Gender test for South African athlete

[andyandy]

upon news that in the world Championships a female 800 m athlete is to undergo a gender test I was wondering as to what such a test would involve, and what outcomes would constitute not being allowed to compete as a woman. With all the various chromosome combinations can you only compete if you have xx? And with the athletics Federation saying that the tests will take several months, why do they take such a long time (I presume it is more complicated than "drop your trousers please." :))

[andyandy]

Here are the details:

South African 800m star Caster Semenya has been asked to take a gender test, according to athletics' governing body.

The International Association of Athletics Federations says it demanded the test three weeks ago amid fears she should not be able to run as a woman.

IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said the "extremely complex, difficult" test results were not due for several weeks.

The South African athletics federation insist it is "completely sure" that the 18-year-old Semenya is a female.

"We would not have entered her in the female competition if we had any doubts," said a statement.

Semenya is considered a favourite to win gold in Wednesday's 800m final at the World Championships in Berlin.

She burst onto the world stage earlier this year, running 1.56.72 in Bambous three weeks ago, smashing her previous personal best by more than seven seconds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/8210471.stm

[Rolfe]

I recall hearing about a woman athlete many years ago who was banned because of some sort of chromosome abnormality. She later married and had a baby.

Rolfe.

[andyandy]

As a quick update, she's just destroyed the field to win the 800 m by about two seconds. Whatever the end results of the tests are it seems pretty dreadful that the athletics Federation have made this public today. It should have been handled in a discreet manner only being made public if it was later ruled that she couldn't compete. They afford athletes who have failed a drugs test anonymity until a B sample confirms a positive test, it would seem only fair to afford her anonymity as well.

[Agatha]

I remember this case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhi_Soundarajan

Google found this: http://www.medhelp.org/ais/articles/MARIA.HTM

[Darat]

They refer to as a gender test rather than a sex determination test - and from the report it appears that they take into account a lot more than just her biology.

I suggest she starts wearing more pink.

[Rrose Selavy]

The problem as I understand it is is that an athlete must complete as the gender originally specified on their birth certificate - and with some medical conditions that isn't necessarily going to be correct. What actually determines sex/gender isn't that clear cut .
Often "intersex" or babies with ambiguous genitalia are assigned and brought up as females early on because to put it crudely surgically it is easier later on to remove than add "working" tissue- and it is felt better to have a fixed gender as early a possible (for the parents sake also)
Also these issues may not become apparent even to the person involved until puberty( or lack of it ) or they decide they want to start a family.

[sol invictus]

This (http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/08/caster-semenya-male-or-female.html) says the standard is that she be "entirely female".

[Rrose Selavy]

http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/gendertest/gendertest.html


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-bqET22vEU

[Stacy Head]

I saw this today and was confused. Can she not just drop trou and prove she is a woman? Is there a gender reassignment in question? The IOC is getting very pricky, I mean picky.

[Delvo]

There are at least a dozen different "intersex" disorders causing traits that are neither masculine nor feminine but usually somewhere between. It can happen not only by chromosome oddities like XXY but also by other interferences in a fetus with normal chromosomes, like a burst of adrenal (normally not sex-related) hormones in an XX fetus causing partial masculinization despite the lack of a Y chromosome or testes or any significant amount of testosterone, or the cells of the rest of the body just not reacting to testosterone in an XY fetus regardless of how much there is, or an ovarian abnormality causing simple failure to produce (a significant amount of) feminizing hormones in an XX fetus so it never gets either feminized or masculinized.

These conditions have their own separate symptoms, but they also tend to have some symptoms in common. One is that the people's groins tend to superficially resemble women's reproductive organs because the differences between their undetermined state and a true female are mostly internal (little or no inward development of the vagina, no uterus, possibly partially descended ovaries/testes or glands structured like testes but located where ovaries belong). The other is that the secondary sex-linked traits, like muscle size and lung capacity and body/facial hair and subcutaneous fat and facial & pelvic shapes, tend to be between the normal forms for men and women... which, because men generally have an athletic advantage over women, means these people do, too, but can often seem to be women for their whole lives and even think that they are women. The result of this combination of facts is that, although people with these conditions are rare, they disproportionately end up in female athletics, and the higher the level in the female athletic world you look, the more their number gets concentrated.

Part of the difficulty with testing is the number of different conditions that can cause this. A chromosome count won't work because some of them have normal chromosomes. A hormone level measurement won't work because some of them have normal hormone levels, especially as adults. A pelvic X-ray won't work because they usually have pelvises that are normal or close enough to it to be indeterminate, not definitively masculine ones. Probably, each type of sex-determination disorder has its own specific test, and some genetic and other biochemical tests can easily take one or more weeks.

[Rolfe]

Look at the picture in this news article. It may have been selected to accentuate the problem, but I can easily see why there are suspicions.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/sport/headlines/display.var.2526431.0.Gender_row_erupts_after_teen agers_gold_rush.php

I'm very sorry for the girl, but I suspect there's a fair chance she'll be found to be some sort of intersex,

Rolfe.

[Skwinty]

I heard her speak on the telly this evening and she even sounds male.
I too, feel sorry for her.

[Professor Yaffle]

I wonder if she has some sort of disorder that causes excess testosterone? I know PCOS does - and causes an increase in hirsuteness. Maybe she has an extreme form of this?

[shadron]

This (http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/08/caster-semenya-male-or-female.html) says the standard is that she be "entirely female".

Rose's reference to the HHMI is a very good representation of the problems facing the arbiters of Semenya's gender. It differs from Sol's blog reference which says that all indications must be that she is female for her to be declared female; in the HHMI reference it is possible, as in the demo case, that everything indicates female except that she has a Y chromosome, and it says that the athletic world would accept her as female in spite of her chromosomal analysis.

I recommend Rose's link: http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/g...endertest.html (http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/gendertest/gendertest.html)

[shadron]

I saw this today and was confused. Can she not just drop trou and prove she is a woman? Is there a gender reassignment in question? The IOC is getting very pricky, I mean picky.

No she can't; see the link in in Rose's posting to the HHMI for the problems. Also it isn't the IOC involved in this. It is International Association of Athletics Federations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_Athletics_Federations ) who is demanding the testing.

[sleepy_lioness]

Those links are very educational, thanks. It seems that the main issues are:

There are lots of possible causes for someone to be intersex. These include chromosomal abnormalities as well as hormone issues and having-active-receptors-for-the-hormones issues.

People with these issues will generally have female-looking external genitalia (which is why you can't do a dropped-trousers test) but may vary wildly as to what equipment they have inside.

They tend to have body size and muscular development somewhere between a typical female and a typical male. Which is why they are over-represented among female athletes, particularly at the highest levels.

I was also interested to find that women such as those with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (ie, XY-women: they just lack functioning androgen receptors and so don't develop male sex characteristics but are infertile) are allowed to compete as women as of right. I can't imagine what else the authorities would do, since CAIS women generally feel completely female and are brought up and accepted as such, but it does raise interesting questions about whether they have an advantage.

[GreyICE]

I was also interested to find that women such as those with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (ie, XY-women: they just lack functioning androgen receptors and so don't develop male sex characteristics but are infertile) are allowed to compete as women as of right. I can't imagine what else the authorities would do, since CAIS women generally feel completely female and are brought up and accepted as such, but it does raise interesting questions about whether they have an advantage.

And the further question of if it's really the job of the Athletics Federation to care about these sorts of genetic advantages.

I mean Shaq is 7'1", and can jump high enough to dunk a basketball in the hoop. I'm 5'11", and jump like a white guy. I offer that he has certain genetic advantages as compared to me.

I think we have to accept that in sports, as in most aspects of life, some people have a genetic advantage. Having a completely fair playing field isn't gonna happen.

[drkitten]

And the further question of if it's really the job of the Athletics Federation to care about these sorts of genetic advantages.

Yes.

When there are rules, the rules need to be enforced. There's no height rule in basketball, which means that Shaq is better than you and will be rewarded appropriately.

If I decide that I want to start a sub 6' jumps-like-a-white-guy professional basketball league, and I write in to the league bylaws that all players must be less than 6' tall and bad jumpers, then it's unfair to the rest of you if I let Shaq play. (Or, more likely, if I let a good-but-not-great college basketball star who couldn't make it in the NBA play. He could make good money as a standout in this league, if it weren't for the fact that he's 6'8" and it wouldn't be legal for him to play.)

In this case, there are rules that say women get to compete against other women, just like you get to play against other sub 6' guys who can't jump. And if someone comes in who's 6'2", I have a duty to go out and measure him, and if necessary, disqualify him from the league.

[GreyICE]

Yes.

When there are rules, the rules need to be enforced. There's no height rule in basketball, which means that Shaq is better than you and will be rewarded appropriately.

If I decide that I want to start a sub 6' jumps-like-a-white-guy professional basketball league, and I write in to the league bylaws that all players must be less than 6' tall and bad jumpers, then it's unfair to the rest of you if I let Shaq play. (Or, more likely, if I let a good-but-not-great college basketball star who couldn't make it in the NBA play. He could make good money as a standout in this league, if it weren't for the fact that he's 6'8" and it wouldn't be legal for him to play.)

In this case, there are rules that say women get to compete against other women, just like you get to play against other sub 6' guys who can't jump. And if someone comes in who's 6'2", I have a duty to go out and measure him, and if necessary, disqualify him from the league.
So let me get this straight - you are 100% behind the idea that a woman is defined completely and solely as a person born with two XX chromosomes and no hormonal abnormalities? I don't want to misrepresent you before I tear into this idea.

[drkitten]

So let me get this straight - you are 100% behind the idea that a woman is defined completely and solely as a person born with two XX chromosomes and no hormonal abnormalities?

No. I am 100% behind the idea that the IAAF can define a woman for purposes of their competitions completely and solely as a person born with two X chromosomes and no hormonal abnormalities. I am also 100% behind the idea that they can define a woman, for purposes of their competitions, as an Emperor penguin, or as a small green mechanical pencil, or as a rock so heavy God can't lift it, or as a superintelligent shade of the color blue.

Because it's their competition and their definition.

And if you don't like their definition, don't compete. Or start your own athletic federation and define "woman" as a superintelligent shade of the color yellow.

They didn't pull this stuff out of thin air, you know. These rules came about because people were complaining about unfairness. Just as Fina has adjusted the rules on legal swimwear in light of the controversy that swim meets were no longer fair -- it was a question of who your sponsor was, and not how well you could swim.

[GreyICE]

No. I am 100% behind the idea that the IAAF can define a woman for purposes of their competitions completely and solely as a person born with two X chromosomes and no hormonal abnormalities. I am also 100% behind the idea that they can define a woman, for purposes of their competitions, as an Emperor penguin, or as a small green mechanical pencil, or as a rock so heavy God can't lift it, or as a superintelligent shade of the color blue.

Because it's their competition and their definition.

And if you don't like their definition, don't compete. Or start your own athletic federation and define "woman" as a superintelligent shade of the color yellow.

They didn't pull this stuff out of thin air, you know. These rules came about because people were complaining about unfairness. Just as Fina has adjusted the rules on legal swimwear in light of the controversy that swim meets were no longer fair -- it was a question of who your sponsor was, and not how well you could swim.
The FINA thing is a perfect example, actually. It's pretty damn easy to do something about it when the association decides you're wearing an illegal swim suit. You change your suit.

I can do that in the locker room in about 30 seconds, if I'm feeling lazy and slow. However will I step into the locker room to change my genetic code?

Now we both agree that since it's their competition, they can define woman however they like. I mean they could define it as "Person with boobs and white skin" if they felt like it.

I could call them narrow-minded bigots if they did that. I WILL call them narrow-minded bigots if they exclude this woman because her genetic code doesn't pass their particular purity test.

Do you have a problem with this concept?

[drkitten]

I could call them narrow-minded bigots if they did that. I WILL call them narrow-minded bigots if they exclude this woman because her genetic code doesn't pass their particular purity test.

Do you have a problem with this concept?

Not especially. You're permitted to have your own opinion, which is not required to bear any relationship to logic, evidence, or reason.

[laca]

I could call them narrow-minded bigots if they did that. I WILL call them narrow-minded bigots if they exclude this woman because her genetic code doesn't pass their particular purity test.

Do you have a problem with this concept?

I know you didn't adress this to me, but anyway, I do.

How does your definition exclude males from competing with women? Why are males to be excluded? Because they have an advantage just from being males. (And this does not in any way mean that all males are better than any female.) If 0.1% of the otherwise female population have an advantage just because some condition (genetic, hormonal, ...), isn't it more sensible to discriminate them instead of the other 99,9%?

You can't have 100% fairness, so you settle with what comes closest. How is that narrow-minded bigotry?

[GreyICE]

Not especially. You're permitted to have your own opinion, which is not required to bear any relationship to logic, evidence, or reason.

Of course the concept that excluding a woman from something because she doesn't meet your particular standards of genetic purity is totally logical. And calling that bigoted is illogical, not based on evidence, and irrational.

I dunno. I mean I agree people espousing the notion of genetic purity have done a lot for humanity, so I guess I sympathize with your position on it. I'm glad your genes are very pure.

Back in sanity land, discrimination on the basis of 'genetic purity' is bigotry.

[GreyICE]

I know you didn't adress this to me, but anyway, I do.

How does your definition exclude males from competing with women? Why are males to be excluded? Because they have an advantage just from being males. (And this does not in any way mean that all males are better than any female.) If 0.1% of the otherwise female population have an advantage just because some condition (genetic, hormonal, ...), isn't it more sensible to discriminate them instead of the other 99,9%?

You can't have 100% fairness, so you settle with what comes closest. How is that narrow-minded bigotry?

It's pretty simple. There's a men's competition and a woman's competition. These broad categories are intended to separate the genders based on physical capacity, since the advantage the men have over the women is enormous.

What advantage does this hypothetical genetic difference grant her? Well, she broke the African junior world record by 2.13 seconds, which means she ran it 1.8% faster than the previous world record holder. 1.8%.

But that was in the junior championships. The world record? 1:53.28. Her personal best is 1:55.45.

Now that's damn fast. She's only 2 seconds behind the goddamn world record. That's really, really fast.

It's still hard to say what difference this genetic abnormality has granted her. I mean she's not beating the world record time. She did get the fastest time this year, but we're not looking at the Michael Phelps of women's running here.

Now, 2 seconds behind the world record, she's a damn good runner. What's the men's record? 1:41.11.

She's 14 seconds behind that. Fourteen bloody seconds. She isn't even close to scratching the men's times.

So whatever this hypothetical disorder is, at most it makes her... good at running. Not 'better than any woman that's ever lived' good. Not 'inconceivably fast' good.

Just... good.

And because of this genetic disorder that MIGHT give her more capacity to run fast (protip: no one's in there because they run slow), you'd disenfranchies her, take away her ability to compete at running. Why? Because her genes aren't pure enough?

Please. You say you're doing this for the 99.9%? Protip #2: 0.1% is a LOT more than can compete at that level of running. You could pick a thousand women off the street of new york, and not one of them could do that. A hundred thousand.


So you're not looking at the top 0.1%. You're looking at what? The top 0.01%? The top 0.001%? Here's a hint: they all have genetic advantages that help them run faster. They all also train hard.

But you? You'd take away her right to run. Because not all genetic advantages are created equal. Because some genetic advantages are good, and some genetic advantages are bad.

Look at those times again. Then tell me she's anything other than a very good woman runner. Then tell me if the principle of universal enfranchisement is worth more than the principle of genetic purity.

[Rolfe]

Something about this is a bit odd. Thirty years ago when I was a post-grad student, one of the other students in my group was an athlete - a long jumper I think. She'd competed at Commonwealth Games level.

She told me about having to take a "sex test" whenever she competed in a high-level competition. It involved plucking out a little bit of hair with a hair root, and doing something on the hair root. She and another Scots girl encountered trouble quite often because they had very fine hair, and it was inclined to break off at the shaft rather than pull out a root, and they were then called back for another test. Everybody was questioning why they were being recalled, but it was only because of the fine hair problem.

She then went on to tell me about another athlete, can't remember the nationality, who had been barred from competition because she was some sort of genetic intersex. However, she was entirely phenotypically female, and later went on to marry and have a baby.

So if Myra was right and they were doing routine sex tests on hair follicles 30 years ago, why hasn't this been addressed before now?

Rolfe.

[Ivor the Engineer]

Why are women allowed to compete in athletic sports such as running when they can't compete with the fastest men?

She's fast for a woman, seems like women are being treated as a special-needs group. Are they?

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Something about this is a bit odd. Thirty years ago when I was a post-grad student, one of the other students in my group was an athlete - a long jumper I think. She'd competed at Commonwealth Games level.

She told me about having to take a "sex test" whenever she competed in a high-level competition. It involved plucking out a little bit of hair with a hair root, and doing something on the hair root. She and another Scots girl encountered trouble quite often because they had very fine hair, and it was inclined to break off at the shaft rather than pull out a root, and they were then called back for another test. Everybody was questioning why they were being recalled, but it was only because of the fine hair problem.

She then went on to tell me about another athlete, can't remember the nationality, who had been barred from competition because she was some sort of genetic intersex. However, she was entirely phenotypically female, and later went on to marry and have a baby.

So if Myra was right and they were doing routine sex tests on hair follicles 30 years ago, why hasn't this been addressed before now?

Rolfe.

I believe it has been addressed, if you look at Rrose Selavys link http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/g...endertest.html (which I posted in the other thread on this subject) there seem to be clear rules on what hormonal or genetic conditions prohibit athletes from competing as women. Because the conditions are complex and hard to test for, and also because it's a very intrusive thing to test it's done on an ad-hoc basis rather than on all female athletes.

As your example suggests a simple hair follicle test which defines someone who is capable of having children as 'not female' leaves a bit to be desired.

Whatever the outcome of this, I hope she takes the IAAF to court and gets substantial damages for them being unable to do this discreetly.

[Rolfe]

In the other thread, someone posted a link to an article which seems to discuss this (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/30/olympicgames2008.gender).

