Latest Caster Semenya Race

[NotBadConsidering]

www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/48603383

"I can run any event I want. It can be 100m, 200m, the long jump, heptathlon, you name it."

The double Olympic and three-time world champion added: "Even if I have to withdraw from the 800m, it doesn't matter no more, I think I have won everything I ever wanted.”

Tell me again why I should have sympathy for this person?

“So 25% don't have periods? And should automatically assume they are men and withdraw from sport?”

Any 15-16 year old girl who had never had a period should have a medical evaluation, yes. And if that athlete was also virilised then that evaluation would include a karyotype.

Now here you are on a feminism board asking why we don’t feel sympathy. My god.

It was the OP's question! I think that in her shoes I would run or jump if I were allowed to do so. I would earn money to secure my future. I would not volunteer to give up my career if I was operating within the rules. It is up to the sporting authorities to make a decision (I do not think that she should be able to run fwiw). But I totally have sympathy for her doing so if she is allowed.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should

The ruling only applying to 800m is ridiculous.

Caster wants to keep the biological advantage that being male gives her over being female. She does not want to lower testosterone as basically, she knows she would have to train harder and it will even out the playing feed somewhat. That Caster has been allowed to compete with women all this time is wrong, but not Casters fault. And 'transwomen' jumping on the intersex train to also compete against women is just vile.

I did feel sympathy for Caster, but honestly her 'I will continue to fuck over women in any way I can' attitude..is hardening me a bit.

And Caster Semenya, as well as running like a man, living like a man, having male biology - thinks women are "boring and soft" in this interview. Yet still happy to win their races. I have a lot of sympathy for CS as a child in rural Africa - not so much as a post-puberty adult who now knows the score but still wants the fame and money.

I did feel sympathy for Caster, but honestly her 'I will continue to fuck over women in any way I can' attitude..is hardening me a bit.
Same.
Up until the point CS knew they were biologically male then I supported them. But 10 years knowing and now coming out saying 'oh well ban me from 800 because I can win any women's event I choose to enter' has been the nail in the coffin for me. Nobody can claim they have no advantage of being biologically male on one hand and then on the other say 'screw you ban, I'll pick any other women's event and win there instead'.

" But it has not been known what advantage intersex variations have. Nobody had done any science on intersex athletes as few of them existed until a decade or so ago. It is not robust enough to say 'it's obvious' for it to be a truth, a known fact. Research had to be done"

Nonsense, in fact.

There are a few points here:

• XX people are shorter, for various reasons
• XY people are stronger, because of testes.

Caster Semenya has testes, and processes testosterone.

There is no possible research however that can prove statistically that Caster Semenya has an advantage with a given DSD, given that said DSD is too rare to perform any sort of controlled study on

The evidence of that has been presented to the courts in the form of a study purporting to show that extra testosterone is advantageous only in certain events,.and therefore that XY 'women' should restrict their testosterone, is little better than fraudulent. Even someone with very basic understanding of statistics could see that when your 800m dataset includes multiple XY athletes with functioning testes, then that is going to distort results. Equally I don't give a flying fuck whether a woman who has double the testosterone of another woman, but still just 5% of Caster Semenya's level, is faster or slower.

The so-called science showed nothing more than their being no correlation between athletic performance and a high or low female.level of testosterone. They only got anywhere because their dataset includes biological males.

If you don't accept as a starting point, and without the need for supposed science that you take on face value, that people with functioning testes, producing testosterone, THE performance-enhancing steroid, do not belong in female sport, well you have a problem with logic.

Maybe someone else knows, how is it, if they don't know that testosterone gives an advantage, that it is a banned substance?

Nobody had done any science on intersex athletes as few of them existed until a decade or so ago....

Apart from Stella Walsh. Tamra Press. Irina Press. Erik Schinegger, Foekje Dillema, Maria José Martínez-Patiño, Santhi Soundarajan. Zdeňka Koubková. Mark/Edith Weston.....

Maybe someone else knows, how is it, if they don't know that testosterone gives an advantage, that it is a banned substance?

Yes, I always wonder why those who keep claiming it does not give an advantage aren’t campaigning for Lance Armstrong and the like to have their wins reinstated. I mean, if the argument is it does not offer an advantage surely you should undo all those disqualifications for its abuse so history is also in your favour.

