'We know Semenya is a girl'

Source: BBC

In Caster Semenya's remote home village of Masehlong in northern South Africa, people have no doubt about the gender of the new 800m world champion.

...

Her family also produced her birth certificate, which unambiguously classifies her as female.



Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8213581.stm

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This is gearing up to be another birther controversy.

But when she wasn't flexing her muscles, she looked like a girl.

And establishing gender for the purposes of competition is complicated.

Semenya's sex test: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/gordonfarquhar/2009/08/this_must_be_an_awful.html

So what? Watching him last night, the general comment was "amazing but a freak of nature", i.e. his achievements are unexpected based on his physique. should he also be disqualified for not running in the appropriate manner? not all women are feminine looking and not all of them "run like a girl"

The whole thing can be cleared up within three weeks.

They might check her for 'roids, as well.

She really does look like she's bulked up with anabolic steroids.

I am not saying that she is, but someone can be a hermaphrodite, and have both female and male characteristics.

While there are a few variations, a high achieving athlete will likely not have one of them since their physical effects are usually debilitating.

Anatomy can be inconclusive. DNA tells the truth.

On edit: her bone structure certainly looks female, but her musculature does not. I'd suggest testing for anabolic steroid use, meaning a hair test.

They're like air hoses. They'd be a snap to get IV lines into.

Hey, I was a nurse for 25 years! That's how we think!

I thought the exact same thing, except from the perspective of a person without good veins. Every time I have bloodwork it's traumatic! :(

:cry:

...I was told by the Blood Bank supervisor that weight lifters had the crappiest veins. They looked big but would collapse every time. I've seen drug abusers with big veins that don't work also.

I've seen people with veins like Madonna's. Sometimes they fool you. You can get the needle in but blood won't come out.

cannot always be determined with even genetic testing when dealing with the inter-sexed. There are an array of possibilities that go beyond the simple xx/xy determination. It's quite fascinating, really.

the more I realized that the theory that people who are gay or lesbian or bi are "inherently disordered" was a crock of shit. People come in all flavors. That's the way God made them!

nothing else is really black and white either. We're all shades of gray. Cue the Monkees....

this.

OK, when you said check her for 'roids I was wondering what the hell hemorrhoids had to do with it. Nevermind. :crazy:

Glad I'm not the only one!

America has Nuclear Technology. But apparently Africa has Time Travel Technology. They can travel time to see what country or sex on an African child's birth certificate will best serve them and the conspiracy in the future. Maybe trying to live close to the nature of the ancient past allows them to leap into the future that continuously passes them by? Maybe she's just a girl? But the time travel conspiracy is far more interesting an exciting. It'll sell far more papers.

If she was born genetically male but is transitioning - or has transitioned - to female, what does that do to the equation?

Will it get to the point of a chromosomal test to see if she's XX or XY?

:shrug:

being allowed to compete as a female, but I am not sure. Might depend on the specific competition rules.

In a fight where the transgendered person attacked a woman for "spreading her business" which translated to telling someone that person used to be a man, was exactly the same as seeing a man beat up a much smaller, weaker woman.

I do not believe a male to female should be allowed to compete against females. The superior strength and size does not go away.

Dr. Renee Richards was allowed to play tennis in the early 80s.

There is ambiguous genitalia, ambiguous chromosomes - really.

THere are a lot of people out there and we do not all fit neatly into male and female.

Then again, this whole subject wasn't in the Bible, so as good Christians we should go burn the biology textbooks.

to make a person gender "other" ie not 100% XX or XY.

i can't remember all the scientific details, but the conditions are all congenital, there does not have to be any hormone replacement or transgender surgery done.

i just the story on tv this morning when they were talking about this athlete.

nt

and IMO she is female

but not all
right?

What to do?

especially when it comes to secondary features like breasts and hips. Personally some of the sexiest women I know are cross country runners, but they don't have bodies like typical girls.

Yea - i think your pictures just sold me on Semenya being a female. She has some incredibly mascukine features, but she is nowhere near as musuclar as those men in their sprint - she is in fact quite muscular, but her frame and build is not even close to those men.

Initially I totally thought she was male.

She looks straight up like a dude. But I think she is female, because she has a slight curvature to her inner thighs that most men don't have.

same expression and everything! I hate pictures where people have their mouths open, it's so unattractive. Either smile or close your mouth.

It's way more complicated than genitalia. And as a previous DUer mentioned, sometimes DNA testing won't even settle the question.

What's sad is what this poor girl is going through. Regardless of what she 'technically' may be, she's been raised as a girl and that's her identity. My heart goes out to her. I hope she proves them all wrong.

Who started questioning this, anyway? Anybody know?

and she was raised as a girl.