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced sex testing in 1968 at the Olympic games in Mexico City, after the masculine appearance of some competitors, many pumped up by anabolic steroids, had started to raise questions about the gender of athletes in female events. Unsurprisingly, gender-determination tests were seen as degrading, with female competitors having to submit to humiliating and invasive physical examinations by a series of doctors. Later, the IOC decided to use a supposedly more sophisticated genetic test, based on chromosomes. Women usually have two X chromosomes; men an X and a Y chromosome. So, according to the rules of the test, only those athletes with two X chromosomes could be classed as women. However, many geneticists criticised the tests, saying that sex is not as simple as X and Y chromosomes and is not always simple to ascertain. [that was probably the test Myra was referring to]

[....] At the Atlanta games in 1996, eight female athletes failed sex tests but were all cleared on appeal; seven were found to have an "intersex" condition. As a result, by the time of the Sydney games in 2000, the IOC had abolished universal sex testing [....]


Rolfe.

[Twiler]

The distinction between men and women in athletic activities doesn't seem especially progressive. Perhaps in the future there'll be a division based on the build of the people involved. That way, we'd avoid this sort of confusion.

Are there any other reasons for this division?

[Rolfe]

Human beings exhibit a fair degree of sexual dimorphism, which is why it has always seemed reasonable to split the competition classes. It's a bit of a shame for the few people who don't categorise exactly though.

Note that equine athletics classes are not normally split like this, because males, females and castrates perform more or less comparably.

Rolfe.

[sleepy_lioness]

I'd never thought of that - do you have any idea why the difference between horses and people, Rolfe?

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Note that equine athletics classes are not normally split like this, because males, females and castrates perform more or less comparably.

I'd just like to say I will resist as strongly as I can any proposal to introduce the third category into human athletics.:eek:

[Rolfe]

I'd never thought of that - do you have any idea why the difference between horses and people, Rolfe?


Equine species just don't exhibit sexual dimorphism in that area. Ape species do. Maybe it's because mares need to be just as good at running away as stallions. Note that even foals can keep up from an age that can be measured in hours rather than days.

Rolfe.

[drkitten]

Why are women allowed to compete in athletic sports such as running when they can't compete with the fastest men?

Because athletic competition is something a lot of people like to do.

When it's fair.

Allowing men to compete against women at running is unfair; men, as a group, have a huge natural advantage.


She's fast for a woman, seems like women are being treated as a special-needs group. Are they?

No, they're not being treated as a special needs group.

Any more than wrestlers are treated as a special needs group when they're divided into weight categories, or than "senior" runners (or "junior" runners) are treated as a special needs group in a typical public marathon.

[Molinaro]

Of course the concept that excluding a woman from something because she doesn't meet your particular standards of genetic purity is totally logical. And calling that bigoted is illogical, not based on evidence, and irrational.

I dunno. I mean I agree people espousing the notion of genetic purity have done a lot for humanity, so I guess I sympathize with your position on it. I'm glad your genes are very pure.

Back in sanity land, discrimination on the basis of 'genetic purity' is bigotry.

What a pile of tripe.

The haughty tone you've taken, trying to twist this into some quest for genetic purity is nothing short of a dishonest misrepresentation of the situation.

This is a track meet, and nothing more. The only goal of their rules is to present a fair competition. Trying to imply anything more than that is baseless.

[laca]

It's pretty simple. There's a men's competition and a woman's competition. These broad categories are intended to separate the genders based on physical capacity, since the advantage the men have over the women is enormous.


How do you define a woman?


What advantage does this hypothetical genetic difference grant her? Well, she broke the African junior world record by 2.13 seconds, which means she ran it 1.8% faster than the previous world record holder. 1.8%.

But that was in the junior championships. The world record? 1:53.28. Her personal best is 1:55.45.

Now that's damn fast. She's only 2 seconds behind the goddamn world record. That's really, really fast.

It's still hard to say what difference this genetic abnormality has granted her. I mean she's not beating the world record time. She did get the fastest time this year, but we're not looking at the Michael Phelps of women's running here.

Now, 2 seconds behind the world record, she's a damn good runner. What's the men's record? 1:41.11.

She's 14 seconds behind that. Fourteen bloody seconds. She isn't even close to scratching the men's times.


Irrelevant.


So whatever this hypothetical disorder is, at most it makes her... good at running. Not 'better than any woman that's ever lived' good. Not 'inconceivably fast' good.


Just like men's "hypothetical disorder" makes them better at running than women.



And because of this genetic disorder that MIGHT give her more capacity to run fast (protip: no one's in there because they run slow), you'd disenfranchies her, take away her ability to compete at running. Why? Because her genes aren't pure enough?


No. First of all, I have nothing to do with it. It's not my decision. There are rules. Stop appealing to emotion.


Please. You say you're doing this for the 99.9%? Protip #2: 0.1% is a LOT more than can compete at that level of running. You could pick a thousand women off the street of new york, and not one of them could do that. A hundred thousand.


So you're not looking at the top 0.1%. You're looking at what? The top 0.01%? The top 0.001%? Here's a hint: they all have genetic advantages that help them run faster. They all also train hard.

But you? You'd take away her right to run. Because not all genetic advantages are created equal. Because some genetic advantages are good, and some genetic advantages are bad.


Those damn rules... Men's advantages are also genetic. Where to draw the line? Tough question.


Look at those times again. Then tell me she's anything other than a very good woman runner. Then tell me if the principle of universal enfranchisement is worth more than the principle of genetic purity.

Would you let a man run in the women's competition even though he's got no chance to win (i.e. he's a bad runner)?

It isn't about genetic purity. That's a strawman, and you know it. Nobody said that, except you. It is simply about the rules of a specific competition.

[GreyICE]

How do you define a woman?

Irrelevant.

Just like men's "hypothetical disorder" makes them better at running than women.

No. First of all, I have nothing to do with it. It's not my decision. There are rules. Stop appealing to emotion.

Those damn rules... Men's advantages are also genetic. Where to draw the line? Tough question.

Would you let a man run in the women's competition even though he's got no chance to win (i.e. he's a bad runner)?

It isn't about genetic purity. That's a strawman, and you know it. Nobody said that, except you. It is simply about the rules of a specific competition.
Really? It isn't about genetic purity? Then why is this even an issue? She was born a woman, grew up as a woman, never had a sex change. The charge isn't taking hormones, steroids, or other performance enhancing drugs.

All you're left with at that point is 'we don't like her genes.' That's pretty pathetic.

Now you, you posited something very clear: that letting her compete with this condition was unfair to the other runners. Now I demonstrated that her 'unfair competition' was neither particularly unfair, nor particularly outside the bounds of what the other women would rationally expect to be up against in competition.

You said "You can't have 100% fairness, so you settle with what comes closest." But when I demonstrate that her advantage is NOT unfair, what is your response?

"Irrelevant." Cute. So any facts, figures, or information that debunks your argument is 'irrelevant.' Did you pick up that line of logic from the CT forum?

Then, and this is my favorite: you accuse me of appealing to emotion. You make an appeal to the concept of fairness, I debunk the idea that it's unfair with numbers, and the person who is appealing to some abstract concept of fairness is being 'logical' while the person using numbers is being 'emotional.'

[drkitten]

You said "You can't have 100% fairness, so you settle with what comes closest." But when I demonstrate that her advantage is NOT unfair, what is your response?

I don't know. When you actually make that demonstration instead of a series of strident appeals to emotion, we'll see what the response is.

[kerikiwi]

Note that equine athletics classes are not normally split like this, because males, females and castrates perform more or less comparably.


You mean the jockeys also, don't you?

[Delscottio]

Really? It isn't about genetic purity? Then why is this even an issue? She was born a woman, grew up as a woman, never had a sex change. The charge isn't taking hormones, steroids, or other performance enhancing drugs.



I know this sounds daft, but how do you know she was born a woman and raised as one. People do lie from time to time.

[laca]

Really? It isn't about genetic purity? Then why is this even an issue? She was born a woman, grew up as a woman, never had a sex change. The charge isn't taking hormones, steroids, or other performance enhancing drugs.

All you're left with at that point is 'we don't like her genes.' That's pretty pathetic.


You are forgetting about the rules. Go whine to the IAAF about their rules. As long as the rules stand, she might be disqualified if she breaks the rules. It doesn't have to be intentional.


Now you, you posited something very clear: that letting her compete with this condition was unfair to the other runners. Now I demonstrated that her 'unfair competition' was neither particularly unfair, nor particularly outside the bounds of what the other women would rationally expect to be up against in competition.


You demonstrated no such thing.


You said "You can't have 100% fairness, so you settle with what comes closest." But when I demonstrate that her advantage is NOT unfair, what is your response?

"Irrelevant." Cute. So any facts, figures, or information that debunks your argument is 'irrelevant.' Did you pick up that line of logic from the CT forum?


Take a chill pill. The facts are yet to be discovered after the tests are done.


Then, and this is my favorite: you accuse me of appealing to emotion. You make an appeal to the concept of fairness, I debunk the idea that it's unfair with numbers, and the person who is appealing to some abstract concept of fairness is being 'logical' while the person using numbers is being 'emotional.'

Oh so as long as there are numbers there can't be appeal to emotion? Next to the numbers, perhaps?

Heading back to the CT forum... :boxedin:

[Professor Yaffle]

I know this sounds daft, but how do you know she was born a woman and raised as one. People do lie from time to time.

I have read enough comments from people who have known her at school etc to know that she was raised female - despite being very tomboyish.

[GreyICE]

You are forgetting about the rules. Go whine to the IAAF about their rules. As long as the rules stand, she might be disqualified if she breaks the rules. It doesn't have to be intentional.

You demonstrated no such thing.

Take a chill pill. The facts are yet to be discovered after the tests are done.

Oh so as long as there are numbers there can't be appeal to emotion? Next to the numbers, perhaps?

Heading back to the CT forum... :boxedin:
Please. First, lets examine your claim that I have not demonstrated that you are wrong.

Your original claim was as such:

How does your definition exclude males from competing with women? Why are males to be excluded? Because they have an advantage just from being males. (And this does not in any way mean that all males are better than any female.) If 0.1% of the otherwise female population have an advantage just because some condition (genetic, hormonal, ...), isn't it more sensible to discriminate them instead of the other 99,9%?

But I have conclusively demonstrated that allowing her to compete is not unfair to other women. She does not represent a level of competition that they should be unprepared to face, given that she is not outside the bounds of the best women athletes. Since they are competing for the title of best women athlete in the entire world, they should be prepared to face competition at the level of the best women in the world.

So your fairness argument is completely, utterly, and 100% debunked. You may state for a third time it is not, but it is not hard for anyone reading this to figure out how pathetic that denial sounds. When women are competing at the title for 'best in the world' it is not surprising for them to face people who are 2 seconds behind the world record. It cannot be considered an unfairness to them to allow her to compete.

And for the record, an appeal to an abstract concept of fairness is almost always an appeal to an emotion. But I demonstrated with numbers that her level of competition was not unfair - that's why my argument was not an appeal to emotion.

Now you may note my closing statements evoke some emotions in you. They should. Having a rational argument does not exempt one from feeling anything - the idea of the unfeeling Vulcan saying 'most illogical' was an idea that even Star Trek poked fun at - emotions and logic can coexist.

But when you construct an argument entirely out of a call for fairness, it's an appeal to emotion. When you demonstrate the competition isn't unfair using times, records, and numbers, it's an appeal to our ability to count.


Now we move onto your next claim - that it is against the rules. This may or may not be true (you are assuming something that hasn't been proven yet). But even if it was proven true... so what? There used to be a rule that little black kids couldn't go to school with little white kids. There used to be a rule that women couldn't wear pants, or vote. There used to be a rule that if you had premarital sex, you were condemned and possibly killed.

So yes. There's a rule. A rule is something different than a law of physics. A rule is an edict, made by a body, for their own purposes, and enforced by people at their own pleasure, for whatever reason they want to enforce it. In this case, I think we can all agree that if she was mediocre (merely 4th or 5th in the ranks of 'best runner in the world') we wouldn't be having this discussion. So part of their purpose is to make sure the sport's champions are 'pure' enough.

I submit your rule was made by hypocrites, and enforced haphazardly, and for inscrutable reasons. It is a bad rule. You may type 'there are rules!' but this does not exempt those rules from making rational sense. I submit they do not. If you merely wish to view all rules that do not directly impact you as obviously right because they are right, you are engaged in sloppy thinking. Then again, there were lots of people who thought that damn woman should have sat in the back of the bus, like the rule said. Takes all sorts.



Finally, yes, you can remain in the CT forum, your little box. I wouldn't mind. But if you venture out, feel free to get smacked down whenever your logic is this bad.

[GreyICE]

I know this sounds daft, but how do you know she was born a woman and raised as one. People do lie from time to time.

At the moment, there's enough people stating this, and absolutely no reason to disbelieve them. You may assume the birth certificate is faked, the coaches are lying, the surgeons who did the plastic surgery are paid off, her teammates she practiced with are ignorant or also lying, and that anyone who checked the records after this claim has either chosen to remain silent - or the records have been altered.

Sure, you can believe that. On zero evidence whatsoever, I'm going to say that if you propose that we should follow this line of logic, you must provide something that would incline us to believe it. Otherwise, I shall discount it for now - the multitude of statements that she was born and raised a woman, and the silence I've seen of contradicting evidence, merits dismissing the possibility until something new shows up.

[ponderingturtle]

Human beings exhibit a fair degree of sexual dimorphism, which is why it has always seemed reasonable to split the competition classes. It's a bit of a shame for the few people who don't categorise exactly though.

Note that equine athletics classes are not normally split like this, because males, females and castrates perform more or less comparably.

Rolfe.

The other thing is that there is plenty of differences within sexes as well. This is why many events have things like weight classes, but many also do not.

I am not sure why power lifting has weight classes, but there are not say height classes for runners.

[Delvo]

I have conclusively demonstrated that allowing her to compete is not unfair to other women.You have not, at least not by the definition of "fair" that's relevant here, which is about group performance trends, not specific individuals' performance. I'm male, and I presumably could not outrun most of the women in these races, but I am not allowed to race against them... not because of an advantage I myself have over any one of them, but because of the advantage that my demographic group has over their demographic group. There are many non-sexed people in the world, most of whom also can't outrun any pro racer either. But, in the world of elite racing, just as surely as men do better than women, it's already known that people with no sex (for any of a bunch of different medical reasons, not just the "genes" you keep harping on as if that were the only possible cause) have, overall as a group, an advantage over women. That fact does not depend on, or change as a result of, any individual's failure to demonstrate the overall trend.

If it's "unfair" to base sports rules on group data like that, then it's unfair to have separate men's and women's sports at all. So the fact that there are men's races and women's races means that the pro athletic world has adopted a definition of fairness that separates people based on group data and does not respond to individual results such as by letting a man who is slower than the fastest compete against women, even if they'd still outrun him. By that concept of fairness, the relevant and applicable one to sports that are separate by sex, your argument proves nothing.

For your argument to prove anything, we'd have to be talking about a sport in which men and women don't perform substantially differently, or one in which the question of which competitors face each other and which ones don't face each other is determined in some individualized manner which allows men and women to face each other. If you want to advocate that racing should be that way, then consistency would demand that it must apply to men as well as to people who are neither men nor women.

She does not represent a level of competition that they should be unprepared to face, given that she is not outside the bounds of the best women athletes.What if "she" is only that close to real women's performance results due to not a particularly good competitor for the type (people with whatever particular disorder this person has)? There are also men who would get about the same results as this person, or worse, because they just don't operate particularly close to the potential for their type (the male sex). Your argument would apply just as well to them, and the relevant authoritative organization has already decided that it does not accept such an argument.

In other words, if the women in these races are nearly 100% as fast as a woman could possibly be, and that happens to be only 90% as fast as a man could possibly be, then an adult with no sex could match it by running only about 95% as fast as a person with that condition could possibly be. It's a lower standard for the group, just as surely as it would be a lower standard for men.

Since they are competing for the title of best women athlete in the entire world......they should actually, you know, BE women.

So your fairness argument is completely, utterly, and 100% debunked.Not quite. Just add a bit more bombast and bluster, and then maybe it will be.

When women are competing at the title for 'best in the world' it is not surprising for them to face people who are 2 seconds behind the world record. It cannot be considered an unfairness to them to allow her to compete.It can, however, be considered an unfairness to them to allow people of the same basic biological group that this individual is a member of to compete. It's not an individual thing. It's a group thing. Either you're in the group (in this case sex, in some sports weight class or such), or you're not. If she's not actually female, she's in some other category, and what's been deemed unfair is pitting the categories against each other.

Now we move onto your next claim - that it is against the rules. This may or may not be true (you are assuming something that hasn't been proven yet).You think it might be within the rules for somebody who isn't a woman to compete in a women's sport? That's a pretty clear case of a misplaced burden of proof; a women's sport is by definition one that only women are allowed to compete in. It's up to you so show exactly which other types are allowed in despite not being female. Are people with Turner Syndrome in and people with Klinefelter Syndrome out? Does mosaicism require deeper investigation to determine exactly which body parts are affected?

I submit your rule was made by hypocrites, and enforced haphazardly, and for inscrutable reasons. It is a bad rule. You may type 'there are rules!' but this does not exempt those rules from making rational sense. I submit they do not.Undoing the rule that only women are to compete against other women would knock more women out of the competitions completely, whether you flung the doors open completely (thus ensuring that men win every race) or did it more selectively (including some or all intersex disorders but not men, thus ensuring that a vastly disproportionate supply of the winners of the races would be intersex and an intersex competitor was close to guaranteed to win). It's no less unfair to the women you'd be pushing out that way than the current situation is to those with no sex.

[GreyICE]

You have not, at least not by the definition of "fair" that's relevant here, which is about group performance trends, not specific individuals' performance. I'm male, and I presumably could not outrun most of the women in these races, but I am not allowed to race against them... not because of an advantage I myself have over any one of them, but because of the advantage that my demographic group has over their demographic group. There are many non-sexed people in the world, most of whom also can't outrun any pro racer either. But, in the world of elite racing, just as surely as men do better than women, it's already known that people with no sex (for any of a bunch of different medical reasons, not just the "genes" you keep harping on as if that were the only possible cause) have, overall as a group, an advantage over women. That fact does not depend on, or change as a result of, any individual's failure to demonstrate the overall trend.

If it's "unfair" to base sports rules on group data like that, then it's unfair to have separate men's and women's sports at all. So the fact that there are men's races and women's races means that the pro athletic world has adopted a definition of fairness that separates people based on group data and does not respond to individual results such as by letting a man who is slower than the fastest compete against women, even if they'd still outrun him. By that concept of fairness, the relevant and applicable one to sports that are separate by sex, your argument proves nothing.

