Hang on a minute. If feminity is a product of the market-place, whatever does a “feminine physical feat” mean? If it is a product of the market-place, do you, Laurie – as a socialist among other things – approve of it?

And Greer understands, as you seem not to, that if you allow anyone who is transgender (some of whom you characterise as “victims”) to qualify herself as a woman, why would you deny it to a man? Admittedly there may be more such in south-east Asia than Europe, but that’s neither here nor there (so to speak).

And if you agree with the principle of women’s sport in the first place – I am unable to establish this point from your article – then why do you think that women should be compelled to compete with transgender individuals who have an innate physical advantage?

I, too, share your disappointment with Germaine Greer, in the 60s she was an inspiration. But as time goes by she has become more and more conservative in her views. She started this dialogue in the 90s when she wrote a series of articles about ‘laddish girls’, and often makes reference to this subject in interviews. Unfortunately, this just serves to replicate the view that social behaviour is, in fact, something to do with biology.

I’m a Klingon. I don’t have a pasty on my head but I FEEL like a Klingon.

Sometimes I’m a Dalek.

If you want to get rid of the binary opposition of men and women in sports, fine: let men, women and the intersex compete against each other – but I wonder how Laurie would feel if male athletes who weren’t quite up to the standards of the top male athletes decided to declare themselves female because, hey, gender is a social construction, but female athletes tend to be slower and weaker than their male peirs and why try to be the fastest human being on the planet when you can be the fastest at running like a girl?

As to your ‘bleeding cunt’, have you tried tampons? They advertise them on TV. It doesn’t have to be messy: you can even roller-skate in white jeans these days.

And you do know it’s not actually your ‘cunt’ which is bleeding, don’t you? It’s just your uterus shedding it’s lining, not a wound to your vulva. Honestly, put your Judith Butler away and learn some biology.

This angered me too; I was livid watching the interview with the slimy bureacrat speaking on behalf of the IAAF.

#3 – the afore-mentioned reptile didn’t for a moment claim that there was any cheating going on, he said the issue was that this woman might not realise she was a man, and might therefore have an unfair advantage. Leaving aside the issue of whether gender gives any advantage in this sense on its own (I’m pretty sure Paula Radcliffe could do two marathons in the time it took me to do one), are we going to disqualify Usain Bolt on the grounds that his height gives him an advantage over other athletes? What physiological differences are “allowed” and what aren’t?

As for whether men would cheat if self-definition was the only test – do you think the Labour Party does biological testing on people standing in All-Women Shortlists? The system relies on any person who was obviously cheating purely for selfish reward being so hated and mocked by everyone else that it just wouldn’t be worth it.

Shatterface/Mike

You miss the point and of course, drumroll, wish to pick the bits so you can be mary, mary quite contrary..

Laurie/Jb

Was Greer ever GENUINELY on our side? Was she not just an opportunist who is a self styled pub junkie? I read her stuff and felt, myeh. Yeah, I thought, she can read a book and is very good at school I’m sure but there was as much heart and passion then well, a Tory party policy pack.

She reminds me of that other lipstick feminist who’s jus the same. They find a niche and run with it. If they were men, they would do the same thing.

But in all fairness, at least she inspired millions of women to ‘feel’ something..

So not suprised by this, esp after her swooning for Becks and Posh. Yawn.

Will say though, yep, female sports stars should still seem pretty, slim with nice hair…surprise, surprise…

Laurie,

Nice piece of writing, but I really disagree with it.

I believe that Greer’s issue, like mine – the issue you touch on with the quote from her CiF article you’ve included in her post – is with men who appropriate femininity in a way that denigrates women – in particular, men who crossdress and pile on the lipstick, stick on a nice big pair of plastic tits and a big blonde wig and mince around calling each other ‘bitch’ and ‘she’ and ‘cunt’ and generally deliver us all of a gross male view of what it means to be female…
I LOATHE crossdressers and crossdressing. It’s no less offensive than blackface in my opinion. and yet we’re all supposed to think it’s the height of sophistication and wit. Movies like Priscilla Queen of the Desert are thought to be the last word in humour, when all they are are pointed, and very depressing, illustrations of what men think it is to be female. I think we need to see Greer’s defense of her identity as a woman in the context of the constant and offensive definition of what it means to be a woman that the mainstream feeds back to us. The Female Eunuch – the best feminist text ever produced in my view – is nothing if not an attempt to wrest back a definition of what it means to be female by describing what it is not.

Transpeople – different story. Caster Semenya says she is a woman. She is not a man appropriating the props of modern femininity – the big hair, the tits, the ditzy attitude. By birth and/or inclination, some people do not fit tidily, if you like, into one of the two defined genders. No problem there. Greer’s problem was always with male perceptions and expressions of femininity and drag in particular got on her tits. I think the problem is that she didn’t get that across very well in yesterday’s piece. It wasn’t one of her best – you called it confused, I think, and I agree. I agreed with the person in the comments who said it sounded like something she knocked out in five minutes.

You talk a lot about ‘femininity’, but there’s a difference between ‘femininity’ (which I tend to think of as a ghastly pantomime of make-up, clothes and faux-naive simpering) and femaleness. Whether or not one is female, in 99 per cent of cases, is a matter of simple chromosomal, hormonal fact. I very much agree with Greer’s position (as outlined in The Whole Woman – and it’s Julie Bindel’s position too I think?) that the male-to-female transgender trope seems, often, to involve a fundamentally anti-female belief: that femaleness is something that one can achieve by applying five inches of slap and a really high heel. (I do agree with you, though, that Greer becomes less clear by the day. I could barely understand today’s article, and I already know what she thinks about this issue – or I thought I did.)

And, to be fair, I don’t think anyone thinks that Semenya is a man because she’s fast and strong. People suspect that she’s a man because she really, really looks like one. (Which is not to say that she is.)

Cross-posted with Kate, who had already said most of what I thought!

It’s reassuring to see Laurie still has the capacity to get overexcited.

Athletics is measured according to physical performance, not cultural difference. So it is a case where identity is biologically determined.

The case for transgender competition is interesting, but I’m unconvinced that it could be categorised legitimately until transgender people organise their own games with more specific classes of competition, as in the para-olympics.

Would a mostly-female athlete be happy compete against mostly-males if this gives her a serious disadvantage?

Perhaps Laurie should stick to whining about the world knitting championships and why male TV execs are bigoted because they don’t find space in their schedules for it.

Pray, tell us, Thomas – is there any reason why comments on Laurie’s posts need always to descend into personal attacks on Laurie?

I’ve often marvelled at this. She’s young, she’s passionate and she can sure as hell write, and yet she seems to be forever the recipient of hostile observations from one or other member of the small knob brigade. This evening’s post does not speak of overexcitement – it speaks of intelligent, engaged and passionate youth.

Since we’re talking sport – how about you play the ball, not the man?

Alternatively, piss off. The topic tonight is transgender and Greer. If you’re not up to either, go wank in a cupboard.

‘are we going to disqualify Usain Bolt on the grounds that his height gives him an advantage over other athletes?’

If there were seperate events for tall people and short people then yes, we’d exclude him from racing against midgets.

Boxers are seperated into different weights too: Mike Tyson couldn’t declare himself a feather weight just because he fancied giving someone scrawny a right twatting.

You might also be aware of something called the Special Olympics. These aren’t open to someone because his kid thinks he’s the World’s Best Dad.

The sex of every athlete is everybody’s business, just like their drug habits, their age, and any other criteria that is used in competitive sports. People who are up in arms concerning the testing are just afraid of the test results. There is hardly a sport that has not been marred by multiple attempts at cheating. That’s why we have the right to test everyone that presents a suspicious set of circumstances. If Semenya is shown to be some kind of hermaphrodite, or even worse, a man brought up to think he was a “she,” than all her care-takers and sports officials involved in her career are to blame. The other suspicious thing not often mentioned is her own attitude. If you are a woman and you are suspected to be a man all the time, that would be surely distressing. Apparently she can care less. If you are a woman and you look in the mirror and you see the image of a grown man, that would be enough to make normal women seriously psychologically disturbed. But if you were a man, claiming to be a woman, and people suspected you were a man, why would you care?

And if she is a hermaphrodite in the sense of having more of a man’s muscular build, then she shouldn’t compete in women’s sports. Put her into her own category and let her compete there. Then it’s fair. There is a biological reason why men and women have different categories in such sports and it would not be fair to have just one category. The same applies to people who cannot normally fit into either male or female sex.

Who’s to say that these people are not women too, if womanhood is the gender identity that they prefer?

And there is your problem. If gender in sport becomes self defining, then any sport that has monetary rewards and where men have an advantage, will suddenly be inundated with men deciding they are now women.

Where the IAAF should be attacked is in the manner of their handling of the issue, which seemed designed to humiliate (but was probably bureaucratic incompetence).

Hah, thanks Kate! But don’t worry, I’m used to it…

I do know what you mean about ‘female impersonators’ – but there’s a big difference between tropes like the pantomime dame, which I feel are genuinely insulting in the blackface realm, and people who are transgender. I know (and, indeed, have had relationships with) people who were born male and who were considering transitioning to presenting as female, and it’s not just about appropriating feminine tropes and sending them up – far from it.

This is something I’ve thought a lot about, as you can tell. I have had times when I’ve had my doubts about whether someone can just wake up and decide they’re a woman, but having gone through the whole process with some very dear people, I’ve had my mind forcibly changed.

I also agree that TFE is the best feminist book ever, ever. Even if I disagree with much of what she says then and now, the passion, the energy, the lack of apology – as much the way she said it as what she said – are hugely important. It’s why I also love Dworkin, despite not being able to read her without wincing at her misandry.

‘And there is your problem. If gender in sport becomes self defining, then any sport that has monetary rewards and where men have an advantage, will suddenly be inundated with men deciding they are now women.’

