Oh good grief - this was actually printed in FORBES in 2020 - "The Myth of Biological Sex" (of course, intersex, JK Rowling, Caster Semenya are all mentioned/lied about )

submitted by BEB from forbes.com

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[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Glad to be of service! I've been following this area since I was a girl 50 years ago.

When sex chromosome testing of athletes competing in women's elite international sports was first instituted in 1967 in the run up to the 68 winter Olympics, one of my heroines - 18 year-old women's world champion alpine skier Erika Schinegger of Austria - was found to be a male with a DSD apparently much like Semenya's. Austrian officials immediately withdrew Schinegger from competition, Schinegger retired from the public stage and went into therapy, ultimately emerging as Erik and deciding to have surgery to repair his genitals. Later he fathered a daughter, which he said is his biggest accomplishment. Later in life, he also located the women who'd placed behind him in ski events and gave him the gold medals he was awarded that should've gone to them. He seems like a lovely, decent man.

https://youtu.be/8mgQ97TKxc8

Today, the people who did the 2014 study on androgen levels in female athletes at the behest of the IAAF/WA, Bermon et al, most likely would not describe the conditions of athletes like Semenya, Wambui and Niyonsaba as "hyperandrogenic disorders of sex development" as they did back then. Coz "hyperandrogenism" by definition is a condition that only affects female people with ovaries. In the proceedings before the COurt of Arbitration for Sports in the Semenya case, the IAAF/WA made it clear that they are not trying to regulate T levels in sports for any females whatsoever or even for all XY athletes with DSDs. They are concerned only with XY athletes who have functioning testes, male levels of T and male sensitivity to T who have a couple of conditions that are DSDs in males alone, like 5-ARD.

In the proceedings before the CAS, Bermon testified that except for genitals that look unusual coz they did not form properly in utero, Semenya is physically no different from any other healthy male athlete.

BTW, one of the reasons there is such an over-representation of XY athletes with specific DSDs/VSCs like 5-ARD in elite sports is that in some countries young people with these conditions have actually been sought out by sports and government authorities for the purpose of entering them in female sports.

Since 5-ARD is the result of consanguinity, it occurs most frequently in places where procreation happens amongst family members, often coz sex abuse of girls & women via incest is widespread and girls & women in those places have little or no rights. Officials know exactly where on earth such patterns most commonly occur.

I know you called these athletes

cheating bastards

as a figure of speech, but actually there is more truth to that term in many of these cases than most people probably realize.

Whilst some of the XY athletes with DSDs in elite women's sports are the result of cousins procreating willingly, others are the offspring of girls and women who were impregnated by their own fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins in what probably were acts of brutal rape or coercion on the part of the males. Which means many of the XY athletes with DSDs/VSCs who've grown up to become "cheating bastards" in elite women's sports actually were conceived as the result of criminal, immoral acts committed by the boys/men who sired them.

In other words, we're talking about bad male behavior across generations. And it's bad male behavior that girls & women of different generations, nationalities and life circumstances have had to pay the price for - either coz they are the girls/women who were impregnated by family members against their will in the first place, or coz they are entirely unrelated girls & women who've have had to compete against these XY DSD/VSC individuals in sports.

I am sorry for the difficulties that people with DSDs/VSCs like Semenya and Schinegger have faced. At the same time, these individuals have been blessed with robust good health overall and will live normal life spans. Lots of people are born with conditions such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia that are much worse. Moreover, lots of people get dealt a shitty hand by fate in all sorts of other ways. But IMO, no genetic condition and no amount of bad luck gives anyone a pass to cheat in sports, to take away the rights of others, or to behave in ways that are morally objectionable, indeed reprehensible.

[–]GConly 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Long post, short reply.

Later he fathered a daughter,

I was wondering if their internal balls would produce sperm. The internal temp is a bit higher than is good for that.

Every time on Reddit you mention Semenya has internal balls, the comment gets deleted. It's "a woman with hyperandrogenism", everything else is banned.

The whole claim that he never knew he was male was utter balls. He was dressed as a boy at school.

It's also kind of insulting to Africans to suggest they couldn't spot he was male when he hit puberty.

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Semenya has often said his younger sister & the kids he went to school with all questioned his sex. And yes, he wore the boys' uniform throughout his schooling. Which was not a privilege granted to any other female children in SA then (or now). Moreover, Semenya brags about how his wife has always viewed him as male.

Re the "internal balls" claim: in the development of male humans there are many different stages that the testes go through between originating inside the abdomen and finally ending up on the outside of the body in the groin. Lots of males with DSDs like Semenya's have testes that are more outie than innie, but are hidden from easy viewing by the skin and folds of the groin. The testes of such children at birth/in early childhood have traditionally NOT been seen as indicative of biological sex by sexist health care experts and family & community members. In their view, balls themselves don't matter - only balls of a certain location and size count.

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The lie that Semenya is "a woman with hyperandrogenism" isn't just rife on reddit. It's the position that all the MSM take as well.

Yes, it is insulting to Africans to suggest they can't see sex differences and are incapable of discerning DSDs/VSCs the way midwives and ordinary people in rural parts of the Dominican Republic where XY 5-ARD occurs somewhat commonly can.

At the same time, the Semenya scam seems to have been intentionally engineered by male political figures in post-Mandela SA who coz of their membership in or affiliation with the ANC were exiled and educated in "the global North" during the late-apartheid era of the 80s and early 90s. My impression is that a number of these very smart SA men quickly picked up on queer theory and immediately saw how its claims and theories could be used to hoist the white-dominated "global North" by its own petard. Which is exactly what's happened. And the ones who've paid the price are females humans of all races and nationalities.