For your argument to prove anything, we'd have to be talking about a sport in which men and women don't perform substantially differently, or one in which the question of which competitors face each other and which ones don't face each other is determined in some individualized manner which allows men and women to face each other. If you want to advocate that racing should be that way, then consistency would demand that it must apply to men as well as to people who are neither men nor women.

What if "she" is only that close to real women's performance results due to not a particularly good competitor for the type (people with whatever particular disorder this person has)? There are also men who would get about the same results as this person, or worse, because they just don't operate particularly close to the potential for their type (the male sex). Your argument would apply just as well to them, and the relevant authoritative organization has already decided that it does not accept such an argument.

In other words, if the women in these races are nearly 100% as fast as a woman could possibly be, and that happens to be only 90% as fast as a man could possibly be, then an adult with no sex could match it by running only about 95% as fast as a person with that condition could possibly be. It's a lower standard for the group, just as surely as it would be a lower standard for men.

But you see here, you've written five paragraphs, and they're all examples of begging the question. Your entire, unquestioned premise (yes, that's the original meaning) is that this genetic condition she hypothetically has... makes her run faster.

But why does it make her run faster? Because she has it and she runs fast. Bullcrap. That's the first logical flaw most of us learn. "I eat my cheerios every day and I have the best math scores in the school!" First principles on that logical flaw.

Your next argument is that she's getting an unfair boost, and could really be running faster than the world record, but she's not performing up to maximum.

She could also grow giant wings and fly to Mars. I mean who the hell knows? I mean that's not even a fallacy. That's just random speculation. Maybe she has a genetic disorder, maybe that genetic disorder makes her a faster runner, maybe the reason she isn't blindingly faster than all the women is that she's really not as good of a runner as them, etc. So we've demolished that line.

Finally, we get into the last section. What I call genetic snobbery. Because that's what it is. You hypothesize that women can do 90%, she can do 95%, men can do 100%.

Lets consider that for a second. I randomly pick a baby. I decide that baby is going to be the fastest runner in the world. I train that baby for all of her life. Have I trained the fastest runner in the world?

Probably not. Genetics plays a huge part in it. Kid has short legs? Difficulties building muscle tissue in the right spot? Got the codes for a set of double Ds that kicks in at a bad time? Guess what? Not the best runner in the world. Oh she's good. Very, very good. But not the best.

So each and every woman up there is the winner of some sort of genetic lottery. They have also trained their asses off.

This woman has also trained her ass off. Maybe she won a slightly different genetic lottery.


Finally, the quotation marks you used are hellishly offensive. "She?" Really? The doctor walks in tomorrow and tells you that you're XO. Male, except that you have absolutely no Y gene, and some interesting conditions you're going to enjoy down the road.

You telling me that you're now not a man, not a woman? Shut the hell up, you'd still be a guy, and we both know it. Your blatant phobias are sick.









...they should actually, you know, BE women.

Not quite. Just add a bit more bombast and bluster, and then maybe it will be.
Phobia and amusing comments. I could cut out part of your writing and make fun of you too. But why bother, when it's all bollocks, and I can just point THAT out?


It can, however, be considered an unfairness to them to allow people of the same basic biological group that this individual is a member of to compete. It's not an individual thing. It's a group thing. Either you're in the group (in this case sex, in some sports weight class or such), or you're not. If she's not actually female, she's in some other category, and what's been deemed unfair is pitting the categories against each other.

You think it might be within the rules for somebody who isn't a woman to compete in a women's sport? That's a pretty clear case of a misplaced burden of proof; a women's sport is by definition one that only women are allowed to compete in. It's up to you so show exactly which other types are allowed in despite not being female. Are people with Turner Syndrome in and people with Klinefelter Syndrome out? Does mosaicism require deeper investigation to determine exactly which body parts are affected?

Undoing the rule that only women are to compete against other women would knock more women out of the competitions completely, whether you flung the doors open completely (thus ensuring that men win every race) or did it more selectively (including some or all intersex disorders but not men, thus ensuring that a vastly disproportionate supply of the winners of the races would be intersex and an intersex competitor was close to guaranteed to win). It's no less unfair to the women you'd be pushing out that way than the current situation is to those with no sex.

But, as I pointed out above, you've begged the question of intersexuality providing all the benefits that you've listed. As it stands, all you have is one piece of anecdotal evidence. Lance Armstrong is a fast cyclist. Lance Armstrong had cancer. Cancer makes you bike faster?

That one little piece of begging the question has completely demolished your sad argument here. I don't even have to go into asking about the lovely little genetic witch hunts you've proposed - do you know mosaic genes frequently show up in only one part of the body? I might be XY everywhere, but have an XX or XO right arm, or something along that line.

I mean how much of your body does it have to be before your witch hunt kicks in?

Finally, you end with a lovely slipper slope. Eventually the sport will be entirely dominated by intersexuals. Cute. We go from one woman, possibly with a genetic disorder, who can run fast.

From this it's hypothesized that the disorder makes you run faster, that it makes you run not only faster, but faster than is possible for any woman, and that soon these evil "intersexuals" will come to dominate women's running... all this. From one possibly intersexual woman whose a good runner.



Yeah. This doesn't reek of bigotry or anything :rolleyes:

[Uncayimmy]

Just some food for thought on the subject of gender separation in general.

Are women as a whole inferior in track and field sports due to genetics? In my mind there is no doubt that the social component plays a large role in this apparent observation. Starting a young age, more little boys enter into competitive sports than young girls. As girls mature, they tend to drop out of sports more than boys. No, I don't have the actual statistics on this, but I feel pretty safe saying this based on years of observation. As you drive around looking at kids playing pick-up games of basketball, football, soccer, and baseball, how many are girls? Very few. So, right off the bat we have a self-selection issue.

There is also the social issue. This woman was called a tomboy by some. It is not generally considered feminine to be athletic. Prominent muscles and smaller breasts, which are conducive to athletic success, are not considered the feminine ideal. So we have pressure that way as well.

Then there's the issue of training at the elite level. It costs money. Athletes need sponsors. Like it or not, men make more money through sponsorships because as it stands now, they are run faster, jump higher/farther, etc. People want to see and emulate the best of the best. Women are treated as second tier, so those that choose to pursue it to the international level are at a disadvantage.

One thing I decided to look at was the history of world records in track and field.

History of World Records: Men have records going back earlier than women, so I noted the earliest men's time/distance in parentheses. The range of records for men given is over a comparable point in time to the first women's record recorded. The year in parantheses after the range is the year of the current world record. The Improvement is the men vs women over the comparable time period noted in years.

100M
Men: (10.3) 10.6 to 9.78 (2002)
Women: 11.7 to 10.49 (1998)
Improvement: 0.82 vs 1.21 (75 years)

200M
Men: 20.36 to 19.32 (1996)
Women: 23.6 to 21.34 (1988)
Improvement: 1.04 vs 2.29 (74 years)

400M
Men: (47.8) 45.2 to 43.18 (1999)
Women: 57.0 to 47.6 (1985)
Improvement: 2.02 vs 9.4 (52 years)

800M
Men: (1:52.8) 1:50.6 to 1:41.11 (1997)
Women: 2:16.8 1:53.28 (1983)
Improvement: 9.49 vs 23.52 (81 years)

1000M
Men: (2:32.3) 2:16.0 to 2:11.96 (1999)
Women: 2:35.9 to 2:28.98 (1996)
Improvement: 4.04 vs 6.92 (37 years)

1500M
Men: (3:55.8) 3:33.1 to 3:26.0 (1998)
Women: 4:17.3 to 3:50.46 (1993)
Improvement: 7.1 vs 26.84 (42 years)

2000M
Men: (5:30.4) 5:20.4 to 4.44.79 (1999)
Women: 6:42.0 to 5:35.6 (1994)
Improvement: 35.61 vs 66.4 (72 years)

5000M
Men: (14:36.6) 13.06.29 to 12:39.06 (1998)
Women: 15:14.31 to 14.28.09 (1997)
Improvement: 27.23 vs 46.22 (28 years)

High Jump
Men: (200) 209 to 245 (1993)
Women: 165 to 209 (1987)
Improvement: 36 vs 44 (77 years)

Pole Vault
Men: 402 to 614 (1994)
Women: 123 to 482 (2003)
Improvement: 212 vs 359 (100 years)

As we can see, in some events the current top female athletes could have beaten the top male athletes of yesteryear. In every single case the improvement of women's world records has been far more dramatic than for men. However, we also see that most of the current world records for women are older than current world records for men.

In both cases it looks a lot like the athletes are approaching the limits of the human body, but I would argue that perhaps the women still have a ways to go based on the broad range of improvement and what is obviously a smaller pool of candidates entering the sport.

Like I said, it's just food for thought.

[sleepy_lioness]

Finally, the quotation marks you used are hellishly offensive. "She?" Really? The doctor walks in tomorrow and tells you that you're XO. Male, except that you have absolutely no Y gene, and some interesting conditions you're going to enjoy down the road.

You telling me that you're now not a man, not a woman? Shut the hell up, you'd still be a guy, and we both know it. Your blatant phobias are sick.



Quite. No matter what the genetic tests on this woman show - even if she has some sort of intersex condition (I'd hesitate even to use the term 'disorder' because some intersex conditions plainly aren't), and if this gives her an unfair advantage, and if the authorities decide, in their infinite wisdom that she shouldn't be allowed to compete in women's athletics, she would still be a woman, and it would still be highly disrespectful and bigoted to refer to her as "she" in quotation marks. She was listed female on her birth certificate, brought up female, all her family and friends know her as such, and presumably she feels female. How it could ever possibly be correct or polite to refer to her as 'he' or 'it' I can't see.

[jhunter1163]

She's only two seconds off the world record at the age of 18. Her body is likely not yet fully mature. Usain Bolt wasn't running those times at 18. Given another couple of years, I have little doubt that Semenya will lower the world record in the women's 800 significantly if she is allowed to compete as a woman.

[laca]

Please. First, lets examine your claim that I have not demonstrated that you are wrong.

Your original claim was as such:

How does your definition exclude males from competing with women? Why are males to be excluded? Because they have an advantage just from being males. (And this does not in any way mean that all males are better than any female.) If 0.1% of the otherwise female population have an advantage just because some condition (genetic, hormonal, ...), isn't it more sensible to discriminate them instead of the other 99,9%?



Ok, do you understand what a claim is? The only claim I made there was related to males having an advantage over women in athletics. The rest are questions. A question is not a claim. You could have answered those questions. You did not.


But I have conclusively demonstrated that allowing her to compete is not unfair to other women. She does not represent a level of competition that they should be unprepared to face, given that she is not outside the bounds of the best women athletes. Since they are competing for the title of best women athlete in the entire world, they should be prepared to face competition at the level of the best women in the world.


Remains to be seen. I'm not saying whether it is unfair or fair, just that it could be.


So your fairness argument is completely, utterly, and 100% debunked. You may state for a third time it is not, but it is not hard for anyone reading this to figure out how pathetic that denial sounds. When women are competing at the title for 'best in the world' it is not surprising for them to face people who are 2 seconds behind the world record. It cannot be considered an unfairness to them to allow her to compete.


My fairness argument was hypothetical, in case they find something. So, yeah, if you suppose there isn't anything to be found, then you can say it is debunked. Duh.


And for the record, an appeal to an abstract concept of fairness is almost always an appeal to an emotion. But I demonstrated with numbers that her level of competition was not unfair - that's why my argument was not an appeal to emotion.


Probably that's why my monitor almost weeped...


Now we move onto your next claim - that it is against the rules. This may or may not be true (you are assuming something that hasn't been proven yet). But even if it was proven true... so what? There used to be a rule that little black kids couldn't go to school with little white kids. There used to be a rule that women couldn't wear pants, or vote. There used to be a rule that if you had premarital sex, you were condemned and possibly killed.


You are assuming also. She hasn't been disqualified yet. She's only being tested. Who's the hypocrite now?


I submit your rule was made by hypocrites, and enforced haphazardly, and for inscrutable reasons. It is a bad rule. You may type 'there are rules!' but this does not exempt those rules from making rational sense. I submit they do not. If you merely wish to view all rules that do not directly impact you as obviously right because they are right, you are engaged in sloppy thinking. Then again, there were lots of people who thought that damn woman should have sat in the back of the bus, like the rule said. Takes all sorts.


It's not my rule. It's the IAAF's. It might be a bad rule. Complain to them. It's not my decision to make that rule. I cannot invalidate it. Also, there's that appeal to emotion/strawman again with the women in the end of the bus...


Finally, yes, you can remain in the CT forum, your little box. I wouldn't mind. But if you venture out, feel free to get smacked down whenever your logic is this bad.

My logic might be bad, but fortunately yours is worse. In this case anyway.

[sol invictus]

It's pretty simple. There's a men's competition and a woman's competition. These broad categories are intended to separate the genders based on physical capacity, since the advantage the men have over the women is enormous.

Grey, how would you propose to determine which category an athlete falls under?

If it's just by what they say, what's to stop men from claiming to be women?

If it's birth certificate, what if it's faked? What additional verification could confirm it?

If it's a biological test, what would you propose if not something more or less like what they're already doing?

[Stacy Head]

For the sake of arguement let's say she is intersex. She has lived as a woman her entire life, why does it matter if she is intersex? In my opinion, the IAAF is walking a thin line.

[Delvo]

Your entire, unquestioned premise (yes, that's the original meaning) is that this genetic condition she hypothetically has... makes her run faster.

But why does it make her run faster? Because she has it and she runs fast.I do believe that an intersex condition would make an individual faster than the same person would be if she were truly female but otherwise the same. But you already know that the reason you just claimed for why I believe that is not the actual reason why I think that. We've already discussed previously in this thread the fact that people with no actual sex due to a variety of medical developmental conditions have a history of being found among the top athletes in female sports, vastly out of proportion to the number of them in the general population. It's not a supposition about this individual but an observed statistical fact based on numerous prior recorded experiences in professional athletics. (Some texts even use such inordinately successful sexless athletes in female sports as examples in defining and describing what intersex conditions even are in the first place.)

Claiming that my reason for thinking something that's a well-established medical and historical fact is just that "she (hypothetically) has it and runs fast", even after I've already talked about the prior cases that this basic knowledge about intersex conditions comes from, is simply a lying.

That's lie #1 from you (in the most recent post).

Your next argument is that she's getting an unfair boost, and could really be running faster than the world record, but she's not performing up to maximum... That's just random speculation.That was not an argument but an illustration of the fact that intersex conditions create traits that are somewhere between male and female, neither one nor the other, so a statement that applies to a comparison between men in general and women in general also applies to sexless adults in general and women in general... just not to the same extent, but the same basic types of comparisons hold. Compared to women in general, sexless adults in general can run faster and farther and lift more and so on.

Using examples or illustrations to explain an established fact is not making an argument. So claiming that it is, is lying. That's lie #2 from you in that same post. Also, a statement about statistical trends in comparisons between groups is not a statement about any individual, so you've doubled up on this one and given us lie #3 at the same time by trying to pretend that I had said anything about any individual when I was talking about groups.

Maybe she has a genetic disorderAgain with the genetics! There are other causes of some of these disorders, yet you insist on pretending either that the genetic ones are the only ones that exist, or that anybody else but you has claimed so. That's lie #4, and a fairly peculiar obsession on your part. You keep harping on "genetic purity" so much that it makes me wonder how you'll react if they find that this is a case of some other kind of intersex condition. Will you then suddenly switch to accusing us all of trying to enforce "purity" of some other, non-genetic, factor?

You hypothesize that women can do 90%, she can do 95%, men can do 100%.Lie #5. Each group has its own 100% level, the fastest that a member of that group could possibly ever run. That's not even a hypothesis but an obvious fact given that people's speeds can not be infinite. The point was that one group's 100% speed is not the same speed as another group's 100% speed.

each and every woman up there is the winner of some sort of genetic lottery.True (finally!), but irrelevant. Nobody's talking about what makes one woman different from another woman. And you know it, so responding on that subject is pretending that it's something that I or someone else has talked about before, and that makes it lie #6 (arguing against yet another straw man).

Finally, the quotation marks you used are hellishly offensive. "She?" Really?Yes, really. If a person is not female, then feminine pronouns don't exactly apply, any more than masculine pronouns do if the person is not male. One set of pronouns or the other may be used for convenience, but when doing so, I am compelled to acknowledge the fact that it is a non-standard (and not biologically accurate) usage for convenience... particularly when the whole subject is the DIFFERENCES between such people and men or women.

The doctor walks in tomorrow and tells you that you're XO... you have absolutely no Y gene, and some interesting conditions you're going to enjoy down the road.

You telling me that you're now not a man, not a woman?Precisely (with the contradictory part removed where I put in the ellipsis; otherwise the statement would be self-contradicting and thus could never possibly be entirely true in anybody's case regardless of sex or biological condition). That's been the entire point all along. People with intersex conditions have no sex. They are not men. They are not women. They are another, separate type of person (which our language doesn't have pronouns for).

Shut the hell upThat's just weird. What is the basis for your claim to be in a position to give me orders? And what is the basis for thinking that I would agree that I am in the position of taking and obeying them from you?

Phobia and amusing comments.Amusement is a matter of opinion or taste, not fact, but phobia is something else. It means both fear, and some interference or disruption of the life of the person who has the fear. You've just claimed not only that I'm afraid of... something (I'm not even sure what)... but also that it's somehow preventing me from doing what I want or need to do, preventing me from living my life as I would choose to live it. Those are lies #7 and #8. And I'm not even sure what the point of these could have been, because "phobia" just doesn't have anything to do with anything here. You might as well have been accusing me of driving a Toyota pickup truck with a Dodge Ram bumper sticker.

Lance Armstrong is a fast cyclist. Lance Armstrong had cancer. Cancer makes you bike faster?Another straw man, but at least this time you gave this one a name.

Straw men are always lies because using them is claiming that the person you're using them against said something which that person did not say. That's #9.

the lovely little genetic witch hunts you've proposedI am not in control of, or even a member of, the athletic association which decides whether and how to make sure that the athletes competing in certain women's events are actually women. Lie #10.

