From your own cite
I’ll just ignore you from here on. Your style is exhausting, your approach disingenuous and having to explain simple concepts to you three times over gets us nowhere.
…I asked for a cite that “She isn’t biologically clearly female.” I’m not interested in whatever “inferences” you can make. There have been more than enough inferences in this thread.
…YOU WANTED TO TALK TO ME. It should have been crystal clear after my first response to you that I had no interest in having that particular conversation with you. But you continued to talk to me. If “my style” has exhausted you then you only have yourself to blame.
You don’t get to demand ‘Cite! Cite! Cite!,’ when she has deliberately decided to make it as difficult as possible to be obtain the proof you desire. At least, not without looking really silly.
Or you can demand whatever you want, but—and I think Novelty Bobble has the right of it here—I no longer feel it feasible to continue to engage with you. Go harangue someone else.
Xena, thanks for the link, but that’s just another inference, and those aren’t good enough to form an informed opinion, evidently. Albeit, if Ms. Semenya is really XY, then why doesn’t that end the enquiry there at, whatever gender she chooses to adopt, she’s not a female for purposes of elite athletic competition?
He seems to think it’s some kind of random taboo invented by American progressives. I’m saying it’s hardly novel or arbitrary that it’s something people would get offended about; the most conservative people would be the first to complain if they were misgendered. But anyway, it’s a distraction from the main issue. Gender can be complicated and we may well want to follow different rules when deciding what pronouns to use vs who should be eligible to compete in which athletic competitions.
…I’m not “demanding”. I asked once. In response no cite was provided. I asked for clarification and clairobscur may or may not reply, thats over to them. It was an entirely fair request for a cite. If someone refuses to answer though it is ridiculous to blame Caster Semenya for the refusal. She hasn’t “made it difficult” for people to stop asserting something they can’t back up. Those people should simply assert the self-control not to assert something they can’t support.
Bye!
My apologies about saying Caster was intersex earlier. I was under the impression that it was known that she had internal testes, and was not aware that that was speculation.
This article references reports saying it was established by tests done in 2009. Which is a bit short of proof, but stronger than speculation.
It would be most interesting to see evidence for this - sounds like arrant nonsense.
…from that article:
No direct citation to any “Australian Media.” No links, not even a name of a paper or a website. Additionally:
“Believed to have shown” are weasel words. It either showed this or it didn’t.
From the caption:
“Thought to show?” Who thought this?
This is speculation. And ten years later nothing has changed.
Exactly how stupid do you think these men are?
Even at a race with “gendered segmentation”, don’t you think that assorted men would notice that a given woman ran faster than they did? Don’t you think they’d notice women setting new world records with a shotput or a javelin or whatever? Don’t you think they do their best in the high jump or the long jump or this or that, and then notice if someone else managed a bigger leap?
You think they’d notice it without segmentation, but miss it otherwise?
Did I talk with Semenya and referred to her as “he”, offending her in the process? I don’t think so.
I’ve been attacked as far as I can tell for the following reasons :
-Having put pronouns in agreement with the meaning of my sentences : “if HE’s XY, as mentioned earlier in this thread, HE’s a man by at least at least by one common definition”. Instead of writing “SHE’s a MAN” which would make no sense, or if "SHE’s XY, then HE’s ", which also makes no sense.
-Saying that the issue has something to do with her gender. The first poster who attacked me thought that I could express my position without any reference to gender, and should do so. Which seems a ludicrous statement to me in this case.
-Insisting that biological reality doesn’t necessarily match one’s preference and that any definition of “man” and “woman” will necessarily result in some people who define themselves as women being classified as “man” according to this definition.
-Insisting that she’s not biologically and objectively a woman, or a man, regardless of which gender she wants to identify with.
-Wanting to exclude her from competitions solely to diminish her achievements (hence motivated by hatred), even though I didn’t even express an opinion wrt whether she should be excluded or not from competitions.
Basically, I’m saying that someone who is intersexed isn’t a objectively a woman, regardless of how she chooses to identify, and that in a society based on binary genders, some people inevitably won’t be classified the way they would like to, and this is anathema for some people. They definitely think that self-identification should trump any other consideration, and that any hint that someone self-identification is open in any way to debate for any reason whatsoever is heinous. Not just calling Semenya “him” to her face which I anyway didn’t do.
Well it’s* high school* biology.
What about someone with mixed chromosomes, or XXY? And where did you get the idea that only chromosomes count and physiology is not an important factor?
Do you disagree that there is a concept in biology of intersex?
Sent from my Redmi 5A using Tapatalk
This thread went off the rails early on. I think characterizing this situation as some kind of bigoted denial that Semenya is a woman is completely misguided. I think the physical class that Semenya is deemed to fall into for physical competitive sports should be seen as a completely separate matter from her gender identity. Gender identity is a mental state, not a physical state.
Consider trans people (I know Semenya is not transgender). We have made great progress in recent years in tolerance and understanding of the universal phenomenon that a minority of people are born with (for example) the mental phenotype of a woman, but the karyotype and other physical attributes of a man. And we now accept and understand that for a trans person their gender identity is a function of their mental state, of how they feel - not of their body. Such a trans person is a woman, whatever degree of physical transition they may choose to undertake. For all social purposes we have progressed to an understanding that gender identity is a function of mental state, and we learn someone’s gender identity by talking to them, not by checking their DNA or what’s between their legs.
