Caster Semenya has lost appeal

[Mumsnut]

Hard on Semenya, but the right outcome overall I think

If Semenya had grown up white in an affluent suburb of Cape Town, no way would this not have been diagnosed much sooner. Being poor and black and having limited access to health services meant Semenya got a long way before a diagnosis was made.

I am sure that there must have been some strong suspicions at least-this was a girl who was in her teens and showing no female development, not getting her periods and developing an increasingly androgenized body, Her poverty would certainly have formed a reason for turning a blind eye and pretending it was not happening since there was clearly a chance of turning her running into a career, and I can't blame her at all-I would have been tempted to do the same. I do feel very very bad for her. But I think the line has to be drawn or women's sports will lose their raison d'etre.

I think it's not quite accurate to put all the blame on the media. Until the first appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2019, it was not actually known publicly which particular condition Caster Semenya has. Her appeal stemmed from an IAAF decision to introduce tests for androgen insensitivity. Before then, it was assumed that she was almost certainly intersex but not that she specifically had the 46 XY karyotype. There were a lot of threads on here at the time discussing this in detail.

All countries want to win Olympic medals and it has suited the South African athletics governing body to present her as a gender non conforming person disadvantaged by racist assumptions about what women look like. They were asked to withdraw her before the 2009 race so that her eligibility could be tested and decisions made in private but they refused.

I know much less about Margaret Wambui but Kenya is one of the countries with the highest number of athletes receiving sanctions because of doping. I can easily believe she was encouraged to take up the 800m when her talent was spotted in the hope she would become a medal winner. Elite athletes have to begin very young so she was unlikely to have deliberately decided to capitalise on her physical advantages herself.

That's why I can have sympathy for individuals while acknowledging that other women are disadvantaged by their competing.

But the media have access to the same Cas report and still report Semenya as “a woman with naturally high testosterone”. They weren’t complicit initially, but they’re complicit with the ongoing misunderstanding. It’s been over 12 months now in which time all major news organisations could have reported accurately.

I remember when Caster Semenya first appeared on the athletics scene and one of her competitors was villifed as a bad loser because she said it seemed clear she was a man. I was googling to try to find out who that was (it was an Italian runner) and almost every article I found in the more mainstream press over the past ten or so years was full of wholehearted support for CS, painting a very sympathetic narrative and (inevitably) also comparing her to transgender athletes. And accusing her critics of using fake science and gatekeeping womanhood and all the usual buzzwords.

I had to find articles written for medical journals and athletics publications before I found even a hint of 'maybe all is not as it seems'.

I remember when I was younger and innocent feeling sorry for her, for the indignity of people saying she wasn't a woman, because I naively thought that no male would be so arrogant (or pathetic) as to compete against women. Now I just see an arrogant, entitled cheat.

From a DailyMail article:

"Semenya, who was assigned the female gender at birth and was raised female, is actually believed to be intersex due a genetic condition which means she has both X and Y chromosomes, a trait usually found in men."

www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-8711163/amp/Caster-Semenya-loses-Swiss-Court-appeal-restriction-testosterone-levels-female-athletes.html

Trying to imagine myself having to put that in print with a straight face. Nooooope.

A trait usually found in men? That's an understatement.

Hmm. TW are "assigned male at birth" but are now expected to be seen as literal women. Semenya was "assigned female at birth" and we are to take that as the stamp-stamp-no-erasies proclamation of their femaleness? Can't really have it both ways, can they?

@CranberriesChoccy

Hmm. TW are "assigned male at birth" but are now expected to be seen as literal women. Semenya was "assigned female at birth" and we are to take that as the stamp-stamp-no-erasies proclamation of their femaleness? Can't really have it both ways, can they?

Good point.

@ThePonderer

Sorry, entirely irrelevant to the important topic at hand, but I have to know. Para 526 of that CAS ruling includes this: "The Panel has the publications which provide the data and has seen the witnesses in the hot tubs, where the data were discussed and analysed by witnesses from all sides".

Legal term I haven't come across, or a great new way to get the truth out of your witnesses?

Hot tubbing is where opposing experts give evidence at the same time, amd they have to answer the same questions put to them. So there's no opportunity to listen to the other side, digest, discuss with legal team etc before giving your evidence (if you're the expert who would otherwise go second). It's still unusual in England (v common elsewhere) but can be very effective.

The part of Tucker's tweet that is of most import, to me, is this bi

All in all, a situation without solution, but for a principle of biological sex’s impact on performance, and the defence of women’s sport integrity, it’s right. For policy creation and integrity of science in governance, it’s a disaster. And Semenya is a significant loser

That will remain the weakness, the part open door. In order to protect and nurture women's sport CAS, IAAC, IOC etc must make illogical decisions and override scientific integrity. We'll have to rely on Right is Might... and hope that Might is Right gets short shrift!

Speaking of which, if, as he says, World Athletics are using the phrase “biological male advantage” there could be some interesting times ahead. It would be very hard to get m/any sport scientists, physiologists, biomechanists to change their mnds on basic biology.

It's only the sociologists, like Ellis bloody Cashore, that do the impossible dance! But he has his repitations as "cultural critic" to keep up! Don't take a peek at his Twitter feed, you'll fill quite a few bingo cards very quickly!

(I despair that I ever thought the man had any bloody insight at all)

Stonewall now arguing that the decision was made because CS does not ‘conform to a framework centred on white European woman.’

