# Caster Semenya and Gender Tests in Sports **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 20, 2009, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088 "2009-08-20T16:19:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/41 "2009-08-21T04:19:43Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Well that wouldn’t really give her an advantage because the testosterone doesn’t affect XY women. Well that’s true. It’s why they’re XY women in the first place, but their “male” chromosome does still bring them athletic advantages, as mentioned up thread. Should XY women be disqualified? ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/42 "2009-08-21T04:43:37Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Well that’s true. It’s why they’re XY women in the first place, but their “male” chromosome does still bring them athletic advantages, as mentioned up thread. > > Should XY women be disqualified? There can be no clear answer if we can’t define what a man or woman is. If we want to have a separate women’s event, you have to be able to define a woman to some objective standard. It is the very nature of sport that it abhors subjectivity, except for gymnastics, diving and other judged competitions. We have to make a judgement call for all ambiguous cases, xy males, transgendered people, and so on. Otherwise it comes down to self-identification, and of course the women’s events will be swamped by men who self-identify as women. Of course the cleanest solution is to simply have sports in which men and women compete against each other. I’d love to see the arguments we will have about why the race should not go to the swift, nor the fight to the strong, because of the disparate impact speed and power standards have on women. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/43 "2009-08-21T06:25:17Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > There can be no clear answer if we can’t define what a man or woman is. If we want to have a separate women’s event, you have to be able to define a woman to some objective standard. It is the very nature of sport that it abhors subjectivity, except for gymnastics, diving and other judged competitions. > > We have to make a judgement call for all ambiguous cases, xy males, transgendered people, and so on. Otherwise it comes down to self-identification, and of course the women’s events will be swamped by men who self-identify as women. > > Of course the cleanest solution is to simply have sports in which men and women compete against each other. I’d love to see the arguments we will have about why the race should not go to the swift, nor the fight to the strong, because of the disparate impact speed and power standards have on women. Yea it’s a complex issue, but the problem is because they’re trying to force world of shades gray into monochrome. Maybe instead of the genders, what about something like what boxing does with different weight classes? Say the physically gifted would be one class, then lesser gifted, a different class, and the even lesser gift yet another, etc. That’d do away with all this gender testing nonsense. Caster Semenya’s sex would have been irrelevant because she’d have been competing with people of similar physical advantages, and similar gender status would be irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/44 "2009-08-21T08:46:00Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Say the physically gifted would be one class, then lesser gifted, a different class, and the even lesser gift yet another, etc. That idea seems inherently flawed, unless you’re using some other measure of “physically gifted”. Creating divisions based on an independent variable like sex or weight only works because it _isn’t_ an absolute measure of ability. Creating divisions based directly on ability just means you’re assigning rewards arbitrarily, handing out gold medals to the people who score 5.99 and 6.99 but not to the one that scores 6.01. ---
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/45 "2009-08-21T12:08:01Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > That idea seems inherently flawed, unless you’re using some other measure of “physically gifted”. Creating divisions based on an independent variable like sex or weight only works because it _isn’t_ an absolute measure of ability. Creating divisions based directly on ability just means you’re assigning rewards arbitrarily, handing out gold medals to the people who score 5.99 and 6.99 but not to the one that scores 6.01. Agreed. In application, being female would be like a weight handicap. They would be allowed to “fight down” In weight to provide a perceived equality in physical attributes. However, it would still cause a number of issues as a 180 lb woman is likely to be much taller than her male strength equivalent at 150 lbs. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/46 "2009-08-21T13:20:51Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > There is a third option, and it seems to me that it is **SFG** ’s key point: your binary divisions of male/female and stronger/weaker need to be deconstructed and dehegemonized – why did it not occur to you that Caster Semenya is a woman through-and-through and also as strong and as swift as a man. > > I read a lot of facile “men are better athletes, it’s not fair to make women compete with them” talk above. But, it is obvious to me, although I’m not sure it’s obvious to that premise’s proponents, that the claim already presupposes this essentialized notion of women as weaker. That is, Caster Semenya’s male-equalling athletic performance is itself taken as evidence of her non-womanhood. God, don’t tell my boyfriend that women aren’t actually weaker. I’d have to open my own jars and all. Oh, wait. I forgot. I ask to open the jars because I can’t and he can. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/47 "2009-08-21T13:20:54Z")
