I think she has to for the health reasons. Her testicles could get cancerous. It’s pretty common to remove abdominal testes.
Looking at both the existing regulations of sporting agencies like the IAAF and the reactions of people here, it seems like the biggest determiner of fair competition is testosterone. How would people feel about dividing competitions not as “men’s” and “women’s,” but as “testosterone level #+” and “testosterone level below #”?
One of my big objections to gender verification is that it’s currently applied in a very selective, subjective way. A better alternative, in the hypothetical situation of dividing by testosterone level instead of sex, would be one comparable to the current anti-doping standards: all athletes competing at high-level events are eligible to be tested, and the top-ranked athletes can also be selected for tests even out of competition.
The whole point of gender segregation in sports is to allow a level playing field for men and women. If Semenya falls at the high end of the normal range for women, but is well below the normal range for men, she would be at a much greater disadvantage competing against men than she would be at an advantage competing against other women.
If she does turn out to be intersexed, whatever partially developed testes she does have will almost certainly be removed anyway, thus negating that advantage.
This, I’m very glad to hear about.
Are there that many MtF trans athletes, that you can say they “routinely outperform” 46,XX women? Not attacking, just curious where you’re getting your data from.
From what I’ve read about Semenya, she’s been very athletic her whole life. And while girls are menstruating earlier and earlier, it’s still not that unusual for some to undergo menarche in their mid to late teens, by which time she’d have been even more seriously involved in athletics. So, it might raise red flags, and a lot of people would probably go, “Duh, I should get this checked out, in case there’s a problem,” but it’s not completely incomprehensible why she and her family could have let it slide.
As Freudian Slit observed, there’s an increased risk for testicular cancer.
Well if removing them removes testosterone, then she may not do it anyway, if she can still compete as a woman.
Is she XY or XX or is it not known yet?
The IAAF won’t even confirm the current news stories (that she has no ovaries or uterus). Really, they’ve botched the everliving fuck out of this whole thing. There has been an apalling lack of information discipline displayed in the handling of the testing.
A marketing nightmare.
This whole thing has been handled terribly, but I think the IAAF has not reported some of the results because the analysis isn’t finished yet. That’s not unreasonable.
Why? Because of the stigma attached to, say, a man who would be in the category of people with the lower amount of testosterone rather than the higher?
It’s just harder to understand, and I think that makes it far more difficult to attract fans. When men compete against men and women compete against women, it’s easy to understand. When you’re assigning people to classes based on their testosterone level, even it’s nominally more fair, it’s more difficult to explain, particularly to young people who are prospective athletes. Imagine an Olympic champion being interviewed and babbling excitedly about “having the chance to come here and compete against the best athletes with moderate testosterone levels in the world!” It’s also worth considering that this wouldn’t change the classification of many athletes, which makes it a lot of effort for little overall gain.
Just Checking back in to say:
Told you so. 
Semenya has a distinct gender-based rare advantage in competing among women. Among men, she would be nothing special. Have her get the testes removed and compete in the womens’ event, or “fight up” into the mens’ as she is.
Semenya has a small, sex-based advantage against women, and a massive sex-based disadvantage against men. Remember, she produces about three times the testosterone of your average woman, while your average male produces 40 to 60 times. That’s a **huge **difference: Semenya beats the average woman by three times as much, but the average man beats her by 13 to 20 times.
True, however she also has had the advantage of completing puberty with the benefits of increased testosterone. Her form is not the pure result of a normal female genome and extensive training. She is in effect, not in practice, a female on steroids. A reasonable person can compare her gross anatomy to those of typical female athletes and notice a significant difference. That amount has given her significantly increased muscle mass, as well as a larger frame. Regardless of treatments from this point on it is unlikely that she will undergo a gross reversal of these characteristics. A current hormone level is really irrelevant since the “damage” so to speak, has already been done.
The mens’ event is an open competition that anyone regardless of gender may enter an compete in. Since women have a genetic “handicap” in pure competition against male peers, they have their own event but nothing in the rules stops them from entering the open. What does stop them is the simple fact that they will almost certainly not place.
Since Caster is not the product of normal female development and training it is only fair that she competes in the open so that her unique physiology does not give her an unfair (no matter how small) advantage over those competitors who have chosen to compete only against others of their own gender.
The difference between Semenya and a woman on steroids, however, is that Semenya didn’t cheat: she was just born with a natural advantage. So where do we draw the line when it comes to natural advantages? Do we make a special long-legged category for people like Lancy Armstrong? A long-arms and flexible-ankles category for people like Michael Phelps? At the highest levels of competition, small variations in physical makeup will be the difference between gold and silver. There will never be a truly level playing field until all the competitors are clones (and probably not even then), and no one is suggesting that people who have an unfair advantage against other athletes who train just as hard should be segregated or put into some higher bracket of competition. (No one would say that Lance Armstrong should start biking in the Kentucky Derby.) So why is it okay for someone to be the best because of one genetic fluke but not another?
