Presented her Olympic gold medal by the same organisation that will look to restrict her future in the sport, Caster Semenya stood on top of the podium and smiled broader than ever before.
The finest 800m runner the world has seen for almost decade, there was little doubt that she would depart these Rio Olympics with a gold medal round her neck.
There were three intersex people in that race.
Which leaves everynoe with a thorny problem. One which doesn’t really go away.
Assume that society in general is correct with the insistence that people are whatever sex/gender they say they are.
Then we specifically have a division, here in sports, because we know that male and female physiques are different. The very finest XX is 20%, two whole seconds, behind the finest XY in the 100 m. Open competition would lead to there being no women at all in most sports at the higher level. One story is that Flo Jo would have, with the steroid assisted time she won gold in, come fourth in the men’s Brooklyn high school races.
We have the division because womens’ sport (yes, there are exceptins, equestrianism) simply will not work without the division being enforced.
Now we have intersex. Some forms of which, in certain physical attributes, are rather more male than female. Which of our sections should they compete in?
This simply is not a problem which is going to go away. So, what is the solution?
The solution is obviously to stop with this insistence that ‘people are whatever sex/gender they say they are’ and stick to scientific fact.
That, or create a ‘freak of nature’ category for those like Semenya.
One solution would be to give every aspiring contestant a genetic test. XY β you’re a bloke; XX β you’re a bird: deal with it.
My preference would be to abolish spectator sport altogether, but then I’m in a tiny minority, shared by the dyspeptic ‘Theodore Dalrymple’ in this delightfully bilious rant:
http://takimag.com/article/olympias_true_victors_theodore_dalrymple#axzz4HwksF9VP
What about XXYs and XYYs and other intersex conditions?
Because the discussion about genderfluidity is different to actual intersex issues and intersex people iin general simply aren’t ‘choosing’ to be what they are.
I expect sticking them in the Paralympics as a new intersex category isn’t thought to be a very tactful way of dealing with it.
Also, it reminds me of Strava the competitive app for cyclists. Eventually every winning time on Strava will be made by someone on a time trial bike, with a tail wind, drafting a bus.
And so is the same with women’s sport, given enough time an intersex person will hold every women’s world record.
There is only one solution the Feminists would accept, no gender segregation in sport.
Anagram of Caster Semenya: Yes a secret man.
That’s enough to prove it for me.
It won’t be an issue until Trans women start turning up in boxing and battering their opponents half to death. It’s already happening in UFC.
They should make a ‘Trans’ category and dump it in the Paralympics which no one cares about when not virtue signaling anyway.
It only affects the women’s side of sports, so why is this a big deal? π
The Olympic governing body has given themselves two years to rule on the matter. I canβt see they would be allowed to exclude Semenya and her ilk or to force them to take drugs. A toughie.
“The finest 800m runner the world has seen for almost decade.”
Her time of 1:55 would have seen her trailing the winner of the men’s 800m final by 13 seconds, i.e. fucking miles back.
What absurd hyperbole.
Simple. Give them their own categories.
As MatGB points out, it is important not to confuse the identity politics mentalism of ‘genderfluidity’ or indeed the debased and unscientific notion of gender with matters relating to biological sex.
The notion of gender should be removed from the Olympics (and indeed everything) and biological sex should be used instead.
There is a fair spread of intersex characteristics and the governing body just needs to decide where it draws the line. Of course this is arbitrary and can’t please everyone but as long as it is clear then we can proceed. The number of intersex people is pretty tiny after all.
Remember when the team, the game, the sport was bigger than just one man, woman or transgender?
I seem to recall Bill Shankley saying something like it.
Although he may have forgotten about the transgender.
Grr, Shankly
The governing body attempted to make testosterone levels the cutoff. Lat summer this was overturned for 2 years ostensibly to confirm that testosterone does give an advantage. Semenya’s times started improving after the ruling.
The solution is to end the gender segregation and instead have separate “with testosterone” and “without testosterone” competitions.
Then those East German lady shot-putters can come back.
Bring in Snooker, darts,dog handling,plate spinning and cookery as transgender Olympic events.
Excellent idea NiV–its high time sport was killed off.
Rolo has it. Abolish separation and let the women compete against the men ini single events meaning we’ll never see any women athletes any more excpet in the arty sports like gym and diving
I remember reading something, probably Dalrymple in fact, saying that male expressed intersex make up a surprisingly large percentage of the prison population.
Gunker, her times improved because she stopped taking the medication to suppress her testosterone levels when the ruling was overturned (following a legal case by another intersex athlete.)
We have Paralympics, can’t we have a Shemalympics ?
Admirredly it’d be dominated by the Thais and Brazilians…
Have the same events for all sexes, but with handicaps. Thus fluffy feminine girls would get a 20m start in the 100m, butch girls a 10m start, and so on. Fair’s fair: just like golf.
‘Assume that society in general is correct with the insistence that people are whatever sex/gender they say they are.’
I don’t think society in general accepts any of the gender fluidity crap. It lives only in the minds of the elitist Left.
When I was 8, I was told I couldn’t play on the girls’ softball team. I got over it. The IOC should can all the PC introspection, and just tell the trannys, “No.”
This is not straightforward.
Ban anyone with a Y chromosome? That’s hard on chromosomal males with complete androgen insensitivity. And should Ewa KΕobukowska, who is mosaic XX/XXY, have been banned, as she was? A year later she gave birth to a son.
What about XX women virilized to some extent by congenital adrenal hyperplasia?
