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Caster Semenya the South African female athlete

klaaaz

After much controversy about the Olympic champion, Caster has declared as being "born a woman" https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/47244017

"Ms Semenya is unquestionably a woman," said Semenya's lawyers

"Her case, however, is about the rights of women such as Ms Semenya, who are born as women, reared and socialised as women, who have been legally recognised as women for their entire lives, who have always competed in athletics as women, and who should be permitted to compete in the female category without discrimination."

This athlete as of writing has had a naturally high level of testosterone genetically since birth which has given her quite the physical strength in bone and muscle size advantage over her competitors hence her tremendous success.
She is not transgender, i'm wondering how the posters here who object to transgender people specifically in sports cope with the fact that Miss Semenya has very high testosterone levels which are more likely greater than a trans athlete and greater than non-trans female athletes.

What is your view on this matter, should Miss Semenya still be allowed to compete in female sports despite her high testosterone levels since birth which give her a huge unfair advantage over other female athletes?

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silverharp

Either someone is biologically a man or a woman and even if someone has a sex related disorder they are still male or female with that disorder. Its kind of bizzaro world where biological males are increasingly being allowed to compete in female events yet this is an issue

FTA69

klaaaz wrote: »

Fallon Fox is recognised as a female by the sporting organisation she competed in and is recognised as female by the medical community and the law. It is you on your barstool claiming to be a victim of abuse when you're "shutting your eyes, sticking your finger in your ears and shouting "la la la" , it is you who dismisses these facts. Fallon (who you brought into the conversation) also lost one of her matches so is not all the advantageous that you claim to be and is now aged 43.
As for Caster Semenya who has your description of the male physique where you have no vitriol about her ability, your words..

Barstool? Victim of abuse? What are you even talking about? I said that some women who raised concerns about getting rag dolled and battered by transwomen in sports have been abused, I didn't say I was a victim at all. You've continuously strawmanned throughout this thread.

Fox is now recognised as a female and that's the gender to which she subscribes, fair play to her. But her sex is that of a male, she was born a male, went through puberty as a male and transitioned as a man. These are facts. These facts lead to someone having a certain physicality. This isn't difficult stuff to grasp like, and no matter how much you huff and puff - Fox, Mouncey etc don't magically erase their male characteristics when they transition,

As for Fox, I know you know nothing about martial arts or combat sports - but Fox lost to Ashlee Evans Smith, one of the UFC's top fighters, one of the best fighters in the world at the time. I was a decent amateur boxer, but I've no doubt that Katie Taylor would knock the sh*t out of me in the ring, that fact doesn't mean I should then be boxing in the London ABA women's tournaments.

Again, I haven't made one comment on Caster Semenya at all. Nothing. Zip.

And I refuse to do so because you're using intersex people as a battering ram to push your opinions about transgenderism and it's not on to conflate the two.

eagle eye

Let the trans have their own Olympics.

MsDaisyC

astrofool wrote: »

Usain Bolt is about 10% faster than Flo Jo, should she just accept that and not compete? Should we just get rid of female competition altogether?

Flo Jo's long since dead, retiring from running just as out of competition, random drug tests were being introduced.

independent.co.uk/sport/athletics-flo-jo-and-the-shadow-of-doubt-1200951.html

klaaaz

FTA69 wrote: »

Fox is now recognised as a female and that's the gender to which she subscribes, fair play to her. But her sex is that of a male, she was born a male, went through puberty as a male and transitioned as a man. These are facts. These facts lead to someone having a certain physicality. This isn't difficult stuff to grasp like, and no matter how much you huff and puff - Fox, Mouncey etc don't magically erase their male characteristics when they transition,

Caster has the same male characteristics but born female, why no objections to her competing in female sports with her resulting super Olympic stardom where other female athletes have struggled to compete with her?

FTA69 wrote: »

As for Fox, I know you know nothing about martial arts or combat sports - but Fox lost to Ashlee Evans Smith, one of the UFC's top fighters, one of the best fighters in the world at the time. I was a decent amateur boxer, but I've no doubt that Katie Taylor would knock the sh*t out of me in the ring, that fact doesn't mean I should then be boxing in the London ABA women's tournaments.

So you know more about the MMA than the MMA authorities themselves who allowed Fox to compete under strict criteria. Perhaps set up your own MMA organisation to specifically exclude male physique female fighters!

suicide_circus

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.

