Caster Semenya has lost appeal

[Mumsnut]

Hard on Semenya, but the right outcome overall I think

Oh and selected key words are a fast way to cue the public as to what they're supposed to think - those words do not have to be used correctly in context, what matters is what thoughts/feelings, sympathies and associations it triggers- and current high interest topics can in that way be used quickly to harness public interests and sympathies to whatever it is that you want them to do.

It's reality by corporate marketing.

@drspouse

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

But what sort of DSD? That's the crucial question. For years, after all, Semenya has been reported as a woman with a DSD that raises testosterone levels.

Are there any DSDs in which a person who has gone through female puberty mediated by female hormones from the ovaries, and has raised testosterone?

Or when news reports say Niyosanba is a woman with naturally raised testosterone levels, do they mean "someone who was raised as a woman due to ambiguous/female-looking appearance at birth, but has XY chromosomes and internal testes"?

This is the problem here - the relevant details aren't being looked at.

(It is possible for women to have elevated testosterone levels - women with PCOS typically have levels of about 2.5 nmol/litre, compared to 1.5 nmol/litre for women without PCOS. But even 2.5 nmol/litre is way, way below the bottom of the healthy male range at 10 nmol/litre. And the bottom of the healthy male range is 5 standard deviations above the mean value for the female range, meaning it's vanishingly unlikely to come across a woman who'd have that level naturally.)

The right decision and I don't feel sorry for her.
They have taken prize money and medals etc away from deserving female athletes for a long time.
I feel sorry for those athletes.

I do feel sorry for her. I think it being misgendered at birth and raised as the wrong sex must be traumatising. I also think that for an athlete whose whole life revolves around a particular sport, not being able to continue to compete as before must be an identity shattering blow. I really feel for her.

However, competing with an advantage against women and girls cannot be something to console miserable males with. There are many reasons for people to be miserable. Some individuals have a dreadful time and life can be horrific and unfair. That does not give you a free pass as a man to compete as a woman (depriving women of medals, scholarships or team spots due to the advantage of male puberty).

I have no idea what an equivalent for girls women would be - I had a really traumatic childhood so when I compete in chess (including international competitions), I will start a few pieces ahead, but only against men?

I am grumpy this morning

regionweek.com/burundis-francine-niyonsaba-reveals-she-has-hyperandrogenism/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperandrogenism

If FN were male and had hyperandrogenism, it's vanishingly unlikely she would have been recognised as having female genitalia at birth.
Occasionally girls with CAH (one of the causes) have ambiguous genitalia.

@MoltenLasagne

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.

I agree. It's very depressing

Thanks Drspouse. My worry is round reporting. "Hyperandrogenism" simply means "raised levels of androgens." The wiki article you link to lists possible causes in natal women (and I already mentioned PCOS). But I've seen the term employed a lot in connection with Semenya too.

So when an article says "Athlete so-and-so has revealed she suffers from hyperandrogenism" I no longer have any confidence this means "is an XX female with ovaries but suffers from PCOS/Cushing's/etc." rather than "XY male with internal testes and ambiguous genitalia who was raised as a girl but has male levels of androgens as the result of male puberty."

An article saying "has revealed she suffers from hyperandrogenism" doesn't tell us which - that is the central issue of this thread. That journalists are deliberately writing articles in such a way as to cover up the relevant information.

Incidentally as a woman with PCOS, I can testify first hand that the very marginally increased levels of testosterone give me mildly hairy nipples; they do not, however, approach anything even remotely like the bottom end of the male range, with the concomitant increase in muscle strength.

I also think that for an athlete whose whole life revolves around a particular sport, not being able to continue to compete as before must be an identity shattering blow. I really feel for her.

This is part of being an elite athlete though. There will be competitors who will lose their chance of competing in the Olympics because they didn't take place in 2020, and many, many athletes lose the chance to compete because of injury or illness.

@CoffeeTeaChocolate

I do feel sorry for her. I think it being misgendered at birth and raised as the wrong sex must be traumatising. I also think that for an athlete whose whole life revolves around a particular sport, not being able to continue to compete as before must be an identity shattering blow. I really feel for her.

However, competing with an advantage against women and girls cannot be something to console miserable males with. There are many reasons for people to be miserable. Some individuals have a dreadful time and life can be horrific and unfair. That does not give you a free pass as a man to compete as a woman (depriving women of medals, scholarships or team spots due to the advantage of male puberty).

I have no idea what an equivalent for girls women would be - I had a really traumatic childhood so when I compete in chess (including international competitions), I will start a few pieces ahead, but only against men?