Also, a genetic test or any other test for any other medical abnormality (which you keep pretending, for no apparent reason, don't exist) is not a witch hunt, or even anything close to being even vaguely similar. That's like calling a Toyota Tacoma a gerbil. Lie #11.

do you know mosaic genes frequently show up in only one part of the body?Irrelevant, of course, and obviously completely unrelated to anything I've said, but I just don't get many chances in this thread to quote you saying something true.

Finally, you end with a lovely slipper slope. Eventually the sport will be entirely dominated by intersexuals.Lie #12. People who grow up to be sexless are a very small fraction of the population, and only some fraction of them even attempt to go into sports, and some fraction of them wouldn't be as good as the best of them can be. That alone prevents them from completely taking over. If there were more of them, maybe, but there aren't.

However, history has shown, in the form of a vastly inordinate number of them being found among highly successful athletes in women's sports, that a sexless adult is many times more likely to win such competitions against women than a woman is. Athletic associations tend to avoid mixing groups between which the odds are so uneven like that, with members of one group statistically so much more likely to succeed (or having such an easier time doing so) than members of the other group.

...these evil "intersexuals"...I cut out the rest of this paragraph because it was just repeating lies I've already counted above and I didn't want to run up your score too steeply on nothing but a pile of repeats... but this one claim that you snuck into the middle there is a whole new one: #13!

You know perfectly well that I haven't called anyone evil here or done anything else that could ever seriously be mistaken for it. What's the point of making up a lie that's so far out of left field, so patently bizarre and absurd, that it has no chance of fooling anybody? (Don't bother answering. I've got no reason right now to expect the answer to be true either.)

This... reek<s> of bigotryAnd there's #14, pretending that anything I've said has had anything to do with accusing anybody of something bad based on what group that person is a member of.

At least you didn't finish on an unlucky number.

[GreyICE]

Cute Delvo. Too bad you've decided to define 'lie' as 'statement I can't actually discuss.' Lets examine your so-called lies.

You say that I lie when it's just your claim.

It remains... just your claim. You have stated that intersexual atheletes are found disproportionately in women's sports. But this does not establish intersexualism conveys athletic ability. But this fails to establish that intersexualism conveys athletic ability. You have linked to no study, established no science. So it remains your claim.

But lets say that you're right, and you actually have good studies to back up this piece of crap you're using to disguise your bigotry. It doesn't even establish intersexualism conveys atheletic ability. All it establishes is that intersexuals are more likely to become atheletes than the general population. That's it.

Fact: Failure to back up your claims with actual studies. Failure to establish that the studies mean what you think they mean. Failure to explain your mechanisms - no, this remains your claim, with no evidence behind it. Fail.

You say I lie when I say you're full of crap. But, as I've just shown, you have no idea what scientific studies mean, are reading WAY too much into the evidence, and are generally... full of crap.

You say I lie when I say these are genetic disorders. That are detected by a genetic test. Do I have to explain how you're full of crap?

You say I lie when I explain how your examples of speeds suck. No. Don't blame me for your pitiful examples - when I tear them to shreds, I'm not lying. The source material was given to me by an idiot - explaining how stupid they are isn't lying.

You say I lie when I say we are comparing one woman to another. I say that that's what women's sports is - if we're not comparing them to eachother, what are we comparing them to? Apples? Bloody stupid.

You say I lie when I said that you said that the sport would be completely dominated by intersexuals. This may be confusing for the audience. Lets examine the chain of statements:

thus ensuring that a vastly disproportionate supply of the winners of the races would be intersex and an intersex competitor was close to guaranteed to win)

Finally, you end with a lovely slippery slope. Eventually the sport will be entirely dominated by intersexuals.
Lie #12.

This is what you consider a lie. Me restating your words. Hilarious.


You claim I lie when I parrot your own words back to you. You claim I lie when I point out holes in your reasoning. You claim I lie when I call you a bigot for thinking of intersexuals as sexless. You claim I lie when I whenever I point out this bigotry in your writing, in your words, in the very way you phrase things.

You claim I lie when I say that women's running is about comparing one woman to another. You say I lie when I state intersexualism is genetic. You say I lie when I say you have a phobia about this crap.



Your definition of lie is clearly laughable. Lie means 'anything that shows Delvo is full of bullcrap.' Anyone can see how stupid the above is. Now if you want to have a real discussion... it's probably impossible for you. Try quoting my posts and responding to them. You appear to be writing on the level of a 14 year old kid, in a message aimed at 14 year old kids. Would that be a lie? Yeah, probably. I gave you 6 extra years you didn't earn.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think the fundamental problem is just that we normally divide the world up into men and women, and intersex people occupy an awkward gray area that's hard to make rules about.

If we had to pigeonhole this athlete as either male or female, I think it's obvious she'd be classed as female. She was born female, raised as female and has female external bits. She's clearly more female than male.

However the governing athletics body seems to want to make up an in-between category for people who aren't male and aren't female. Presumably they think the gains to fairness of excluding intersex people from women's sport outweigh the unfairness of excluding intersex people from competitive sport altogether. Personally since I find it hard to take sport seriously in the first place I say let her run in the women's division: her abilities are within the known scope of female athletic abilities, and anyway it's only sport. Who really cares who wins? It doesn't change anything whoever comes first.

My cynical gut feeling is that these sorts of rules are heavily politically driven, and written to exclude or include particular athletes.

[Aitch]

This is a track meet, and nothing more. The only goal of their rules is to present a fair competition. Trying to imply anything more than that is baseless.

OK, so why not have a system of handicapping like with horse-racing? "You keep winning races, so from now on you will run carrying a backpack filled with sand."

[laca]

I think the fundamental problem is just that we normally divide the world up into men and women, and intersex people occupy an awkward gray area that's hard to make rules about.


Agreed. It is even harder to determine whether there is a place for separate rules.


If we had to pigeonhole this athlete as either male or female, I think it's obvious she'd be classed as female. She was born female, raised as female and has female external bits. She's clearly more female than male.


Yes.


However the governing athletics body seems to want to make up an in-between category for people who aren't male and aren't female. Presumably they think the gains to fairness of excluding intersex people from women's sport outweigh the unfairness of excluding intersex people from competitive sport altogether. Personally since I find it hard to take sport seriously in the first place I say let her run in the women's division: her abilities are within the known scope of female athletic abilities, and anyway it's only sport. Who really cares who wins? It doesn't change anything whoever comes first.


Well it changes the name on the winner's paycheck... ;)


My cynical gut feeling is that these sorts of rules are heavily politically driven, and written to exclude or include particular athletes.

I disagree. I think these rules are heavily sporting community driven.

[Pup]

I probably missed it somewhere, but let's say, hypothetically, she's barred from women's sports for being not female enough. Several posters have seemed to imply that she would then be barred from competing, period. Would she truly be barred from competing at all, or just from succeeding at the same level?

Wouldn't she be allowed to compete in men's sports? Admittedly, she'd have less chance of winning at the elite level, but then so would I and a lot of other men (um, zero chance in my case).

Or do men's sports have gender tests to exclude women or anyone not defined as "male enough"? Has that ever come up?

[sol invictus]

Will you answer this simple question, Grey?

It's pretty simple. There's a men's competition and a woman's competition.Grey, how would you propose to determine which category an athlete falls under?

If it's just by what they say, what's to stop men from claiming to be women?

If it's birth certificate, what if it's faked? What additional verification could confirm it?

If it's a biological test, what would you propose if not something more or less like what they're already doing?

[ponderingturtle]

For the sake of arguement let's say she is intersex. She has lived as a woman her entire life, why does it matter if she is intersex? In my opinion, the IAAF is walking a thin line.

Depends in how strong you want to preserve the utility of sexual discrimination in sports.

[shuttlt]

I probably missed it somewhere, but let's say, hypothetically, she's barred from women's sports for being not female enough. Several posters have seemed to imply that she would then be barred from competing, period. Would she truly be barred from competing at all, or just from succeeding at the same level?

Wouldn't she be allowed to compete in men's sports? Admittedly, she'd have less chance of winning at the elite level, but then so would I and a lot of other men (um, zero chance in my case).

Or do men's sports have gender tests to exclude women or anyone not defined as "male enough"? Has that ever come up?
Women may be better than men in ultra long distance events:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrid_Ben%C3%B6hr

Maybe someday there will be gender testing of the type you describe in these events.

[zooterkin]

According to the Torygraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/6078171/World-Athletics-Caster-Semenya-tests-show-high-testosterone-levels.html), she has high levels of testosterone.

A source close to the investigation into the 800 metres gold medallist 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.

Telegraph Sport can also reveal that the head coach of the South African team is Dr Ekkart Arbeit, the former East German coach who was accused by a female athlete of giving her so many anabolic steroids that she was forced to undergo a sex-change operation and live the rest of her life as a man.

[Rolfe]

Hmm, I glanced at a newspaper article on Saturday that said imaging studies had shown that she doesn't have all the normal female organs. Funny thing, I can't find the article online today.

I think we need to wait for the full findings of the investigation. However, if she does have abnormally high testosterone levels (for a woman) then that would undoubtedly give her a speed and strength advantage over "normal" women. A female athlete would be banned if she injected testosterone into herself to achieve that effect.

Should a phenotypically female (well not entirely but passably so) athlete be allowed that advantage if the testosterone is come by naturally?

Rolfe.

[GreyICE]

Will you answer this simple question, Grey?
Jesus, you were serious?



Grey, how would you propose to determine which category an athlete falls under?

If it's just by what they say, what's to stop men from claiming to be women?

If it's birth certificate, what if it's faked? What additional verification could confirm it?

If it's a biological test, what would you propose if not something more or less like what they're already doing?



Seems like a practicality issue to me. There's only two categories, male or female. All we have to do is decide which she's in. And those are reasonably broad headings.

A combination of genetic testing and hormone testing seems to work fine. Honestly, not particularly complicated. The IOC has some common sense rules about it, and frankly, I have no problems with THOSE.

In any case, you've completely ignored the fact that the issue isn't deciding whether she falls into the box 'male' or the box 'female' it's deciding how the boxes are defined.

So you've completely, utterly, 100% missed the point.

[sol invictus]

Jesus, you were serious?

Yes.



A combination of genetic testing and hormone testing seems to work fine. Honestly, not particularly complicated. The IOC has some common sense rules about it, and frankly, I have no problems with THOSE. Hmm. OK.

So... can you explain what you meant by "Really? It isn't about genetic purity? Then why is this even an issue? She was born a woman, grew up as a woman, never had a sex change. The charge isn't taking hormones, steroids, or other performance enhancing drugs.

All you're left with at that point is 'we don't like her genes.' That's pretty pathetic."

In any case, you've completely ignored the fact that the issue isn't deciding whether she falls into the box 'male' or the box 'female' it's deciding how the boxes are defined.

But how to define the boxes is exactly what I asked you about.

So you've completely, utterly, 100% missed the point.Err....

[Yoink]

Hmm, I glanced at a newspaper article on Saturday that said imaging studies had shown that she doesn't have all the normal female organs. Funny thing, I can't find the article online today.

I think we need to wait for the full findings of the investigation. However, if she does have abnormally high testosterone levels (for a woman) then that would undoubtedly give her a speed and strength advantage over "normal" women. A female athlete would be banned if she injected testosterone into herself to achieve that effect.

Should a phenotypically female (well not entirely but passably so) athlete be allowed that advantage if the testosterone is come by naturally?

Rolfe.

If she is androgen insensitive (as seems quite likely), then the high testosterone levels are unimportant; she lacks the necessary receptors to respond to testosterone. Women who are androgen insensitive are born 46,XY but develop as female because the testosterone has no effect on their development.

The Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome)article is actually pretty good on this subject:
If a 46,XY fetus cannot respond to testosterone or DHT, only the non-androgenic aspects of male development begin to take place: formation of testes, production of testosterone and anti-müllerian hormone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-m%C3%BCllerian_hormone) (AMH) by the testes, and suppression of müllerian ducts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCllerian_ducts). The testes usually remain in the abdomen, or occasionally move into the inguinal canals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inguinal_canal) but can go no further because there is no scrotum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrotum). AMH prevents the uterus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uterus) and upper vagina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina) from forming. The testes make male amounts of testosterone and DHT but no androgenic sexual differentiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation) occurs. Most of the prostate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate) and other internal male genital ducts fail to form because of lack of testosterone action. A shallow vagina forms, surrounded by normally-formed labia. Phallic tissue remains small and becomes a clitoris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoris). At birth, a child with CAIS appears to be a typical girl, with no reason to suspect an incongruous karyotype and testosterone level, or lack of uterus.

Androgen insensitivity would account for abnormal internal development, abnormally high testosterone levels, and her rather gender-neutral appearance.

Many androgen insensitive women have been allowed to compete in international women's sports before now. There seems to be no good evidence that it conveys an unfair advantage (in fact, being testosterone insensitive should, in theory, be a disadvantage).

[Rolfe]

If she is androgen insensitive (as seems quite likely), then the high testosterone levels are unimportant; she lacks the necessary receptors to respond to testosterone. Women who are androgen insensitive are born 46,XY but develop as female because the testosterone has no effect on their development.

The Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome)article is actually pretty good on this subject:

Androgen insensitivity would account for abnormal internal development, abnormally high testosterone levels, and her rather gender-neutral appearance.

Many androgen insensitive women have been allowed to compete in international women's sports before now. There seems to be no good evidence that it conveys an unfair advantage (in fact, being testosterone insensitive should, in theory, be a disadvantage).


My own impression is that she doesn't physically look like an androgen insensitive woman. These individuals tend to be tall and willowy, often having sucessful careers as models (apart from anything else they don't get acne so they often have luminous skin), and so far as the gender-neutral appearance goes, it takes the form of a "gamine" look, elven if you like, not the rather butch appearance we see in Semenya. Or that's how I've always understood it.

However, I could well be wrong - we'll see when the test results are published, which sadly they'll have to be since the whole thing has become so public.

Rolfe.

[GreyICE]

Yes.


Hmm. OK.

So... can you explain what you meant by "Really? It isn't about genetic purity? Then why is this even an issue? She was born a woman, grew up as a woman, never had a sex change. The charge isn't taking hormones, steroids, or other performance enhancing drugs.

All you're left with at that point is 'we don't like her genes.' That's pretty pathetic."

But how to define the boxes is exactly what I asked you about.

Err....

Nooooooooo. What you asked me was pretty specific:

Grey, how would you propose to determine which category an athlete falls under?

The question there is "What test do you use?" Not "How do you define the categories?" Every followup 100% supports this interpretation, which leads me to at least suspect that's what you meant.

I'll give you good faith benefit of the doubt, and assume that you meant something other than what you typed.

In that case I'd simply reply that I'd prefer to define gender as a perceptual issue (since it defies definition as either a hormonal or genetic one) and say that if a person's legal gender is their actual gender, unless it can be proved (preponderance of the evidence) that it is not, under IOC rules of competition.

That's a fairly specific answer.

[Dr. Trintignant]

That's a fairly specific answer.

So what is the point of having categories at all, if there is no relationship between the determined gender and the qualities that (generally speaking) lead men to have an advantage in sports?

Should a transgendered individual who lives as a female, but has not undertaken any operations or hormone replacement therapy, be allowed to compete as a female?

Note that while many jurisdictions require some sort of medical treatment to legally change genders, not all do--some only require proof that the individual has established a gender role different from the one at birth.

- Dr. Trintignant

[Yoink]

My own impression is that she doesn't physically look like an androgen insensitive woman. These individuals tend to be tall and willowy, often having sucessful careers as models (apart from anything else they don't get acne so they often have luminous skin), and so far as the gender-neutral appearance goes, it takes the form of a "gamine" look, elven if you like, not the rather butch appearance we see in Semenya. Or that's how I've always understood it.

However, I could well be wrong - we'll see when the test results are published, which sadly they'll have to be since the whole thing has become so public.

Rolfe.

This isn't my field at all, so I'll be happy to be corrected on this, but I thought that the phenomenon you describe applied to only a portion of androgen insensitivity cases. I thought there were just as many (perhaps more) who were seen as physically "mannish."

[GreyICE]

So what is the point of having categories at all, if there is no relationship between the determined gender and the qualities that (generally speaking) lead men to have an advantage in sports?

Should a transgendered individual who lives as a female, but has not undertaken any operations or hormone replacement therapy, be allowed to compete as a female?

Note that while many jurisdictions require some sort of medical treatment to legally change genders, not all do--some only require proof that the individual has established a gender role different from the one at birth.

- Dr. Trintignant
IOC rules of competition state that if a transgender individual has undergone gender reassignment surgery, and has been taking hormone therapy for a period of time sufficient for the therapy to remove any muscle/hormonal advantages they may have had from their birth gender, they are eligible to compete under their legal gender. They did this because testimony by geneticists combined with the evidence they had gathered from their own genetic tests showed them that gender was a far more complicated issue than the simple binary, and thus broader definitions than perhaps Delvo would like are much more sensible and supported by science than narrow, knee-jerk reactionary ones.

This seems eminently fair to me, as a balanced way of handling the issue.

[sol invictus]

The question there is "What test do you use?" Not "How do you define the categories?" Every followup 100% supports this interpretation, which leads me to at least suspect that's what you meant.

What? That wasn't the distinction you claimed I had missed earlier.

I'll give you good faith benefit of the doubt, and assume that you meant something other than what you typed. You're not making any sense.

In that case I'd simply reply that I'd prefer to define gender as a perceptual issue (since it defies definition as either a hormonal or genetic one) and say that if a person's legal gender is their actual gender, unless it can be proved (preponderance of the evidence) that it is not, under IOC rules of competition.

That's a fairly specific answer.It's not specific, and it completely begs the question. First off, legal gender can be changed in many countries, and so there's nothing preventing men from changing their legal gender to female. Second, you didn't answer the heart of my question because you didn't specify how you would go about proving "that legal gender is not actual gender", whatever "actual gender" is supposed to be.

[GreyICE]

What? That wasn't the distinction you claimed I had missed earlier.

You're not making any sense.

It's not specific, and it completely begs the question. First off, legal gender can be changed in many countries, and so there's nothing preventing men from changing their legal gender to female. Second, you didn't answer the heart of my question because you didn't specify how you would go about proving "that legal gender is not actual gender", whatever "actual gender" is supposed to be.

