Caster Semenya

[101]

I honestly can't believe this ruling, she is a woman wanting to compete in a woman's event. She has biology on her said, as did Usain Bolt although not to the same degree. Imagine men with low testosterone being slow and joining to women's event. 

[Jambomo]

1 minute ago, MixuFixit said:

I can appreciate why someone who doesn't have this extra testosterone would feel aggrieved, but sport's so ephemeral and these cases so rare I just struggle to care enough that the 'normal' atheltes end up with silver instead of gold more often while she's competing. I do not know the names of any other female athlete in Semenya's events before or after she came on the scene and suspect very few others do to. That tells me it's not very important in the grand scheme of things and given Semenya probably doesn't have an easy time in life outside of athletics I'd have said crack on.

My gut feeling is deep down those who oppose her competing in athletics do so because she's 'one of that lot' and not 'one of us'. Otherwise how do you explain Florence Joyner's 100m record still standing when she was obviously, obviously doping?

You don't know these, so that means nobody does and its not important?? The world doesn't revolve around you and what you know. There are many people who are interested in athletics for whom this is very important. Its a lot of peoples work and lives 

The problem is that its not a straightforward issue and there is no point in pretending there is an easy or obvious answer because there isn't. I feel very sorry for Semenya, because there is nothing she can do about this and is caught up whilst being totally innocent of wrong-doing.

Its not just a case of being lucky enough to have better biology than the other women though. There are same-sex categories in sport for a reason and whilst she clearly identifies and lives her life as a woman, being intersex means she has characteristics which aren't part of being a woman i.e high testosterone levels, which isn't the same as just having long-legs or fast-twitch muscle fibers that anyone can have. Her biology puts her between the defined categories for competition, its not just a case of fitting her in somewhere as her right to complete need to be balanced with other women's right to fair competition. 

[Dons_1988]

3 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

Outside of those who follow it more than just watching the Olympics every 4 years, bluntly yes. I'm not meaning to diminish the achievements of those involved, I just suspect if you asked 100 random folk to name who won the last gold medal in the diamond league in her event or whatever, it'd be single digits. My interpretation of that is: nothing of particular gravity happens whether Semenya competes or not, so why not let her compete?

It is of particular gravity to those who's career it is though isn't it?

I'm no expert on the matter at all but Jambomo's post seems sensible. In all of this though it can't be forgotten that Semenya is in an awful position here through no fault of her own.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Dons_1988

[Dons_1988]

5 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

Indeed - but then Semenya will be (probably is by now) too old and someone who is 'normal' will win the next event. The number of people affected is very small, the action taken seems to me to be disproportionate.

Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the Paralympics where people of drastically mixed abilities compete and have various weightings put on their results accordingly.

I suppose at a time when gender fluidity is becoming more politically relevant (which is a good thing), one bi-product is that it is important to draw the lines with male/female sport.

Although I may have misunderstood in that you are referring specifically to Semenya herself as opposed to the broader ruling and it's future impact.

 

[sugna]

13 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

I can appreciate why someone who doesn't have this extra testosterone would feel aggrieved, but sport's so ephemeral and these cases so rare I just struggle to care enough that the 'normal' atheltes end up with silver instead of gold more often while she's competing. I do not know the names of any other female athlete in Semenya's events before or after she came on the scene and suspect very few others do to. That tells me it's not very important in the grand scheme of things and given Semenya probably doesn't have an easy time in life outside of athletics I'd have said crack on.

My gut feeling is deep down those who oppose her competing in athletics do so because she's 'one of that lot' and not 'one of us'. Otherwise how do you explain Florence Joyner's 100m record still standing when she was obviously, obviously doping?

This is one of many questions in sport to which there's no answer that meets all of the criteria and is fair for everyone (which I suppose is one of those criteria).

I probably know as much about the historical and current intersex issues within athletics as just about anyone in Scotland, with the exception of anyone who happens to be engaged in active research in this area. The problem is similar to that in golf medals, where the temptation is to give your playing partner a break when they've been unlucky, and agree with them that they can get a free drop (by interpreting conditions a certain way); but in doing so, you immediately fail in your duty to "protect the field".

