Caster Semenya & Bio Males in Women's Sport

submitted by dandeliondynasty from (self.GenderCritical)

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[–]Anna_Nym 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I think they're separate issues. Semenya is not the first athlete with a DSD to have been sex tested and treated poorly. The history of sex testing is pretty horrible, and it sounds like it was fairly degrading for female athletes. That's why sex testing was stopped in... I think it was the 90s. However, as we see with Semenya and the other XY, androgen-sensitive women, that doesn't work either. Sex testing needs to be done in some way.

Semenya did start her career in good faith, but I don't think it's true to say she has a female body. She is both androgen-sensitive and XY. She is biologically male and knew that when she raised her challenge. Some people with 5-ARD (her DSD) can produce viable sperm in their testes and father children with medical intervention.

I know the IAAF and IOC have tried to put in reforms to create a more dignified and humane process for identifying athletes with DSDs. I don't know what those reforms are. Unfortunately, I think athletes with DSDs need to be identified at the junior level in order to have a humane process. It seems like the local federations should be able to do this.

I don't think Semenya's treatment can be compared to transwomen, though. As you acknowledged, there is no need to sex test transwomen because they're open about being biologically male. But they do need to be monitored for compliance with T-reduction. Unfortunately, I think it's looking like the initial claims that T-reduction would be sufficient to remove their biological advantage were false. It is infuriating that quality studies weren't done BEFORE changing eligibility standards.

(I personally wonder whether Semenya would still identify as a woman if she grew up in the US or if she didn't have such a financial incentive to preserve her eligibility to compete in the women's category. But we'll never know.)

[–]GConly 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Semenya did start her career in good faith

He always presented as male even as a kid

As soon as Semenya hit puberty it would have become obvious this wasn't a female. The total lack of menstruation, height, muscles and broken voice would have even a totally uneducated rural farmer heading to a doctor.

She is both androgen-sensitive and XY.

No, he is not androgen insensitive. He has a 5 alpha reductase deficiency. He reacts normally to normal testosterone, he just doesn't make the type of testosterone needed to develop a penis, drop his balls, grow facial hair or go bald.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5%CE%B1-Reductase_deficiency

He'll have all the other benefits/effects of normal testosterone.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The history of sex testing is pretty horrible, and it sounds like it was fairly degrading for female athletes. That's why sex testing was stopped in... >I think it was the 90s. However, as we see with Semenya and the other XY, androgen-sensitive women, that doesn't work either. Sex testing >needs to be done in some way.

The buccal swab testing introduced in the 1960s was not "pretty horrible" or "degrading for female athletes" across the board. Having a cotton swab inserted into one's mouth and swiped the inside of the cheeks is takes a few seconds, involves no pain, and in no way can be characterized as "horrible" or "degrading" or otherwise onerous. I personally know many female athletes who had these tests in the 60s, 70s and 80s - none felt degraded by them at all.

Because I come from a family with some serious genetic conditions, I have also had my own DNA tested both through buccal swabs and blood tests on several occasions; and when I was pregnant in the 1990s I underwent the invasive procedure of CVS so fetal DNA testing could be done. So I can personally attest that there's nothing inherently "horrible" or "degrading" about getting DNA or sex chromosomes tested even when it involves being on a gynecologist's table with a speculum inserted up the vagina and a device inserted through the cervix to get a piece of placental tissue indicative of embryonic sex.

The DNA swab testing of athletes competing in female sports was discontinued entirely at the behest of athletes competing in the female division who were discovered to have XY sex chromosomes. They were the ones who loudly objected to the testing, not athletes who were found to have only X chromosomes. AFAIK, there was no outcry whatsoever about routine buccal swab DNA testing from XX female athletes - and I bet if a poll were conducted today, most elite level female athletes past and present would have no problem bringing back mandatory sex chromosome testing by buccal swab or similar simple means.

I know the IAAF and IOC have tried to put in reforms to create a more dignified and humane process for identifying athletes with DSDs.

The IAAF and the IOC have actually bent over backwards to accommodate male athletes with DSDs. These male-dominated sports bodies came up with policies allowing men with certain developmental disorders that affect their genitals to compete in female sports without ever consulting women! If women had been consulted, there would have been a huge hue and cry. Women would've pointed out that males who have atypical-looking or missing genitals due to birth defects or injuries are not women! They are men with medical anomalies or problems. Only men would say that a man with a small or missing penis or undescended testes is a woman.

If you believe Semenya has been treated in a manner that undignified, inhumane and unfair, the blame for that can't really be put on the IAAF or IOC. Very intelligent, conniving South African sports authorities and politicians put Semenya on the world stage as a female when they all knew full well that Semenya was a male with DSD and that Semenya's sex would be questioned. And when other powers in SA - including Nelson Mandela's personal physician - told them not to do it, it's wrong. The SA sports authorities and politicians who went ahead with the cheat did it to get glory on the athletics field - and, just as important, to score points in the much larger ideological and PR wars in the arenas of geopolitics and ideas being waged by "the Global South" against "the Global North" in the post-colonial and post-apartheid era.

Caster Semenya might have been a rube in the beginning when initially roped into the fraud back as a teenager, but since at least August 2009 when Semenya was fully checked out medically in South Africa both Semenya and South African officials have known full well exactly what Semenya's sex and DSD are. For 11 years now Semenya has decided to go along with the con because it's in Semenya's own selfish interest to do so. All the while, Semenya has actively participated in perpetuating the fraud - and gaslighting the world - by constantly claiming not just to be a woman, but to be to a woman perpetually and unfairly victimized by racist beauty standards and white supremacist, Eurocentric notions of what female bodies look like. All along, Semenya has shown not one ounce of concern for all the women Semenya has cheated against, nor any sympathy for those female athletes of all colors who've been pilloried as racist and sexist by daring to point out what everyone can see: Semenya is male.

One of the first DSDs athletes caught out by the buccal swab DNA testing was women's World Cup alpine skiing champion Erik/a Schinegger. Shortly before the 1968 Winter Olympics - in which Schinegger was expected to win the gold in every race entered - Schinegger was found to be a male with a a DSD. The discovery was a shock to Schinegger, and it ended his competitive skiing career. But he did not experience the simple measure by which he found out his sex - a cheek swab, after all - as horrible, degrading, undignified or inhumane the way you're characterizing it.

Schinegger did the right thing when he found out about his DSD. Semenya did not.

https://youtu.be/8mgQ97TKxc8

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I personally wonder whether Semenya would still identify as a woman if she grew up in the US or if she didn't have such a financial incentive to >preserve her eligibility to compete in the women's category. But we'll never know.

Researchers say that globally the vast majority of males with 5-ARD - 85% - who were mistakenly thought to be female at birth choose to accept and embrace the fact that they are males once they reach/go through from puberty. In countries where females have limited rights and freedoms, the percentage is often closer to 100%.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981