Okay, you've talked yourself into a pretty serious circle here. I'm going to try to walk through this, to see if I understand.

My distinction was:

It's pretty simple. There's a men's competition and a woman's competition. These broad categories are intended to separate the genders based on physical capacity, since the advantage the men have over the women is enormous.

You then proceeded to ask me how I would determine what category each athlete would fall under. You followed this by three very specific GENDER TESTS in question form. That lead me to believe I was being asked to create a gender test.

As I consider that a manifestly stupid distraction, to rather throw the entire thread off topic (as you could start an entire thread just on how to test for genders - and that's if you had an agreed upon definition) I ignored it.

You badgered me for a response, at which point I responded that I found the entire thing rather manifestly stupid.



Now stop me if I'm wrong here, but that's how we got up to the last exchange.

Now we are at the point where you stated you didn't want a gender test, you wanted me to define gender. Nevermind that's a thorny issue that's created a good mile of controversy in biology texts, you wanted me personally, on the forums, to define gender.

I took a stab at it. A rather good one, from where I'm sitting.

Now you're saying I'm begging the question, and following it up with a rather out of context quote (I was specifically referring to people trying to actively cheat the system by simply shifting their legal gender with no medical operations, etc., in countries where that's allowed (very few, afaik).


Now, understand, I have absolutely no idea what you're asking, absolutely no idea what you're driving at, absolutely no idea what you want, and absolutely no idea why you're posting. This is because at no moment have you succeeded in conveying any little detail of any of that.

If you want to restate this into something I can be rationally expected to understand without consulting Sylvia Brown, I'll respond again, but at the moment, I just have to say I have no reason to suspect that anyone has any idea what you're doing besides you.

[Dr. Trintignant]

IOC rules of competition state that if a transgender individual has undergone gender reassignment surgery, and has been taking hormone therapy for a period of time sufficient for the therapy to remove any muscle/hormonal advantages they may have had from their birth gender, they are eligible to compete under their legal gender. They did this because testimony by geneticists combined with the evidence they had gathered from their own genetic tests showed them that gender was a far more complicated issue than the simple binary, and thus broader definitions than perhaps Delvo would like are much more sensible and supported by science than narrow, knee-jerk reactionary ones.

This seems eminently fair to me, as a balanced way of handling the issue.

So, in your opinion, does the hormonal balance only come into consideration for those that underwent gender reassignment, or should it also come into play for intersexual individuals or other ambiguous cases? If not, why not?

- Dr. Trintignant

[sol invictus]

<snip>

I simply asked you to explain your comment: "It's pretty simple. There's a men's competition and a woman's competition" in the context of this debate.

You've utterly failed to do so, and it's clear you won't be able to, so I'll stop here.

[Rolfe]

This isn't my field at all, so I'll be happy to be corrected on this, but I thought that the phenomenon you describe applied to only a portion of androgen insensitivity cases. I thought there were just as many (perhaps more) who were seen as physically "mannish."


I know no more about this than you do, in fact possibly less, and you may very well be right!

Rolfe.

[Rrose Selavy]

The IAAF stresses that it does not suspect her of deliberately cheating but questions whether she may have a rare medical condition which gives her an unfair advantage.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8218530.stm

"Gender verification test" is rather misleading. Gender is bit like race. A social construct and a mix of pheontype/genotype/hormones etc .
If an "intersex" condition is discovered it is highy unlikely the IAAF will simply declare her "male" and disqualified on that basis. The issue will be if that condition gaves her an "unfair" advantage - but how that unfairness is determined remains to be seen. eg; a person unknowingly produces high levels of testosterone ?
This all should have been done discretely.


IAAF President Lamine Diack accepted that the affair was handled badly.
"I deeply regret that confidentiality was breached in this case and that the IAAF were forced into a position of having to confirm that gender testing was being carried out on this young athlete," AP quoted him as saying on Sunday.
"It is a regrettable matter and I have requested an internal inquiry to ensure that procedures are tightened up and this never happens again."


You bet.

[ponderingturtle]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8218530.stm

"Gender verification test" is rather misleading. Gender is bit like race. A social construct and a mix of pheontype/genotype/hormones etc .

The problem is that people don't like to use the word sex and often replace it with gender even when it is not appropriate to do so. This liguistic squemishness not an attempt to actualy use gender as the determining factor.

[GreyICE]

I simply asked you to explain your comment: "It's pretty simple. There's a men's competition and a woman's competition" in the context of this debate.

You've utterly failed to do so, and it's clear you won't be able to, so I'll stop here. That was it?

The point was that despite the fact that gender is complicated, we've chosen to divide it into a binary setup, and thus must make a binary choice for it, which neglects a lot of the complexity actually involved.

Seriously, THAT is what you spent all those words on? I'm occasionally accused of being obtuse, but jesus christ. I have no idea how I would have divined that question from what you posted.

As for your snotty remark, yes, there was no way in hell I could answer that question based on what you posted, because of the language barrier. I don't speak babble.


So, in your opinion, does the hormonal balance only come into consideration for those that underwent gender reassignment, or should it also come into play for intersexual individuals or other ambiguous cases? If not, why not?

- Dr. Trintignant
It should not in other intersex individuals because transsexuals made a pretty clear choice. While that choice should not bar them from competition, it does mean that basic common sense demands that that choice not give them an unfair advantage.

I could justify it by pointing out that it's a generally bad idea to offer a competitive advantage for a gender switch given the number of interesting ways countries have cheated in the Olympics. But that would be trite.

No, basically, transgender individuals chose to have surgery. Letting the benefits they receive from their old gender (in the case of MtF) fade is a good idea for the same reasons that the genders were separated in the first place - to create as level a playing field as possible.

As to the question of why women with unusually high hormone counts who have never made any choices or decisions on the matter, it seems easy - they're women. The system is binary. They fall on the woman side. It's not like the system comes with a spectrum - either you're a man, or you're a woman. Given this, it's easy to define them as women.


Basically, there's been about three people now who think they're really clever because they've pointed out gender isn't a binary system, and that I'm claiming that for the purposes of competition, gender is a binary system. And it's really hard to make a non-binary system binary! So I'm going to be absolutely confuddled when you point out that gender isn't binary!

Oh how enlightening!

[Rrose Selavy]

It has since emerged that news of the test only became public knowledge because a fax was sent to the wrong person.


Doh!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/8219937.stm

-

[laca]

The point was that despite the fact that gender is complicated, we've chosen to divide it into a binary setup, and thus must make a binary choice for it, which neglects a lot of the complexity actually involved.


No, that's a strawman argument. The point actually was whether Semenya should be allowed to compete, not to decide whether she was male or female. There are other reasons a female competitor could be excluded. That would not make her any less of a woman.

[GreyICE]

No, that's a strawman argument. The point actually was whether Semenya should be allowed to compete, not to decide whether she was male or female. There are other reasons a female competitor could be excluded. That would not make her any less of a woman.

A strawman argument against what? I'm not quite sure you know what that term means.

[Dr. Trintignant]

It should not in other intersex individuals because transsexuals made a pretty clear choice.

That seems like a pretty offensive way of putting it. Transsexuals do not actually have a choice in which gender they perceive themselves as. So why should a pre-op transsexual female be required to compete as a male, but not, say, an intersex individual with a number of male characteristics but grew up as a female?

No, basically, transgender individuals chose to have surgery.

Many choose not to have surgery, or even hormonal treatment, and yet they still achieve an effective sex change for both legal and social purposes.

Letting the benefits they receive from their old gender (in the case of MtF) fade is a good idea for the same reasons that the genders were separated in the first place - to create as level a playing field as possible.

As to the question of why women with unusually high hormone counts who have never made any choices or decisions on the matter, it seems easy - they're women.

But you just said that the ultimate goal was to create a level playing field. The separation of genders was just thought to be an easy way of achieving that, back before anyone knew of all these complicated genetic conditions and such. Shouldn't then the test really be whether the individual has a predominantly male or predominantly female body type (muscle mass, muscle tone, etc.), and not whether the individual is legally, socially, or otherwise male or female?

Again, saying that the difference is that transsexuals have a choice is extremely poor form, and reminiscent of the bogus arguments against gay marriage.

Basically, there's been about three people now who think they're really clever because they've pointed out gender isn't a binary system, and that I'm claiming that for the purposes of competition, gender is a binary system.

I'm just trying to figure out what position you actually take. So far you've been extremely vague and seemingly contradictory at times.

- Dr. Trintignant

[Uncayimmy]

But you just said that the ultimate goal was to create a level playing field. The separation of genders was just thought to be an easy way of achieving that,

I disagree with that statement. In track and field the playing field is already level. You run from here to there as fast you can. You jump as high or as far as you can. You throw it as far as you can. Separating by gender creates a second tier in which inferior athletes can compete because socially we believe it's the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, this mindset extends into areas where the genetics of male vs female is not really an issue. I'm thinking "sports" like archery, shooting, bowling and even, can you believe it, poker.

[laca]

A strawman argument against what? I'm not quite sure you know what that term means.

The question is whether Semenya will be allowed to compete. You made it into a "binary setup" where we "must choose whether she's male or female". I think that is a strawman.

[Dr. Trintignant]

I disagree with that statement. In track and field the playing field is already level. You run from here to there as fast you can. You jump as high or as far as you can. You throw it as far as you can. Separating by gender creates a second tier in which inferior athletes can compete because socially we believe it's the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, this mindset extends into areas where the genetics of male vs female is not really an issue. I'm thinking "sports" like archery, shooting, bowling and even, can you believe it, poker.

Your point about poker, etc. is well-taken, but I have to differ in regards to running. I think it's pretty clear that if there were no classes of any kind, men would dominate the ranks and there would be little point for most women to compete. But it's considered useful to have women in competition if for no other reason than to give the female public a better reason to watch the Olympics.

That said, I personally would prefer something like weight classes in boxing/wrestling/etc.--although the exact metric would have to be tuned for track and field.

- Dr. Trintignant

[Uncayimmy]

Your point about poker, etc. is well-taken, but I have to differ in regards to running. I think it's pretty clear that if there were no classes of any kind, men would dominate the ranks and there would be little point for most women to compete.
That is exactly my point. Why is it important for women to compete at an inferior level but it's not important for people like myself to compete at an inferior level?

I was very athletic when I was younger, and I was very into team sports. I also trained pretty hard, even at the elementary school level. In my last year of junior high the school held a decathlon in gym class, so everyone had to compete. I got the highest score in the school. It would have been higher, but I maxed out several of the categories. The track coach saw this and asked me to join the track team for the last two meets. Due to various reasons, there were no practices for me to attend.

I selected the mile, half mile and shotput for my events. I won first place in all three at both events. None of the team sports prepared me for these events - I was just a product of good genes and a strong ethic when it came to training and competing.

I never pursued track because I was primarily an American football player (quarterback to be precise). Genetically, though, I was limited to what I could do at the college level. No amount of training could overcome that.

No special groups exist for people like me to compete, nor do I expect there to be. I know what it takes to be the best of the best and truly admire those who reach that level. I accept my genetic limitations. And yet women get special treatment for their genetic limitations.

It is what it is, but it's not a matter of leveling a playing field.

But it's considered useful to have women in competition if for no other reason than to give the female public a better reason to watch the Olympics.
I'm not buying it. The most popular sport for women is women's gymnastics, where the competitors wear make-up, jewelry, and uniforms that require a Brazilian bikini wax. And it's not really a sport if the winner is a matter of opinion.

That said, I personally would prefer something like weight classes in boxing/wrestling/etc.--although the exact metric would have to be tuned for track and field.

Those sports are very different. They rely upon skill, but that skill can be overcome by sheer size and strength. By adjusting for size we can keep the event centered on skill. Weight lifting uses weight classes, but there is a degree of skill involved in the movements. Primarily, though, it's a "look at how much the little guy can lift!"

[GreyICE]

That seems like a pretty offensive way of putting it. Transsexuals do not actually have a choice in which gender they perceive themselves as. So why should a pre-op transsexual female be required to compete as a male, but not, say, an intersex individual with a number of male characteristics but grew up as a female?

Many choose not to have surgery, or even hormonal treatment, and yet they still achieve an effective sex change for both legal and social purposes. The distinction was not meant to be offensive. The field of the competition is physical. If it were mental, then I'd agree that they should be lumped in with their mental gender. Of course mental competitions do not need to discriminate on a sexual basis.

However, the clear definition of transsexualism that everyone can agree on is that the individual perceives their gender as different from the one they were physically identified as at birth.

Since it is a physical competition, and they are born with a certain physical gender, it seems logical to allow the effects of said original physical gender on the body to fade before allowing them to compete.



But you just said that the ultimate goal was to create a level playing field. The separation of genders was just thought to be an easy way of achieving that, back before anyone knew of all these complicated genetic conditions and such. Shouldn't then the test really be whether the individual has a predominantly male or predominantly female body type (muscle mass, muscle tone, etc.), and not whether the individual is legally, socially, or otherwise male or female?
But once again, you shoot yourself in the foot here. We've already identified that her times are predominantly similar to those of a female runner. A very good female runner, but a female runner. If she was two seconds behind the male running record, you might have a point. But she isn't. She isn't close.

If the test is that the athlete is performing more like a male or female, that test is simple - she's performing at a high level of female ability.

So whether or not this is a good test (which I do not believe it is), this test is utterly irrelevant here, as it would agree with the notion that she be allowed to compete with the women.
Again, saying that the difference is that transsexuals have a choice is extremely poor form, and reminiscent of the bogus arguments against gay marriage.

I'm just trying to figure out what position you actually take. So far you've been extremely vague and seemingly contradictory at times.

- Dr. Trintignant
If you find my statements vague, please ask me to elucidate. If you find it seemingly contradictory, that's what happens when you try and force a non-binary system into a binary framework. There's rough edges.

If we assume that the goal is to achieve the fairest binary framework possible, I believe that exclusive systems will create far more unfairness than inclusive ones, and I've outlined why.

[GreyICE]

The question is whether Semenya will be allowed to compete. You made it into a "binary setup" where we "must choose whether she's male or female". I think that is a strawman. I suggest you reference wikipedia then, as you seem very confused as to what a strawman is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman

The heart of the matter is whether she is considered a woman for the purposes of this competition. She has not taken performance enhancing drugs (that is not the charge), she has not cheated the system, the question solely and completely is "if we find that her genetics do not match our definition of 'woman' we kick her out."

This is called stating the premise, and is used to create a logical argument. Arguments you disagree with are not called 'fallacies.' It is a much more productive use of your time, if you disagree with me, to try and logically describe why you do so.

[QUOTE=UncaYimmy;5044542]That is exactly my point. Why is it important for women to compete at an inferior level but it's not important for people like myself to compete at an inferior level?

I was very athletic when I was younger, and I was very into team sports. I also trained pretty hard, even at the elementary school level. In my last year of junior high the school held a decathlon in gym class, so everyone had to compete. I got the highest score in the school. It would have been higher, but I maxed out several of the categories. The track coach saw this and asked me to join the track team for the last two meets. Due to various reasons, there were no practices for me to attend.

I selected the mile, half mile and shotput for my events. I won first place in all three at both events. None of the team sports prepared me for these events - I was just a product of good genes and a strong ethic when it came to training and competing.

I never pursued track because I was primarily an American football player (quarterback to be precise). Genetically, though, I was limited to what I could do at the college level. No amount of training could overcome that.

No special groups exist for people like me to compete, nor do I expect there to be. I know what it takes to be the best of the best and truly admire those who reach that level. I accept my genetic limitations. And yet women get special treatment for their genetic limitations.

Okay, so you are not genetically suited to be a runner. How about a swimmer? A football player? Hmm, you appear to be good at that. Probably could make a decent weightlifter. A rugby player?

What if you couldn't? What if there was nothing, no field on which you could compete? And what if this condition you possessed was shared by over three BILLION people?

And what if this unfairness could be remedied by a simple, easy-to-apply standard?


I'm not buying it. The most popular sport for women is women's gymnastics, where the competitors wear make-up, jewelry, and uniforms that require a Brazilian bikini wax. And it's not really a sport if the winner is a matter of opinion.
I was primarily an American football player

Irony alert.

[laca]

I suggest you reference wikipedia then, as you seem very confused as to what a strawman is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman


Thanks. I will.


The heart of the matter is whether she is considered a woman for the purposes of this competition.


Right there. That is not like deciding whether she is a woman or not. I don't care if you call it a strawman or shifting the goalposts. In case of a strawman you are attempting to refute your opponent's position by misrepresenting it. By shifting the goalposts you attempt to defend your position by misrepresenting it. See the similarity?


She has not taken performance enhancing drugs (that is not the charge), she has not cheated the system, the question solely and completely is "if we find that her genetics do not match our definition of 'woman' we kick her out."


Also, you constantly keep appealing to emotion. Who accused her of cheating?


This is called stating the premise, and is used to create a logical argument. Arguments you disagree with are not called 'fallacies.' It is a much more productive use of your time, if you disagree with me, to try and logically describe why you do so.

But how is the premise changing from one of your posts to another? In one post you talk about a binary system. In another you admit that she is being tested whether she is a woman for the purposes of this competition. That doesn't sound like a binary setup to me. She can be categorized as a woman or a man. Period. Also, according to you, she can be considered a woman or a man just for the purposes of a competition.

I'm going to stop arguing with you and just wait for the test results.

[GreyICE]

Right there. That is not like deciding whether she is a woman or not. I don't care if you call it a strawman or shifting the goalposts. In case of a strawman you are attempting to refute your opponent's position by misrepresenting it. By shifting the goalposts you attempt to defend your position by misrepresenting it. See the similarity?
Yes, it pretty much is.


Also, you constantly keep appealing to emotion. Who accused her of cheating?
...

You are good at missing the point.

I recommend this frequently, but not often enough - read posts. Don't just take each sentence and see if you can take it out of context and then jump on it.

You're not interested in having a discussion, you're interested in harassing me. Not interested in playing that game.

[Uncayimmy]

Okay, so you are not genetically suited to be a runner. How about a swimmer? A football player? Hmm, you appear to be good at that. Probably could make a decent weightlifter. A rugby player?

What if you couldn't? What if there was nothing, no field on which you could compete? And what if this condition you possessed was shared by over three BILLION people?

And what if this unfairness could be remedied by a simple, easy-to-apply standard?