*really*? Are women really THAT much easier to beat than men that male athletes will risk ridicule in order to do slightly better in an area of sports which is less well represented, less well paid and gets less coverage across the board internationally? Get real.

‘Hang on a minute. If feminity is a product of the market-place, whatever does a “feminine physical feat” mean? If it is a product of the market-place, do you, Laurie – as a socialist among other things – approve of it? ‘

I’m a democratic socialist, not a communist, and just because something is affected by the marketplace doesn’t make it evil.

Femininity was not CREATED by the market-place. Contemporary markets buy and sell and change what we now think of as femininity, but The Feminine is a discourse as old and as wide-ranging as human culture itself.

Get real?

A below average male athlete can run the 100 metres in 10.3 to 10.4 seconds. At those sorts of times the man would get nowhere in male athletics as a 100m runner.

If that bloke decided he was a woman he would immediately break the world record for women’s 100m. He would also, providing he stays fit, easily win all of the meetings that comprise the Golden League. By doing so he would earn himself a million dollars.

So yes, in this example, women are that easy to beat and the rewards would be worth it to somebody, somewhere.

Laurie – I thought Greer’s view of transgender identity in The Female Eunuch came from the same territory as (say) Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire: at best she was critiquing the need for transwomen to conform to conventional ideas of femininity; at worst, she was part of the same transphobic tendency as Julie Bindel’s more recent outbursts.

Kate: defining female as ‘not-feminine’ has been the source of a whole heap of arguments within the movement (the endless war against pink, Barbie, skirts and make-up, for example). The two are distinct, not mutually hostile.* Likewise the attempts to police ‘female space’ against transwomen usually relies on a variation on ‘born and bleeding’ as a woman, which sits oddly with other key feminist ideas about biology and destiny.

*And of course may not be inherently ‘feminine’ in the first place.

This is a ridiculous article. Whether she knows it or not, if Semenya is discovered to be physiologically male, then she has gained an unfair and unsporting advantage over her competitors. It’s not sexism on behalf of the IAAF, it’s simply a case of them making sure that all athlete’s are competing on a level playing field.
What deserves criticism is the IAAF’s handling of this affair i.e. announcing the gender test mere hours before she was due to race. If it turns out they were wrong, then well done her on a fantastic performance. If the tests prove she’s male, and in doing so has gained an unfair advantage, then they should still face criticism for they way this was handled.

I personally find Greer scary and she hasn’t got an ounce of femininity inside her.

Excellent article. The Shakesville thread on this includes suggestions for what could replace the division of sport into men’s and women’s: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/08/caster-semenya-open-thread.html

Hi redpesto,

Yep, largely agreed there.

My point, though, is that Greer’s hostility was not transphobic – it was specifically directed at a decidedly male interpretation of femininity that in its turn oppressed women.

I think the problem here is less transgender, or crossdressing, or Semenya, than Greer herself. I’ve come to the conclusion quite recently – took me a while – that despite her brilliance, wit, obvious literary genius, and great entertainment value, she was in a sense a one-hit wonder.
Nothing she wrote subsequently ever had the coherence, or the conviction of the Female Eunuch, and some of her later work has frankly been batshit. There was that Big Brother thing, too, which was very, very weird.

The celebrity and the talent began to compete at some point, and I think latterly, the celebrity is all we see, really. She resuscitates her old arguments when she remembers what they were, and reconfigures them for the modern media age. And for a few extra bucks, I guess, which I imagine was what yesterday’s piece was all about.

Frankly, I’m quite surprisd at some of the views expressed in the thread above. For a moment I thought I was on the Daily Mail website, at least until I read Alessandra’s post (12) at which point I assumed it was the Daily Star.

Laurie, I don’t agree with your main point regarding gender classification in sport but I think your criticism of the IAAF’s handling of the issue and the subsequent explosion of a wide range of spectacularly ignorant comment on the web, in the press etc is pretty much spot on. In particular, you make a point that needs to be made again and again, and with increasing force:

Caster Semenya is a woman; she has lived her whole life as a woman

Why is this important? For a number of reasons, here are two:

1. It means that this is not a case of “cheating”. Ms Semenya considers herself to be a woman, her family and those who have known her all her life consider her to be a woman and this should suggest to even the least thoughtful observer that this is not a case of deliberate fraud ie some bloke who can run 800m not quite fast enough to compete internationally with other blokes deciding that his only chance of getting a medal is to pretend to be a girl (aided and abetted by South African atheletics’ governing body), preumably for the rest of his life. It is, of course, possible that Ms Semenya has one of a number of conditions (I think you mention Complete Androgen Insensitivity/Resistance Syndrome but there are many others) which would make her genetic sex male, in the sense that she would have an XY chromosome combination, but mean that she would have female genitalia and other characteristics and would therefore be likely, throughout her life, to be considered by others, and think of herself, as female. In such a case genetic sex (chromosome combination) is clearly a less powerful determinant of gender identity than physiology or social factors. To put it simply, gender isn’t determined by the combination of sex chromosome’s in an individual’s cells, it’s a whole lot more complicated than that. It also means that noone has deliberately put a “man” in an event for women.

Secondly, it means that the public nature of the discussion of this issue must be utterly devastating for Ms Semenya. She is a woman, regardless of the outcome of whatever tests are conducted, but how will she feel about herself as a result of it all?

I think your dismissal of the question of whether an intersex condition (and remeber that at this stage we don’t know if this is the case with Ms Semenya) would confer an unfair advantage over other female athletes is a bit simplistic, but the more often I read your article the less sure I am.

Interesting piece, it has made me think.

There certainly have been cases of men, who were unquestionably men, trying to pass themselves off as female to win Olympic events even when it was amatuer never mind now when there are signficant monetary rewards. So, yes there are people out there who would cheat. And so trusting competitors really isn’t going to work.

I am also the proud (male) owner of a genetic condition congenital adrenal hyperplasia that has had female competitors disqualified in the past. It increases the amount of testosterone, a banned substance if administered artificially, in the blood and aids muscle growth. The first “man” ever diagnosed with the condition was a genetic woman who lived her entire life as a man, including sexual relations, but at autopsy was found to have residual female reproductive system and to be infertile (his/her testicles were undescended ovaries).

Allowing such a person to compete in a women’s event does seem profoundly unfair so we need to find a definition of a female competitor. Its in the nature of things that the definition/boundary will be unclear and some unfair cases will result. Of course they should be handled sensitively and ideally out of season rather than within a few hours of the second most important event in women’s 800m running.

Alternatively if you are not happy with defining women biologically we could just dispense with the distinction between men and womens events and have a unified event open to all irrespective of genetic makeup. After all, if being male doesn’t confer a significant athletic advantage then the distinction is pointless to begin with.

Susan – I’ve had a look at the Shakesville thread: parts of it are interesting, but other parts are a mess. Categorising by ‘ability’ is what determines the result, not who gets to compete. I suspect mixed-gender boxing might be a little too close to domestic violence rather than Girlfight for some people (unless the woman wins), while other arguments seem based on knowing/hoping there are (some) women in some sports who can outperform men, so the guys keep the sport segregated to avoid losing face. Getting back to Semenya, it may be the case that she looks ‘too’ androgynous, has had a sudden improvement in her performances which has aroused suspicion, and won by ‘too big’ a margin. Yet she she didn’t break the world record. Maybe once she’s been drug-tested (rather than ‘gender-tested’) we’ll know more.

Personally, the more interesting debate is whether sports in general should be segregated by gender. If we have to accept, as the article seems to, that sports should be segregated by gender, then Ms. Semenya becomes a non-issue: if she is biologically or mainly biologically male, she should be racing with other biological males.

On Ms. Greer.. no knowledge/interest/comment.

‘This is something I’ve thought a lot about, as you can tell. I have had times when I’ve had my doubts about whether someone can just wake up and decide they’re a woman, but having gone through the whole process with some very dear people, I’ve had my mind forcibly changed.’

From your comments on previous threads I gather your partner was transgendered when you met him, but since you also banged on, at length, about a pregnancy test you were eventually going to take if when you’d finished telling everyone about it, I take it he’d changed his mind about what sex he was, again.

It seems like you are trying to invent an social problem inflicting the entire world here, rather than face an uncomfortable reality.

Did you look up the word ‘paranoia’ before you used it?

Suppose that this incredible athlete, who feels that she is a woman, who has spent her entire career competing against women and expresses her triumph as a triumph in the sphere of women’s sports, a female and feminine physical feat, happens to be amongst the 0.1% of women without an XX genotype.

Why on earth is that a problem?…

… Are women really THAT much easier to beat than men that male athletes will risk ridicule in order to do slightly better in an area of sports which is less well represented, less well paid and gets less coverage across the board internationally? Get real.

There are men’s and women’s competitions because combining the competitions would mean that women would never set a record or win a race. There would be no point in women entering the competition. Yes – women are that easy to beat. Look at the records for running or swimming for example – there are significant differences. A man competing in the women’s competition would have an unfair advantage.

The real problem here is that this is being played out in public rather than discreetly; it is disgusting that they are putting Semanya through this public spectacle of something that should be very private and sensitive. Some of her fellow athletes have been pretty appalling too.
Matthew Syed’s article in the Times is worth a read.

Kate,
with your charm you’ll go far. I hope you do, really.

The glaring reason why Laurie’s articles descend into personal sniping is because that is the example she sets when introducing her topic.

If you’ll notice the subject of the article quickly became a peg to impose her view by attacking the views of somone she disagrees with without asking any searching questions or critically deconstructing them. Democratic? Rigorous? Hardly.

Laurie flits from female to feminine while denying any correspondence between the two, she insists upon multi-layered identity while contradicting herself in consecutive breathes over whether fundamental biology can fairly be a part of it, and she appears to have made no attempt to read the IAAF rulebook she apparently wishes to throw out.

So if you call inaccuracy, inconsistency and incoherence being able to write with engagement, intelligence and passion then you are apologising for lowering standards.