You still have the problem if you don’t objectively define women. You’d get 180lb men self identifying as women so they could pummel the carp out of 150lb men (or 180lb “real” women) for the gold medal. Women’s events are by definition segregated based on genetics, so there must be a line in the sand drawn to define who is and who isn’t allowed to compete in those events. Just like a weigh in, it may not be “fair” to be disqualified for weighing 150.001 lbs and the guy who weighs 149.999 lbs isn’t, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. We know an awful lot about genetics these days, between physical tests like an MRI or ultrasound and blood tests, we should be able to draw the line and determine if someone crosses or doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/48 "2009-08-21T14:20:55Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > God, don’t tell my boyfriend that women aren’t actually weaker. I’d have to open my own jars and all. > > Oh, wait. I forgot. I ask to open the jars because I can’t and he can. Go figure. Well, that’s super, toots. I suppose you think all women need to conform to your own subjective experience of womanhood. And if Caster Semanya can open her own jar of pickles, then that’s one more bit of evidence that she’s some sort of man in drag. How do all those poor, unattached women get by? Oh wait, I forgot. Some sisters are doing it for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/49 "2009-08-21T14:42:18Z")
> [@Acid\_Lamp](#): > > On reply I noticed that the thread has mentioned true intersex individuals. While rare, I should think that they ought to compete in the Men’s event. Any intersexing that results in more masculine secondary sexual characteristics is also likely to result in a physique and physiology that few, if any women could fairly compete against. But those intersexed women wouldn’t have all the advantages of an unambiguous 46,XY male. They also have the disadvantage of having spent years of training to compete against the gender they identify as. > [@treis](#): > > If they are “in between” female and male, then they are by definition not female. They might not be 46,XX women, but they’re not average 46,XY men, either. > [@](#): > > Judging by the pictures of this runner, there is definitely something going on. She has the hips, shoulders, face, and muscular build of a man. She is either genetically male or chugging steroids. So because she doesn’t fit your idealized idea of what a woman is supposed to look like, she \*\*must \*\*be a man? > [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > Otherwise it comes down to self-identification, and of course the women’s events will be swamped by men who self-identify as women. Really? Who comprises this great legion of male athletes who will claim to be female just to win more medals? I’m trying to find information about verifying that athletes who participate in the Special Olympics actually have developmental disabilities, but I’m not finding any. By your reasoning, shouldn’t there be a bunch of people pretending to have intellectual disabilities in order to compete there? ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/50 "2009-08-21T14:49:10Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Some sisters are doing it for themselves. Yet, no women are even remotely competitive in running sports. I guess they need to unshackle themselves from their subjective womanhood and start running sub 10 second 100m dashes. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/51 "2009-08-21T14:59:21Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Yet, no women are even remotely competitive in running sports. I guess they need to unshackle themselves from their subjective womanhood and start running sub 10 second 100m dashes. Except, of course, Caster Semanya, the subject of this very debate. Which is why the accusations of sex-deception are being floated, because then you won’t be able to make pronouncements like “women just biologically cannot compete with men; so-called women who do must be some sort of genetic, non-woman anomaly.” ---
