Caster Semenya losses appeal against the restriction of testosterone levels in female runners

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[–]luckystar 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Hi this is a lot of information so it is going to take me some time to go through it. But you asked about the sexing test of IAAF and I found this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8272686/ Semenya was allowed to keep the medals they won so I don't understand how they could fail the test and still be allowed to do that?

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That 1993 article is about the realization/discovery that sex cannot be determined solely and entirely based on whether a person has XX (female) or XY (male) sex chromosomes. Turns out, a/the key determinant of sex is the SRY gene, which is usually located on the Y sex chromosome, but on very rare occasions gets relocated to an X sex chromosome; hence there are people who are XX males. More rarely, there are some individuals who have sex chromosome mosaicism - in which the cells of different parts of their bodies have different sex chromosomes. Which might be because of incorporating a twin fetus in utero, or because some cells belonging to the mother (or to previous children the mother gestated) have been transferred in utero.

But there are many DSDs that do not involve the sex chromosomes. For example, CAIS and PAIS - individuals with these conditions have XY sex chromosomes - there's no question about that - but they have defects/anomalies in the genes that control for/shape an XY person's androgen receptors, which make them more or less able to utilize testosterone in the ways that non-affected males normally do. XY individuals with CAIS develop in ways that make them appear to be fully female. In fact, they are not fully female, but they are raised and socialized as females, and many of us with "rigid" ideas about biology would consider them to be female in most life situations.

But Semenya's DSD has nothing to do with sex chromosomes, a misplaced SRY gene, faulty androgen receptors or an endocrine system that's atypical or has gone awry. Since Semenya had full medical workups in 2009, Semenya's entirely normal male sex chromosomes, and normally functioning male gonads, male endocrine system and male androgen receptors have never been in dispute.

Semenya's condition -5-ARD - is an enzyme deficiency that affects people of both sexes. The genetic mutations/defects that cause it are not located on the sex chromosomes.

But it's only in males that 5-ARD is a DSD. 5-ARD only causes a disorder/difference of sex development or DSD in people who have XY sex chromosomes with a SRY gene located where it normally is - on the Y.

5-ARD prevents the conversion of T into DHT, and since DHT is crucial for the proper development of male external genitalia in utero male fetuses are most affected by it. Typically, they are born with male genitalia that look ambiguous, under-developed or stunted, or appear upon cursory glance to look more female than male.

DHT plays no part in female sex development, so girls and women with the very same genetic/inherited enzyme deficiency that Semenya has are unaffected, and most go their entire lives unaware they have the condition.

[–]luckystar 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm rereading your posts & the links you sent and... Yeah, I was never very good at biology class I must admit. To me it basically sounds like CS is male in every meaningful sense (chromosomes, hormone levels, even has testes) EXCEPT the testes are internal & their external genitalia looked like a large clitoris? But where did her "vagina" come from? I know that surgical mutilations at birth are sometimes carried out on intersex people.

CS can't menstruate, right? Wouldn't CS and family have wondered what was going on in her teen years, when all the "fellow girls" are getting their period?

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

LOL, don't blame yourself - most of this stuff is not taught in standard biology class.

Dunno what Semenya's external genitalia looks like - that info has been redacted from the records released to the public. Which I think is the correct thing to do....

But generally speaking, males with 5-ARD are born with external genitals that can vary widely in appearance: some have micro penises (w/wo hypospadias) that get mistaken for enlarged clits, along with empty scrotal sacs that are assumed to be floppy and baggy labia. Others have scrotal skin that looks more like "normal" female labia (though interestingly, it's often fused).

Many males with 5-ARD do have pelvic indentations that are assumed to be vaginas at birth, and which are later referred to as vaginas. But usually these are just "blind pouches" of flaccid penile or scrotal skin that's been inverted; the pouches go nowhere and are of very shallow depth (usually less than an inch). There is nothing muscular or elastic about them like with real vaginas! Often, the urethras of 5-ARD males empty into the shallow skin pouch, giving the impression that these individuals urinate from their vaginas.

Anyone who has cared for babies knows that infant girls (or females of any other age) don't pee from our vaginas; the female urethra is entirely separate from the vagina. But because medicine and biology are so male-dominated and male-centric, the entire focus in determining neonate and adult sex traditionally has been on, and remains on, whether a baby/person has what looks to be a dick. And whether the child whizzes from out the end of a dick.

If midwives/doctors looked for where a newborn's urethra is, and where the pee comes out, rather than just for the presence of a penis, I suspect there'd be fewer claims of children being born with "ambiguous genitalia." Traditionally in many cultures males with hypospadias (urethra that empties out the side rather than the end of the penis) were considered to be some kind of girl/woman!

CS can't menstruate, right? Wouldn't CS and family have wondered what was going on in her teen years, when all the "fellow girls" are getting their period?

No, CS can't menstruate. Yes, CS and family would have wondered in CS's teen years, as would have been the case with any girl and any family on planet earth... And they sure would have noticed that whilst CS's same-age classmates were becoming clearly feminized in puberty, CS was becoming clearly masculinized.

But this is where all the lying and conning come in. Team Semenya say there's no way Semenya and Semenya's family and community possibly could have realized that something was awry with Semenya's sex development coz in the poor rural township in South Africa CS grew up in, nobody had access to modern medical care - which is true. But at the same time, they claim that without access to modern medicine, no one in Semenya's township had a clue about basic biology - which is false.

No matter where on earth people are from - or what their race, skin colour, ethnicity, class, level of schooling, religion, political persuasion is - people who live(d) in "primitive" conditions and pastoral and agricultural communities have always been the world's greatest experts on biology - coz their daily bread and survival depend on it.

In fact, it was in poor, rural, "primitive" parts of the Dominican Republic that the male DSD that Semenya has - 5-ARD - was first reported on and explored. The people who recognized, described and brought the condition to world attention were not male medical doctors from rich European countries of the Global North, but female midwives from the DR who had noticed the condition and become concerned about it. They reached out to a female endocrinologist in the USA who spoke Spanish, Julianne Imperato of Cornell University, who in 1974 published the first research about this male DSD in a Western scientific journal.

CS can't menstruate, right?

Of course not, coz CS has no ovaries, Fallopian tubes or uterus. But this still hasn't stopped Semenya from being the public face and celebrity spokesman [sic] for a South African brand of menstrual cups - Princess D.

In the past year, most of the evidence of Semenya being the public face of Princess D menstrual cups has been erased from the internet, but some evidence remains:

https://twitter.com/caster800m/status/829011501012893696

https://www.swdcricket.co.za/news/article/1666

The fact that Semenya can't menstruate also hasn't stopped Semenya from being one of SA's leading "menstrual educators" who has been showered with awards for Semenya's "campaigns to distribute menstrual cups to disadvantaged South African girls, supporting them to remain in school during their menstrual cycles."

http://www.twohundredwomen.com/castersemenya

One of Semenya's main tactics as a "menstrual educator" to/of disadvantaged girls in SA seems to be shaming those who are unable to use menstrual cups and instead must rely on pads or tampons

https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/semenya-to-continue-efforts-to-distribute-menstrual-cups/