Are they biologically illiterate or just racist?

Especially considering the race of the majority of elite elite would be...? They are clutching at straws.

Elite athletes

Consistently I have posted here that Semenya had every right to fight for her right to carry on competing even after her 'diagnosis'. It is her life, her way of earning a living, all she had been brought up to know.

And there is nothing at all to stop CS competing...in the correct category.

‘Right’ - I keep hearing that. Whose ‘right’, what is a ‘right’? Wants aren’t rights.

That just crossed my desk too! Possibly because I had a look at Cashmore's twitter feed. Desperation?

It's a ludicrous position given the number of elite black athletes across many sports. In fact people like Cashmore used to argue that spot was racist because of the high numbers of black participants - things like stacking, use of sport to escape socio-economic situations etc.

Shades of the Fatima Whitbred nastiness, in reverse!

Can I just take a moment to state how incredibly pissed off I am at the press for their wilful misrepresentation on this issue. It seems every time now there is an area I am knowledgeable on, I find articles that misreport the issue, whether intentionally or through ignorance.

So CS is reported as female with high testosterone, not a male with a DSD.
JK Rowling is declared transphobic without whit of evidence to support it.
The Leeds "managed zone" is declared a success when the report proves the exact opposite.

What else am I reading that is pure lies that I don't have the knowledge to realise? No wonder people turn to conspiracy theories when we can see we're being lied to every sodding day.

And there is nothing at all to stop CS competing...in the correct category. Yep. But that category had to be created in sport law, backed by sport science. Happily that is closer now and the use of terms like “biological male advantage” make it less and less likely that this will be overturned.

Don't mistake my wanting Semenya to have been seen to have had a fair deal with wanting them to be allowed to compete as a woman. I want this decision to be a strong, unassailable position in all sports.

Francine Niyosanba has a DSD that increases testosterone in women.
I'm not sure about the others.

Well Rio was news to me... 😲😲😲

People don’t critically analyse what they read/see. They don’t seem to teach this in schools anymore - so we have kids and young adults in the education system being targeted quite strongly with the ‘truth’ of the day and told that anyone who questions is evil, hateful, criminal, worthy of beating/death threats etc.

We’ve always been lied to/had the ‘truth’ from different angles but social media makes it all so much worse in my opinion.

Whereas in ye olden days someone would have to go to the bother of getting paper and pen to compose a poison pen letter or critical rebuttal... now it’s death threats in 240 characters at the click of a button, and everyone and their dog thinks their opinion is 100% correct and so fascinating to the rest of the world that it’s worthy of mass publication (and yes, I get the irony of posting that on a sm site!)

1984 indeed.

More blather from Stonewall:

It sets a dangerous precedent in regulating how people participate in sport. What’s happened today is a missed opportunity to send a positive message to women of all races, shapes, sizes and abilities that sport is open and welcoming of everyone.

Elite sport is very much NOT about including all abilities.

What ever decision was made, it was always going to exclude somebody from competition.

The concerning thing about Stonewall is that they aren't even trying to engage with relevant arguments, they are just trying to misdirect.

This sets a very worrying precedent for any engagement 'on behalf of' people who have DSDs.

What else am I reading that is pure lies that I don't have the knowledge to realise?

We are living in an age where it is an open political approach to create a narrative from selected information, insist this is the truth despite obvious facts that don't fit, and to then brazen it out while denying, slurring and refusing to engage with anyone raising conflicting information, and if necessary using legal approaches to hush them on the grounds of unwanted facts being unkindness and wrongdoing.

Cummings and his castle eye test is the overt example, but this is the age we're living in. It's based on much of what Serenity describes, of grabbing an emotional angle for public sympathy and hoping most will be too lazy/briefly engaged to think and will instead just get on side and co operate. Or that if you stick it out long enough, the public will forget and move on to the next shiny thing. Johnson doesn't appear to realise what this approach has done to his credibility or public trust, there seems to be a belief in the stupidity and gullibility of all, and an arrogant right to decide what to 'make' people think. Hence the tantrums and reproach (again seen in the Cummings example) when they fail to co operate and demonstrate critical, independent thought.

@KnowingYou

But what I was getting at was - how do you decide in the more grey areas?

CS is not at all a grey area. She is genetically male XY, has internal testes, produces several times more testosterone than women, has a body modified by a testosterone puberty and presents as male off the track.

I know. But the discussion here is including other DSDs, and in particular, the difficulty in coming up with a policy/criteria that would work - and I think it's clear that there can't be one. There ARE those individuals where there is a grey area, such as the examples given in the rest of that paragraph, where using any single one of the potential criteria (T levels, chromosomes, presence of SRY etc) wouldn't be appropriate, and thus I think there has to be a policy of examining on a case-by-case basis, however difficult and potentially open to other issues (like bias, prejudice, corruption etc) that might be.

Francine Niyosanba has a DSD that increases testosterone in women.
I'm not sure about the others.

Bollocks.

No literally that's what Niyosanba has.

The rules reply exclusively 100% only and without any exception of any kind at all to people with testes. They do not ever apply to anyone who does not have testes.

It is horribly misleading to say that Niyosanba has a condition 'increasing testosterone', as testes produce testosterone as their normal function, so nothing is being increased.

All of these athletes have bollocks.