“I donβt think society in general accepts any of the gender fluidity crap. It lives only in the minds of the elitist Left.”
On the contrary. Society has been persuaded, which is why our elected legislators have passed things like the Sex Equality Act which includes “the gender fluidity crap” as a protected characteristic, why psychologists have removed it from the DSM, and why the NHS offers treatment for it. About 80% of the UK population agree with them doing so, as of the last survey I saw.
But of course, that 20% rump of the older generation remaining are still firmly convinced that nearly everybody still thinks like they do. And nothing will convince them otherwise. C’est la vie.
That’s what makes it all so interesting, isn’t it? What actually should be the line if we are to still have, for those physical reasons, a distinction between male and female sports?
NiV: Society has been persuaded, which is why our elected legislators have passed things like the Sex Equality Act.
That presupposes that elected legislators mirror the views of electors.
The Brexit vote and the popular support for the death penalty suggest that they don’t.
“That presupposes that elected legislators mirror the views of electors.”
True. You have a good point, there.
Bloke in Wales has the only solution that doesn’t hit le “unfairness” barriers.
@ Tim Newman
How shall we distinguish between a XXY woman battering her opponent half-way to death and a standard XX woman doing the same?
How shall we distinguish between a XXY woman battering her opponent half-way to death and a standard XX woman doing the same?
The degree of battery, of course!
‘This is not straightforward.’
Sure it is. Tell the freaks they can’t compete.
Gamecock: First you have to define “freak”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/swimming/10768083/Michael-Phelps-The-man-who-was-built-to-be-a-swimmer.html
Is anyone here bothered by, for instance, Michael Phelps competing? Or is it only womenβs sport that must be kept pure?
Something like the Olympics is almost bound to search out freaks of nature. Why pick on Phelps?
Though I must say he’s shown that there are far too many separate events in Swimming.
“Too many chromosomes, and you can’t play.”
It’s not difficult.
Sports tests biological capabilities, so any segregation should be by biological characterstics, – ie sex, not gender. I’ve been shouting at the radio whenever there’s a report about an Olympic “gender” test – NO!, it’s a SEX test!!! A gender test is “are you Shawn or Sheila?” A sex test is “drop your keks”.
@ Gamecock
Which freaks? Stephen Hawkings didn’t enter.
Anyhow, being a freak isn’t enough to get you into the Olympics. You would need to be an Olympic-quality freak.
@ Gamecock
Are you limiting this to women’s events? Or are you saying that men’s/open events are not open to whoever is best in the world? If a woman can beat me is she to be diaqualified because she is a woman? I had to give up dreams of the Olympics when I was twenty but I still believe it should be open to whoever is the best.
If you need to invent a new category for Semenya Caster, do that! Or you could just have a unisex event for everything (minor problem in boxing where the target area differs for men and women, but since women carry more useless fat so have less srrength than a male boxer of the same weight the two biases offset each other).
Something like the Olympics is almost bound to search out freaks of nature. Why pick on Phelps?
Well, exactly. So why pick on Semenya?
βToo many chromosomes, and you canβt play.β
Itβs not difficult.
That doesn’t work though.
@ Tim Newman
The last time I attended a boxing match the most battered individual was a woman boxing another woman over a stone lighter [wouldn’t have been permitted for the guys where they expected to match everyone in the same or, at worst, adjacent weights]. Nothing to suggest that the smaller lass was XXY, she was just a lot better than the heavier one.
I’m not unduly exercised by all the controversy surrounding a not very interesting field of human endeavour.
What does get my goat is that the Olympic Games and the latest medals awarded to “Team GB” are the first news item on the radio and if that wasn’t enough, these items are accompanied by excited, nay hysterical, shouted commentaries.
Is it true that more BBC staff went to Rio than the entire “Team GB”?
Nothing to suggest that the smaller lass was XXY, she was just a lot better than the heavier one.
It’s the same with men. But a male boxer could batter a woman boxer like no woman could.
βToo many chromosomes, and you canβt play.β Itβs not difficult.
So you would allow XX males, or XX individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia and hence ambiguous physical characteristics to compete as women?
SJW: So you would allow XX males, or XX individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia and hence ambiguous physical characteristics to compete as women?
The problem for a social justice warrior (lower case intended) is an inability to recognise how utterly absurd your question is.
There is no foolproof, fail-safe triage system for all of life’s oddities but there used to be a fairly reliable degree of ill-defined tolerance which is being eroded, in this case, by a burgeoning tyranny of the trannies.
There’s all the difference in the world between people who unfortunately born with ambiguous sexual organs and lunatics like Jenner who decide (while retaining penis and testicles) that they consider themselves a woman and expect to be treated as such.
The first group require compassion and the second derision. But that doesn’t mean that either should be able to compete as women in sporting competitions. Unfair on the born intersex? Perhaps, but the alternative is unfair on the remaining competitors.
The whole ‘trannies are womyn too!’ thing was inevitably going to backfire on the left as soon as it was applied to sports, because it now means that the best girls’ sports team is the one with the most boys in it.
Womyn don’t yet seem to understand that, by voting for these nuts, they’re voting against their own best interests. But they’re learning.
Womyn donβt yet seem to understand that, by voting for these nuts, theyβre voting against their own best interests. But theyβre learning.
Hence the feminists, who for years have inisisted all men are rapists and they need female-only spaces (such as toilets and locker rooms) for their own safety are now finding anyone who self-identifies as a man can walk right on in. Whoops!