I am grumpy this morning

In golf there are female tees. I really can’t imagine men being happy in a competition if a trans woman went to the ladies tee and played from there. With the male strength I think she might start beating a lot of the men.

I agree DianasLasso.

There is a tendency to lump together many quite separate conditions.

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.

I'm not sure who is operating stonewall's Twitter account, but they must be losing people in droves with drivel like this.

There are zillions of sports people, sports commentators etc on Twitter. It's not some esoteric subject that no one knows about, and can be blurred in the way they blur other stuff.

Saying that, what is essentially sex segregation in sport, is setting a dangerous precedent sets their credibility tumbling specifically with people who know better and are involved in the profession.

They really seem to have lost the plot.

It's not really a tendency to lump together separate conditions so much as a deliberate political decision to appropriate female language to apply to males, in the same way as we have ended up with 'menstruators' and other such abominations.

The definition of hyperandrogenism is clear.

"Hyperandrogenic states are the clinical manifestation of excess androgen disorder in women. They encompass excess androgen production associated with exceptional androgen-secreting tumors, rare genetic diseases that impair adrenal steroidogenesis, and the very common polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Hyperandrogenic states also include increased peripheral androgen metabolism and clearance that enhance androgen cell availability and bioactivity (7, 8). Finally, they may also involve increased androgen activity within the cell, through active intracellular metabolism and/or enhanced androgen receptor machinery (9)."

This a women's illness.

These athletes aren't ill, they simply have a genetic disorder affecting male steroidogenesis, or a genetic disorder affecting their androgen receptors.

This condition does NOT describe male DSDs such as AIS and 5-ARD, where the body does NOT experience adverse effects due to T.

This is about biological females experiencing negative effects due to:

• The shortage due to a genetic defect of various enzymes converting progesterone into cortisol, resulting in excess progesterone which is therefore converted into testosterone
• Excess production of testosterone in fatty tissue, the ovaries, etc.

So one condition that is potentially life threatening and various others involving undesirable effects such as hirsutism, infertility etc.

All women's illnesses.

The fraudulent misuse of the term hyperandrogenism appears to have been introduced by the IOC and IAAF to deceive the public in 2011, when they appear to have appropriated this word to apply to Caster Semenya and other similar athletes with testicles.

This was a medical fraud and it did not appear to have been used in this way previously.

All this new language is thought up by pomo pricks with the deliberate intention to deceive, obfuscate and to render 'female' and 'woman' meaningless terms

The fraudulent misuse of the term hyperandrogenism appears to have been introduced by the IOC and IAAF to deceive the public in 2011, when they appear to have appropriated this word to apply to Caster Semenya and other similar athletes with testicles.

This was a medical fraud and it did not appear to have been used in this way previously.

I'm trying to work back through some articles and see where it started. It may well be one of the reasons CAS and WA use much clearer terms like “biological male advantage” - they are primarily scientists and participants not politicians!

@DianasLasso I did also see an older article on CS suggesting it was hyperandrogenism but CS does NOT have that; I do know however that CS was not releasing information on which condition it WAS until just recently. So I imagine that was speculation as CS was quite firm that it was a private matter (until it wasn't).

If FN has announced that she has hyperandrogenism, and her genitalia were noticed (in a very small Burundian village no doubt) to be female (or female enough) then either a) FN is lying (as she WILL have had genetic testing by now) or b) FN has CAH or some other cause of excess testosterone, and is indeed female.

www.olympic.org/news/ioc-addresses-eligibility-of-female-athletes-with-hyperandrogenism

Basically the IOC & IAAF met at the January 2010 Miami World DSD conference.
They then met again in October 2010 with lawyers and advocates and came to an agreement that these athletes would be called 'women with hyperandrogenism' rathe than 'intersex'

This decision certainly did not come from intersex advocates, who would not seek to erase their condition.

The term seems to first appear in 2011 in the IAAF/IOC statements. No doubt both were quite pleased with it as it distracts from the idea that there might be men in their competitions.

Michael Phelps produces a very low amount of lactic acid compared to the average person, meaning he doesn’t fatigue as much giving him a natural advantage over his competitors. He is praised for his biochemical advantage, while Caster is penalised and humiliated because of hers. It’s misogyny and racism, men who dominate a sport are celebrated while woman who dominate a sport are humiliated and forced to change their bodies

@Charley1984

Michael Phelps produces a very low amount of lactic acid compared to the average person, meaning he doesn’t fatigue as much giving him a natural advantage over his competitors. He is praised for his biochemical advantage, while Caster is penalised and humiliated because of hers. It’s misogyny and racism, men who dominate a sport are celebrated while woman who dominate a sport are humiliated and forced to change their bodies

Rtft

@ShootsFruitsAndLeaves so far that's what I have unearted too. Its a direct response to the initial questions about intersex athletes, CS in Rio etc.