But none of that is to say that I don’t find the IAAF’s gross mismanagement of the affair an unhelpful distraction.

@ Laurie (15),

Are women really THAT much easier to beat than men that male athletes will risk ridicule in order to do slightly better in an area of sports which is less well represented, less well paid and gets less coverage across the board internationally?

Afraid so. With virtually no exceptions (ultra marathons usually being the one cited, but on inspection men still have the upper hand, just by a lesser margin) with men competing against women in sport, the medal places/winner’s rostrum/top 10 ranking table etc will end up occupied by men.Noble sentiment to want men and women to all race together, but in the vast majority of events it’ll be kinda disheartening for all the current, and indeed future female athletes, to realise that there is just no realistic way they will ever win any medals, in fact no real scope that they’ll get as far as the qualifying for major championships. Not the way to go to encourage female participation in sports.
The upshot is that women-only events and championships are a necessity. Sure the money’s less, and the glare of publicity is dimmer, but it’s still money.Risking ridicule doesn’t come in to it (if it did, most sportspeople wouldn’t ever compete: let’s face it, on objective analysis much sport is innately ridiculous. Cricket+using a stick to defend some sticks in the ground while someone hurls a ball at you, Football = chasing a bladder filled of air and hoping to hoof it into a receptacle. It’s all still pretty marvellous).
Did you not catch the Spanish basketball scandal at the Paralympics in 2000? :http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/1071059.stm
If folk can do that, they can certainly “risk ridicule in order to do slightly better in an area of sports which is less well represented, less well paid and gets less coverage across the board internationally”

People keep bringing up the “innate physical advantage” as a reason to separate this one individual from the others. But, for god’s sake, there are principles of identity at stake more important than the bloody race.
And besides, one of the few things Greer did get right was to point out at the end of her article that the whole sporting shebang is half about innate physical advantage already.

However, what really grinds my gears is how Greer is so damn hostile to the idea of androgyny. There are stone-age concepts of gender that can never be thrown in the bin unless we accept the idea of androgyny. This is where Laurie gets it right, with her point about Transpeople and the knowledge that identity is fluid.

@15 Laurie: *really*? Are women really THAT much easier to beat than men that male athletes will risk ridicule in order to do slightly better in an area of sports which is less well represented, less well paid and gets less coverage across the board internationally?

I bet some would. Or more likely you’d get edge cases. With 99% of people it’s obvious whether they are male or female, the other 1% it’s not so clear cut: there are people with unusual sex chromosomes, there are people who self-identify as transgender or genderqueer, etc.

The IAAF organises separate sporting events for males and females, therefore they need a definition of female, and preferably one that’s objective; if they don’t do this there’s bound to be endless arguments about edge-cases, cheating, etc.

@31 Joel: People keep bringing up the “innate physical advantage” as a reason to separate this one individual from the others. But, for god’s sake, there are principles of identity at stake more important than the bloody race.

Let’s say you were an athlete who came second in a race, where the race was limited to a certain category of people (women for example). It then transpired that the winner of the race might not have belonged to the category. I bet then you wouldn’t think it was just a “bllody race” and not as important as “principles of identity”.

Especially if there was lots of money at stake.

[16] You’re shifting your position a little from what you wrote originally, but that’s OK I guess…

I am more concerned about the views expressed on here about Greer. People are saying The Female Eunuch was great and thereafter she lost the plot… actually she found it. Eunuch was written by an angry young woman who had not yet recognised, let alone confronted and dealt with her own inner demons, which she later did brilliantly in Daddy We Hardly Knew You.

The implication that people who haven’t gone through some process of gnosis make better social analysts than those who have merely points up the unhappiness of those who make the implication. Nor does writing articles which seek to provide some kind of justification for the writer’s anger – for all that the blogosphere sometimes seems as if it consists of little else – count as a gnostic process. Sorry about that.

People keep bringing up the “innate physical advantage” as a reason to separate this one individual from the others. But, for god’s sake, there are principles of identity at stake more important than the bloody race.

And besides, one of the few things Greer did get right was to point out at the end of her article that the whole sporting shebang is half about innate physical advantage already.

Well there’s a truism.

But I’m not sure if Greer understands the nature of the physical advantage of being a man in sport. In terms of the 800m, being male seems to confer an advantage over females of over 10 seconds (if you look at the records), but the differences between males themselves (and females themselves) are measured in 100ths of a second. If men and women raced together in the 800m we would never see a woman with a medal. I dare say you would not see a woman in the top ten.

A couple of observations – anybody know why this issue was not addressed long before the final? (with the world media interest surrounding it)

Nowadays the margins at top-end athletic events are so fine that all competitors are extremely twitchy about ANYTHING that might constitute an unfair advantage.

We have heard of athletes having to defend themselves after taking an innocuous substances (allegedly) and then being accused of being a drug cheat.
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/fanguide/athlete?athlete=2344

Other commentators have already highlighted the gulf in performance between top male and female athletes – for this reason it is very difficult to overlook any group of athletes that MIGHT have unfair biological advantage.

Its very sad the way this has played out for the gold medal winner but in the dog eat dog world of international athletics hardly surprising?

@33 Philip Hunt: Let’s say you were an athlete who came second in a race, where the race was limited to a certain category of people (women for example). It then transpired that the winner of the race might not have belonged to the category. I bet then you wouldn’t think it was just a “bllody race” and not as important as “principles of identity”.

Especially if there was lots of money at stake.

But, as I pointed out, the world of sport is always at the mercy of innate physical advantage. However you categorise and divide it, it always will be. Germaine Greer got that much right, I think.

Perhaps I didn’t express myself well– I wasn’t just saying that the race comes second. The institution has the right to stand up for its own regulations. But much of the sporting world is a celebration of innate physical advantage.

Either way, my main concern was to disagree with Greer’s dislike for androgyny.

to Richard (23):
I am happy for you that this article has given you the illusion of thinking. I suppose for those who can’t think, the illusion suffices.

to others:
I say: Let the tests begin. For those who affirm she is a woman, so far there is no proof. Everything about her outward appearance and voice and demeanor so far says otherwise. The principal of her school said he thought Semenya was a boy until “she” was 11. And he was not alone in wondering about her appearance contradicting her and her family claims. There are conflicting accounts about Semenya’s own gender behavior and reactions when her sex category is questioned.

Semenya was born in some ignorant, poor SA village and family – what if they couldn’t have any inkling of a rare hermaphrodite condition and raised her as a girl even though that’s not really her 100% category? What if she has outward somewhat female genitalia, but a male skeleton and muscular build, along with a more male component of hormones? You can’t blame ignorant village folk, but you can certainly hold accountable coaches and officials, starting with the ones that are doing the most yelling and yelping about the injustice of questioning “her” sex. Sounds fishy to me. My guess is that the SA sports official are in the know that Semenya has some kind of hermaphrodite condition but they were too gold-greedy to bring it up. Can care less about Semenya, man or woman or neither.

Too bad we have to wait for several weeks for the results.

Joel, I’m not sure I understand your point (nor Greer’s) relating to “innate physical advantage”. I think you’re playing down the advantage of being a man in competitive sport – or you don’t appreciate the difference between men and women is much larger than the difference between men or women.

Greer wrote:

Supposing that the verdict of the sex police is that Semenya is mentally female and physically male, what would it mean for other women athletes if she was allowed to compete with such an unfair biological advantage? People who don’t ovulate or menstruate will probably always physically outperform people who do. But then, doesn’t all competitive sport canonise and glamorise the exploitation of genetic advantage? Who said life was fair?

The inference I draw is that Greer thinks we may as well let a male compete in the female competition, or vice versa, or combine the competitions.

Perhaps she isn’t bothered about women ever again competing in sport.

All-time number one 800m:
men’s no. 1: Wilson Kipketer 1.41.11
men’s no. 2: Sebastian Coe 1:41.73
men’s no. 10: Patrick Ndururi 1:42.62
women’s no. 1: Jarmila Kratochvílová 1:53.28

Bonjour, Thomas,

I suspect, sadly, that my charm has taken me about as far as it is going to. You’re stuck with me.

I don’t conflate writing a few words in support of a young, talented writer like Laurie with a thumbs-up for a dumbing-down of online writing. You’re saying that some of her articles are uneven – heart before head and all that. I’m saying I like that and good luck her. I find it purely heartening to see these passionate young feminists and writers coming through. Makes me think there might be a tomorrow after all.

@39 ukliberty Joel, I’m not sure I understand your point (nor Greer’s) relating to “innate physical advantage”. I think you’re playing down the advantage of being a man in competitive sport – or you don’t appreciate the difference between men and women is much larger than the difference between men or women.

Yes, I agree that it confers an advantage– I would be beta biased if I didn’t recognise that. The institution truly has a right to uphold the level playing field through categorisation– don’t worry, I wasn’t questioning that.

When I made the (perhaps badly stated) point about “principles of identity” being more important than the race, I meant only here in the after-race discussion sphere. I meant that the most important thing on the discussion table afterwards was an issue of gender identity.

Well, you might find Laurie’s writing ‘heartening’ but I just see some spoilt rich kid struggling with reality.

Excusing her dribblings because she’s ‘young’ and ‘passionate’ is just patronising.

@38.

Alessandra, help me in my “illusion of thinking” by explaining which “rare hermaphrodite condition” you are talking about. How do you think gender/sex is determined? Is it purely through the sex – determining chromosomes? What about XXY, XYY, XXX, XXXX etc individuals? What about female phenotypes with an XY karyotype? What about fragmented Y chromosomes? Do you have any idea what any of this means or do you think that “man” and “woman” are genetic absolutes rather than broad sets of characteristics? Do see that there may be a difference between gender and sex? Do you have the faintest idea what you’re actually talking about?

Please, I wish to be educated, tell me how you would determine (biologically) whether someone is a man or a woman and why you would use your chosen criteria. Then maybe you could explain how individuals who fall outside your definition of “woman”/”female” would have an “unfair” advantage over individuals who fall within it.

