as always, everyone has the freedom to perceive others as the sex they appear to be, and using pronouns opposite to that sex for someone else's benefit is a courtesy that some may not be willing to extend.

We can't compel perception, and we shouldn't compel speech.

Arguing about this specific case and it's nuance is difficult.

Some people have no concerns about treating someone as female socially so long as that isn't extended into disregarding factual biological differences in other forums.
That distinction is firmly resisted by others.

Barracker

It's really rather relevant in this case, where frequently the basis of the claims to compete with females are based on
1. Assignment at birth
2. 'Raised as female'
3. 'believes self to be female'
4. 'identifies with female sex class'

YY!

If I refer to Semenya as “he” in online posts it is because I am responding to the constant media gaslighting (as well as by their legal and athletic supporters) we have had for ten years about how Semenya is “female”, a “natural woman”, born and raised “as a girl”, and so on.

In person I expect if I met Caster I would call them “Caster” as I don’t talk to people in person in the third person and treat them respectfully - as a human being.

But I don’t see why I should need to keep perpetuating with the gaslighting that has been going on for ten years when it comes to discussions that are specifically about sex segregation in sports. Where sex matters, not gender identity

Caster Semenya, for anyone who hasn't seen this.

Previous thread.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3511026-Caster-Semenya

I apologise if this has already been posted but this is a lecture given by Quentin Van Meter who is a paediatric endocrinologist who worked at Johns Hopkins with the notorious John Money. He describes how Money was attracted to the hospital precisely because they were the world leaders in early work with children with disorders of sexual development. The two areas have been disturbingly intertwined from the beginning. At around 12.00 he describes how 8 of 14 young children who were genetically male but with no male genitalia were surgically altered to be female but later decided to live as males in spite of their surgical "sex change". This led the Johns Hopkins endocrinologists to conclude that genetically-determined (rather than genitally-determined) sex is a real thing and not a social construct.

He goes on to describe how the ideologues took over transgender medicine - his talk is called "the terrible fraud of transgender medicine"

I’m a little confused by your thread title - of course they accept that (a very tiny number of) people with a Y chromosome have a vagina.

This isn’t new information. What’s wrong with a scientific publication acknowledging that?

I’m not saying there aren’t issues and implications around all of this, which of course need to be addressed, but if we start trying to censor scientific fact because it’s a bit tricky then we are no better than the rest of them.

@OldCrone manspreading 😥

@Melioration Nature is more of a science magazine than a journal

Nature is one of the leading scientific journals, definitely not just a science magazine. However the article linked is an opinion piece not a research article.

Nature is no longer a respected scientific magazine, but a mouthpiece for the trans lobby.

Rubbish. Nature is a wide-ranging, heavyweight research journal which happens to have some non-peer-reviewed 'newsy' articles at the front. Caster Semenya is in the news.