The controversy over gender row champion runner Caster Semenya deepened today — after reports claimed sex swap tests have shown she is a HERMAPHRODITE. South African gold-medallist Semenya, 18, has both male and female organs, it was claimed.
And sources close to the International Association of Athletics Federations — who ordered extensive tests on the teen after her amazing 800m win at the World Athletics Championships last month — say the results mean she could still be stripped of her medal.
Do we need a third category in competitions?
Small facet? 10 yards ahead of the pack and pulling away? “ok”
#11 See your answer that is well described by post #15. Essentially, Democrats and Liberals have the ability to see the world in shades of gray.
I’m sure you would agree that Republican and Conservatives in general see things in black and white. So there you have it.
>> Scients said, on September 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
>> Or if someone is XY but develops as a female (like Jamie Lee Curtis) because they have no receptors for testosterone, are they considered male or female?
Jamie Lee Curtis is genetically a male? I had no idea. When she was on her fitness craze, she did seem to get kind-of metro sexual.
>> Testing people in this way is ridiculous. Some produce more testosterone than others, and that could be an unfair advantage! Some people produce more but have fewer receptors-that’s not fair! What about men? Some have higher/lower testosterone–not fair!!
You raise solid issues and could probably convince me.
While estrogen and testosterone are both present in both women and men, aren’t they typically present at sigtificantly different levels?
I tried to find a graph on Google with no luck.
Do you know?
By the way, this isn’t an issue of “fairness” but a way to medically define the handful of transgender athletes only at the highest level of sports.
#23–Greg==Its ALL ABOUT fairness. The whole point of having the female category is because 99.9% of the time they can’t compete with males.
Why do we do that?
Ahem: to be fair.
Kinda “obvious.”
Met plenty of tweed trouser wearing bearded pipe smoking hermaphrodite English ladies in my youth. All could chop their own wood, shoot and skin a rabbit with a knife, tell a yarn, would drink a man unconscious and have their way with him. Eventually they were revealed as actual men, and banned from teaching. Just, a memory.
Those two little balls in her belly spurting out testosterone gave her an undue advantage, end of story. I’m sorry for her, but it’s like discovering a car had a turbo in a non turbo race, but saying it was ok, because the driver didn’t know.
I’ve heard that Jamie Lee Curtis rumour before. [citation required]
If the tracks were big enough we could just let all the qualifiers run and let the categories of humans sort themselves out.
Related was the issue a while back on whether or not amputees who can run quite well with teflon springed feet should be allowed to compete.
Evidently, the top amputee atheletes run faster or slower than world records according to the dial on the spring. Some to to “11.”
#23 – Yes, there are basic ranges for testosterone for women and men (same with estrogen.) However, these ranges vary (sometimes wildly) from one lab to another and even moreso from one country’s set definition to another’s.
What if we tested Serena or Venus Williams, because they’re obviously more “torn up”/”ripped” than other female tennis players. I’d bet you money they produce a markedly higher level of testosterone than other women. This level could easily fall outside of normal ranges, but because both of them still retain what our society deems as female-like characteristics (mainly breasts and finer facial features) we automatically assign them in the female category. That and they say they’re female, which they are.
So if this athlete says she’s female, has grown up as female, has no inkling of the fact that she has male organs, but somehow doesn’t look feminine enough for people’s standards, her abilities that may or may not be directly related to testosterone production* are questioned.
You could expand this further towards cognitive abilities–can someone better utilize glucose in the brain than another? If someone produces a higher ratio of Glutamine to GABA, so their brain expresses a marked increase in certain regional “activity” on a scan, are they at an unfair advantage in a spelling competition?
*Many many studies have shown that there is a correlation between testosterone and muscle production. However, this does not imply causation for several reasons.
First, the human body’s functional use of testosterone varies from person to person, just as metabolism of food, drugs, etc. varies from person to person (otherwise, no one would have allergies, side effects, etc.) A female who produces less testosterone than her peer can still produce more lean muscle/kg body weight because she uses it more efficiently. I would go as far to say that this athlete could on a good day have normal testosterone levels (which may be the norm if she is in fact an XX intersexual) but just utilize it for muscle production more efficiently.
Second, more testosterone and more muscle does not equal athletic prowess. For example, millions of women in our country have PCOS, an endocrine disorder that usually involves highly elevated testosterone (as well as infertility, hyperlipidemia, and amenorrhea.) Look up what happens in this disease–yes you might put on some muscle weight, but for the vast majority of women with this disease, there is excess fatty weight gain around the middle, male-pattern baldness, hirsutism, acne, and fatigue.