First off, maybe you are just misusing the word compete. The fact is that at the world level in any given track and field event, maybe a dozen people tops have a chance for a world title. The other billions of people on the planet don't stand a chance, but they can compete all they want. The fact of the matter is that there's just not much interest in watching inferior athletes compete. You wanna go race? Go right ahead. Nobody's stopping you. Just don't expect anybody to watch or make any money off of endorsements.

Is that unfair? Nope. That's life. At every level of sports, genetics plays a large role.

Now, is it fair setting up a second tier and excluding half the population of inferior athletes simply because of the presence of a penis? Not really, but I'm not all fussed about it. If I were a woman, it would bother me, but not as much as things like female divisions for games like poker or sports like shooting.

[Ferguson]

GreyICE, why do you keep harping on her time as if it is relevant as evidence for her eligibility? If I could run it in 1:59, would that make me female? If I can run around my house two seconds slower than my cat, does that make me an American shorthair?
Do you think there should be separate competitions for men and women? Do you think that for there to be separate competitions the rules have to define a line somewhere? The runner in this case has not even been declared over any such line, they're simply going to see if she qualifies.

How you could read any bigotry into Delvo's post is beyond comprehension to me. All of us (who care about pesky things like facts) are aware that men and transgendered competing in women's competitions would result in less females competing. Your trying to claim this is somehow a "slippery slope fallacy" or "hidden" bigotry is transparently absurd. It is the reason women's sports exist.

Personally, I was a bit surprised by the test, but saying that drawing a line at all is evil bigotry is completely illogical, of course a women's competition must draw lines of exclusion, or it wouldn't be a women's competition.

But no, don't think too hard about it, emotional grandstanding is so much more fun. Especially when you can whip out misplaced back-of-the-bus analogies. I'll just wait for the Godwin. :popcorn1

[GreyICE]

GreyICE, why do you keep harping on her time as if it is relevant as evidence for her eligibility? If I could run it in 1:59, would that make me female? If I can run around my house two seconds slower than my cat, does that make me an American shorthair?
Do you think there should be separate competitions for men and women? Do you think that for there to be separate competitions the rules have to define a line somewhere? The runner in this case has not even been declared over any such line, they're simply going to see if she qualifies.

How you could read any bigotry into Delvo's post is beyond comprehension to me. All of us (who care about pesky things like facts) are aware that men and transgendered competing in women's competitions would result in less females competing. Your trying to claim this is somehow a "slippery slope fallacy" or "hidden" bigotry is transparently absurd. It is the reason women's sports exist.

Personally, I was a bit surprised by the test, but saying that drawing a line at all is evil bigotry is completely illogical, of course a women's competition must draw lines of exclusion, or it wouldn't be a women's competition.

But no, don't think too hard about it, emotional grandstanding is so much more fun. Especially when you can whip out misplaced back-of-the-bus analogies. I'll just wait for the Godwin. :popcorn1


Because, Ferguson, people here are claiming unfair competition. They are claiming this specifically as grounds for her disqualification. Now lets say you are, in fact, unable to outrun your housecat. You are probably not a cat (although I'll wait for further evidence on that point), but if you are manifestly much slower than your house cat, you are not 'unfair competition' for your cat in a running contest now, are you?

I know it's a subtle point, I've only blatantly stated the above three times or so by now, but somehow people like you keep missing it. Not only 'disagree with it' but simply miss it... like you didn't read it.

Edited for rule 12.
Please do not make personal attacks unrelated to the discussion.

[Pup]

Because, Ferguson, people here are claiming unfair competition. They are claiming this specifically as grounds for her disqualification. Now lets say you are, in fact, unable to outrun your housecat. You are probably not a cat (although I'll wait for further evidence on that point), but if you are manifestly much slower than your house cat, you are not 'unfair competition' for your cat in a running contest now, are you?

I don't get it either.

Yes, her performance is within the range of normal elite female runners, but so is the performance of many male runners, and they're still barred from women's races due to their sex.

Even if a man (or non-female) could only finish 100th in a woman's race, from the point of view of the 101st female finisher, he unfairly took her rightful spot, since even she was supposed to be competing only against "women" (however that's defined by the race organizers).

[GreyICE]

I don't get it either.

Yes, her performance is within the range of normal elite female runners, but so is the performance of many male runners, and they're still barred from women's races due to their sex.

Even if a man (or non-female) could only finish 100th in a woman's race, from the point of view of the 101st female finisher, he unfairly took her rightful spot, since even she was supposed to be competing only against "women" (however that's defined by the race organizers).

Okay, let me walk you through something - people can make multiple bad arguments.

Now, assume we accept for the minute the premise that there should be a male and female league to sports (UncaYimmy apparently doesn't, so if you agree with him, we're dead in the water here, but from what you wrote I don't believe you do).

Now the question is 'does one Caster Semenya belong in the women's competition? Is she, for the purposes of this competition, a woman?'

We are further assuming that there is some intersexual condition found for the purposes of this discussion (even if there is not, there will be further athletes who have similar conditions discovered, so this seems fair).

People have raised many points about why she should be excluded. They are, summarizing:

- She's not a woman
This is easily rebutted. The competition only has roles for men or women. Despite how much people are babbling on, given a binary choice between the two as the only possible option, she's clearly a woman. If the choice could be more nuanced, it might be... but it's not.

- She's a woman, but she represents an unfair level of competition for other women because of her advantages
This is pretty clearly debunked here. She's not an unfair level of competition, because she's not competing at an unfair level.


Mostly then people take stuff from heading 1 to attack heading 2, and use heading 2 to attack heading 1. For instance, you have decided to use the 'is she a woman argument' to attack the 'is she a fair level of competition for other women' argument, which is clearly doing no one any good.


Other than those two arguments, most of the stuff posted has been 'argument from incomprehensibility' (you don't understand me, therefore you're wrong!), 'argument from authority' (there are RULES!), argument from authority, redux' (the RULES define the RULES without need for logical basis to form the RULES), 'slippery slope' (do this, and soon women's sports will be dominated by intersexuals), or 'temper tantrum' (certain posts whining about lies are coming to mind).'

[Professor Yaffle]

- She's a woman, but she represents an unfair level of competition for other women because of her advantages
This is pretty clearly debunked here. She's not an unfair level of competition, because she's not competing at an unfair level.


I'm not sure I agree with you there. If that were the case, then taking performance enhancing drugs would be ok as long as you didn't beat the others by too much. And the guy with the artificial leg would be ok to compete in the able bodied competition with his sooper dooper foot. And a male to female transexual would be allowed to compete with the women as long as she didn't beat them by loads. The problem here is that we can't guage how she would have competed if she didn't have whatever condition this might be.

[GreyICE]

I'm not sure I agree with you there. If that were the case, then taking performance enhancing drugs would be ok as long as you didn't beat the others by too much. And the guy with the artificial leg would be ok to compete in the able bodied competition with his sooper dooper foot. And a male to female transexual would be allowed to compete with the women as long as she didn't beat them by loads. The problem here is that we can't guage how she would have competed if she didn't have whatever condition this might be.
Performance enhancing technology is illegal for a variety of reasons. Effects on the athlete's bodies, the dangers of a technological 'arms race' in the sport, etc. All of it can be identified as external - i.e. things that the athlete was not born with and did not acquire through training or practice.

This is internal. There was no choice she could have made to change things. That's an important distinction. (the guy with the legs falls into a corner case, if you ask me, but because the time is rapidly coming when technologically enhanced humans will be able to beat unenhanced humans hands down, the IOC took a stand early).


Remember, that's the important point. She did nothing. The argument here is that the level of competition she represents is so extremely unfair to the other athletes that it merits banning her from this competition.

I see no evidence that she meets that standard.

[Walter Wayne]

- She's a woman, but she represents an unfair level of competition for other women because of her advantages
This is pretty clearly debunked here. She's not an unfair level of competition, because she's not competing at an unfair level.
It is not clearly debunked. You listed some numbers, but didn't actually analyze them. If you actually look at the numbers there is a huge difference?

In the Berlin race the time look like ...
1st place 1:55.45
2nd place 1:57.90
...
7th place 1:58.81
8th place 2:00.32

If the seventh place finisher could have taken a second off her time, she would have been 2nd. Differnce between second and last 2.42 seconds. I took a quick look through other 2009 competitions, and found only one where the gap between first and second was more than 1.00 second (1.40 seoncds).

In her race, she was the youngest by seven years.

2:45 seconds is a huge difference, and she is expected to improve.

ETA: World record holder was 32 years old at the time.

[Dr. Trintignant]

Since it is a physical competition, and they are born with a certain physical gender, it seems logical to allow the effects of said original physical gender on the body to fade before allowing them to compete.

Yes, of course. But you said that choice is the differentiating factor. I still don't understand why you think a physical difference matters in one situation but not another.

But once again, you shoot yourself in the foot here. We've already identified that her times are predominantly similar to those of a female runner. A very good female runner, but a female runner. If she was two seconds behind the male running record, you might have a point. But she isn't. She isn't close.

You are fallaciously generalizing from a single example. The rules should be such that they are fair under all conditions.

From the data presented so far, we can't tell if she's a superb athlete with no particular advantage from her male characteristics, or a mediocre athlete with a very strong advantage from those characteristics. If it's the latter, then it is unfair for the rest of the female runners; they have to work much harder to achieve a comparable result.

If the test is that the athlete is performing more like a male or female, that test is simple - she's performing at a high level of female ability.

Again, your reasoning is fallacious. The fact that an athlete is performing at a female level does not in any way validate that the athlete is female, or that the athlete lacks male characteristics.

If you find it seemingly contradictory, that's what happens when you try and force a non-binary system into a binary framework. There's rough edges.

Maybe that's a sign that the current binary system needs to be altered, and another metric should be used.

- Dr. Trintignant

[Ferguson]

Now lets say you are, in fact, unable to outrun your housecat. You are probably not a cat (although I'll wait for further evidence on that point), but if you are manifestly much slower than your house cat, you are not 'unfair competition' for your cat in a running contest now, are you?

So, as I am "fair competition," I am eligible for a cat show ribbon? Semenya's running ability is irrelevant to her eligibility for the competition.



I know it's a subtle point, I've only blatantly stated the above three times or so by now, but somehow people like you keep missing it. Not only 'disagree with it' but simply miss it... like you didn't read it.


And you are missing that it is not her as an individual which represents the unfair competition. The point of a woman's competition is to exclude men so women can compete against each other in a non male-dominated environment. She may be disqualified from a this competition, if she's not what they consider female. I don't know the results of the test, or their exact definition of female, once the results of the test and the decision of the IAAF are known, I might disagree with the IAAF, or I might agree. But to disagree with testing at all as immoral, is saying that a woman's competition can not discriminate based on genes at all. The point of a woman's competition is that it "discriminates" by only allowing women compete.

And perhaps Semenya is a "corner case" and the IAAF will have to reason out a decision they hadn't considered before, which I might agree or disagree with, but until the results and decision are made there is nothing immoral about a female competition performing a test to exclude non-females.

[Rolfe]

There are few certainties running in the human race (http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2527626.0.There_are_few_certainties_ru nning_in_the_human_race.php)

But is that playing field ever level? Humans vary a lot. To some extent almost all elite athletes are exploiting genetic advantage. That's why most top sprinters are of West African origin and most distance runners come from East African stock. Usain Bolt uses the fact that he's built like a sprinter but is also a giant. Should he be told he is too tall to compete?


Interesting article, in the light of this conversation.

Rolfe.

[Delvo]

- She's not a woman
This is easily rebutted. The competition only has roles for men or women... given a binary choice between the two as the only possible option, she's clearly a woman. If the choice could be more nuanced, it might be... but it's not.The dichotomy for women's sports is not "woman or man". It's "woman or not-a-woman".

The former dichotomy would be false because of the existence of people with certain biological conditions making them neither male nor female. It's impossible to use because it doesn't have a place to put everybody.

The latter dichotomy does have a place for everybody. The people who don't fit the former dichotomy (and make it false and unusable) fit into the "not a woman" category.

[GreyICE]

It is not clearly debunked. You listed some numbers, but didn't actually analyze them. If you actually look at the numbers there is a huge difference?

In the Berlin race the time look like ...
1st place 1:55.45
2nd place 1:57.90
...
7th place 1:58.81
8th place 2:00.32

If the seventh place finisher could have taken a second off her time, she would have been 2nd. Differnce between second and last 2.42 seconds. I took a quick look through other 2009 competitions, and found only one where the gap between first and second was more than 1.00 second (1.40 seoncds).

In her race, she was the youngest by seven years.

2:45 seconds is a huge difference, and she is expected to improve.

ETA: World record holder was 32 years old at the time.


You are fallaciously generalizing from a single example. The rules should be such that they are fair under all conditions.

From the data presented so far, we can't tell if she's a superb athlete with no particular advantage from her male characteristics, or a mediocre athlete with a very strong advantage from those characteristics. If it's the latter, then it is unfair for the rest of the female runners; they have to work much harder to achieve a comparable result.


Both of you miss a very important point (and one of you fails massively, but that's only because he forgot that his name shows up on the left side of each post, so he doesn't need a signature line).

Maybe she's merely a mediocre athlete whose receiving a genetic boost. And maybe she's a space alien from Uranus. Know what both of those claims are?

Things not supported by evidence. Now one is a more interesting line of speculation than the other, but as far as lines of speculation go, we don't take away people's right to run on a line of speculation.

Wayne, what you've posted merely shows she's very good. But if the world record holder had shown up in top form, she would have blown Semenya away by the same 2 seconds that she blew everyone else away.

Now one day Semenya might hold the world record. This happens. World records have been broken (Phelps just blew away a ton, and no one is arguing that he needs to be barred from swimming, despite the fact he is clearly part dolphin). And since the IOC doesn't care about stupid things like 'we don't like your genetics' she'll have it whether she can compete here or not.

The fun fact of the matter is you have to speculate like mad here.

My line of logic:
1) She was born and raised female
2) She's a really good runner
3) She's close to the world record
4) Someday she might have it
5) None of this adds up to a good reason to ban her from the sport

Your line of logic:
1) She was born and raised female, but is actually a male with a vagina
2) She's developing muscles like a male
3) She's just a rather bad male runner
4) BURN... err... BAN HER!




Again, your reasoning is fallacious. The fact that an athlete is performing at a female level does not in any way validate that the athlete is female, or that the athlete lacks male characteristics. Failure. Complete, utter, total failure.

I posted about this. I posted exactly about this. Check out Post #99.

Now see this:

People have raised many points about why she should be excluded. They are, summarizing:

- She's not a woman

...

- She's a woman, but she represents an unfair level of competition for other women because of her advantages

...

Mostly then people take stuff from heading 1 to attack heading 2, and use heading 2 to attack heading 1. For instance, you have decided to use the 'is she a woman argument' to attack the 'is she a fair level of competition for other women' argument, which is clearly doing no one any good.

You take things from heading two, and use them to address heading 1. Of course this is not failure. Failure is talking about fallacious reasoning in the middle of your logical fallacy.

Complete and total fail.

Seriously, go look at what you wrote, then separate the two arguments, then slap yourself.

Maybe that's a sign that the current binary system needs to be altered, and another metric should be used.

Propose a new system.

Oh yeah, and...

- Dr. Trintignant
Check to the left of your posts, mate.

[GreyICE]

So, as I am "fair competition," I am eligible for a cat show ribbon? Semenya's running ability is irrelevant to her eligibility for the competition.




And you are missing that it is not her as an individual which represents the unfair competition. The point of a woman's competition is to exclude men so women can compete against each other in a non male-dominated environment. She may be disqualified from a this competition, if she's not what they consider female. I don't know the results of the test, or their exact definition of female, once the results of the test and the decision of the IAAF are known, I might disagree with the IAAF, or I might agree. But to disagree with testing at all as immoral, is saying that a woman's competition can not discriminate based on genes at all. The point of a woman's competition is that it "discriminates" by only allowing women compete.

And perhaps Semenya is a "corner case" and the IAAF will have to reason out a decision they hadn't considered before, which I might agree or disagree with, but until the results and decision are made there is nothing immoral about a female competition performing a test to exclude non-females.
Post #99. You're doing it. Separate your arguments into one of the two categories.

You're rebutting it's not fair arguments with women arguments, and women arguments with fair arguments again. Just stop.

If you want to address the 'is she a women' arguments, I'll happily spank you in that field. If you want to address the fairness arguments, well, you don't.

But stop conflating the two. You don't get to do that. It's a stupid fallacy, and I'm just going to point it out until you succeed in sanitizing your messy thinking.

Is it honestly so hard for you to keep track of two different ideas? And do you understand why I call it bigotry? Usually I only see such rank sloppiness when someone has a preconceived notion that they're defending, instead of a logical thought path they've followed through (of course I think Dr Termagant has just developed an addiction to proving me wrong here, but I could be wrong, and am open to changing my position on that one).

[lomiller]

GreyICE, why do you think there should be any such thing as “women’s sports”? What’s your rationalization for having these competitions at all, why not just have a single competition open to everyone?

[GreyICE]

GreyICE, why do you think there should be any such thing as “women’s sports”? What’s your rationalization for having these competitions at all, why not just have a single competition open to everyone?

I'd suggest start a different thread. I can't really draw a firm line from that topic to the current one, and as we've demonstrated already, people are in quite a muddle trying to track two ideas. I'm afraid three might pop some heads.

[Dr. Trintignant]

Now one I posted about this. I posted exactly about this. Check out Post #99.

You have in no way refuted your ridiculous claim. To repeat:

If the test is that the athlete is performing more like a male or female, that test is simple - she's performing at a high level of female ability.

That statement is simply, utterly false. Ferguson put it as well as anybody. The fact that my cat barely outruns me does not mean I am performing at high level of cat ability, nor does it make me eligible for cat running competitions.

If anything, the reverse of your statement is more likely to be true (although still useless for any kind of rule system): there are far more males that can run an 800 M in 1:56 than there are females.

So again: using the actual level that an individual performs at is useless as any kind of metric for what class they belong in. It is a form of circular reasoning.

Propose a new system.

The system should be based on objective metrics such as muscle mass and hormone levels. It should also be blind: those deciding which category an athlete belongs in should be only presented with those criteria which were included with the rules. The criteria would be decided in advance by medical experts on the subject, and the overall goal would be to produce a high-performing and low-performing range which very roughly correspond to the current male/female breakdown, but without using sex-related genes or reported gender as input.