Caster was eligible to compete in women's events - and anything other than "open" is of course a partially arbitrary distinction, such as sex, age, weight and so on - but the tacit assumptions underlying the definition of those events break down significantly in her case and in the case of some other athletes. If you are producing high levels of male hormones, and are not androgen-insensitive, you will have a material advantage relative to the class of competitors that the women's events assume.

No one is to blame, so "punishing Caster" (as it appears to the public) is unfair; but allowing her to compete abrogates the responsibility of "protecting the field".

There's just no ideal answer, so it comes down to the most equitable solution. Returning to the golf comparison, it is often said in "Rules of Golf" circles that the game isn't supposed to be fair; it's supposed to be equitable. That's fine in that domain, as the criterion is that two competitors in the same circumstances be treated identically. In intersex considerations, it is those very circumstances that differ relative to other competitors, and so "equitable" is a very tough nut to crack from the outset.

Flo-Jo's record still stands for the very simple reason that nothing has ever invalidated it: an unevidenced "obviously" is not a criterion in any legal or arbitration environment of which I am aware. Marita Koch was a still more "obvious" example, as was (according to some in sports science) Paula Radcliffe. It is still possible that the 100m record may one day be removed - it would then go to a different Flo-Jo run, I think, or to the probably equally clean Carmelita Jeter - but that would be on non-analytical grounds, as the 10.49s was obviously* heavily wind-assisted.

* There's that word again. In this case, I mean that the times within that race across the whole field make it virtually certain that there was much more than 2mps helping them. There's an excellent statistical piece on this that I don't have to hand right now.

[sugna]

25 minutes ago, Jambomo said:

You don't know these, so that means nobody does and its not important?? The world doesn't revolve around you and what you know. There are many people who are interested in athletics for whom this is very important. Its a lot of peoples work and lives 

The problem is that its not a straightforward issue and there is no point in pretending there is an easy or obvious answer because there isn't. I feel very sorry for Semenya, because there is nothing she can do about this and is caught up whilst being totally innocent of wrong-doing.

Its not just a case of being lucky enough to have better biology than the other women though. There are same-sex categories in sport for a reason and whilst she clearly identifies and lives her life as a woman, being intersex means she has characteristics which aren't part of being a woman i.e high testosterone levels, which isn't the same as just having long-legs or fast-twitch muscle fibers that anyone can have. Her biology puts her between the defined categories for competition, its not just a case of fitting her in somewhere as her right to complete need to be balanced with other women's right to fair competition. 

Quoting this excellent post in its entirety, because it accurately describes exactly what "the problem" is, and exactly why the concept that there is always "the correct answer" is an illusion.

[The Moonster]

11 minutes ago, Jambomo said:

You don't know these, so that means nobody does and its not important?? The world doesn't revolve around you and what you know. There are many people who are interested in athletics for whom this is very important. Its a lot of peoples work and lives 

The problem is that its not a straightforward issue and there is no point in pretending there is an easy or obvious answer because there isn't. I feel very sorry for Semenya, because there is nothing she can do about this and is caught up whilst being totally innocent of wrong-doing.

Its not just a case of being lucky enough to have better biology than the other women though. There are same-sex categories in sport for a reason and whilst she clearly identifies and lives her life as a woman, being intersex means she has characteristics which aren't part of being a woman i.e high testosterone levels, which isn't the same as just having long-legs or fast-twitch muscle fibers that anyone can have. Her biology puts her between the defined categories for competition, its not just a case of fitting her in somewhere as her right to complete need to be balanced with other women's right to fair competition. 

Has it ever been confirmed she is intersex? Plenty of rumours claiming that's the findings but as far as I'm aware the results were never officially released due to privacy.  She's definitely appears hyperandrogenous, which can appear in men too and it can make them more aggressive. Be interested to hear if there are any hyperandrogenous men in sport and how they are treated. 

The law brought in here specifically targeted Semenyas events and I'm a bit uneasy about that.

[Dons_1988]

7 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

Bit of both. If you're a young talented athlete with wonky androgen levels you just got told you're not allowed to compete because you're not like us™. If you're Semenya you're told you can't compete without taking drugs to diminish your performance. It isn't like she came first in every race she ever ran, so I have to question just how strong the effect of her testosterone levels are over a panoply of other factors at play in competition. None of her times are olympic or world records, which are all held by 'normal' women.

I suppose it depends on the outcome of the gender tests she had years ago, which have never been made public.