Putting just her through this test on the basis of her physical appearance is wrong. Unless they give gender tests to all athletes, she should not be singled out.
And if they do the genetic testing and it shows that she's genetically not XX, then what? Do they disqualify her? Do they strip her of her win because genetically she is not "female". Does all of her hard work and determination to be the best just mean nothing?
bullshit, complete bullshit.

I wouldn't like to have all my accomplishments questioned. She doesn't just look male, her voice is masculine and she has facial hair. I think it's best for all concerned to establish the truth once and for all.

If you hear her talk it definitely sounds like a male. But I just feel bad for her under this kind of media scrutiny.

...at least in high tenor ranges.

Many smaller choirs have contraltos singing "tenor" because there aren't enough male tenors.

Otherwise, why do the test in the first place?
But I am not sure how they would decide whether she failed or not.

As for how fetching or not she appears in photos taken of her while she's deeply involved in doing something intensely demanding, not sitting for a formal portrait, try to imagine whether or not you are 100% fabulously wonderful to behold every moment of your life.

This thread, and the idea of posting it here seems completely sadistic, and exclusionary. What's the point of placing it in a political forum, anyway? How does it relate to politics?

She IS a human being, after all, and she has done NOTHING to bring on this load of pointless, idle gossiping about her.

thank you for this post.

She is not a kindergartner running on a playground; she's a world-class athlete competing in world-class events.

My understanding is that it was not her appearance alone that attracted attention; it was that her winning times were dramatically better than other recent times she has posted. Not minute fractions of a second but several seconds better.

She may indeed be intersexed, and if so, no doubt there will be rulings on it based on the precedent her case sets. She may indeed be on performance-enhancing drugs, which will result in another ruling. Or she may simply be a very gifted athlete.

While it may be kind to say "Leave her alone; she believes she's a girl and that's all that matters," it's not kind to the other athletes she is competing against. They, too, have rights: the right to know that they are competing on a level playing field, or level track as the case may be.


But what do I know?



Tansy Gold

Men are celebrated as great athletes and warriors irregardless of their physical structure.

But at the bridal auction for athletic women, we men must be certain we are getting a real woman. :sarcasm:

At the international level of competition every athlete has rare physical attributes that make them an exceptional competitor in their sport. Women in sports are harassed for any attribute that makes them "less feminine" by entirely arbitrary social standards of beauty. This news item illustrates the situation perfectly. There is a beauty pageant aspect to women's sports that won't go away because the patriarchy demands it. Every woman athlete is measured by the standard of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.

In many sports women are not able to compete with the men. Gender tests are done for the protection of other female athletes. It would be not fair to them to compete with males.

For example, it is not fair to exclude athletes based upon a simple chromosome test because XY does not always equal "male." The biology is complex.

In any case people are always speculating about "masculine" looking female athletes, but rarely about male athletes. There is no justice in that.

Without extraordinary evidence to the contrary, the only just course of action is to take the word of the athlete and her community. A woman described as female at her birth, a woman who understands herself to be female, a woman who is accepted by her community as a woman, is likely to be a woman. Anything more than the physical examination all athletes are subject to is exclusionary.

What, is there a problem with women trying to compete as men?

If only because there have been more venues for male competition. Also, male sports is more lucrative.

In any case, and to repeat myself, I don't believe there is just cause to subject any athlete to further testing unless there is good evidence of deliberate deception or extraordinary evidence of sexual misidentification.

That's not the situation with Caster Semenya.

deceptive.
But she looks very masculine and her times have improved a lot in a relatively short period of time.
No doubt other athletes and people are going to ask questions. Does she have an unfair advantage due to some sort of biological condition? These tests are done to protect other athletes.
Athletes are constantly tested for drug and steroid use. I presume you don't have problems with that?
Then what is the problem with gender testing someone?
If the woman wants to compete with men, then presumably she doesn't have a biological advantage (in most of the sports).
If a man wants to compete with women, that's a totally different story.

Life's not fair. No matter how hard we try, no matter how intense our motivation and training, most of us our not going to be able to compete as world class atheletes simply because we don't have the body for it.

Are you arguing that it's fair for women to compete against men?

In a fair competition ALL the athletes ought to be subjected to exactly the same standards and testing before the competition.

Challenging the sex of a competitor after the competition simply because they look "too masculine" or "too feminine" is unjust.

We must also account for the fact that the line between male and female isn't precise in nature, and make our determinations of sex for the purpose of competition in a way that does not exclude any single competitor from fair competition.

There is no evidence that Caster Semenya is of indeterminate sex or male, only inappropriate and unfair speculations based upon her appearance and superior athletic performance.

Hell, we blew a month on Michael Jackson.

It's not like I posted it in GD:P.

if you really want to be fair about it.