Oh yeah, and...
Check to the left of your posts, mate.

I like to sign my name. I sign snail-mail letters even though my name is on the return address. I sign emails even though my name is in my email address.

This is suspiciously close to an ad hominem attack (and a pretty silly one at that).

- Dr. Trintignant (no, I'm not going to stop signing)

[Delvo]

You have in no way refuted your ridiculous claim.I suggest editing if you still can; I believe you meant "supported", not "refuted". (Or leave it, if you think it will be fun to watch GreyICE spend a dozen posts obsessing over what that little error means...)

The fact that my cat barely outruns me does not mean I am performing at high level of cat ability, nor does it make me eligible for cat running competitions.

If anything, the reverse of your statement is more likely to be true (although still useless for any kind of rule system): there are far more males that can run an 800 M in 1:56 than there are females.In other words, this person in the news is closer to the male average than to the female average, closer to most males than to most females, more like a typical male than a typical female, closer to the middle/peak of men's bell curve than to the middle/peak of women's bell curve... and it's supposed to somehow mean this person should be equated with women.

The system should be based on objective metrics such as muscle mass and hormone levels.Tangential side-issue, out of curiosity: is there any way to determine the ratio of fast twitching muscle fibers to slow twitching ones, without cutting pieces out of the subject's muscles and destroying them?

This is suspiciously close to an ad hominem attack (and a pretty silly one at that). removed rule 12 violation.
Again, please keep this addressed to the argument, not to the arguer.

[Dr. Trintignant]

I suggest editing if you still can; I believe you meant "supported", not "refuted". (Or leave it, if you think it will be fun to watch GreyICE spend a dozen posts obsessing over what that little error means...)

Oh, heh. Too late to edit. Yes, I meant "supported". But it will be fun to see what GreyICE does with it...

In other words, this person in the news is closer to the male average than to the female average, closer to most males than to most females, more like a typical male than a typical female, closer to the middle/peak of men's bell curve than to the middle/peak of women's bell curve... and it's supposed to somehow mean this person should be equated with women.

It depends on which population you look at. It's still only a tiny minority of men that run as fast as she does. But no matter which population subset you pick (99th percentile, 99.9, or whatever), a much larger fraction of men would run that quickly compared to women.

Tangential side-issue, out of curiosity: is there any way to determine the ratio of fast twitching muscle fibers to slow twitching ones, without cutting pieces out of the subject's muscles and destroying them?

I wish I knew (I'm not a real doctor). But I was thinking about that when I was describing my system. I'm not sure how you would easily test for muscle type, or what the expected mixture would be, or even if the proportion varies between equally trained male and female athletes. I'd suppose a team of experts could reason through that, though.

The two persons' behavior is precisely identical, just in different settings. With Creationist Dave, after listening for a while and even talking to him a few times, I figured out what he was about and walked away and didn't stop by Speaker's Circle (or even walk very close) when he was there anymore.

Well, I wouldn't want to say anything that could be a construed as a personal attack. But I will note that GreyICE has a surprising confidence, given that (s)he is at odds with almost everyone in this thread. Not that it has anything to do with whether GreyICE is correct or not. It's just an observation.

- Dr. Trintignant

[Walter Wayne]

Both of you miss a very important point (and one of you fails massively, but that's only because he forgot that his name shows up on the left side of each post, so he doesn't need a signature line).

Maybe she's merely a mediocre athlete whose receiving a genetic boost. And maybe she's a space alien from Uranus. Know what both of those claims are?

Things not supported by evidence. Now one is a more interesting line of speculation than the other, but as far as lines of speculation go, we don't take away people's right to run on a line of speculation.First no one took away her right to run on speculation. She ran, and received the gold medal. No one is suggestion to take her future right to run based on speculation, notice the tests.

Second, while the space alien claim may not have evidence, there is evidence for the first claim. The evidence isn't conclusive, hence the tests.

You had no point to be missed.

Wayne, what you've posted merely shows she's very good. But if the world record holder had shown up in top form, she would have blown Semenya away by the same 2 seconds that she blew everyone else away.
Using a record holder from the Eastern Block during the 80s is hardly the best exampple to choose.
Your line of logic:
1) She was born and raised female, but is actually a male with a vagina
2) She's developing muscles like a male
3) She's just a rather bad male runner
4) BURN... err... BAN HER!

Failure. Complete, utter, total failure.

Reading comprehension failure. Not one of those 4 points occured in my argument. You'll note that the conclusion of my argument, stated in the first line of my post, is that your assertion that she represents an unfair level of competition for other women because of her advantages is clearly debunked - is false.

Walt

[laca]

Both of you miss a very important point (and one of you fails massively, but that's only because he forgot that his name shows up on the left side of each post, so he doesn't need a signature line).


Haha.


My line of logic:
1) She was born and raised female


True.


2) She's a really good runner


True.


3) She's close to the world record


Yes, she's fairly close.


4) Someday she might have it


She might.


5) None of this adds up to a good reason to ban her from the sport


Again, true. You only forgot #6:

6) She might have a (genetic ?) condition which would disqualify her according to the rules if the IAAF.

QED. This is all you need to know. Have you written to the IAAF yet, complaining about their rules?


Your line of logic:
1) She was born and raised female, but is actually a male with a vagina


Who said that?


2) She's developing muscles like a male


Again, who said that?


3) She's just a rather bad male runner


???


4) BURN... err... BAN HER!


Riiiight....

Yeah, you have really good arguments. Personal attacks, forgetting to include the obvious in your reasoning, total misrepresentation of positions and that beautiful appeal to emotion. Gotta love that!

Why don't we all just wait for the ruling and then there's maybe to discuss.

[tableplay]

If Caster is found not to be female (with respect to the tests that are being given), Caster would not be allowed to compete in Women's track events that are sanctioned by the questioning body. Would Caster be allowed to compete in Men's events sanctioned by the questioning body if it is determined that Caster is not female ? Even if Caster could compete in the Men's events, it would no longer be at a world-class level with respect to men. So basically, if a person is found to be of indeterminate gender, their professional career is effectively over.

[GreyICE]

You have in no way refuted your ridiculous claim. To repeat:

That statement is simply, utterly false. Ferguson put it as well as anybody. The fact that my cat barely outruns me does not mean I am performing at high level of cat ability, nor does it make me eligible for cat running competitions.

If anything, the reverse of your statement is more likely to be true (although still useless for any kind of rule system): there are far more males that can run an 800 M in 1:56 than there are females.

So again: using the actual level that an individual performs at is useless as any kind of metric for what class they belong in. It is a form of circular reasoning.

Post #99. Again.

Either you are arguing the basis of fairness, like Laca's original argument, or you're arguing on the basis of her not being female, like Delvo.

Which is it? Simple question, Testicond.

Are you arguing she is not qualified for woman's events because she doesn't meet the definition of woman, or are you arguing that the definition of woman should not include her for the purposes of the competition because it's unfair to other women?

You seem to wish to be arguing the latter, but whenever it's convenient for you, you revert to the former. Once again, it's a pitiful style of argument. Of course maybe you should imitate Delvo, you two seemed to hit it off well.



Either you are arguing that she's not qualified on a genetic basis,

The system should be based on objective metrics such as muscle mass and hormone levels. It should also be blind: those deciding which category an athlete belongs in should be only presented with those criteria which were included with the rules. The criteria would be decided in advance by medical experts on the subject, and the overall goal would be to produce a high-performing and low-performing range which very roughly correspond to the current male/female breakdown, but without using sex-related genes or reported gender as input.
An interesting idea. Leg length is also very important in running. Is this in the system?

Also, while I might support such a system, especially if it offered a higher degree of granularity in assigning categories, it is manifestly not the one being used in this competition.


I like to sign my name. I sign snail-mail letters even though my name is on the return address. I sign emails even though my name is in my email address.

This is suspiciously close to an ad hominem attack (and a pretty silly one at that).

- Dr. Trintignant (no, I'm not going to stop signing)
Really? Ad Hom? Someone's a bit sensitive. Though not a sensitive as Delvo (uh oh, that might be Lie #483 in the Delvo book of lies (Lie #484 - it's not a book, it's an encyclopedia set he carries around (Lie #485 - he actually went digital 3 years ago and now it's a 20 gigabyte file)




Again, true. You only forgot #6:

6) She might have a (genetic ?) condition which would disqualify her according to the rules if the IAAF.

QED. This is all you need to know. Have you written to the IAAF yet, complaining about their rules?

Oddly enough, I have. I have no idea what it will do, but why not? In any case, writing to them doesn't disqualify me from talking about it here, nor does not writing disqualify you from doing the same.

Link is:
http://www.iaaf.org/aboutiaaf/contacts/feedback.html

If you're interested.





Who said that?

Again, who said that?

I refer you to Delvo!

Yeah, you have really good arguments. Personal attacks, forgetting to include the obvious in your reasoning, total misrepresentation of positions and that beautiful appeal to emotion. Gotta love that!

Why don't we all just wait for the ruling and then there's maybe to discuss. Look, if you want to wait, it is honestly no skin off my nose. Wait. I don't honestly care. I think it's valid to be discussed at this point, and I think as a result of discussions similar to this one, the IAAF may soon change its rules to more in line with the IOC rules on the subject.




If Caster is found not to be female (with respect to the tests that are being given), Caster would not be allowed to compete in Women's track events that are sanctioned by the questioning body. Would Caster be allowed to compete in Men's events sanctioned by the questioning body if it is determined that Caster is not female ? Even if Caster could compete in the Men's events, it would no longer be at a world-class level with respect to men. So basically, if a person is found to be of indeterminate gender, their professional career is effectively over.
Yay! Someone else gets this!

[GreyICE]

Well, I wouldn't want to say anything that could be a construed as a personal attack. But I will note that GreyICE has a surprising confidence, given that (s)he is at odds with almost everyone in this thread. Not that it has anything to do with whether GreyICE is correct or not. It's just an observation.

Really Tentifly?

Really? Almost everyone? Nice weasel words there. I just looked through and counted, and it seems a bit less than 'almost everyone,' agreeing with you.

Most people just don't have the stomach to argue with you and Delvo. Don't take that as a compliment. Really. Don't.

[lomiller]

I'd suggest start a different thread. I can't really draw a firm line from that topic to the current one, and as we've demonstrated already, people are in quite a muddle trying to track two ideas.

It certainly does not belong in a new thread, because the people who disagree with you on this topic do so as a direct consequence of their own answer to that question.

[GreyICE]

It certainly does not belong in a new thread, because the people who disagree with you on this topic do so as a direct consequence of their own answer to that question.

I think the UncaYimmy/Ivor argument is pretty off-topic, and while it's fine for a post or two, if you really want to take that position, start a new thread.

[Uncayimmy]

If Caster is found not to be female (with respect to the tests that are being given), Caster would not be allowed to compete in Women's track events that are sanctioned by the questioning body. Would Caster be allowed to compete in Men's events sanctioned by the questioning body if it is determined that Caster is not female ? Even if Caster could compete in the Men's events, it would no longer be at a world-class level with respect to men. So basically, if a person is found to be of indeterminate gender, their professional career is effectively over.

Pretty much, yeh. He/She/It would be among the ranks of 99.9999% (give a take a digit of precision) of the population that because of genetics cannot compete at the world class level either. Like it or not women's competition is based on creating a lower quality tier of athletes based on genetics.

[Dr. Trintignant]

Post #99. Again. Either you are arguing the basis of fairness, like Laca's original argument, or you're arguing on the basis of her not being female, like Delvo.

All you're done in post 99 is repeat the argument. Yes, it's a potential fairness issue. The fact that Semenya is not as fast as the best male athletes changes nothing: she is still among the best women's athletes, and if she takes a place she did not deserve, all the other athletes suffer in comparison by not placing as high.

Imagine an athlete that was caught taking performance drugs. If the athlete still only placed 6th in some competition, does that mean there are no fairness issues? Of course not. The person who would have placed 6th has every right to complain.

Are you arguing she is not qualified for woman's events because she doesn't meet the definition of woman, or are you arguing that the definition of woman should not include her for the purposes of the competition because it's unfair to other women?

I'm arguing neither because the data isn't in yet. I only argue that we cannot exclude the possibility that Semenya has characteristics that may make for unfair competition.

An interesting idea. Leg length is also very important in running. Is this in the system?

Could be. It has several advantages: it's easy to test, it clearly is correlated with sex, and it is correlated with performance. Including this could, for instance, allow a vertically-challenged (but otherwise motivated and fit) male to achieve some athletic success. I'd consider that a good thing.

Also, while I might support such a system, especially if it offered a higher degree of granularity in assigning categories, it is manifestly not the one being used in this competition.

Sure. And I never said that I thought Semenya should be excluded. Again, I only argue against claims that we can know this in advance.

Really? Ad Hom? Someone's a bit sensitive.

The comment was solely for the benefit of the audience; I do not personally care. But I give them too little credit--I'm sure everyone here can separate out these kinds of irrelevant comments.

Really? Almost everyone? Nice weasel words there. I just looked through and counted, and it seems a bit less than 'almost everyone,' agreeing with you.

I never said that almost everyone agreed with me (I'd be scared if they did). There are more than two possible positions in this discussion; I have mine and others have their own. I just think you have a surprising confidence in your position. You might come off better if you did not string adjectives together like "completely, utterly, and 100%", or claim to "demolish" an argument, or just label everything as "stupid".

- Dr. Trintignant

[GreyICE]

All you're done in post 99 is repeat the argument. Yes, it's a potential fairness issue. The fact that Semenya is not as fast as the best male athletes changes nothing: she is still among the best women's athletes, and if she takes a place she did not deserve, all the other athletes suffer in comparison by not placing as high.

Imagine an athlete that was caught taking performance drugs. If the athlete still only placed 6th in some competition, does that mean there are no fairness issues? Of course not. The person who would have placed 6th has every right to complain.
Okay, then follow your own argument. It's a fairness issue. Therefore, when you write:

That statement is simply, utterly false. Ferguson put it as well as anybody. The fact that my cat barely outruns me does not mean I am performing at high level of cat ability, nor does it make me eligible for cat running competitions.

If anything, the reverse of your statement is more likely to be true (although still useless for any kind of rule system): there are far more males that can run an 800 M in 1:56 than there are females.

So again: using the actual level that an individual performs at is useless as any kind of metric for what class they belong in. It is a form of circular reasoning.

You are, by your own logic, debating a non-point. If the issue of what class she belongs in is as simple as figuring out whether a human belongs in a cat running competition, fairness doesn't even enter the picture. Yet, to quote you:
Yes, it's a potential fairness issue.

So now that your last few posts are out of the way as non-issues, we can move on.

Glad you finally figure out #99 btw. Yes, it did restate the arguments. Plural. What you were doing was conflating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflating) the two. I linked that, in case someone doesn't know the term.


I'm arguing neither because the data isn't in yet. I only argue that we cannot exclude the possibility that Semenya has characteristics that may make for unfair competition.
Assume she has these characteristics, then answer the question.


I never said that almost everyone agreed with me (I'd be scared if they did). There are more than two possible positions in this discussion; I have mine and others have their own. I just think you have a surprising confidence in your position. You might come off better if you did not string adjectives together like "completely, utterly, and 100%", or claim to "demolish" an argument, or just label everything as "stupid".


Oddly, Tourtiere, when I have demonstrated that an argument relies solely on a logical flaw of conflation at its core, I will refer to it as stupid. When I see a claim that is debunked by simple reasoning, I will call it demolished.

[Dr. Trintignant]

You are, by your own logic, debating a non-point. If the issue of what class she belongs in is as simple as figuring out whether a human belongs in a cat running competition, fairness doesn't even enter the picture.

You misunderstood the logic. The point, as before, is that using her observed level of performance is useless as a criterion for whether her participation is unfair or not.

Let's try it the other way. Imagine a female contestant that not only beats any other female, but any other man as well. And imagine that she has perfectly normal XX chromosomes, no hormonal diseases or other conditions, and certainly takes no drugs. There is no demonstrable difference between her and any other female besides the stunning performance.

Is this hypothetical person's performance a reason to exclude her from a race? Of course not. And yet by your reasoning, one might well do that.

Assume she has these characteristics, then answer the question.

Exactly which characteristics? And are you asking if I personally think the hypothetical is unfair, or if I think she should compete under the existing ruleset?

Say, hypothetically, that Semenya biologically an ordinary male, but was born with deformed genitals. Say that these were reconstructed into female genitals, and that Semenya was thereafter raised as a female--but with all the athletic advantages of being a man.

I would then say that it's unfair to let Semenya compete against females, even if she identifies as one and always has.

Of course, I don't think the truth is anywhere close to this extreme. And until the data comes in, I can't know anyway. But I think it does demonstrate that there is quite a large grey area that Semenya could exist in.

Oddly, Tourtiere, when I have demonstrated that an argument relies solely on a logical flaw of conflation at its core, I will refer to it as stupid. When I see a claim that is debunked by simple reasoning, I will call it demolished.

What do you call playground-style name-calling?

- Dr. Trtintignant

[GreyICE]

You misunderstood the logic. The point, as before, is that using her observed level of performance is useless as a criterion for whether her participation is unfair or not.

Let's try it the other way. Imagine a female contestant that not only beats any other female, but any other man as well. And imagine that she has perfectly normal XX chromosomes, no hormonal diseases or other conditions, and certainly takes no drugs. There is no demonstrable difference between her and any other female besides the stunning performance.

Is this hypothetical person's performance a reason to exclude her from a race? Of course not. And yet by your reasoning, one might well do that. Nonsense. The exact hypothetical is that Semenya has received an advantage from her genetics that makes her an unfair level of competition.

So we're back to the basic issue again - you have no idea whether:

1) She's not qualified because she doesn't meet the definition of female
2) She's not qualified because to ensure a more fair competition, the rules 'define her out' of qualification


Your evasiveness is getting really obvious. Define which argument you are making.


Exactly which characteristics? And are you asking if I personally think the hypothetical is unfair, or if I think she should compete under the existing ruleset?

Say, hypothetically, that Semenya biologically an ordinary male, but was born with deformed genitals. Say that these were reconstructed into female genitals, and that Semenya was thereafter raised as a female--but with all the athletic advantages of being a man.