I should point out that I am very much in favour of the male/female split in sport, in the same way that I am in favour of the retention of weight categories in boxing, Judo etc. So, Alessandra, we agree on at least one point. I think the point on which we disagree is whether you have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.

@42 Shatterface: Excusing her dribblings because she’s ‘young’ and ‘passionate’ is just patronising.

It is, somewhat.

Bit harsh, fellas.

You’ll find earlier in this thread that I didn’t agree with Laurie’s argument. I just happen to like her style, even if she is landed gentry or whatever it is. Since when was enjoying someone’s style patronising?

Anyway – we’re not going to win here, so yours truly, who is neither rich nor young, is going to lie back down on the couch and continue to listen to the Ashes. Your boys are starting to look quite likely, I must say.

*For more on this and the capitalist connotations of femininity, I heartily recommend the excellent essay Mama Cash: Buying and Selling Genders by Charles Anders

Capitalist connotations of femininity? So it’s all down to capitalism again. That’s funny. When I lived in the USSR in the ’70′s, femininity had exactly the same connotations as in the capitalist world. And nobody I met had ever even had so much as a sniff of capitalism! But capitalism’s infectious, isn’t it. The connotations probably drifted over the arctic from the USA, or maybe via the Bering Strait, and started breeding. Or perhaps the Russian capitalist connotational germs sort of went dormant before 1917 and started to wake up and become active up 60 years later. I don’t suppose Laurie Penny remembers Irina and Tamara Press, does she?

I think that Laurie tried too hard in her piece. There’s an argument about an athlete’s birth sex. Conjoined with an argument about transsexualism, frilly skirts and eyeliner. It doesn’t work and the comments are directionless.

All the same, I liked the passion in Laurie’s post. Please, can we have a really basic introduction to transgenderism.

#11

But you can measure height and weight in an absolute way that isn’t contestable. You can’t do the same with gender/sex.

Has there been any research on what factors have led to the discrepancy in short-distance athletic events that we currently see between men and women? Are there any biological reasons? And if it is as crude as wide hips/breasts hinder running more than some male body shapes, will we exclude from running in women’s events any woman who has very small breasts and narrow hips? There is more variation within sexes as to body shape than there is between them.

Tim f, these articles may be worth your time.

You’re saying that some of her articles are uneven – heart before head and all that. I’m saying I like that and good luck her. I find it purely heartening to see these passionate young feminists and writers coming through. Makes me think there might be a tomorrow after all.

Sorry Kate, there might be a tomorrow but nonsense is nonsense, whether written by a passionate young feminist or a cynical old misogynist.

@43 Richard,

Tell us why asking for tests to prove that there has been no cheating with hormones, drugs, or ambiguous male-female anatomy equals writing from the Daily Star. (@23) Your remark simply sounds like one coming from a corrupt sports official.

You proclaim you know for a fact that Semenya is a woman (@23)– why hasn’t the IAAF taken your word for it and are conducting investigations? Do you know every single substance she has taken all her life? Have you ever heard of “female” athletes who have cheated with hormones, drugs, and sex impersonation in sports?

Maybe your illusion of knowledge does not include the 1976 Olympics, among a thousand other examples? There was a reason why Eastern European female athletes had deep voices, male-like musculature, and incredibly powerful performances. That reason was not pretty. Yes, they were women, but they were “chemically altered” women. Cheating technology has come a long way since then, and it surely has not been stopped in Berlin. Is Semenya simply one of the latest examples?

Blabber as much as you would like about other people not knowing what they are talking about, but you haven’t shown anything more than that for your own remarks.

Morning Alessandra.

I didn’t say that asking for a female athlete to undertake a gender verification test (or any other test) is equivalent to writing for the Daily Star. I agree with gender/sex testing because I agree that male and female athletic events need to be kept separate. I was using the Daily Star analogy to ridicule your comments in post 12 eg “some kind of hermaphrodite”, use of the word “she” in inverted commas etc. I stand by my original position of ridiculing you since you seem to have no understanding of the issues.

You now seem to be confusing use of banned substances with sex/gender verification. Ms Semenya is undergoing a gender verification test. She will, as a matter of course, have been subject throughout her career to tests for the use of banned substances which, up to now, will have been negative otherwise she would not be competing at an international level. The two are separate issues and your confusion of them underlines your ignorance. The phrase:

“Do you know every single substance she has taken all her life? ”

in relation to a debate about gender pretty much sums up your confusion on the matter.

Why do you imply that I have claimed that cheating doesn’t happen? I haven’t made that claim anywhere in any of my posts. Of course it does. That’s why drug and gender testing happens. My issue is with the way the IAAF announced the test (publicly and during the world championships, a matter of days before the final of Ms Semenya’s event) and the series of ill – informed and ignorant comments which followed. Your comments are ignorant and ill – informed since you seem to believe that determining sex/gender is a simple matter, for example you seem to believe that there are 3 clearly delineated groups ie male, female and “hermaphrodite” You also seem to think (and I’m making this remark as a result of your comments in your previous post) that taking certain banned substances somehow changes a female into a male.

Anyway, I asked you a series of questions in my previous post. You did not answer them but, instead, responded with questions. I have answered your questions, now please answer mine. I shall re – state the main ones:

a. How do you think gender/sex is determined? Is it purely through the sex – determining chromosomes?

b. What about XXY, XYY, XXX, XXXX etc individuals? What about female phenotypes with an XY karyotype? What about fragmented Y chromosomes?

c. Do you have any idea what any of this means or do you think that “man” and “woman” are genetic absolutes rather than broad sets of characteristics?

d. How you would determine (biologically) whether someone is a man or a woman?

e. Why you would use your chosen criteria?

f. Explain how individuals who fall outside your definition of “woman”/”female” would have an “unfair” advantage over individuals who fall within it.

If you can’t manage them all then just do your best with the ones you actually understand.

I look forward to your response.

I’m actually a little tickled by the parallel question of whether female identity is more about style or substance and whether ‘feminism’ is more about style or substance under whatever cultural-social matrix.

If gender and sexual identity isn’t simply either or then why should anyone struggle with the concept that the politics (and therefore the culture of society) need be?

Thomas, to be honest most of the socio – political aspects have gone over my head. The scientific aspects of the debate (or, to be more accurate, slanging match) interest me a lot more because I’m much more comfortable in that area and because I think they are usually overlooked and misunderstood.

Biological determination of sex/gender isn’t as straightforward as people may think, it’s not always, as you quite succinctly put it, either – or. There is an apparently quite widespread misconception that it is either – or and that everything else comes down to personal preference, political standpoint or “how people feel about themselves.” Like you, I don’t see why the politics of it needs to be viewed in this way. But there you go, eh?

Hi Richard,
I think the connection is that a lot of people habitually draw political conclusions from scientific facts, or at least from a perception of them.

It’s based on the ability to successfully disentangle the relationship between opinion and fact that anyone can make informed decisions.

Yes, and, unfortunately, a lot of “scientific facts” presented by the media are neither scientific or factual. Hence, political conclusions drawn from them may be a bit wide of the mark.

A fact of life, I suppose.

‘I find it purely heartening to see these passionate young feminists and writers coming through. Makes me think there might be a tomorrow after all.’

If Laurie was advancing a new theory you might have a point, but we were giggling at this stuff in the 70′s.

Since when do we have the female -male conditon on a spectrum? All transgender, transexual and hermaphroditic members of our species are to some extent maladaptive. It doesn’t mean we don’t love and support them, it just means something went wrong somewhere in their creation.

For the very vast majority – its very simple to say whether someone is girl or boy and wether they act like a girl or a boy?

Why are we complicating things?

Lilliput,
for the very same reason that it may be easy to see the colour of someone’s skin and use this to jump to a conclusion about where they are from, what food they may like etc.

Stereotypes may have some foundation in reality, but they are no grounds to regulate for.

What someone looks like and how they act isn’t seriously being advanced as a means of determining sex/gender is it? I don’t think anyone here is complicating the issue, it’s complicated already.

Lilliput, purely for the purposes of deciding eligibility to compete in female athletics events, how do you think sex/gender is best determined? It really isn’t as obvious as you might think – most humans have 46 chromosomes with the sex determining chromosomes being XX for females and XY for males, but some people are born with 47 chromosomes and XXX, XXY or XYY combinations (you’d be surprised how common such individuals are and there are numerous other possibilities X0 etc). They aren’t maladaptive as they tend to go through life without being noticed since usually they don’t look significantly different, suffer from ill health or an inability to reproduce. Additionally, some people are born with 46 chromosomes and an XY combination making there genotypic sex male but develop as a phenotypic female due to something called complete androgen insensitivity. Such people (estimated as about 1 in 20,000) are born with a “female” external body (not internally though).

Sorry for the boring lecture, but it genuinely is pretty complicated. That said, I’m nor advocating and end to the male/female split in sport, just pointing out that the definitions of male and female used in sport are decided upon in order to ensure some degree of fairness (however defined) for competitors rather than to be actual definitions of what constitutes a man or a woman.

All-time men’s 100m records…

http://www.alltime-athletics.com/m_100ok.htm

All-time women’s 100m records…

http://www.alltime-athletics.com/w_100ok.htm

All-time 10,000m records…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10000_metres

I was very surprised to discover that the difference between male and female athletes is far greater than I imagined it would be. The difference in the 100m is so vast, it goes off the scale before we get anywhere near the best women’s time (and the list goes to over 1,600 times). As for the 10,000m, the women’s world record now, stands at where the men’s did 60 years ago!

Before anyone accuses me of being sexist, I am merely trying to point out that there is a huge difference between men and women’s abilities and that the links above should indeed show why there should be separate men’s and women’s races.

As to the question of Semenya, it really is irrelevent whether she ‘thinks’ she is, or has grown up being a woman. If her body carries all the testosterone, or chromosomes, or whatever else goes into deciding whether one is male, she is gaining an unfair advantage on the other athlete’s.

