Caster Semenya could be forced to undertake hormone therapy for future Olympics

[dowie]

It’s a bit rich to claim we’re wading in because it’s a culture war topic [...] Have a look at Lizzy Banks who took 10 months and spent £40k to overturn a positive doping test due to contamination. It’s a hugely protracted process, heavily weighted against the athlete and it has to be for something.

When you keep coming back with the flimsiest of arguments then it's pretty clear.

This has nothing to do with doping tests or drug testing so throwing in an anecdote about that is just ridiculous levels of cope. AFAIK this was PCR testing - remember from the pandemic? Are you going to join the ranks of the conspiracy theorists who thought Covid was fake?

So not only is it a very sensitive and specific test but it was carried out twice and they didn't appeal it for obvious reasons.

Any more lame duck arguments/cope?

 

[dowie]

There isn't any information at all, just a claim by one man, which isn't backed up by evidence, that many have chosen to believe.

You're regurgitating nonsense, it's not just a claim by one man it's a claim by multiple people and decision made by a whole orgnaisation - the Taiwanese boxer even lost a bronze medal at the 2023 World Championships over their failed gender test.

Pretty sad when you consider they're both allowed to compete under the IOC guidelines and it's overshadowing a genuine controversy.

Pretty sad when you consider that's already been covered a few times in here; the IOC guidelines just use legal sex/what's in the passport.

 

[dowie]

If an observably female competitor does happen to have a sex disorder and a Y chromosome then the obvious question to answer is: does this confer an unfair advantage? If the answer is yes, or it’s on the fence, then they probably shouldnt be allowed to complete for the sake of ensuring fairness. But it’s not an absolute given.

It's already been answered as the IBA mentioned male advantage too and the Algerian is XY + observable rather masculine.

It's also just common sense, XY conditions like swyer not only doesn't give any advantage but also probably gives a disadvantage vs normal females as even normal females can make use of testosterone a bit. That's not to say there won't be any, it's rare but possible (there has been one Olympian with it AFAIK) and it's not really an issue if they compete as not only do they not have any male advantage, they're typically considered to be female (though they're infertile/don't produce either eggs or sperm).

They're also not likely to look super masculine like that Algerian boxer though for what ought to again be obvious reasons.

Let’s also not adopt the position that ‘genuine sexual development disorder’ is the same thing as an adult male (without any sexual development disorder) deciding to identify and compete a woman. It’s a completely different circumstance and should be fairly treated as such.

The big differences are that the decision was made for them to identify as the opposite gender from birth rather than them deciding to do so later in life and that they have a physical motivation for doing so.

It's not surprising that Semenya, for example, a biological male, is married to a woman/is a "lesbian" as most biological males are attracted to women.

But this isn't some mysterious thing either, they'll have known since puberty, in the case of the Algerian there is some extra dubious issue of why her birth certificate was issued in 2019 (IIRC) - did someone there scout for XY/Male DSD people?

The bottom line is that they know they're biological males and they're still choosing to compete in the women's event knowing they've been disqualified from the world championship and knowing how dubious this is, I'm not really all that sympathetic to it turning into a media storm as it's one they've created by their own choices.

 

[dowie]

People are gaming the system now, it's the new doping. Men competing against women for easier wins.

A birth certificate issued only 5 years ago... it's pretty obvious that has been fiddled for sport purposes.

It's certainly very suspect, whether there is some reasonable excuse or not they know full well what they are and why they've been banned from the World Championship.

The Algerian side basically seemed to acknowledge on twitter that their boxer had the same condition as Semenya too.

 

[dowie]

Ironically one of the best ways to tell if an athlete should be allowed to compete in the female competition is their theoretical ability to have children. If you can get pregnant and give birth then you are female and if you can't then you are not. Caster Semenya for example cannot get pregnant no matter what, so it's a man

She may well have fathered some children though, at least her second child was via artificial insemination but it's not been made public whether it was sperm from her.

 

[dowie]

That the appeal would have failed....?

Yup. You'd think that would be obvious given they've failed two tests from different labs.

@Richie is that now obvious to you or are you still confused?

 

[dowie]

I wanted you to be explicit in what you meant by "obvious reasons"

So you're just playing dumb and it's some personal issue again?

 

[dowie]

I wanted to know what you meant by "obvious reasons" so we can discuss in good faith

Well they're kind of obvious!

It's up to you if you want to answer a very simple question directly

It was answered earlier in the thread and confirmed in post #785.

 

[dowie]

It does raise interesting questions about sport categorization. We split male/female in the interest of "fairness" due to different physical performance limitations between them, but we don't categorize by race, even though it is known that


We also categorize some sports like Boxing/MMA by weight category to account for different body types and sizes, yet in grass roots football, we categorize only by age. In the later, this can present massive differentials week in week out in football matches across the country where in some age groups around age 14/15, you can have 6ft+ heavy players, going in for headers/tackles against 5ft light players that haven't gone through puberty and are not developed yet.

And those are fair points to raise, I don't think categorising by race is going to be palatable though and that's a bit of a minefield both socially and in terms of even how to categorise objectively as you're going to have people with mixed heritage etc..