At the time I thought it was reframing the scientific argument, to avoid there being any suggestion of bias, old fashioned thinking or just plain old upsetting the squeaky wheel.

It looks very different now!

@Charley1984

Michael Phelps produces a very low amount of lactic acid compared to the average person, meaning he doesn’t fatigue as much giving him a natural advantage over his competitors. He is praised for his biochemical advantage, while Caster is penalised and humiliated because of hers. It’s misogyny and racism, men who dominate a sport are celebrated while woman who dominate a sport are humiliated and forced to change their bodies

Bloody hell Charlie!

We're 350ish posts in on this thread alone, and you've gone back to square one/2010.

RTFT!

"If FN has announced that she has hyperandrogenism"

No, this is not correct.

The IAAF released regulations in March 2018 which included the female condition CAH.

On May 1 2019 they won their case against Semenya and released a new set of regulations deleting CAH and an accompanying statement that the regulations applied now ONLY to biological males

Niyosanba is covered by these regulations and as such as completely unequivocally biological male

www.olympicchannel.com/en/stories/news/detail/caster-semenya-targets-200m-tokyo-2020-olympics/

This does not of course rule out being born with female appearing genitalia, but it is an unequivocal fact that Niyosanba has testes

@Charley1984

Michael Phelps produces a very low amount of lactic acid compared to the average person, meaning he doesn’t fatigue as much giving him a natural advantage over his competitors. He is praised for his biochemical advantage, while Caster is penalised and humiliated because of hers. It’s misogyny and racism, men who dominate a sport are celebrated while woman who dominate a sport are humiliated and forced to change their bodies

Read the thread Charley. Caster is biologically male. And not because of a DSD. They are a biological male with a DSD that only affects males.

That’s really interesting, shoots

I’m still boggling over how much front it takes to conflate trans and intersex athletes given that the stated reasons for inclusion in women’s sports directly conflict with each other, and it’s all made possible by the heavy lifting being done by the concept of being “assigned” something at birth.

Athlete with DSD: assigned female at birth, but it later comes to light that in fact they are male, however it is imperative that the original category is respected.

Trans athlete: assigned male at birth, but later it comes to light that in fact they are female, and it is imperative that the later category is respected.

Actual reality: both are male and have been from the moment of conception, regardless of whatever difference in development then happened, or whatever identity was later adopted.

The two diametrically opposed bases of inclusion are allowed to continue because those athletes involved prefer it to be so - but honestly, so what? So what if their preference is to continue to be allowed to dominate their sports? Difficult as this may be to accept for those individuals involved, neither have a place in women’s sports because this is extremely detrimental to women who cannot hope to compete with a body formed and sculpted by testosterone, regardless of where the testes that produced it might reside, or if they have been decommissioned. My sympathies lie with those invisible and sidelined female athletes missing their spots on teams and podiums by this gamesmanship.

No ifs, no buts, no Ys in women’s sports.

Reading this thread has really given me the rage. I've never really followed the Caster Semenya story apart from initially feeling sorry for her. But it's just cheating, plain and simple. To know you're an XY male, have gone through male puberty and to still compete against women? I think it's shameful.

What are the names of the women that CS has "beaten"? I feel like we should be talking about them and trying to raise their profiles rather than continuing to focus on this cheat.

charley, the missing piece from your point is that we don’t divide swimming into low and high lactate categories, so that makes no sense, now, does it? You’re arguing for there to be no men’s and women’s categories at all, just a “people” category.

All elite sports end up being about who has these small differences of development that actually make them elite. But we still have weight categories in boxing, because that actually works to make the competition both fairer and more competitive for a broader range of athletes.

This does not of course rule out being born with female appearing genitalia, but it is an unequivocal fact that Niyosanba has testes

In that case, my second alternative stands: FN was lying, and does not have hyperandrogenism.

But if you read this it applies to:

The IAAF says its DSD Regulations, apply to legally female or intersex athletes who have:

XY sex chromosomes
Testes instead of ovaries
A blood testosterone level "in the male range"
Androgen-sensitive.

Assuming the last one is meant to read "androgen insensitivity" then CAIS would fall under that.
But IIUC then female athletes with hyperandrogenisation COULD have testosterone in the "male range" and therefore FN could be XX but still fall under the IAAF rules.

The IAAF rules appear to apply to a wide variety of DSDs, not just "males with a DSD who were incorrectly assigned as female at birth" like this thread seems to be saying.

(I don't know what a "legally intersex" athlete is but given the way the world is going, some countries could have introduced an "intersex" marker on their passports without anyone noticing).