Third, testosterone is not all that makes up the athleticism equation. Consider metabolism again. If someone has a greater affinity for utilizing linolenic and linoleic acid, or CoQ10, or N-acetylcysteine, or any other supplement, or even PROTEIN…if someone has lower cortisol levels on average, produces more epinephrine (to give that nice athletic “high”)…if someone has any one of literally MILLIONS of modifications in their system that occur in each and every human on this planet, their athletic/cognitive/anything abilities will differ.
This of course isn’t taking good old will power into the argument at all.
Finally…bobbo, if perhaps we should consider testing Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt for excess testosterone outside the “male range”–if it’s outside the range, they can’t possibly be male. Even if they found out they were XXY, would they still be male, even though they are XX as well?
This is my point–testosterone/sex hormones alone are not an indicator of athleticism nor socially conditioned sex identities.
#27 – Ok, that’s a valid point. The Jamie Lee Curtis issue hasn’t been fully validated–though it’s actually taught as an example in many a college biology class! That’s probably a bad thing.
But, the disorder does exist. The example I was using involves deletion of the SRY region of the Y chromosome. This is actually the region that applies to most of the secondary sexual characteristics males experience as well as receptor-based utilization of testosterone. So if you’re XY and don’t have an SRY region on your Y chromosome–you could in theory develop as a female (some define it as the ultimate feminine, b/c even XX females have testosterone receptors.)
Here’s a study on it:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=gene&part=gonad-dys-46xy
#29–scient==nice review. I have never mentioned testosterone or really any other issue other than: define the competing category and go for it. Not what the contestant thinks, or the contestants family thinks. I googled (Olympics “gender definition”) and didn’t turn up anything in the time I gave it.
Fact is what’s interesting as you demonstrate is that things we take for granted upon closer SCIENTIFIC (greg!) scrutiny invariably show reality to be more complex, more variable, more sublime, more intricate, more mystical than the black/white simplistic scenario’s foisted on us by our great leaders.
Define female as you wish and if it is determined later you gotta add an X or delete a Y then go for it but anyone qualifying under whatever the defintion is should be allowed to complete.
The WHOLE POINT of female competition is to see what females are capable of==not what a transexual is capable of. and THAT has nothing to do with all the other tangential issues that idiots will try to cram in.
#13, “They’re not hermaphrodites anymore. They’re called Intersex person now.”
lol, until the next feel-good term gets invented because the current one stops being vogue.
#4 Not only medical, but scientific since hermaphrodites can be found in other species.
#9 Someone needs to settle down, alright. That’d be you and your fixation with Obama. Now, please don’t start ranting that people here are calling Obama hermaphrodite.
#11 Where that came from? From a deranged mind, that’s where!
#19 I don’t remember any other spices where females suffered hysteria attacks.
#22 The trouble with you is that you seem able to see shadows in broad daylight.
#33–Hey Pedro==isn’t daylight required in order to have shadows? And the brighter the light, the darker the shadows?
Hysteria? Gee whiz. Is what the Greeks thought that much relevant anymore? “Mental Agitation” applicable to men and women? Update your dictionary.
I’ll stop now.
Here’s the thing. When you give a blood test for athletic testing of some sort (doping, whatever,) you are giving info on markers in your system, but NOT your gender.
If there is no way gender is defined by a governing athletics organization, they cannot discriminate against anyone who claims to be of any gender.
However, most likely there is a definition (albeit simplistic) of gender at this level. If you have a Y chromosome, you’re a male–cut and dry, right?
Well that’s fine if they do a karyotype to show this lovely 23rd pair on EVERY participant. But the fact is, they don’t do this. Ever really. This person has been discriminated against in this way by having to do a karyotype while other contestants did not. Why? Because this person ran faster than expected and doesn’t look traditionally female.
If the article is correct, Semenya also has no ovaries, which in addition to any elevated testosterone level the testes are contributing to, she also should have a lower than normal estrogen level as well, which seems as though it could also contribute to having a physiological advantage over her other female competitors.
Heh, watching the accompanying video, without knowing any better, I wager most would say that is a young man being interviewed.
#35–scients==Why should karyotype testing be done if everyone is satisfied with the performance of everyone in a race?
If Semenya had come in fourth, it wouldn’t be an issue. Semenya isn’t claiming anyone behind her needs to be tested.
Wanna join the real world, you aren’t making any sense at all.
Who woulda thought someone named “Semen” would have extra testosterone? What is this, a Victorian morality play?
So, can hermaphrodites be gay or straight?
#33 Yes, Pedro, I do see shadows in broad daylight. You proved my point.
Also, what spices are you talking about?
Are you on 1/2 medication to cut costs? It’s not working.