Now, consider the narrow question of competitive sports with this context. Some competitive sports are almost entirely about testing physical strength - including athletics (but not some other sports like shooting, sailing). We have restricted sub-competitions in these sports for “women” because - for the binary/cis majority - human physical attributes are strongly bimodal male/female, and in many sports those on the physically female side of the bimodal distribution would rarely be competitive against physical males. But there’s a reason that I put “women” in inverted commas. That’s because for this narrow purpose, it makes little sense to define the restricted female class based on gender identity, which is mental attribute - the entire point of understanding transgenderism is that someone’s gender identity is a mental state, and that someone who is a woman may (depending on their transition choice) retain physical characteristics on the cis-male side of the distribution. If we plan to keep sports that test physical strength set up based on the bimodal physical characteristics of the binary/cis majority, we should surely emphasize that the “male” and “female” categories in such sports are categories that refer solely to the bimodal physical characteristics of binary/cis people, and not to gender identity.
From a social perspective it’s far from ideal, because (for example) a trans girl in high school who has not transitioned would be required to do competitive sports in the “physically male” category according to her body, even though her gender identity is female. But I see no coherent alternative other than doing away with the binary classes for competitive physical sports altogether.
And none of this gives any easy answer for people like Semenya who (presumably) don’t fit the binary. If we insist on keeping sports set up with categories that are based on the bimodal physical distribution of the binary/cis majority, what alternative is there other than to introduce quantitative physical criteria for who falls into the “physically female” restricted class for competition? Whether or not the line has been drawn in the correct place in this particular case, it surely must be drawn somewhere. The entire point of our modern progressive understanding of sexuality is that gender identity is a mental state, not defined by physical attributes, so it makes little sense to set up restricted classes for sport based on gender identity. Even if we did, where does that leave people who don’t identify (mentally) on the binary?
In any event, I think it’s almost a regressive step to suggest (as some seem to in this thread) that the right to participate in the “physically female” restricted category of competitive sport is somehow the same thing as respecting someone’s gender identity. It seems to me to deny the modern progressive understanding that gender identity is not defined by physical attributes.
"Should all 7’ basketballers be subject to height reduction surgery? "
YES, if they want to compete in the under-4-foot league.
Having a lot of testosterone in your body makes developing muscle tissue much easier. It was and is a favorite way for athletes to cheat in many sports. The well-knows “Steroids” are merely chemicals that imitate testosterone’s action in the body.
Athletics has a specific league for naturally testosterone-deprived persons, it is called the women’s competition. Men are not allowed to compete in women’s competition, because they have an (unfair but natural) advantage over women biochemically.
Biochemically, Caster Semenya IS male. Genetically she is female.
By having the advantage of a “male” body, but wanting to compete in the female events, she is effectively cheating.
What they should do is to split the male and female participation in athletics not by chromosome genetics, but by testosterone count. This would much better accommodate the modern gender identity paradigm, and allow transsexuals to compete in an appropriate category.
Caster Semenya should be allowed to compete, in the Men’s events.
Xema provided one just below this post, if for some reason you are refusing to accept the fact that the ruling that affects her only applies to intersex people as proof that she’s intersex…
You are, however, poisoning the well. People asking for cites for things that are uncontroversial always are.
Also, it doesn’t greatly matter if it’s not the case for Semenya specifically - the question of how trans or intersex people will be dealt with in sport remains. If it turns out that she meets the requirements and is able to compete, fine, but the question about what should happen when someone doesn’t remains.
Absolutely. And we can let intersex athletes compete in the open / male events.
This is the primary issue you’re getting nailed on. Generally, at least among people who talk about gender identity issues relatively frequently, it’s incredibly uncommon to modify pronouns to agree with a hypothetical or conditional. Like, it’s so foreign of a concept to me it legitimately looks like you’re trying to make a point and intentionally go absurdly out of your way to intentionally misgender her.
The only time I can think of where I’d naturally do this is a hypothetical quote in a conditional case, e.g. (particularly tortured example)
That wasn’t written with me deliberately thinking about the grammar, other than trying to come up with a hypothetical phrase. All the gender agreement agrees with the pronoun “she” (which is used to clearly signal who you’re talking about), and only in the hypothetical quote, occurring in the universe where this case were true, is the pronoun modified.
I’m not trying to rip into you here, but this mode of pronoun agreement is so natural to me it legitimately looked like you were trying to make a point by doing otherwise. And to be clear, this isn’t just among trans or intersex people or something. Like, I can’t think of anyone I know in real life in my generation/geographical area who would do otherwise in any context, and it’s not like hypothetical gender swaps isn’t a conversation that doesn’t come up when shooting the shit, even when talking about boring everyday sexism (“if she were a guy, she wouldn’t have been catcalled”).
TBC, this was an attempt to disclaim my own demographic, not to imply this is a matter of Caster’s gender identity, which is uncontroversially female. However, the more I think about it the closer I get to the end of my previous post where I realize I don’t think I’ve even heard my mom try to agree pronouns in that manner. I’m not saying it’s never happened every, I’m sure someone can cite some famous book or film this happens in to me, but it doesn’t change the fact that at least in almost every circle I frequent it’d be extremely odd.
OK, but what you keep repeating is this idea that it’s just XX or XY and it’s just that simple.
That’s what I was responding to. And it’s not enough to acknowledge the existence of intersex and just propose they should all be ineligible for women’s events: the acknowledgement is already conceding the original point.