South African Caster Semenya, 18, is facing a rare legal challenge in her sports career. The problem is not drug testing but gender testing. Various people have accused Semenya of being a male and sports officials are planning gender testing to result the dispute.
This week Semenya took gold in the 800m World Athletics Championship in Berlin. Various people insisted that her muscular physique was that of a man. Her mother, however, insists that she is female (here): Mokgadi Caster is a girl and no one can change that.”
I fail to see why there is such suspicions after the run below in Berlin. She seems like a very muscular female to me. I was far more suspicious (and remain suspicious) of the Chinese gymnasts in the age controversy.
It turns out that a gender test is not just watching to see if she can sit through a full performance of “Pride and Prejudice” without fleeing the room. The testing takes several weeks to complete.
Molatelo Malehopo, general manager of Athletics South Africa, insists that she is a she: “We have not been absent-minded, we are very sure of her gender.”
For the full story, click here.
foo writes:
I have no bias either way, just arguing because law school has twisted my mind.
aw… that’s not true.. law school has trained you, is training you, to argue a point from all sides. this is a good thing because you will have to be adept at this in order to give your clients the best representation they can afford.
how are your interviews for summer associate going?
By the standards Alan quoted above, namely that a female athlete must be “entirely female,” a transgendered individual who went from male to female, even with sexual reassignment surgery, might not fit the definition of being entirely female because they do not have XX chromosomes.
I would say that the legal definition of female and the IAAF standard may not be quite the same, and I do not know what the legal standard in South Africa is. Can the IAAF have a different standard for femaleness than what is written in South African law?
I have no bias either way, just arguing because law school has twisted my mind.
foo asks? So, what is the definition of a woman? 😀
shoes? I hate to go all snide on you….but anyone who grew up watching russian female shotputters during the olympics on the tv machine has already been down this well-travelled road.
i believe yesterday was Renee Richards’s birthday.
She has been a woman for decades now, being one of the more famous trans gender folks. she was a tennis player and was shunned from competition as a women but was eventually admitted into the association and was ranked 20th.
Possible controversial combinations:
1) she has a vagina, but has XY chromosomes (i.e. genetic male)
2) she has a penis, but has XX chromosomes (i.e. genetic female)
He/she can also be XXY (Klinfelter syndrome).
Is phenotype more important than genotype? The two traits are almost always paired, but obviously there are mis-matched situations.
So, what is the definition of a woman? 😀
being able to watch Pride and Prejudice is the test? I always thought it was “Beaches”
but then again< I can't stand Beaches and no one would ever accuse me of being a guy. even if they were deaf and blind.
Boggart,
So seeing the world as something other then black and white is being “The Political Correct Thought Police?”
I for one hate our non-binary numeric system. 1 or 0 are the only numbers that matter.
I see the Politically Correct Thought Police in bending over backwards to be fair to everyone achieve exactly the opposite. If we allow people like Semenya who are either born with “gender abnormalities” or have simply been fed testicle schinking performance enhancers by unscrupulous coaches, aren’t we effectively excluding women without such abnormalities / drug induced physical attibutes from ever being able to cpmpete.
If people can cheat they will, which rather stomps on politically correct attitudes.
Or if the guys who excel at 100 meter decide they will never beat Usain Bolt and turn up for the womens race claiming to be female should we just take their word for it?
Gender Testing – It’s Bollocks In Athletics
Weeks for testing?
Can’t they just borrow the Vatican’s Pope Chair?
This is just insulting to the runner and yet another reminder that we need to radically rethink the categories that we place people in, not only in sports but in all of society as well. What if a transgender / nongendered athlete was competing? Would they fail the “completely female” test?
This male/female sports debate seems similar in credulity to the steroid user / non-steroid user debate in sports. There’s not a clear category, occasionally, in which you can put a person. The sporting apparatus’ continuing attempts to do so strikes me as illogical and cruel.
Dear Leslie,
Re: adams apple suggestion.
See “Webster II:” Facetious: playful, jocular, bantering, tongue-in-cheek.
Adam’s Apple: (per L.D.) The gob of forbidden fruit that got stuck in Adam’s throat when he disobeyed God’s command, hence all men have been condemned to display a protrusion in their own throats, just as the Almighty punished all of Eve’s descendants to the pain of childbirth in retribution for her sin of picking the fruit and tempting her most noble companion to partake thereof. Or some such thing.
I might also suggest that the problem of lengthy tests might be minimized by having the lady hold her arm out straight. Females generally have an elbow joint that is not quite in line with the other bones in the arm. Men have straight arms, with proper elbow joints. At least this is what my brother told me when we were kids, although I confess I haven’t researched the issue, and don’t want to bother my neighbors with requests to hold out their arm so I can be scientific about this.
I have the honor to be, your obedient servant (or some such civil war clap-trap),
Leah
The question is not whether Semenya is male; the question is whether she is “entirely female”. The IAAF rules require that in order to run in a women’s event, the athlete must be “entirely female”, and that is what is being tested. There is no similar restrictions to run in the men’s events. See
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/08/caster-semenya-male-or-female.html
Note however it is not clear at all what constitutes “entirely female”. There are wide variations in the expression of gender traits in both men (people with XY genes), women (people with XX genes), and that is true for people who are have entirely normal genes, i.e., have no genetic disorder. For one paper discussing these variations, see
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~phollowa/5sexes.html
“can’t they just look to see if she has an adams apple?”
That would be a non-conclusinve test.
“The laryngeal prominence is usually more prominent in adult men than in women or prepubescent girls or boys.The growth of the larynx itself during puberty is responsible for the vocal instability in teenage boys. The laryngeal prominence is merely the protrusion one sees of the thyroid cartilage making up the body of the larynx. The laryngeal prominence is usually more prominent in adult males because the thyroid cartilage elongates during puberty, protruding out the front of the neck more noticeably. The result is that the two laminae (thin cartilage) of the thyroid cartilage that form the protrusion meet at an average angle of 90° in males, and 120° in females, so there is less cartilage protruding out in females.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngeal_prominence
George, can’t they just look to see if she has an adams apple?
How degrading. The test takes several weeks and the panel evaluates her includes a psychologist and a gender expert.
I wonder if this young lady was an American if she would be enduring weeks of “tests” over such an issue.
Put Danny Bonaduce on the case.
Is that a knife in your pants? Or you just glad to see me?
Why can’t Caster run as an independent?
Just another example of the problems with our two party system.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-bqET22vEU&hl=en&fs=1&]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUiso6MHvRw&hl=en&fs=1&]
Well now enters the women all male competition. will they be tested next? Herr Frauline?
I’m not one to judge by appearances but I must say if I saw this person in non-gender specific clothing, I would think they were a male.