Because the Women’s division is intended to be restricted to people of a particular genetic makeup. When your genetic fluke encroaches on the genetic restriction of the division you want to compete in, there is a conflict. Far more of a conflict than a genetic fluke that has nothing to do with the intended genetic restriction.
It’s like a 6’ and under basketball league. It doesn’t matter that your 6’6" height is a “genetic fluke”, that fluke has to do with your height, the league’s restriction is height based, so there is a conflict. If you had a genetic fluke and were 5’11" tall with the wingspan of a 7 footer, it’s cool, even though it gives you an advantage.
No - the point is to allow a level playing field for women. Men’s competitions don’t need to exclude anyone, and so far as I can tell no one has presented evidence that genetic tests apply to these.
The simple and obvious answer is that we draw such a line in just one significant way: to make only women eligible for women’s competitions. (To be sure, there are age and weight categories in some competitions at some levels.)
But Semenya is a woman: she is intersexed, but she was raised as a woman, she identifies as female, and her testosterone level is much, much closer to that of a typical woman than that of a typical man. She might not have a uterus or ovaries, but neither does a 46,XX woman who’s had a hysterectomy, or a 46,XY woman with CAIS, and both of those people would still be considered women and allowed to compete as such. Your 6’ basketball league example doesn’t really make sense here. We separate competitors into men and women, and while it’s hard to point to some middle point in the continuum between “man” and “woman” that would be as easy to define as an objective mark like six feet would be for height, Semenya definitely seems to fall on the female side of things.
See above as to whether or not Semenya is a woman. Further, 46,XX women with polycystic ovary syndrome have elevated levels of male hormones, too, but there’s no question about letting them compete as women. So why does it make a difference if the woman is getting an advantage from PCOS or from underdeveloped, undescended testes?
It isn’t clear that PCOS confers an advantage; if it did, it might make sense to test for it.
The basic point is that if you’re going to have a restricted competition that works, the restrictions must be specific, comprehensive and well enforced. If weight classes in wrestling were administered by means of self-certification or doctor’s notes, they’d soon be of dubious value in preserving fair competition.
My point was that if you restrict competition based on a person’s genetics, whether it be height or gender, genetic anomalies that affect the genetics being restricted are far more problematic than genetic anomalies outside of the restriction. Thus, Semenya’s genetic disorder is a bigger deal than any genetic oddity that Phelps has.
Ultimately, what is needed is a team of doctors to identify genetic gender disorders, and determine which ones do not result in an unfair genetic advantage over normal XX women, and which ones do. In essence, defining the 6’ mark.
Where does this “she is a woman” stuff come from?
She/he was mis-identified as female at birth, so that makes her a “woman”?
“Well, she is a woman with a genetic type defect”. Actually, “she’s” a MAN with a genetic type defect would be more accurate. She/he is an XY with incomplete masculine development. But “he/she” is not “female” just because “she” thinks “she” is because “she” was mid-identified at birth.
Maybe “she” has lower testosterone for a man and thus is at a disadvantage in male races. So it’s not “fair” to call her a “man”. OK, but it’s not FAIR to the female competitors to call “her” a “woman”, is it? and make them run with someone who technically has XY (male) chromosomes and a hormonal advantage that comes with it.
Well, do we know for sure what her chromosomes are?
Plus, it’s not like she’s obviously a man either. She has internal testes and no penis, as well as outer female genitalia.
It’s my understanding that PCOS **does **confer the same type of advantage as Semenya has (though possibly not to the same degree–I couldn’t find information on exactly how much more testosterone a woman with PCOS could be expected to have). The women are just allowed to compete as women because (a) they’re 46,XX women and (b) they’re not cheating, they just have a natural advantage.
Agreed. The problem is that right now, we don’t have a good equivalent for that 6’ mark. But right now, it’s my impression that all of the standards seem to revolve around testosterone (compare competition standards for a 46,XY woman with CAIS and a 46,XY MtF trans woman), and IMO Semenya doesn’t have enough of it that she should be forced to compete as a man, since while her testosterone level is relatively high, it still falls within the range that would be possible to see from a 46,XX woman.
First, and most importantly, Semenya identies as a woman. She is legally recognized as a woman. She also has a number of typical female features, including her external genitalia. Your question points to an incredible amount of ignorance and insensitivity about intersex and transsexual issues.
We don’t even know for sure that the current reports are correct. Last I heard, the IAAF has not yet confirmed or denied the results. (The implication being that someone inside the organization decided that getting a fat payout from a tabloid was more important than respecting the human dignity and privacy of a teenage girl.)
Any examples of elite athletes with PCOS?