Of course, the disgraceful way in which this entire episode has been handled is shameful, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that anyone that is ‘built’ as a man, competing in a women’s race, has a distinct and unfair advantage.

Does it convey an advantage? How exactly?

I mean, its a bit of a jump from assuming someone is trans, or at least not female in the conventionally understood sense, to assuming that they will have the characteristics that will make them better at a certain sport.

It would seem to me that you are jumping to conclusions by assuming XXY or XXX chromosomes etc. would give you an advantage. It could easily make it more difficult for an athlete and Semenya has overcome this, only to be subject to snide comments across offices around the world.

Left Outside – This doesn’t really apply to XXY or XXX individuals. 47XXX individuals are unambiguously female and allowed to compete in female events. 47XXY individuals are, generally, male and may actually be at a disadvantage to other males in athletic competitions.

46XY individuals are “genetically male” but may develop female physiology due to syndromes such as PGD or CAIS. Such people will generally have a fairly normal outward female physiology until puberty at which point failure to develop secondary sexual characteristics such as breasts, menstrual cycle etc will indicate a possible problem. Such individuals could (not definitely will) have an advantage over other females in athletic events as they will not experience physiological changes induced by estrogens.

I think the point is that if we have something called “female” athletics we do so because men have a significant advantage over women in this area and, without segregation, women simply wouldn’t be able to compete (in many events female world record times are below many national association qualifying times for mens’ international trials – the best female athletes in the world wouldn’t even qualify for consideration for inclusion in an international team). If it is decided that we do need to have female athletic events then we need criteria to decide who is eligible to compete in them. Such a definition is about fairness and creating a level playing field for athletes, not about gender identity. 46XY women fall outside the criteria for female competition because of this but that doesn’t make their gender any less female. The unfortunate aspects of this affair are:

a. The IAAF was right to ask for a gender verification test if concerns had been raised (they were and much longer ago than last week) but there should have been no public announcement.

b. Ms Semenya is 18. If she is a 46XY female, and at this stage there is no reason to suppose that she is anything other than a “normal” 46XX woman, the signs would probably have been there for some time and they should have looked into the matter much, much sooner.

I am merely trying to point out that there is a huge difference between men and women’s abilities and that the links above should indeed show why there should be separate men’s and women’s races.

That is the kind of sexist claptrap that ensures male domination becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Just as there should be equal rights, equal pay etc there should be equal athletic peformance. Anyone who implies that men can run faster than women should be prosecuted in line with the forthcoming equality legislation.

The UK government should ensure that the 2012 Olympics are the first truly transgender games.

@58 Lilliput: “Why are we complicating things?”

Because it is complicated. I’ve socialised with post-op TS women of 60+ years of age who have found it difficult to get a bus pass or explain the absence of it to neighbours. In the UK, there is an extraordinary number of post-ops with an armed forces background, which makes a reinvented background very difficult for them — too many years of work to explain away.

I’ve met post-op TS women who, post operation, have been later identified as intersex (failure at birth identification). Some of them are fathers.

Of course, it is complicated.

#64

“That is the kind of sexist claptrap that ensures male domination becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Just as there should be equal rights, equal pay etc there should be equal athletic peformance. Anyone who implies that men can run faster than women should be prosecuted in line with the forthcoming equality legislation.

The UK government should ensure that the 2012 Olympics are the first truly transgender games.”

For a moment there, I almost took you seriously

@Richard, thanks, unfortunately I definitely still have a lot to learn on gender and sex.

I agree with you about testing out of public view, it’s ridiculous to do this so brazenly and publically. There’s no reason to – it seems like malice, or at least massive incompetence.

Oh, and put away your straw man pagar.

‘Oh, and put away your straw man pagar.’

How do you know it’s a straw MAN?

Touché

Hermann the high-jumper.

Shatterface:

Well, you might find Laurie’s writing ‘heartening’ but I just see some spoilt rich kid struggling with reality.

Classy. You didn’t like what she wrote, so you’ve just ad-hommed your way through? There’s a difference between ‘transgender’ and ‘intersex’, by the way. Her talking about her partner and pregnancy scare don’t give you licence to attack her.

I don’t agree with everything Laurie says and have criticised her rather harshly in the past, but having actually MET the woman, I’ll stand up for her against the likes of you anyday. Of course you see a ‘spoilt rich kid struggling with reality,’ it’s the lovely convenient little stereotype you’re looking for, isn’t it?

Note to anyone else on this blog who thinks that addressing comments at the writer – WHOEVER THEY ARE – in a rude, caustic, smartass, way makes you really clever and relevant: it doesn’t.

KJB, I’m not sure I understand Laurie’s (among others) apparent anger about sport.

As is evident from thousands of timings, women would not fare at all well in the majority of mixed sex track, field, or swimming competitions – even women who took performance enhancing drugs in the 80s and 90s could not break the 10s barrier, which is consistently broken by men.

Yet there is an insistence that women could beat men in their own game, if only those oppressive patriarchies in sport would give them the opportunity – of course, it is man’s fear of being beaten by woman that is holding women back, not physiology.

There is also the suggestion that the difference between, say, Usain Bolt and Florence Joyner-Griffiths is the same as the difference between Bolt and Tyson Gay. Clue: it ain’t.

And let’s disregard the silly point that an Olympian female athlete could easily best the average non-athletic man – of course she could.

I think this is the reality Shatterface is referring to. There seem to be a number of people who get angry about it. And frankly it seems due to an ignorance of reality – otherwise surely they would not suggest women could actually beat men over 100m, for example. And it doesn’t mean women should stay in the kitchen. So why get angry about it?

How we treat intersex is of course more difficult, not least because (1) it is difficult to determine and (2) because the person might not even be aware of it – it’s a sensitive issue to say the least. But it’s important to other competitors because a chromosomal ‘abnormality’ could conceivably give a significant advantage – and again, this could be rather more significant than the apparent advantage Bolt has over Gay. It is worth noting, too, that Semenya’s peers demanded something be done, not the male-dominated sporting authorities – and why on earth the authorities would be afraid of a woman breaking the 10s barrier is perhaps best left to the imagination of the angry feminist.

But yes, I can understand the anger about Semanya’s situation.

Simon Barnes ‘gets’ sport. His article on Semanya seems reasonable. But like all other critics he makes no suggestion as to how the situation can be improved, other than with more discretion and sensitivity. A commenter on his article suggests keeping a women’s category and creating an open category – implying getting rid of the men’s category – and letting anyone attempt to race in it. But that still doesn’t solve the issue of intersex in the women’s category. Perhaps there is no solution. Perhaps life as a result of sport is even more unfair for that minority of people who are not born in either of the two convenient categories we have assigned to people.

(Barnes also mentions Renée Richards, who played Gentlemen’s Singles tennis as Richard Raskind and, after gender reassignment and a lawsuit, played Women’s Singles as Renée Richards.)

Tennis is probably another sport from which lessons in this area could be learned.

Athletics has an objective permormance measure (time, distance etc) which is blind to the actual facts, whereas tennis shows how relative competition is capable of creating excitement and that non-physical skills are at equally important, if not moreso at the top.

So maybe this debate is more of a criticism against the cultural value of athletics in a world where physical properties are growing less relevant for the mass of people.

Hello Richard,

I see that you continue spewing one pompous post after another, interspersing evern single comment with some kind of put down. Do you know what this says about you? Time to take some time off the blogging and start looking inside. You ask why haven’t I answered your questions. Aside from your multiple distortions of what I have written, you come out shooting insults, spew an unmistakable amount of bile and barbs, and I don’t see you have much going for you in terms of engaging in a discussion or a debate.

As for you hitting a nerve with my “some kind of hermaphrodite” — it wasn’t so much ridicule but lack of clear-cut definition. How can I precisely affirm what kind of anatomy and hormones and chromossomes Semenya has just by looking at pictures and reading the (insufficient) info that was in some of the press up to the date I posted? It all added up to some kind of hermaphrodite, and indeed, with more info that’s been out in the last 48 hours, it seems I was right. Not only that, the picture seems to be getting uglier and uglier and for “little Miss” husky -voiced, pumped up Semenya in myriad ways.

And now for the breaking news in the non-anglo press that’s been making it’s way into the anglo papers, connected to SA head coach (Ekkart Arbeit). Even without the allegations (below) all over the German and latino press this weekend, Arbeit’s proven doping track record in several countries, starting with his two decades in East Germany, is horrible.

This, although, up until now, deemed in alleged status, wouldn’t surprise me at all:

http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/sport-news/more-sport/2009/08/21/caster-semenya-sex-test/ex-coach-says-world-800m-champion-is-a-hermaphrodite.html

Caster Semenya’s ex-coach has claimed the sex test controversy athlete is actually a hermaphrodite. The unnamed coach told Swiss tabloid ‘Blick that tests to determine her gender had already been taken. South Africa carried them out in March. The result is clear. Semenya should not have been allowed to start with the women at the World Championships in Berlin.

The unnamed source also claimed that South Africas head coach Ekkart Arbeit, who used to hold the same position with East Germany, knew exactly what had to be done to get Semenya past authorities in previous competitions.

Her testosterone level can be altered using medication so that she was not found out in previous doping tests.

=========
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:
A source close to the investigation of Semenya has confirmed that tests carried out before the start of the World Championships indicated that the runner had THREE TIMES the normal female level of TESTOSTERONE in her body.

=============
Arbeit was head coach for throwing events of the East German track and field team from 1982-88 and chief coach in 1989-90. This includes the infamous East German shot put team and Heidi Krieger, who was given so many hormonal drugs, she later changed into a he.

“Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women’s names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn’t polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man’s delusion that he is female.”

On the money. Nailed it. Except for the “We” in the next to last sentence. Not all of us engage in the pretense. Fortunately not all of us are that blind.