Cienciano

ceadaoin. wrote: »

She is a person with a y chromosome and testes who went through a male puberty as a result.. Bit different than just a woman with a male "physique"

Do you have a citation for that? I never heard it before, would be interesting to read it.

Pissartist

s4uv3 wrote: »

If she's declared a woman, she's a woman, and should be entitled to live as one. If you were to ban her from female sports on hormone grounds, you'd have to start testing the levels of all women who compete.

she's only a woman if she has the xx chromosone,
otherwise it's a man

DEFTLEFTHAND

klaaaz wrote: »

Caster has the same male characteristics but born female, why no objections to her competing in female sports with her resulting super Olympic stardom where other female athletes have struggled to compete with her?

So you know more about the MMA than the MMA authorities themselves who allowed Fox to compete under strict criteria. Perhaps set up your own MMA organisation to specifically exclude male physique female fighters!

Not everybody involved with the UFC is happy about it.

Joe Rogan has a major issue with Fallon Fox competing in the women's division.

I accept Fox's gender identity but we have to be realistic when it comes to the biological differences between the male and female bodies.

Wibbs

klaaaz wrote: »

Fallon Fox is recognised as a female by the sporting organisation she competed in and is recognised as female by the medical community and the law.

Which proves that we've gone down the rabbit hole taking crazy pills as we fall. Fallon Fox is a biological male, tweaked by hormones(and surgery?) into a self identifying female. This is a biological, scientific, medical fact. Using current laws as an argument is ridiculous. Would you run to that argument twenty years ago when Fox would be defined by law and medicine and sporting bodies as a male? You would not.

klaaaz wrote: »

Caster has the same male characteristics but born female, why no objections to her competing in female sports with her resulting super Olympic stardom where other female athletes have struggled to compete with her?

Caster is intersex. A biological medical condition. She is not a transexual. She is not a male who medically changed her hormone profiles to one approximating a female.

RWCNT

klaaaz wrote: »

She is not transgender, i'm wondering how the posters here who object to transgender people specifically in sports cope with the fact that Miss Semenya has very high testosterone levels which are more likely greater than a trans athlete and greater than non-trans female athletes.

What is your view on this matter, should Miss Semenya still be allowed to compete in female sports despite her high testosterone levels since birth which give her a huge unfair advantage over other female athletes?

It's a very interesting question. There are loads of physical characteristics that provide an advantage for different sports and what exactly constitutes an "unfair" advantage. There's an MMA fighter called Bigfoot Silva who suffered from acromegaly which gave him a giant head and hands, both quite advantageous in combat.

There was also a trans-woman MMA fighter called Fallon Fox a few years ago and there was a huge amount of debate over whether it was safe to allow her to fight cisgender women. The safety question made me think - what if there was a cis woman with higher testosterone and greater bone density than Fallon- which can happen, there are always outliers - would it be proper to allow them to fight, given that the danger to their opponents is potentially greater?

I honestly don't know where I fall on the subject. A consensus from medical professionals with specialist knowledge of the sports in question is the way to go IMO, with a focus on fairness of competition.

DEFTLEFTHAND

There was an interesting programme on recently about the Soviet Union female athletes from the height of the Cold War era. Many were pumped full of hormones and steroids to compete in disciplines such as the shot putt and hammer throw.

The most worrying thing I took away from it was all the health issues and early deaths which followed for many of these women.

Do we fully understand the long term impacts of 'transitioning' so to speak. From a health perspective is it wise to continuously pump the body with hormones for years?

Doctors could have a lot of explaining to do some day.

abcabc123123

Pissartist wrote: »

she's only a woman if she has the xx chromosone,
otherwise it's a man

A person can have a Y chromosome and be a woman

[Deleted User]

abcabc123123 wrote:

A person can have a Y chromosome and be a woman

Go on...

klaaaz

Wibbs wrote: »

Which proves that we've gone down the rabbit hole taking crazy pills as we fall. Fallon Fox is a biological male, tweaked by hormones(and surgery?) into a self identifying female. This is a biological, scientific, medical fact. Using current laws as an argument is ridiculous. Would you run to that argument twenty years ago when Fox would be defined by law and medicine and sporting bodies as a male? You would not.

So lets disregard the modern medical community in their study of transgender people and you as a poster on boards is right! :rolleyes: Fox is a medical transitioned transgender person, who went from male to female. This fact about transsexuals is recognised in the EU law, the EU where we live today and specifically in Ireland if you reside here.