If it's the case that she is simply a woman with abnormal testorone levels then your point is probably valid.

If it's something more complex than that (don't think anyone is suggesting she is simply a man) then there's a discussion to be had around her having an unfair advantage. I don't think it's disputed that certain male characteristics would give an unfair advantage. And saying she's being denied because she's 'not like us' is probably too emotive a position here.

[Jambomo]

31 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Has it ever been confirmed she is intersex? Plenty of rumours claiming that's the findings but as far as I'm aware the results were never officially released due to privacy.  She's definitely appears hyperandrogenous, which can appear in men too and it can make them more aggressive. Be interested to hear if there are any hyperandrogenous men in sport and how they are treated. 

The law brought in here specifically targeted Semenyas events and I'm a bit uneasy about that.

Yes, I believe they tested her in 2010 and confirmed it. I have also read that they had given her medication to reduce her testosterone levels  to that of other women and her running was tested, she was much slower than the faster women. I am afraid I can't remember where I read that to link to it though. It does rather point to her having a significant advantage though.

I believe that the reason that the law at present only applies to her events is that there is not yet evidence of the advantage that it may give at other events/distances, because there have not yet been cases of it. 

[Dons_1988]

11 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

I think that has to be playing some part. Unconscious bias or whatever. She won some golds, folk thought she looked a bit manly, runners up said stuff to the press/made a point of not congratulating her on a few occasions and now here we are. As I said I'd be interested to see the statistical spread of her race times versus the rest of the field. If it's a conspicuous outlier I think I could be persuaded the testosterone suppression requirement has some merit but I'm also uneasy at how this seems to have been tailor made to exclude her.

You don't have to be the best by a mile to have an unfair advantage though 

[The Moonster]

1 minute ago, Jambomo said:

Yes, I believe they tested her in 2010 and confirmed it. I have also read that they had given her medication to reduce her testosterone levels  to that of other women and her running was tested, she was much slower than the faster women. I am afraid I can't remember where I read that to link to it though. It does rather point to her having a significant advantage though.

I believe that the reason that the law at present only applies to her events is that there is not yet evidence of the advantage that it may give at other events/distances, because there have not yet been cases of it. 

I genuinely can't see any confirmed results anywhere but fair enough if that's the case.  

That sounds like a nonsense justification tbh.  Hopefully Semenya makes a mockery of it and starts competing in the 200m or 3000m without needing her medication. High levels of testosterone either helps you or it doesn't, I don't think you can start allocating it to certain events.

[Jambomo]

7 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

I genuinely can't see any confirmed results anywhere but fair enough if that's the case.  

That sounds like a nonsense justification tbh.  Hopefully Semenya makes a mockery of it and starts competing in the 200m or 3000m without needing her medication. High levels of testosterone either helps you or it doesn't, I don't think you can start allocating it to certain events.

I agree that I would expect there to be an advantage at other distances/events, I think most people would but I suppose the question is what events do you apply it to when you have no evidence that it has an effect. 

I don't think the public will ever find out confirmed results because they are her private medical data, however that doesn't mean it isn't confirmed that she is or isn't and that we have these subsequent rules and rulings suggest to me that it is confirmed to the governing bodies.

[Savage Henry]

7 minutes ago, Jambomo said:

I agree that I would expect there to be an advantage at other distances/events, I think most people would but I suppose the question is what events do you apply it to when you have no evidence that it has an effect. 

I don't think the public will ever find out confirmed results because they are her private medical data, however that doesn't mean it isn't confirmed that she is or isn't and that we have these subsequent rules and rulings suggest to me that it is confirmed to the governing bodies.

The fact that she continued to compete in women's events implies the findings, does it not?

But besides, I feel like this is a broader issue of gender fluidity which is merely being manifest in a very specific arena right now.  The fact that she had to even go through a test is pretty horrendous if you think about it.  Twenty years down the line,  WADA or World Athletics, or whoever is in charge of this research are going to look extremely myopic.  Sport is extremely conservative by its very nature due to its reliance on rules and codes.  Eventually these codes become antiquated when viewed in a wider societal context.  Sport can't even deal with being ambidextrous very well.