On the “what then is Caster to do if he is a hermaphrodite” question:
“Why on earth is that a problem? And why should that disqualify her from women’s sports? What, are they going to create a special intersex olympics just for her and a handful of others? Or will she be ostracised from the world of sport altogether because her body does not support the binary ideology of the IAAF?”

The only interview I saw of Caster gave me a really bad impression of him. No little victim. There seems to be nothing in Caster’s own mind about being female himself, and he seems to me quite aware of his hermaphrodite condition, which is clearly male as far as his own identity seems to be concerned on a gender level. I am leaning more and more towards FRAUD (in all caps) by S African Athletics. And Caster, although young and easily manipulable, not that innocent either.

http://www.sbs.com.au/blogarticle/112372/Athletics‘-crying-game

Came from some little poor, uneducated background but is now a uni student in Sports Science, no less, in one of the best departments in SA. My guess is that either alone or with the help of someone, quite some time ago, Caster figured out he was a hermaphrodite. Loved sports, was good. Not as good as the best guys, but certainly could do better than the best girls. If nature alone didn’t do it, there could always be a little help from Arbeit and his East German “pump those kids up with steroids” methods.

Caster looks, speaks, acts, gestures, and dresses as a guy (although there are conflicting accounts in the media about his earlier past activities concerning typical gender choices). Then someone starts pushing him into the mess he finds himself now. You can pass for a girl, take advantage of it, think of the medals, the money. Not that implausible. Maybe it was never stated that clearly. One race just led to another, all in less than one year. He raced poorly, then, all of a sudden, including a period of 3 months resting, he’s world champion. So much talent in just one “woman,” developed so quickly. Amazing.

By the info so far, I think he should play in men’s sports. Then again, is the alleged ultra-high level of testosterone found in Caster produced with or without a little external help?

And what if the Swiss article is right and his hormone levels are easily manipulable to pass testing? What a joke on the world.

The tests must go on.

Alessandra, you haven’t answered the questions I asked because you really have no idea about what you’re talking about, do you?

There’s little point engaging with you since you’re becoming hysterical. The obsessive and increasingly strident tone of your posts suggests to me that this subject is in danger of (further?) damaging your mental health. How’s that for “some kind of put – down”?

You really should calm down.

Ta ta.

Alessandra, hermaphrodite is not synonymous with intersex and if I understand correctly it would be easy to determine if someone is the former. Semanya isn’t a hermaphrodite. Richard has taken the time to provide some interesting information – if you don’t like it, I recommend reading this article.

Thomas, you make an interesting point and mixed tennis is enjoyable sport. In athletics there is mixed relay, too.

But it doesn’t resolve the issue of any intersex participants having some physiological advantage – nor the demands of female competitors (and all competitors in a mixed sex competition) that they compete under conditions they perceive as fair.

Sorry for not engaging more on this thread guys, I’ve been travelling.

Kate and KJB – thanks for backing me up. Being a woman writing online, as I’m sure you both know, I’m kinda used to these visceral ad-hominem (ad-feminam?) attacks by now. I’m not ‘landed gentry’, although I do have parents who were able to support me through university and internships, which these days is privilege that makes a difference – but I’d be being attacked for my class whatever it happened to be, I imagine.

Quite heartened to see that in about 75% of cases the comments are responding to the actual points! Well done, chaps. Little by little, we get better and better.

No worries, chook. You deserve backing. It doesn’t matter a bugger what sort of privilege people are born to, as it happens – it’s what they do with that privilege that counts. Just keep right on at it.

Women do take a lot of shit online, but that’s no surprise. The patriarchy has been trying to shut us up for centuries.

Go well.

@81 Kate Belgrave: Women do take a lot of shit online

Is there any evidence that women are criticised online any more than men? Political debate is of its nature combative: if someone display political opinions online, they’re bound to get people disagreeing with them, and often the disagreement will involve people criticising their rationality or morality.

The patriarchy has been trying to shut us up for centuries.

You believe, AFAICT, that there’s a conspiracy of men trying to prevent you from speaking on the Internet. What evidence is there of this?

‘You believe, AFAICT, that there’s a conspiracy of men trying to prevent you from speaking on the Internet.’

No, I don’t.

I just put the word patriarchy in there to wind you fellas up.

Works a treat, don’t you think?

‘No worries, chook. You deserve backing. It doesn’t matter a bugger what sort of privilege people are born to, as it happens – it’s what they do with that privilege that counts. Just keep right on at it.’

Actually, it does matter as Laurie has previously attacked other people for daring to speak on class issues – because they went to Oxford with her so couldn’t possibly know what they are talking about!

Laurie MADE background an issue.

But by all means, pretend she’s a victim of something or other to ‘wind the fellas up’.

Kate,
I think this thread has already established that the lines of gender classification are blurred, and in fact this was one of the main planks of Laurie’s argument.

So to defend her by contradicting her ideas seems both perverse and unwittingly malicious, don’t you think?

And the best of Net commentary recently seen on the Semenya saga goes to:

“There is nothing about Semenya that is even remotely female, so I believe it is fair to ask for gender testing. The medal is for the WOMEN’s 800 meter. So the winner of the medal should be a woman. We would be having the same conversation if a person with full breasts, a high pitched voice, hips and 3 times the level of estrogen had won the men’s 800 meter race. ”
==========
“And the prize for Shameless Popularism goes to the ANC for pouncing on poor Caster Semenya when she arrived back in SA to claim her as their latest struggle victim.”
==========
(on the same subject as right above:)
…everyone knows that the [SA] “stepmother of the nation” is in good company when she shares the populist stage with the jelly tsotsi. Neither are renowned for their common sense or good judgement. Like the political vultures that they are, they are constantly on the lookout for claiming the prize for something that someone else did.

============
Martin Samuel: We’ve every right to bang on about sex

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-1209023/Martin-Samuel-Weve-right-bang-sex.html#ixzz0PJNgwgHI

Butana Komphela, chairman of the South African parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Sport and Recreation, alleged sexism and racism. ‘The humiliation of Semenya is a sign of sexist action by the IAAF,’ he said. ‘When Caster comes back we will welcome her as our heroine. Just because she is black and she has surpassed her European competitors, there is all this uproar.’

How perceptive. It is the one field where black folk just can’t catch a break, isn’t it, athletics? That and dance music. As for sexism, why would an investigation designed to ensure female athletes are not being forced into competition against an abnormally masculine rival be misogynistic? After all, it was not just the IAAF that harboured suspicions.

Competitors and observers around the world thought there was something unusual in a woman who appeared masculine and came from nowhere with an improvement of 16.53sec in one season, to be the fastest in the world over 800m while coached by a former East German drug cheat. In any other sport, there would be questions; in any other sport the demand would be for transparency.

===========

“A guttural laugh from Semenya came at a question about whether she had received hormone injections from Ekkart Arbeit, head coach of the South African team.”
===========

What’s so funny, I wonder?

Oh, and there was this gem:

“That’s about as interesting of a comment as the gender debate of the South African runner Caster Semenya. Since she’s shaved the ‘stache and left the running jacket on, she is looking more and more like a, well, she. ”

ROFL

Oh, this wasn’t bad either:

Herr Doktor Arbeit (“macht frei”)

========

Perhaps to be known from this incident on as Herr Doktor Testosteron Macht Frei?

Dr Arbeit
Apparently the good Dr did some tests and said “Ve found semen ja”

by Bonehead on August 26 2009, 12:59

ROFL

Alessandra,

Competitors and observers around the world thought there was something unusual in a woman who appeared masculine and came from nowhere with an improvement of 16.53sec in one season, to be the fastest in the world over 800m while coached by a former East German drug cheat. In any other sport, there would be questions; in any other sport the demand would be for transparency.

There are questions… they are investigating her! Jebus… please try to sort out your monomania, it’s interfering with your faculties.

From the original post, this was also interesting as a starting point concerning what is currently so wrong with Athletics and similar speed sports:

“But if we truly want to progress as a species – if we want to celebrate sporting achievement, if we want to strive collectively and individually to run faster and swim stronger and jump higher and think more clearly, our frantic cultural drive to uphold gender as a holy and immutable binary is the first thing we need to abandon.”

I’m leaving the question of gender totally aside here, not because it is unimportant, but because what needs to be equally emphasized is that this very ideology enshrining a “collective target to run faster and swim stronger and jump higher” does not entail clear thinking, and most importantly, it is inimical to ethical attitudes and behaviors in various sports.

Generally speaking, the limits for most racing and jumping sports have been attained as far as training and competing clean are concerned. From now on, it’s the pills and the injections (or other such cute tricks, such as slick little swimsuits, as the recent controversy in swimming has shown us, may the most high-tech speedo win). But for competing solely as grand nature has made us, we’ve pretty much hit the limit. This obviously entails basically no more record breaking and it makes the obsessive target of breaking multiple records every year a very different endeavor than it was decades ago, when there was still much room for clean improvement.

The current insane objective to always break a record is driven enormously by the sports ring masters. It is also enhanced by the media industry’s design of sports programming targetted for a not very wise public. There is an equally obsessive lust for medals, resulting from various contaminated, but complementary agendas. One is to reinforce political ideological superiority and nationalistic jingoism. Another is to exploit all aspects of attaining media celebrity, because this paves the way to more glory, more privileges, and, of course, ties into the third very important goal: heaps of money. All of this is inimical to ethical principles and attitudes.

Athletes are often intensely glorified if they win gold, in contrast to being sternly demeaned if they win second (as if there was an enormous difference). If they lose beyond third, they are often humiliated and punished by the nastiest reactions, as if they were a total failure, even when they show an excellent performance overall. You can be the fourth fastest runner out of all the billions of other little humans on the planet, but you didn’t bring home a medal, and certainly not a gold one, so I’m sorry, you’re worthless and you’re a disappointment to the nation. It is so insane.