**Author:** ![bri1600bv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9fc29f/32.png) [@bri1600bv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bri1600bv)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/52 "2009-08-21T15:05:15Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > But those intersexed women wouldn’t have all the advantages of an unambiguous 46,XY male. They also have the disadvantage of having spent years of training to compete against the gender they identify as. > > They might not be 46,XX women, but they’re not average 46,XY men, either. > > So because she doesn’t fit your idealized idea of what a woman is supposed to look like, she \*\*must \*\*be a man? > > Really? Who comprises this great legion of male athletes who will claim to be female just to win more medals? I’m trying to find information about verifying that athletes who participate in the Special Olympics actually have developmental disabilities, but I’m not finding any. By your reasoning, shouldn’t there be a bunch of people pretending to have intellectual disabilities in order to compete there? You want names of men who would compete as women or the whole male/female thing is invalid? OK, there’s Joe Jones of Toronto who was a good male miler in high school. He’d break the women’s record but wouldn’t even rank nationally for men. There’s Joe Smith or Albuequerque, who’d smash the women’s shotput record even though he’s just an average Joe. Is that a valid request? There aren’t people falsifying mental disorders to be in the special olympics so that means that we don’t need any rules of who is and who is not a woman for an athletic competion separated by “sex”? OK, I agree. Let’s just have one race, no sex standards at all. No “women’s mile / men’s mile”…what is sex but sexism anyway? Run that by some female olympic athletes, see what they think about it now that their once exceptional abilities wouldn’t even qualify them as mediocre. As for the “just because she doesn’t match societies’ expectations of what a woman looks like”…or anyone else’s standards. Maybe she’s just a very manly looking, completely flat chested woman. Maybe. Or maybe not. That’s why some are demanding a test. Maybe she’s somehow intersexed or whatever, which opens the question of is it still fair? Again, the people with the dog in the fight are competing WOMEN. Not men. ---
**Author:** ![bri1600bv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9fc29f/32.png) [@bri1600bv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bri1600bv)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/53 "2009-08-21T15:11:37Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Except, of course, Caster Semanya, the subject of this very debate. Which is why the accusations of sex-deception are being floated, because then you won’t be able to make pronouncements like “women just biologically cannot compete with men; so-called women who do must be some sort of genetic, non-woman anomaly.” Would Caster Semanya be remotely competitive with the top men? Some women can compete with some men; I’m sure all of the women in the race are faster than me and probably most other guys. But the most competitive women are slower and weaker than the most competive men. That’s just reality. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/54 "2009-08-21T15:12:52Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > They might not be 46,XX women, but they’re not average 46,XY men, either. No shit. However, the point of womens competition is to allow 46,XX women to compete on a level playing ground. Allowing someone to compete that isn’t gives that person an unfair advantage. > [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > So because she doesn’t fit your idealized idea of what a woman is supposed to look like, she \*\*must \*\*be a man? Uh, no. It isn’t that she doesn’t conform to my idealized idea of a woman. It is that she has physical attributes that are impossible to achieve biologically as a female. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/55 "2009-08-21T15:14:50Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Except, of course, Caster Semanya, the subject of this very debate. Which is why the accusations of sex-deception are being floated, because then you won’t be able to make pronouncements like “women just biologically cannot compete with men; so-called women who do must be some sort of genetic, non-woman anomaly.” I said this once before, but I guess it will take at least two tries to sink in. She ran very fast for a woman, but she is still 10 seconds behind the male competitors in this race. She has zero chance of successfully competing on an elite level with men. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/56 "2009-08-21T15:45:38Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > That idea seems inherently flawed, unless you’re using some other measure of “physically gifted”. Creating divisions based on an independent variable like sex or weight only works because it _isn’t_ an absolute measure of ability. Creating divisions based directly on ability just means you’re assigning rewards arbitrarily, handing out gold medals to the people who score 5.99 and 6.99 but not to the one that scores 6.01. Wait I thought of sex distinctions was because sex strongly influenced ability. Isn’t gender therefore already dividing the 5.99s, and 6.01s? If you want to go with sex please tell me your line in the sand. Which side would my up thread list of people fall in? If it’s purely chromosome based, say anyone with a Y is male, including XY anatomical females, what’s the difference between that and athletes that inherited other advantages such as longer legs, or stronger hearts? Weight works because you can objectively measure it. Sex isn’t so easy to quantify in many cases. Weight wouldn’t be a good way to gage male female differences but since the advantage is purely muscle development based then weight combined with percentage of muscle mass might. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/57 "2009-08-21T15:47:03Z")
> [@bri1600bv](#): > > OK, there’s Joe Jones of Toronto who was a good male miler in high school. He’d break the women’s record but wouldn’t even rank nationally for men. There’s Joe Smith or Albuequerque, who’d smash the women’s shotput record even though he’s just an average Joe. So, people you just made up. If your argument had any weight, there would have been a lot of men competing as women before testing started being required. What we actually had was a tiny, miniscule handful of examples: one man who was forced to compete as a woman **by the Nazis** , two sisters who may have been brothers… If your argument had any weight, you should be able to point to a **statistically significant** number of female athletes who mysteriously stopped competing when gender testing was first mandated. > [@treis](#): > > However, the point of womens competition is to allow 46,XX women to compete on a level playing ground. Allowing someone to compete that isn’t gives that person an unfair advantage. I will pose to you [the same question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11465558&postcount=4) that I posed to someone else earlier in the thread (which, incidentally, went unanswered): Michael Phelps has [a bunch of interesting quirks to his physiology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_phelps#Physique_and_training) that make him an especially good swimmer–do you want to strip him of his medals and records and ban him from competing again because he had an advantage against people who don’t have the same physical makeup as him? > [@](#): > > It is that she has physical attributes that are impossible to achieve biologically as a female. This deserves nothing more than a :rolleyes:. Here’s my problem: no one thinks that Semenya is cheating–they think that she might have a genetic anomaly of which she is unaware. So what’s happening is that a woman, who thinks she is a woman, is having her entire gender identity called into question in a very public way because she does not fit many people’s ideas of what a woman “should” look like, sound like, or be able to achieve athletically. \*\*That \*\*is what disgusts me. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/58 "2009-08-21T15:47:16Z")
> [@treis](#): > > I said this once before, but I guess it will take at least two tries to sink in. She ran very fast for a woman, but she is still 10 seconds behind the male competitors in this race. She has zero chance of successfully competing on an elite level with men. Well, if there’s nothing out of the ordinary, why are you so adamant about testing her then? ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/59 "2009-08-21T15:57:29Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > I will pose to you [the same question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11465558&postcount=4) that I posed to someone else earlier in the thread (which, incidentally, went unanswered): > > Michael Phelps has [a bunch of interesting quirks to his physiology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_phelps#Physique_and_training) that make him an especially good swimmer–do you want to strip him of his medals and records and ban him from competing again because he had an advantage against people who don’t have the same physical makeup as him? The point of a women’s division is to allow people with a specific genetic disadvantage to compete on a level playing field. If you don’t possess that specific genetic disadvantage than you are ineligible to compete in that division. There is no rule against competing with big feet or a long torso. If there were say a sub size 13 foot division, then yes, Phelps would not be allowed to compete in that division. > [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Here’s my problem: no one thinks that Semenya is cheating–they think that she might have a genetic anomaly of which she is unaware. So what’s happening is that a woman, who thinks she is a woman, is having her entire gender identity called into question in a very public way because she does not fit many people’s ideas of what a woman “should” look like, sound like, or be able to achieve athletically. \*\*That \*\*is what disgusts me. It isn’t what a woman “should” look like, sound like, or achieve. It is what woman “do” look like, sound like, or achieve. Semenya is well out of the bounds for all three of these, which is why her sex is being questioned. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088/60 "2009-08-21T15:58:35Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Well, if there’s nothing out of the ordinary, why are you so adamant about testing her then? Are you really this dense? What is ordinary for a good male athlete is beyond extraordinary for any female athlete. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/caster-semenya-and-gender-tests-in-sports/507088.md?page=4)