[Herman Hessian]

it's obvious that the amount of testosterone in male athletes varies from one individual to another to some extent; does anyone know how this variation compares to that between Semenya and other female competitors - is her imbalance grossly disproportionate ? curious as to whether a male athlete may now be able to claim that another athlete of the same gender 'has an unfair advantage' through having naturally higher testosterone levels - or is the difference between blokes at a far less significant level from that of Semenya to other women ?

figures published yesterday stated that male testosterone levels vary from  7.7 to 29.4 nmol/L, so one bloke can have pretty much four times 'as much' as another - how does this compare to the 'Semenya > other women' disparity ?

 

[D Angelo Barksdale]

She had her gender tested in 2010, the results were never made public but the IAAF cleared her to compete in women's events.

Are the authorities now saying she's not 'woman' enough to compete without taking performance reducing drugs ?

 

[sugna]

To try to clear up the accusations of apparent targeting (and I'm fully aware that's a very optimistic aim): all measures in this area and similar areas have to be based on specific evidence; and gathering that evidence is done with a specific scope, which means that it cannot legitimately be extrapolated.

For example:

• Data gathered across a specific range of disciplines cannot trivially be extended outwith that range;
• Measurements of specific properties of prostheses such as "blades" cannot imply anything about other properties that were not measured.

On the second of these, it always jarred with me that the reporting of the original Pistorius findings (at the CAS stage) were almost universally parsed as "blades give no advantage" - that was neither measured nor implied by the results of what was measured, but was a convenient simplistic glossing of a complex set of data. In fact, the data showed the reverse, but CAS found that a failure to balance the measured advantages with unmeasured potential disadvantages invalidated the IAAF's decision.

Pistorius's agent and Pistorius himself seemed happy to promote this interpretation, but surely must have known it was completely misleading. Nowadays there's very little room for doubt, as a more general question has been answered

https://www.iaaf.org/news/news/oscar-pistorius-independent-scientific-stud-1

 

[Jambomo]

25 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

The fact that she continued to compete in women's events implies the findings, does it not?

But besides, I feel like this is a broader issue of gender fluidity which is merely being manifest in a very specific arena right now.  The fact that she had to even go through a test is pretty horrendous if you think about it.  Twenty years down the line,  WADA or World Athletics, or whoever is in charge of this research are going to look extremely myopic.  Sport is extremely conservative by its very nature due to its reliance on rules and codes.  Eventually these codes become antiquated when viewed in a wider societal context.  Sport can't even deal with being ambidextrous very well.

I think it just means that the rules as they were didn't prevent it, hence changing them now.

I am not trying to say that I agree with any of this or that what she has had to go through is fair or just, only that it is a pretty unique case which in reality is difficult to resolve without someones rights being diminished in some way. I go back to my earlier post in that balancing the rights of Semenya and those of women competitors is really difficult , if not actually impossible.

I think we are getting to a really new place where there is a crossroads between who a person wants to be and how they wish to identify themselves, and what they are biologically considered to "be" (for want of a better way of putting it). Medical advances are such that people are now  able to be identified medically as intersex or as having these differences; people are also now more able to change gender and identify as they wish to. 

A lot of society is quite supportive to this (in the UK at least) but there is a point where these things clash with the gender categories that society has and continues to use. Some are easy fixes (gender-neutral toilets etc) but I think this is an example of one that isn't easily fixed at all because it goes beyond moral considerations (i.e people want/don't want that) and now goes into considerations of harm and rights (i.e are Semenya's rights infringed / are female athletes rights infringed)?

Edited May 2, 2019 by Jambomo

[NotThePars]

The white competitors complaining about Semenya are still going to finish with f**k all but good luck to them, I guess. Did anyone ever suggest flinging lactic acid over Michael Phelps while he was swimming?

[welshbairn]

3 hours ago, NotThePars said:

The white competitors complaining about Semenya are still going to finish with f**k all but good luck to them, I guess. Did anyone ever suggest flinging lactic acid over Michael Phelps while he was swimming?

Was he the one with the massive feet? They should have given his competitors flippers to make it fair.

[MONKMAN]

12 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Was he the one with the massive feet? They should have given his competitors flippers to make it fair.

The difference between Phelps and the rest was his entire genetic make up, which was that of the perfect swimmer.  If you could literally design the body of the perfect swimmer it was Phelps, from the size of his limbs, hand and feet, to the shape of his torso.