Even though most people don’t like the fact that sports have become inundated by doping, nobody boycotts anything because of it. The money in sports only gets bigger, the politicians are always on the lookout to exploit their next little hero/shmero, and the drugs just keep getting stealthier. And, of course, the public must have their circus. All sports have come a long way about doping controls, but the problem is certainly very, very far from being solved; too far, in my opinion.

I have thought for some time that it was time to divide sports competitions between clean and drugged. It is not a matter of ideals, but of pragmatism. Since we cannot stop the doping because of all the factors briefly outlined above, not excluding yet others, let us bring it out into the open. I only saw one commentary on the Internet along these lines, related to the current African hermaphrodite train wreck. the basic idea is that everything concerning drugs in sports would be allowed. The only rule is that each athlete would need to inform the list of drugs they had been taking. Therefore we would have that Athlete A had beat the world record by 10 seconds while taking X, then Athlete B by taking Y, etc etc. And then we would have the “lame” ones, who would never beat a world record again, but who would race clean. At the end of the games, we would have the clean records, the drug X records, the drug Y records, etc.

Of course, it would only a matter of time before we discovered that Athlete A beat the drug Y record while really taking drug Z, but I would still prefer this more transparent sports scheme to what we have now.

And the plot thickens a little more…

By DONNA BRYSON (AP) – The remorseful coach of a South African runner, Caster Semenya, whose gender has been questioned, has resigned over the way her case was handled, saying she was not told what was being done when she was given tests in South Africa.

Daniels said he found out shortly before Semenya won the race at the world championships in Germany last month that she had been tested in South Africa in July at the IAAF’s behest. He said she was told she was undergoing only a doping test. (only a few minutes before she won? what a coincidence!)

Daniels said he did not know why Semenya was lied to, but said it could have been to protect her feelings at a time when the issue was confidential, as IAAF rules demand. (it’s so touching how much they wanted to protect the so-called her…)

But “when there’s legal implications that an athlete could be barred from competing for life, we need to explain to the individual concerned, look, these are the implications,” Daniels said.

====================================
Legal implications that an athlete could be barred from competing FOR LIFE?!

And the reason that said athlete would be barred for life would be…?

Smells like a pre-emptive resignation. Resign before the bomb explodes and you are forced out in shame.

And what little bomb exploded in the mediasphere Sept 11? (of all dates)

Caster Semenya has male sex organs and no womb or ovaries. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is ready to disqualify Semenya from future events and advise her to have immediate surgery because her condition carries grave health risks. They have also not ruled out stripping Semenya of her 800m world championships gold medal.

While the IAAF are treating the Semenya case as a health matter, with her eligibility to compete in women’s athletics very much a secondary issue, the same South African politicians who denied AIDS was a problem in their country are now blindly standing behind their new queen of the track.

“Well of course Caster is a totally innocent victim in this whole affair,” the source explained. “What could she do about it? And the IAAF accepted her entry. So the two parties at fault are the IAAF and especially Athletics SA. The South Africans have got a massive responsibility, but no one seems to be attacking them.

“Basically they (ASA) have known for months, for years, that she’s not normal. They could have set in process these kind of tests if they had been more responsible.”
=======================

Like I wrote way, way back in Aug. 24, this smelled so bad. This had all the makings of Major FRAUD by SA authorities. And now they are going to go to “war” not to admit it. And unless the IAAF has some real ethical backbone, and doesn’t cave in and engage in a cover-up, a lot of stuff is going to hit the proverbial fan in November.

Oh, BTW, and what are the ASA crooks and SA political parasites? Liberals. Slimy, corrupt liberals. And you know if they could read this post, they would also say that I am ignorant and don’t know what I am talking about. The discourse of self-aggrandizing people is remarkably the same all over the world.

And you know why the IAAF are still going to carry on the tests for two more months? How sweet. Go for it. Unless there is a cover-up, the full lovely answers coming out, in a media outlet near you, in two months.

There was a really stupid (red herring baiting) comment on this thread saying that demanding that an athlete who looks like a man should undergo tests for both drugs and sex/gender verification is an ignorant or confused request. I am betting virtual money that the answer in November will involve both of these combined forms of cheating, as was already denounced in the Bild article. Apparently their source was reliable. But, then again, until now, it is all “alleged.”

And as for Caster, this whole thing about her innocence smells rotten to me. Granted that she is very much a pawn, but certainly an opportunistic one. There may not be doctors in the boondocks of SA, but in top level athletics there are more doctors per square meter than in the NIH. “Girl” has adult male body build, no breasts, has never menstruated, and the little SA top level athletic doctors couldn’t think of the word DSD? No one has ever talked to Caster about this? No one ever did a little exam to find out her internal organs? “Girl” is 18 and has never been to gynecologist? Don’t believe it for a second. My theory: Semenya (certainly advised by a bunch of corrupt baboons) had figured out that checking the “girl” checkbox in the sports competition form would bring her the money, period. She didn’t realize how much it could unravel at the top level. Now she will play the little innocent gender victim card to the joy of the developed world’s gender bending and deforming pseudo-intellecto community.

One thing, though, that struck me as quite tragic in all of this, that I saw no comments about, is that her father is reported to have said he had already so many girls, he was really wishing for a boy when Caster was on the way and that he wanted Caster to be a boy. Then there is this biological mishap which is no one’s choice and, 18 years later, we see Caster “choosing” to act, talk, and dress like a guy. Could this have been to psychologically defend “herself” from her father’s rejection of having yet another girl?

Even Caster may not consciously know the answer to that one.

Give it up Alessandra, this isn’t about petty partisanship and racism or sexism, but how individuals don’t always fit neatly into the boxes authorities prescribe for them and therefore how the expectations of people with a narrow experience of reality are constantly overturned.

Whatever gender Caster Semanya is determined as (or anyone else for that matter), there must be some form of open world-class competition in which it is possible to prove the limits of individual human potential and encourage every single one of us to strive for the best.

I can admit I’m no world-beater, but I can say that because I’ve participated to the fullest in each arena where I’ve had an opportunity. Or do you think it would be better to be an obese TV addict continually griping from the sidelines with increasing bitterness about what other people should not be allowed to do for whatever reason you care to conspire against them?

So without prejudging the case of Caster, if any of the allegations are proven it would be an unfortunate case with a real human story at its heart. Caster obviously loves running, is very good at it and wants to continue – athletics will be all the poorer if the community can find no place for individuals of that level of desire, commitment and ability.

It is no more than an interesting coincidence, but this matter makes for a good comparison with the SA authorities’ responses to the recent case of Oscar Pistorius.

Thomas,

This Semenya case is about so many interwined things, it just unravels in so many directions.

As for what to do about intersex athletes, I have to say that I have been so busy thinking about the doping and the fraud and the sex/gender aspects of this case that I haven’t yet given the question much thought. It’s really a question that requires thinking along multiple, simultaneous lines. It remits into the forefront one of the most fundamental questions about sports: what is fair? If there is a lot of unfairness in sports as it is, where are the convention lines to be drawn?

Some of my initial thoughts on this (and that’s all they are, initial thoughts) :
if Semenya has only a) external female genitalia (ambiguous or not) and b) and a half-formed vagina, and the rest of her body is mostly male, including her hormones (higher than normal for women), it is like for other women to compete against a female athlete on steroids. (I’ve read a few blogs with discussions by researchers and doctors and others on what type of intersex Semenya is, and there is no consensus. I don’t know about the CAISes and the AISes and the alphas and betas, but from my lay understanding, wouldn’t Semenya’s set of male secondary sex characteristics and an abnormally powerful performance rule out the testosterone insensitivity claim? I’ve asked the question and haven’t gotten an answer. Whatever intersex type she is, I am guessing “she” is profitting from her higher levels of testosterone and her sports-related male characteristics. )

Furthermore, according to the Bild’s allegations, Semenya’s testosterone level can be altered using “medication” so that she was not found out in previous doping tests.

So far, everything that was claimed by this article has been reaffirmed by other subsequent allegations. I am waging “her” testosterone levels go way beyond 3 times the female average (either naturally or by “medication”).

And I also observed something that was remarked by other commentators, Semenya ran this race comfortably, “she” had quite a bit more gas, “she” could have crushed her time more. But, maybe, she had been coached not to do it because then the suspect aspects of “her” performance would glare out even more than they already did.

Without knowing what goes on in her biology, it’s hard to guess. Why not let her compete with the steroid-pumped women? Or she can compete with the guys. So she wouldn’t be in the very top level if she competed with the guys, so what?

I know extremely talented volleyball players who aren’t tall enough to play in the top-level teams because nature made them 15 or 20 cm too short. I have always thought, again, just as the issue concerning our drug-infested sports world, that we should have different divisions in pro sports based on height for certain sports. There are some shorter volleyball players who are just as fantastic as the taller ones. Why can’t they play in the best teams and earn money like the taller ones? Because nature made them shorter. Is this fair? Does anyone care? No. Apparently, there was a nature mishap regarding the definition of sex in Semenya. Is it fair? No. Why is it any different than being born too short for so many other sports?

Another example, it would be much fairer if we computed the world high jump record based on bar height compared to body height. A 1.60m-tall woman and a 2.0m-tall woman who both clear a bar at a 2.0m height have not achieved the same feat at all. In fact, the astounding feat, in this fictional example, is really accomplished by the shorter athlete. But in real life, a woman who is 1.60m tall would never be allowed to compete in the high jump. Is this fair? And the muscle differences between white and black people, is this fair in racing? No, but it’s the way it is.

And on the subject of fairness, we could talk for hours, why is it fair for some little idiot to pocket 60 K just for running around in a circle? Or for some other little idiots to pocket *millions* just for throwing or kicking a ball around? Is this fair? When the world has never enough money for hospitals, schools, basic nutrition, and mental health services, is this fair?

on the subject of fairness, we could talk for hours, why is it fair for some little idiot to pocket 60 K just for running around in a circle? Or for some other little idiots to pocket *millions* just for throwing or kicking a ball around? Is this fair? When the world has never enough money for hospitals, schools, basic nutrition, and mental health services, is this fair?