I would then say that it's unfair to let Semenya compete against females, even if she identifies as one and always has.

Of course, I don't think the truth is anywhere close to this extreme. And until the data comes in, I can't know anyway. But I think it does demonstrate that there is quite a large grey area that Semenya could exist in. Quite possibly. But you're not sure you that you're making that argument.

Lets abstract this a bit: Are intersexed individuals an unfair level of competition for other females, are they not female, or are they female and fair competition for other women?





What do you call playground-style name-calling?

- Dr. Trtintignant Delvo.

[LordoftheLeftHand]

Ok here is LLH's gender test for sporting competitions. Take a x-ray (or some other high falutin medical scan) of the competators pelvis and send it to X number of television show crime fighting doctors along with some control scans. If they all agree the person is male then they can't compete in the female competitions.:)

[ponderingturtle]

Ok here is LLH's gender test for sporting competitions. Take a x-ray (or some other high falutin medical scan) of the competators pelvis and send it to X number of television show crime fighting doctors along with some control scans. If they all agree the person is male then they can't compete in the female competitions.:)

This is not a good design for determining of their endocrine system fits with in female norms or not. You are boiling all of the sexual differences down to one bone.

[lomiller]

I think the UncaYimmy/Ivor argument is pretty off-topic, and while it's fine for a post or two, if you really want to take that position, start a new thread.

Since you refuse the opportunity to give your own justification for having separate versions of the same sporting events for women, I’ll just go ahead and give mine and expect you to accept it.

Women’s sport exists exclusively for the reason that people without a Y Chromosome cannot reasonably compete in comparable athletic categories with people that do have one. This effectively removes 1/2 of the worlds population from the prospect of athletic completion. To rectify this situation a category of competition was created that forbids the participation of people who have a Y chromosome, or it’s accompanying physical attributes.

It is therefore unreasonable to make exceptions and allow the highest levels of this new category to be dominated by people who have a Y chromosome and/or it’s accompanied physical attributes.

[LordoftheLeftHand]

This is not a good design for determining of their endocrine system fits with in female norms or not. You are boiling all of the sexual differences down to one bone.
But that is just the point. My first instinct would be to declare "plumbing check!" but we know that is not good enough. I suspect any test that is good enough will be very subjective, which kind of defeats the point IMO. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

I'm very curious how this will all turn out.

[MikeMangum]

You are, by your own logic, debating a non-point. If the issue of what class she belongs in is as simple as figuring out whether a human belongs in a cat running competition, fairness doesn't even enter the picture.

Actually, you are missing the broader point. The entire reason that there are seperate men's and women's events is specifically for fairness. In many sports, if there was one event for both genders, it would be either all male or very close. To allow women to compete in these events, a seperate women's only event is created.

There is no rule in the NBA that says a woman can't be a point guard for the Lakers. The NFL has no rule prohibiting female linebackers.

If a man who was a good sprinter (but not good enough to win against the best in the world) decided he wanted to win by entering the women's events, the women in the events would rightly scream bloody murder. It is an issue of fairness.

[Uncayimmy]

If a man who was a good sprinter (but not good enough to win against the best in the world) decided he wanted to win by entering the women's events, the women in the events would rightly scream bloody murder. It is an issue of fairness.
Fair is allowing everyone to compete and having the results be what they are. I don't know how you can argue that it's fair to exclude half the population. It's certainly not "fair" to those whose genetics would make them merely competitive at the level of the best women.

Events solely for women exist because we feel sorry for them because their times/scores aren't high enough to get a ribbon in an open playing field. Remember, the times/scores are the same - we're only talking about ranking. We do it at just about every level of competition.

[GreyICE]

Since you refuse the opportunity to give your own justification for having separate versions of the same sporting events for women, I’ll just go ahead and give mine and expect you to accept it.

Women’s sport exists exclusively for the reason that people without a Y Chromosome cannot reasonably compete in comparable athletic categories with people that do have one. This effectively removes 1/2 of the worlds population from the prospect of athletic completion. To rectify this situation a category of competition was created that forbids the participation of people who have a Y chromosome, or it’s accompanying physical attributes.

It is therefore unreasonable to make exceptions and allow the highest levels of this new category to be dominated by people who have a Y chromosome and/or it’s accompanied physical attributes. The Y chromosome itself has no effect on atheletic ability. Hormones accompanying the Y chromosome affect the ability, but people with the Y chromosome and without those hormones do not have the same advantage, whereas introducing those hormones into people without the Y chromosome (Hi, steroids/hormone treatments) does a damn good job of giving them those advantages.

As I said earlier, the IOC commissioned a study on the issue, and decided gender was far too complicated to be boiled down to any trait or combination of traits. Y chromosomes most certainly do not determine it, as there are males who lack them and females who have them.

Final note: By your definition, XO males can compete in the woman's competition. Since XO males are biologically male, despite lacking certain things (ability to reproduce), they have an unbelievable advantage over women, XX or XXY. But they have no Y chromosome. None.

P.S. It's still off topic, even if you want to invent spurious definitions shared by no medical professional who has studied the subject.

[GreyICE]

Actually, you are missing the broader point. The entire reason that there are seperate men's and women's events is specifically for fairness. In many sports, if there was one event for both genders, it would be either all male or very close. To allow women to compete in these events, a seperate women's only event is created.

There is no rule in the NBA that says a woman can't be a point guard for the Lakers. The NFL has no rule prohibiting female linebackers.

If a man who was a good sprinter (but not good enough to win against the best in the world) decided he wanted to win by entering the women's events, the women in the events would rightly scream bloody murder. It is an issue of fairness.

The decision to disallow him as an individual is not an issue of fairness. The decision to ban him is because he is male, and men are unfair competition for women, even if every woman on the entire planet could beat him in running.

The decision to ban Semenya is either because she does not fall into the category of woman, or she should be excluded because of an unfair advantage of biology.

It's really one or the other. You may say I am missing the broader point, but this is simply because you've missed the fact that there are two points. Delvo doesn't think she's a woman. Laca thinks she's a woman, but doesn't think she should compete, because of fairness.

If you missed the difference between their two positions, reread both of them.

Dr. Tertiary is just wandering all over the map.

[lionking]

A whole new can of worms. He/she is an hermaphrodite.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/runners-gender-mystery-solved-20090911-fjjq.html

WORLD champion 800 metre runner Caster Semenya has been revealed to have both male and female sexual organs, posing an ethical and political quandary for the world international athletics body, the IAAF, and South Africa.

Extensive physical and emotional examinations of Semenya, 18, have shown the athlete is technically a hermaphrodite.

Medical reports indicate she has no ovaries, but rather has internal testes, producing amounts of testosterone considered abnormal for a woman.

So where does her gold medal stand? Should she/he keep it or not?

[WildCat]

A whole new can of worms. He/she is an hermaphrodite.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/runners-gender-mystery-solved-20090911-fjjq.html

WORLD champion 800 metre runner Caster Semenya has been revealed to have both male and female sexual organs, posing an ethical and political quandary for the world international athletics body, the IAAF, and South Africa.



So where does her gold medal stand? Should she/he keep it or not?
I think he she Semenya should be disqualified. Clearly not a woman.

[lionking]

I just heard a Sports Medicine doctor on the radio say that Semenya would definitely have an advantage over biological women and should be banned. He also said that it was a sad situation and that no winners come out of this whole situation.

I have to agree with this assessment.

[icerat]

I think she should be allowed to keep her medal, she didn't cheat and I don't think the rules disallow her. However she clearly can't continue to compete, they need to modify for the rules to make that clear in such a case.

[GreyICE]

Well I guess this finishes the 'it's just a hypothetical' and 'lets wait and see' responses. Interesting to see if there's any follow up from those people now.

[Vortigern99]

Maybe, rather than disqualifying hermaphrodites such as Semenya from competing, the sporting authorities should create a third group of competitors so that hermaphrodites and "indeterminate gendered" athletes can compete against one another. Obviously Semenya and others like her have talent, and it would be a shame to see them disappear from sports altogether.

[Rrose Selavy]

Medical reports indicate she has no ovaries, but rather has internal testes, producing amounts of testosterone considered abnormal for a woman.



The term hermaphrodite often gets bandied about but may not be strictly correct in this case, "true hermaphrodites", where ovarian & testicular organs are both present are extremely rare, if there are no ovaries then Seymena may possibly be classified as a "male psuedo-hermaphodite"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudohermaphroditism

-

[WildCat]

Maybe, rather than disqualifying hermaphrodites such as Semenya from competing, the sporting authorities should create a third group of competitors so that hermaphrodites and "indeterminate gendered" athletes can compete against one another. Obviously Semenya and others like her have talent, and it would be a shame to see them disappear from sports altogether.
http://www.gaygames.com/en/ ?

[Elf Grinder 3000]

Does she/he have XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes? And is this the definitive test?

I checked wikipedia and it didn't seem to indicate what a hermaphrodite was, just having sex organs that have male and female characteristics.

[laca]

Well I guess this finishes the 'it's just a hypothetical' and 'lets wait and see' responses.


Well, you guess and you guess wrong.
See the IAAF's official statement here (http://www.iaaf.org/aboutiaaf/news/newsid=54277.html):

We can officially confirm that gender verification test results will be examined by a group of medical experts. NO decision on the case will be communicated until the IAAF has had the opportunity to complete this examination. We do not expect to make a final decision on this case before the next meeting of the IAAF Council which takes place in Monaco on November 20-21.

Please note that there will be no further comments from the IAAF on Caster Semenya until that time.


Furthermore, they say there will be no further comments until the examination is complete. I wonder why? Could it be that it would be pointless speculation?


Interesting to see if there's any follow up from those people now.

Let's wait until the IAAF publishes the examination results. :D

[WildCat]

Furthermore, they say there will be no further comments until the examination is complete. I wonder why? Could it be that it would be pointless speculation?
On NBC's Today show a few minutes ago the reason cited was that they had been threatened with lawsuits for hu,man rights violations or something. So they are lawyering up and making sure all their "I"s are dotted and "t"s crossed before proceeding.

But IMHO no womb, no ovaries, high testosterone, and testicles = not a woman. Would be completely unfair to actual biological women to allow such a person to compete in women's events.

[nathan]

A whole new can of worms. He/she is an hermaphrodite.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/runners-gender-mystery-solved-20090911-fjjq.html

From that article 'After her stunning victory, Semenya ... returned to South Africa as a hero.'

Seems they already knew something back then :)

[WildCat]

From that article 'After her stunning victory, Semenya ... returned to South Africa as a hero.'

Seems they already knew something back then :)
:D

[laca]

From that article 'After her stunning victory, Semenya ... returned to South Africa as a hero.'

Seems they already knew something back then :)

Now you've done it. You'll have to answer to GreyICE... :D

[GlennB]

Maybe, rather than disqualifying hermaphrodites such as Semenya from competing, the sporting authorities should create a third group of competitors so that hermaphrodites and "indeterminate gendered" athletes can compete against one another. Obviously Semenya and others like her have talent, and it would be a shame to see them disappear from sports altogether.

How about a fourth category, for "lanky 58 year old male Brits with bad eyesight who once just managed a sub 6 minute mile, but who can still play a decent game of chess" ? We could have the World Championships in my back garden. Or a "huge, fat, metabolically-challenged and really slow people Track+Field champs", to avoid discrimination?

Nah. If in doubt, oblige the doubtful cases to compete at the appropriate higher level, so as not to disadvantage the so-called 'normal' masses.

[oldhat]

The treatment of her by the IAAF (releasing this private information to the public without informing her first or with her consent), and the mixture of mockery and ridicule in the media and certain people in this thread is repulsive.

The idea that she must have surgery to "fix" the way she is smacks of the worst medical barbarism of the 20th century.

"God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I'm proud of myself," she told [South Africa's] You Magazine, which ran a photo spread. "I don't want to talk about the tests. I'm not even thinking about them."

[nathan]

The treatment of her by the IAAF (releasing this private information to the public without informing her first or with her consent), and the mixture of mockery and ridicule in the media and certain people in this thread is repulsive.

Why is this private information? She's an athlete, it comes with the territory.

Did the IAAF release this information without informing her first? My understanding is they informed her of the results first.

[William Parcher]

Semenya withdraws from race amidst reports she's hermaphrodite (http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Semenya-withdraws-from-race-amidst-reports-she-s?urn=oly,188930)


3) Who knew about this and when did they know?

We haven't gotten this far down the road yet, but the next logical step in the progression of this sordid affair is whether there was a coverup involved. Regardless of whether the intentions of Semenya and her handlers were nefarious, they had to know of her ambiguous gender. Not having ovaries isn't something that goes unnoticed. If they did, then at what point did this turn from an unfortunate medical situation into outright deception?

[CynicalSkeptic]

The idea that she must have surgery to "fix" the way she is smacks of the worst medical barbarism of the 20th century.

Admittedly, I haven't carefully read every post in this thread, but has anyone actually said that?

[Tiktaalik]

"Not having ovaries isn't something that goes unnoticed???" Ovaries don't exactly hang out on the outside of the body. Maybe a lack of menstruation would be noticed, but female athletes with low body fat who are training hard sometimes don't menstruate (if I recall correctly). And if the testes are internal, how would that be noticed, esp. if she/he is from somewhere where medical care is limited?

[CynicalSkeptic]

I checked wikipedia and it didn't seem to indicate what a hermaphrodite was, just having sex organs that have male and female characteristics.

Read this article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersexuality

And this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersexuality#Notable_intersex_people

[oldhat]

Admittedly, I haven't carefully read every post in this thread, but has anyone actually said that?

The IAAF itself, according to the paper they leaked the report to.

http://www.examiner.com/x-6732-SF-Health-and-Beauty-Examiner~y2009m9d10-Leaked-test-results-for-Caster-Semenya

The athletics governing body is also expected to advise her to have surgery to fix the potentially deadly condition, the paper reported. The IAAF would not comment on the results that have yet to be released.

[GreyICE]

Well, you guess and you guess wrong.
See the IAAF's official statement here (http://www.iaaf.org/aboutiaaf/news/newsid=54277.html):

Furthermore, they say there will be no further comments until the examination is complete. I wonder why? Could it be that it would be pointless speculation?

Let's wait until the IAAF publishes the examination results. :D

I'd actually wait until the autopsy results of when she dies of old age to be 100% sure.

[lionking]

The idea that she must have surgery to "fix" the way she is smacks of the worst medical barbarism of the 20th century.



The "condition", for want of a better word, is likely to shorten Semenya's life. How is this barbarism?

[korenyx]

"Not having ovaries isn't something that goes unnoticed???" Ovaries don't exactly hang out on the outside of the body. Maybe a lack of menstruation would be noticed, but female athletes with low body fat who are training hard sometimes don't menstruate (if I recall correctly). And if the testes are internal, how would that be noticed, esp. if she/he is from somewhere where medical care is limited?


Her father said he was proud of his daughter and she was rasied as a girl. She might have external female genitalia that looked normal during a pelvic exam.

[laca]

I'd actually wait until the autopsy results of when she dies of old age to be 100% sure.

Yea, that's exactly like waiting for the governing body's official position...

[Rrose Selavy]

E-mails show South African officials covered-up gender tests on Caster Semenya



South Africa’s ruling athletics body sent Caster Semenya to the World Athletics championships after covering-up tests that showed her gender was in question, it emerged today.
Leaked e-mails show that Athletics South Africa (ASA) ordered an examination of the controversial 800 metres champion after becoming suspicious about the 18-year-old's sex, but suppressed the results.
The chief medical officer and team doctor for the ASA urged the organisation to withdraw Semenya from the championships once medical experts discovered that the runner had internal testes and produced abnormal amounts of testosterone, but officials refused.




But the former ASA chief coach, Wilfred Daniels, said that the organisation had duped Semenya into thinking the gender test carried out on her were routine drugs test.
Daniels, who resigned last week in protest at the ASA’s handling of the Semenya saga, said the runner was left “distressed and humiliated” by a two-hour examination during which her feet were placed in stirrups while her private parts were photographed and her internal organs examined. “She was in no way prepared for what happened,” said Daniels.


Whatever the outcome , what an awful experience for the individual concerned.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/athletics/article6840356.ece

[Rrose Selavy]

Athletics South Africa's president Leonard Chuene has apologised for denying knowledge of gender tests conducted on runner Caster Semenya. The tests were carried out in South Africa in August but Chuene said he wanted to protect Semenya's privacy.





"I believed at the time my consistent denials would help protect her. "I have however realised that it was an error of judgment and that I could have been more forthcoming with this information, even if it was difficult."



More here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/8261566.stm

[Walter Wayne]

She is in the news again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/8793668.stm

"The IAAF accepts the conclusion of a panel of medical experts that she can compete with immediate effect," said a statement from the athletics body.

[luchog]

Equine species just don't exhibit sexual dimorphism in that area. Ape species do. Maybe it's because mares need to be just as good at running away as stallions. Note that even foals can keep up from an age that can be measured in hours rather than days.

IIRC sexual dimorphism is, in general, far more pronounced in predator species than prey species. For what should be fairly obvious reasons.

[Aepervius]

IIRC sexual dimorphism is, in general, far more pronounced in predator species than prey species. For what should be fairly obvious reasons.

That is not so obvious for me, as some predator species don't have that big a dimorphism (try cat for example) whereas some prey species have a very pronunced one (try faisan or whatever it is called in english dimorphism (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/fr/wiki/Fichier:Male_and_female_pheasant.jpg) for example, or even ungulate like antler animals can't remember the name). I can only recall a few predator species where the predator has a big dimorphism, much more preys specie.

[Aepervius]

Heck : Sexual dimorphism wiki (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism) there is no real mention of prey/predator except for the reverse dimorphism in bird of prey (female bigger than male). Otherwise it seems pretty wide spread.

[Roboramma]

Heck : Sexual dimorphism wiki (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism) there is no real mention of prey/predator except for the reverse dimorphism in bird of prey (female bigger than male). Otherwise it seems pretty wide spread.

Yeah, I don't really see any connection between sexual dimorphism and whether a species is predator or prey. It seems to me to have more to do with mating behavior than anything else.

[zooterkin]

Caster Semenya was being interviewed about the World Cup to give a local perspective:

So, do you think Spain will win?

Caster Who did they beat?

Uruguay

Caster Don't start that again...