Wibbs wrote: »

Caster is intersex. A biological medical condition. She is not a transexual. She is not a male who medically changed her hormone profiles to one approximating a female.

Doesn't matter one iota. Both types have the male physique where presented and Semenya in her case also has elevated testosterone levels, both types compete in female sport and yet one type is condemned(the transsexual) and the other(Semenya) is allowed to win Olympic gold medals over other female athletes for years.

.......

Matthais Schlitte.

Champion German arm wrestler, bone disorder, gives him a giant arm.

Is it legal? Yes.
Is it natural? Yes.
Its it fair? Probably not.

Pissartist

you are what you are born as, no surgery or identifying as something else will change that,
you can put make up on a pig, but it's still a pig.

[Deleted User]

As I said earlier, if we are to continue down this (frankly bizarre) rabbit-hole, in which biology is not important and one person's reality MUST be accepted by others, we should just scrap the divide in sport between men and women and let everyone compete against each other.

It is remarkable that we have gotten to this stage but unfortunately that's where we are.

[Deleted User]

I wonder if a heavyweight fighter who identified as a flyweight should be allowed to fight at that weight class?

abcabc123123

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Go on...

Simplifying but the the SRY gene on the Y chromosome is responsible for initiating male sex determination. The SRY gene can be mutated or missing, in which case the person develops as a woman, albeit one without ovaries and will require treatment to go through puberty.

Pissartist

abcabc123123 wrote: »

Simplifying but the the SRY gene on the Y chromosome is responsible for initiating male sex determination. The SRY gene can be mutated or missing, in which case the person develops as a woman, albeit one without ovaries and will require treatment to go through puberty.

exactly how common is this, in % to the worlds population ?

Ash.J.Williams

This has nothing to with trans...

[Deleted User]

abcabc123123 wrote: »

Simplifying but the the SRY gene on the Y chromosome is responsible for initiating male sex determination. The SRY gene can be mutated or missing, in which case the person develops as a woman, albeit one without ovaries and will require treatment to go through puberty.

Ah right. So that would be like me saying "Not everybody has two thumbs" and then pointing to a very rare case where someone was born without a thumb?

Not being flippant, but I am assuming that these are extremely rare cases?

Pissartist

all this trans and identifying as someone else, it's a mental illness in my opinion, nothing else

abcabc123123

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Ah right. So that would be like me saying "Not everybody has two thumbs" and then pointing to a very rare case where someone was born without a thumb?

Not being flippant, but I am assuming that these are extremely rare cases?

It is rare. I don't think this a fair analogy given the context of the thread though. Generally speaking an XY chromosomal pair means male yea, but we're not speaking generally here, we're talking about a very specific minority of the population and how they should be treated.

This isn't the only scenario like this. There are others, eg CAIS. Developing into the adult male sex is not a simple binary determined by the presence of a Y chromosome alone; it occurs in stages, and it being nature there are many ways in which things do not go according to the norm. It is messy and complicated and defies simple answers.

RWCNT

Pissartist wrote: »

all this trans and identifying as someone else, it's a mental illness in my opinion, nothing else

The overwhelming consensus of those who actually study and understand mental illnesses runs counter to your opinion, so good on you for being brave and soldiering on with it.

Guy:Incognito

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Why the emphasis on nature, though? As Klaaz has pointed out, trans women actually deliberately lower their testosterone levels as part of the transitioning process.

It's literally the opposite of 'cheating', and although there may be some vestigial benefit (I don't know of any), nobody is seriously going to transition just to win a medal, especially knowing that such victories will always be tarnished in the eyes of some people.

People have been juicing themselves to the eyeballs resulting in early death for decades. If death isnt a barrier to doing whatever they can to win I dont see why gender reassignment wouldn't be something some would do.

Arghus

ceadaoin. wrote: »

She has no female reproductive organs and internal testes apparently. If this is true, she has basically been through puberty as a male and absolutely has an unfair advantage.It's not just about current testosterone levels It's not her fault, she has been raised from birth as a girl/woman, but it isn't fair on her competitors. I feel bad for everyone involved.

How do you know this?

Pissartist

RWCNT wrote: »

The overwhelming consensus of those who actually study and understand mental illnesses runs counter to your opinion, so good on you for being brave and soldiering on with it.

good on you for backing your point up with fact, oh wait

RWCNT

Pissartist wrote: »

good on you for backing your point up with fact, oh wait

My point is a fact. What do you mean?