According to what/whose standard of fairness?

Do you think it is unfair that professional sportspeople pay their taxes at the rates decided by their govenments, which goes into paying for the “hospitals, schools, basic nutrition, and mental health services”, which (as you say) will never have ‘enough’ money?

We could spend every last penny we have on health or education, but people would still die prematurely from disease or stupidity.

Am I right in thinking that, if CS were British,

(i) if she were not allowed to compete in women’s athletics she would have a prima facie case for sex discrimination and

(ii) if she were, every woman athlete in the same event(s) would likewise have a prima facie case for sex discrimination.

And, in either case, the EOC’s published priorities (which include establishing precedents) suggest that the case would be publicly funded.

@96,

I’m sure you’re right. If Semenya was British it would make for some fascinating legal cases.

We should open up athletics to everyone, but limit their maximum speed (or whatever) to the lowest common denominator.

That means everyone has a 100% chance of tie-ing equal first with everyone else – surely that is entirely fair.

Will we have to wait until November? Suspense…

(click on link for full article)

A series of “smoking gun” emails are believed to be behind athletics boss Leonard Chuene’s bid to distance himself from the doctor who allegedly oversaw sex testing on athlete Caster Semenya.

The emails contain formal communication between the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and South Africa’s team doctor, Harold Adams, dating from early in August.

And they could prove devastating to Athletics South Africa head Chuene’s claims that they were in the dark about the IAAF sex tests, which he said she was duped into undergoing in Berlin.

Adams, who advised ASA that Semenya should not take to the track in Berlin, has yet to break his silence on his role in the debacle – which could be damaging to his career and status as one of President Jacob Zuma’s doctors.

“I simply refused to withdraw her based on rumours. We were not given anything in black and white. The IAAF constitution also did not make provision for that. At that stage we did not even know about the alleged gender tests we read about in the media that were conducted on Mokgadi (Caster).”

Earlier, he said Adams had told him the medical commission of the IAAF had advised them to withdraw Semenya solely on the basis that they had conducted sex tests on her.

Semenya’s former coach, Wilfred Daniels, maintains ASA general manager Molatelo Malehopo authorised sex testing before Semenya went to Berlin. He also claims ASA deputy president Kakata Maponyane accompanied Semenya when she was tested in Berlin in August.

“Mr Chuene will be embarrassed when the results are released”

In an email sent to IAAF general secretary Pierre Weiss, ASA manager Molatelo Malehopo said the ASA had been inundated with media inquiries alleging that Davies had made a statement that Caster’s results were out and that the local association was impeding the IAAF’s efforts to contact the athlete.

“Mr Chuene will be embarrassed when the results are released and this will leave him with no option but to resign. We need the clarity urgently on these utterances so that we can respond appropriately to the media,” Malehopo’s email read.

Confirming that the IAAF had received Semenya’s test results, Davis told the M&G the IAAF needed to speak to Semenya privately once the results had been verified by its experts. “We hope to have her full cooperation in order to conclude this matter to the satisfaction of the IAAF, and with all respect to her personal rights,” he said.

And the best of the week:

Appropriately named ASAs look like they are in trouble !

This is the contextual historical background for Ekkart Arbeit (the current SA Athletics’ head coach).

East Germany’s monstrous doping program

For a fascinating read on the subject:
http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/43/7/1262

Hormonal doping and androgenization of athletes: a secret program of the German Democratic Republic government
Werner W. Franke1,a and Brigitte Berendonk2

Abstract

Several classified documents saved after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1990 describe the promotion by the government of the use of drugs, notably androgenic steroids, in high-performance sports (doping). Top-secret doctoral theses, scientific reports, progress reports of grants, proceedings from symposia of experts, and reports of physicians and scientists who served as unofficial collaborators for the Ministry for State Security (“Stasi”) reveal that from 1966 on, hundreds of physicians and scientists, including top-ranking professors, performed doping research and administered prescription drugs as well as unapproved experimental drug preparations. Several thousand athletes were treated with androgens every year, including minors of each sex. Special emphasis was placed on administering androgens to women and adolescent girls because this practice proved to be particularly effective for sports performance.

The other thing I was thinking about is that probably the next statement we
will hear from Semenya is, “I am shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that girls
normally have breasts, no beard, and menstruate. Although I am very good at
running around in circles, you may not be aware that I am, in fact, legally
blind.”

Cynicism aside, this whole ambiguous (or contrary to what was previously
claimed) female sex definition for Semenya poses the following conundrum.
Let us suppose, just theoretically, that she was aware of her intersex
condition, but maybe unaware of the full details. She is told she can get by in
the sports women’s category and win lots of money. So she does it. At the
same time, she does all of this while rejecting anything and everything that is
female gender-wise. (Watch any previous interview with her for proof).

As an amusing twist of events, let’s just consider the possibility that Semenya
really does not fall into the acceptable biological category for women as far
as the IAAF goes. Because of it, she is told that she can no longer compete as
a woman. However, she is also told there are no issues for her competing as
a man. So, as of next week, Semenya, all of a sudden, begins to check the
“male” checkbox and tells the world “she” is a “he.” For the first time in “her”
life then, “her” male gender will actually match “her” more male than female sex.

At the same, there were a lot of people around the globe desperate to shove
Semenya into a woman identity, gender, and biology because of various
ideological agendas. To pay respect to the whims of such people, would
South African politicians then welcome her at the airport with signs saying
“Our Ex-First Lady of Sports?” Our “20 percent female woman” has
landed? How about our “former queen of the track, now mediocre third-rate duke”?

I am curious to see the outcome of all of this. If it turns out she is biologically more male than female, will she continue to claim she is a girl, maintain her male gender, but check the male sex checkbox? Or will “she” then say he was a boy mistakenly raised as a girl?

This would be a difficult enough situation for any young person, it has just
been made more difficult in this case by so many groups having chosen
Semenya as their political ping-pong ball.

Caster Semenya: ASA to appear before Parliament, following DA request

The DA’s letter comprised the following request:

“I would like to request that Athletics South Africa, as a matter of urgency, appear before the National Portfolio Committee on Sport and Recreation to explain their role – or lack thereof – in the Caster Semenya debacle, and the numerous consequences that have emanated from it.”

There can be little doubt that ASA has a case to answer for, from its failure to properly protect the interests of Caster Semenya to the appalling manner in which it has failed to fully disclose its role in her testing and the amount of information it knew ahead of the IAAF’s cold and callous public announcement towards the beginning of this month.

It also needs to explain whether or not it undertook its own tests on Semenya, whether it did so openly and transparently, what it did with the results and whether it did everything in its power to keep Caster Semenya herself informed and her privacy protected and upheld.

Reports today suggest that, if indeed ASA did act to test her sex, they did so in a manner which can only be described as grossly humiliating and devoid of empathy or understanding.

The DA will ensure that all these questions are put to ASA, and in particular to its president Leonard Chuene, whom we feel has a great deal to answer for as the person ultimately responsible for ASA and the decisions it has made.

Statement issued by Donald Lee, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of sport and recreation, September 16 2009

And the bomb that exploded today…

One SA newspaper is claiming Caster Semenya was subjected to a humiliating two-hour gender examination in SA that included having her genitals photographed. Her former coach Wilfred Daniels told The Star today the athlete was “distressed and humiliated” by the experience.

And this, Daniels stressed, was done at the behest of Athletics South Africa (ASA) which has repeatedly denied it has tested her.

“The worst part was that she thought she was going for doping tests… she was in no way prepared for what happened,” Daniels said. He himself says he is prepared to undergo a lie detector test to prove that his claims are not false.

This was in direct contravention of International Athletics Association Federation (IAAF) rules, he said.

Following the first gender examination on Semenya, which took place at the Medforum Clinic in Sunnyside before Semenya left South Africa to compete in Berlin, the athlete was so distressed that she SMSed her roommates and friends about what had happened.

Less than a month later, and a day before she won gold in the 800m race in Berlin, Semenya’s ordeal was repeated in the hands of IAAF doctors.

full article:
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5167358

This is an interesting comment as well:

I HAVE a brief, isolated comment to make on the incredibly complex Caster Semenya issue. Would the people who are screaming for her to be left alone and for her to keep her gold medal still have the same view if she had smashed the world record in Berlin with a sub-1:50 performance?

(say under 1:41 perhaps?)

And the plot thickens a little more…oohoo

Name of the LAB DOCTOR, name of the LAB, and NAME OF PSYCHOLOGIST WHO COUNSELED SEMENYA that s/he is intersex, ALL BEFORE BERLIN.

If the info below is correct, one more layer of SA’s fraudulent endeavor exposed.

(click on name for full article)

The M&G reported that Semenya had been tested at the Medforum Medi-Clinic in Pretoria early last month and that she had received counselling from ASA board member and psychologist Laraine Lane before hand.

The tests were conducted by Oscar Shimange, a medical doctor specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology.

The M&G said Chuene had also denied Adams was the official doctor of team SA. Adams was, in fact, commissioned by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to oversee Semenya’s gender tests in SA, and was listed in an ASA press release for the championships as a “team doctor”.
The M&G quoted a senior official close to ASA saying that when Team SA was in Neubrandenburg, Adams received a call from Medforum Medi-Clinic informing him of Semenya’s gender test results, which were “not good”.

The official said Adams then convened a meeting with Chuene and ASA vice-president Kakata Maponyane, among other ASA officials.

Adams advised them to withdraw Semenya from the competition, but they refused, said the M&G.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly’s sport committee yesterday postponed its meeting with ASA, which was scheduled for Tuesday.

This was because of the change in the parliamentary programme next week.
The meeting will be rescheduled in the next parliamentary term, starting on October 6 . — SDR, additional reporting by Sapa