But sure people with West African DNA will dominate sprinting, East Africans will dominate long distance and neither group will typically be very competitive at swimming.

But in this case, we do have a category/requirement and it's being breached rather unfairly. We test for doping/drugs, we check the weight of athletes where weight limits are in place, we check the age of athletes where age limits are in place. Paralympics have criteria for types of disability.

None of those things are conflated by modern gender discourse and people's choice to identify or continue identifying (after someone has made that choice for them at birth) as a particular gender when biologically they're the opposite sex.

We'd have no tolerance for someone saying they identify as someone older or younger or heavier or lighter or with a disability they don't have etc..

 

[dowie]

I wanted to know what you meant by "obvious reasons" so we can discuss in good faith

So the question was answered, you wanted to discuss in good faith supposedly and yet... [crickets]

What was it you were looking to discuss exactly if you're being sincere there?

 

[dowie]

Sorry to be a lemon but can someone summarize/ correct me?

They have xy chromosomes but are a woman ?

Define woman?

No seriously - it depends on what you mean by woman. Their gender identity is "woman" in the same way as "trans women are women".

Biologically they're male though; either their external genitalia had a few issues so a decision was made to raise them as girls at birth (sometimes surgery is involved) or it wasn't noticed at birth because it looked female externally and so they maybe become aware they were males later - at least by puberty!

The Russian boxing federation did a test, of which there is no evidence or results of and disqualified them?

This is all a witch hunt? They are intact a really manly woman.....

No, labs in Turkey and India conducted tests, it's not a witch hunt and the labs are ones the CAS is happy with.

You could call them manly women depending on your definition of woman but they're biological males.

 

[dowie]

Cool still makes no sense

OK, to put it simply - it's a bloke (or rather two blokes) fighting in women's boxing and lots of people are just trying to be polite about it (because.... woke LGBTQIA stuff.)

 

[dowie]

I clearly asked you to answer it. After avoiding answering it with nonsense replies about "personal issues" etc, you let someone else answer it and then tagged on a snarky reply so I chose to no longer engage with your childish and disingenuous posting style, that's why you have received no reply.

Someone else had already answered what the obvious was... because it was blinding obvious and I posted to agree with them.

You're just having your own little rant all over again and it's clear you had no substantive point to make nor were you attempting to discuss anything in good faith.

 

[dowie]

It's absurd that when the IOC wants to waffle about it being down to individual sports etc that boxing, of all things, is one of the sports that still lets males compete as women.

You'd think if they're going for an individual sport approach then some common sense would prevail and combat sports would be an obvious no-no for safety and fairness reasons, various athletics events for fairness and maybe the debate would be about things like the extent of male advantage in say pistol shooting etc..

Perhaps less shocking than boxing, but still farcical, is that the limits on DSD males with male advantages (who naturally produce male levels of testosterone) in athletics events basically just apply to middle distance - 400m, 800m and 1500m + hurdles & combined events over similar. The requirement is they lower their T levels.

And for trans they just need to have lowered T for 12 months for all events.

The requirement was dropped during the 2016 games unfortunately and we can see what happened!

In 2016 Lindsay Sharp, who is quite familiar with this issue, gave an honest response to reporters (see the comment section for how this was received):

Some people were confused about why the person in 6th place was complaining but it seems all three medal winners were biological males, she'd just been robbed of a gold medal:

What are the odds of that? A rare intersex condition and yet all three medal-winning "women" have it! Couldn't possibly be some advantage thanks to being male?

Interestingly too re: the Canadian runner who ended up in 4th place, this is what the coach of the Canadian team had to say:

"An Injustice" : Former Canadian Olympic Head Coach Speaks Out Against Results Of 2016 Olympics, Calls For Sex-Segregated Sport - Reduxx

Athletics Canada’s former head coach has come forward to reveal that he was threatened by the Canadian Olympic Committee lawyers after expressing discontent with the results of the women’s 800m at the 2016 Olympic Games. The competition saw three biological males take the top spots, displacing...

reduxx.info

“I was the first one to see Melissa after the race and what do you even say in that scenario? ‘You’re the best woman in the race?’ You don’t get a medal for that,” Eriksson says. “This was such an injustice I wanted to speak out, and then I got a call from the Canadian Olympic Committee’s lawyer saying that if I opened my mouth, I would be banned for life in sport.”

It's become very much a "woke"/culture war issue thus the common sense approach of just don't let biological males with male advantages compete in women's sports is suddenly controversial and it's taken huge efforts just to get a handful of running events restricted to only biological women or biological males who are willing to lower their testosterone levels.

 

[dowie]

He is not considered female in his natural-born state, though.

Neither are males with DSD conditions considered female in their natural born state.

DSDers have done nothing to change themselves, either through doping or filling out legal paperwork.

The same could be said about non-DSD males, they shouldn't be allowed to compete as women though.

If comes down to the solution being that you're going to use 'science' to suddenly flip someone's entire life-long given identity and force them to accept this, it should not be plastered all over the public realm.