Jacky thank you very much for that link to the Wise conference. It looks fascinating. Also saw the slide about how female athletes (anonymously) feel about transgender participation in female sports, very sad. So unfair that female athletes have been put in that position, also that they weren't informed of the rule changes, don't feel they can share their views on how unfair it is bit are extremely certain that it is unfair and the science does not support it.

Full Cas report released, confirming Semenya has 5 alpha reductase deficiency:

www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/CAS_Award_-redacted-_Semenya_ASA_IAAF.pdf

Thats 163 pages of report- can anyone briefly outline what it means please?

happydappy2 this explains the condition in layman's terms
ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/5-alpha-reductase-deficiency

5-alpha reductase deficiency is a condition that affects male sexual development before birth and during puberty. People with this condition are genetically male

5-alpha reductase deficiency is a condition that affects male sexual development before birth and during puberty.

That's pretty clear. How it can it possibly be justifiable for CS to compete in female athletics when their condition has apparently been known about for 10 years?

From that link:

During puberty, an increase in the levels of male sex hormones leads to the development of some secondary sex characteristics, such as increased muscle mass, deepening of the voice, development of pubic hair, and a growth spurt.

happyday2

I’ve read half of it, when I’ve read it all I’ll summarise.

CS is 46 XY DSD and so are the other two here on the podium at the Rio Olympics. So no biological born female who did not benefit from male levels of testosterone at puberty (and the associated benefits to their development) won a medal in the 800m at the last olympics.

This is the future of women's sport. Political correctness gone mad. The silencing that is the worst part - the other athletes having to try to make no possible expression of dissent lest they be lambasted as bigots.

Latest word seems to confirm CS will be moving up to beyond a mile if the CAS ruling is upheld.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/48678230

Those experimental drugs with the 'unknown consequences' would be the contraceptive pill which many female athletes take under TUE.

This is an excellent article for anyone interested

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

I feel very sorry for CS. It must absolutely rock your world to find out something so basic as your sex is not what you thought. I don't know the exact circumstances of her upbringing but she trained hard all her life (and it will still have been hard) and created a career. One that she was successful in. And then to be told that she was in fact male but for competing to be left so ambiguous is awful.

I do think CS was failed. She was, as she said here www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/48678230, used as a Guinea pig. Instead of someone standing up and making a decision she had people suggest unresearched medication to use on her to make it "fair". Even though it made her ill. And now, just to add to get fun, she is being used by people wholly unconnected to her in an argument as to if transwoman should be allowed to compete with females. A discussion intersex charities have repeatedly said is nothing to do with them.

She has been used her whole life and continues to be. I have sympathy for all the athletes involved, CS as stated above, and the athletes who have lost out as the result of her competing.

My personal feeling is that she should not compete as a woman and that she should have been stopped when she found out she is XY. I think asking her to make the decision at what must have been a very hard time, to give up her career and her future, was cruel. And I think that as she was raised with the honest belief that she was female (rather than wanting to be and in an obviously Male body) she should be treated as female for pretty much everything bar sport.

To quote the article I posted below

"the primary reason for the sex differences in the physical attributes that contribute to elite athletic performance is exposure to much higher levels of testosterone during male pubertal growth. Those physical attributes include power generation, aerobic power, body composition and fuel utilization. Compared to females, males have greater lean body mass (more skeletal muscle and less fat), larger hearts (both in absolute terms and scaled to lean body mass), higher cardiac outputs, larger hemoglobin mass, larger VO2 max (i.e. a person’s ability to take in oxygen), greater glycogen utilization, and higher anaerobic capacity."

Those experimental drugs with the 'unknown consequences' would be the contraceptive pill which many female athletes take under TUE.

Exactly, Mockers. Almost all elite female athletes take the pill while they are competing to help prevent variations in performance caused by period pain, PMT etc.

I used to be hugely sympathetic to Caster Semenya but now I think it suits her and the South African athletics officials to keep being vague about her condition and what she is being asked to do. That way she can present herself as a victim of decisions made by countries with far better funded athletics teams.

I also believed she lived as a woman until I read more about her early life. I still think she was badly advised and exploited when she was young but she does have the power to speak her mind now.

Those experimental drugs with the 'unknown consequences' would be the contraceptive pill which many female athletes take under TUE.
But what effect do these drugs have on the male body? I'd be wary of taking drugs designed for males.
What a farce letting these athletes compete as women in longer distances.