That's on the athletes who know they are biological males and decide to come and compete in the Olympics as women anyway, they're free to stay at home out of the spotlight or take their rightful place competing in local running club or boxing club events with other mediocre male amateurs at their level.

Of if they feel particularly strongly for DSD inclusion in Olympic sport then perhaps lobby for inclusion in the Paralympics.

 

[dowie]

Depending on exact condition and any confirmed benefit it brings - Case in point, XY Chromo is considered definitely male, despite it being possible for some of them to give birth.
This is why it's such a point of contention, without solid scientific proof behind it, and why it should not be down to public media trial.

Irrelevant, "she" is clearly masculine. While there are some rare XY conditions that have errors on the Y chromosome and result in a female that's obviously not the case here and there isn't any athletic advantage.

If that was the issue they'd have an obvious case at CAS or could have resolved privately when initially banned pre-Oylmpics.

Only because to do so requires that same form of artificial alteration, ie filling out a form and getting a passport that reflects this.

How do you know that didn't happen in this case - passport issued in 2019. Why should a form make any difference here?

Most have had no idea until some scientist comes along halfway through their career and flips their world around, which is especially harsh when the same experts are reversing official decisions.

Clearly not true.

DSD is a state of being, not a disability.

Pure semantics/politics. You could say the same about any number of disabilities or medical conditions people are born with.

 

[dowie]

An argument that's about as relevant as the assertion that someone has 'girl parts' so is clearly feminine.
Ability to give birth has been cited in this thread as the very definition of feminine, so if a "man" can give birth then it's not as clear as you assert.

You don't seem to understand, you're trying to muddy the waters by talking about an XY intersex condition that comes with female body parts and where the people don't have any benefits from testosterone. These people don't have male advantages and don't look masculine.

It's a total red herring, you're perhaps fallen for some of the deliberate misinformation online - well ackchually in some rare case XY people can give birth... has nothing to do with this case!

Athletic advantage is still not satisfactorily resolved either way, though, and the more people dig into it the more uncertainty is raised.

Males have a clear athletic advantage in athletics.

And they do say this, which is why some people are turned down as being 'not disabled enough'. DSD would be classified as 'not even slightly disabled'

They're turned down because they don't fit the criteria for a category. You have different criteria for different categories... like how blind someone is etc.. But how blind someone is has nothing to do with DSD.

If you have a DSD category for DSD conditions then those DSD conditions would qualify for it.... by definition.

 

[dowie]

Not at all, you're applying gender traits and appearance to various measures of biological sex

Again you have missed the point/don't understand. You're just doing some handwaving where you're conflating this situation with conditions that don't apply, the point about this boxer being clearly masculine was made because you're attempting to conflate things with a different XY condition that doesn't result in that.

Conversely, the idea of testosterone being the defining measure of athletic advantage already fell apart when people start studying it more

There is a clear advantage for males in various sports which is why we have separate events, this is easily observed by looking at the results for almost every Olympic event.

Jah, because DSD is not a disability.

Pure semantics, it can easily be considered one and an event set up for DSD athletes.

 

[dowie]

I like how you're now calling them "masculine", a set of traits and behaviours that can easily be exhibited by either sex, rather than saying "male". It shows you're learning, even if unwillingly and unwittingly.
Also shows I don't need to conflate anything, as you're clearly just as confused as the average person.

You're again missing the point - those things aren't mutually exclusive - you can be male and masculine.

The point re: masculine was made in reference to you trying to do a bit of handwaving re: other XY conditions and that point was to highlight that those clearly weren't applicable here, that still seems to have gone over your head as you keep on replying to it without showing any understanding of that and just responding as if something else has been said.

Then explain what 'disability' DSD athletes suffer from.....
How is their performance in any way hampered by their condition?

DSD

If someone's arm doesn't develop you'd call that disabled right? But if someone's ball sack doesn't fully develop and their penis doesn't grow that's not a disability even though it limits them from performing the obvious?

Just because DSD have been kept very private historically or is viewed a certain way doesn't negate that it could just as easily be seen as a disability.

More to the point though the Paralympics is the place for categories to be segregated based on disabilities or medical conditions and it would be an obvious solution to this issue.

 

[dowie]

Hold up, have I been watching the wrong Olympics? I don't remember anyone having to get their wang out and use it for performing the obvious!?

So what - a disability doens't need relate to how well you perform at the Olympics.

Point is if there is to be an event for people with that medical condition then the Paralympics could hold it just as they do for other medical conditions.

Just as you can be female and masculine, though it seems you'd like to think those are mutually exclusive...

Now you're just making up positions for me - no one said you can't, it's just not relevant here.

Maybe that's because something else was said. Indeed, you're banging on about specific cases in respose to a point where I said I was deliberately not speaking about any one particular case.

OK, but the point you were replying to was about a specific case - the Algerian boxer. The point here is that the boxer is male with a DSD condition.

They'd take one look at DSD applications, stamp them as unimpacted by their condition, and then throw them back at the regular Olympics.

You realise you've just contradicted your whole argument now?

You do in fact understand that males have an athletic advantage over females right?

If your position is that DSD males are unimpacted by their condition then what is the argument for them not competing as males?