The Semenya Rule
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@Siam said in The Semenya Rule:
I've always viewed Semenye"s situation as different to say, that transgender weight lifter that a stupid New Zealand let represent us in comm. games.
As far as I know semenye wasn't born with actual meat and two veg.
To hold her to same standards as a born bloke isn't helping clear up this muddy problem imo.
But then again, the gender is a construct people don't actually want to find a solution to this problem, they just want exposure and publicity
Yeah she's intersex, so any limitations they put on her from a testosterone POV should not apply to Trans people, as Trans females have a raft of other biological advantages over women that go way beyond just testostorone.
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@Siam said in The Semenya Rule:
I've always viewed Semenye"s situation as different to say, that transgender weight lifter that a stupid New Zealand let represent us in comm. games.
As far as I know semenye wasn't born with actual meat and two veg.
To hold her to same standards as a born bloke isn't helping clear up this muddy problem imo.
But then again, the gender is a construct people don't actually want to find a solution to this problem, they just want exposure and publicity
She has no womb or ovaries but has internal testes . That’s not her fault obviously but it does give her a biological advantage.
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bit of a different one really...forcing someone to take meds to compete doesnt seem right.
Was on the road a bit yesterday and listening to the debate on RS, TBH I'm on the fence...
is there a limit for male testosterone levels to be under?
Are female athletes with unaturally low testosterone levels allowed to take testosterone to get up to acceptable levels?
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@taniwharugby said in The Semenya Rule:
bit of a different one really...forcing someone to take meds to compete doesnt seem right.
Was on the road a bit yesterday and listening to the debate on RS, TBH I'm on the fence...
is there a limit for male testosterone levels to be under?
Are female athletes with unaturally low testosterone levels allowed to take testosterone to get up to acceptable levels?
I think she should have to take meds . Part of me says that because of the shitty way the governing body in South Africa behaved when her issue came to light but also because she has advantages over a woman in the way her body is built .
I’d put money on the Chinese using CRISPR to produce athletes in a generation and I don’t know how you stop that .
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@jegga yeah, fair enough if she has the other advantages males have then it's not fair. They need to be very strict on the guidelines for women's sport. If these people want to compete then it had to be against the men.
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@Rocky-Rockbottom said in The Semenya Rule:
sorry for my stone age views on this but wft. She's half fucken dude. The other chicks in the race must say "what the fucking low-fat arse is going on around here? why do we have to race against this she-dude chick fella who waltzes in and then just fucken runs the fuck away from us? how the hell is this fair?"
but then again, would there be a problem if she came 3rd to last in every race? who would care.
hook up some kind if tweener race category I say
I used to watch Adam ruins everything on YouTube till I watched him make an absolute arse of himself on Rogan over Semenya . I’m not 100% sure what the right answer is here and she’s done nothing wrong but she surely has physiological advantages over a woman who doesn’t have testes.
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It's simple, you have strict requirements of what a woman is and have two categories; open and womans.
Semenya and trans woman can compete in open.
There is no definition of a woman that includes having or having had testicles.
And remember this is just sport, this isn't life or death. A tiny fraction of society is affected, and may have to do something else in life.
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@jegga I dont think anyone comes out of this looking good.
They were talking on the radio yesterday about possible breach of human rights forcing her to take drugs to compete?
How common is her 'condition/advantage'?
what about other natural anomolies?
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Personally, I don't like this ruling as it feels like it was brought in against her; it is limited to events in which testosterone benefits are less important in comparison to others - it's the Semenya rule. I agree with @No-Quarter that it should be viewed completely differently to transgender athletes.
Also, like @Kirwan I take the same approach - but get to the a different conclusion; it's just sports. She was born with female bits, raised as a girl, and sadly appears to have had a shit thing happen to her. If she is intersex, she's not having babies etc. etc. but she does have a natural advantage of being a fucking machine at running.
I'd be happy if they brought in in over all sports, with a time lag to provide all currently competing athletes with an opportunity to change over a period of time (e.g., one year). Then I might feel like it is about sport rather than one athlete.
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@taniwharugby said in The Semenya Rule:
@jegga I dont think anyone comes out of this looking good.
They were talking on the radio yesterday about possible breach of human rights forcing her to take drugs to compete?
How common is her 'condition/advantage'?
what about other natural anomolies?
Apparently 1 in 1500-2000 births result in an intersex kid according to this . http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency
Most athletes probably have some sort of physical ability that helps them to get to the top whether it be height in a lock or the ability the ignore pain to get you through a Tour de France. I think hers is different though .
I actually do feel sorry for her though , it’s not her fault and when she first came on the scene the South Africans played the race card to try and stop the IAAF from pushing too hard . -
@Kirwan said in The Semenya Rule:
It's simple, you have strict requirements of what a woman is and have two categories; open and womans.
Semenya and trans woman can compete in open.
There is no definition of a woman that includes having or having had testicles.
And remember this is just sport, this isn't life or death. A tiny fraction of society is affected, and may have to do something else in life.
I agree. As far as I'm aware the "mens" NBA, NHL, NFL etc are actually all open already. There's nothing stopping intersex and trans people competing in sport. If they're not good enough to compete at the top level, like the other 99.9% of us blokes, then they can find another way of making money while competing at lower levels. Women's categories need protection.
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@Kirwan said in The Semenya Rule:
It's simple, you have strict requirements of what a woman is and have two categories; open and womans.
Semenya and trans woman can compete in open.
There is no definition of a woman that includes having or having had testicles.
And remember this is just sport, this isn't life or death. A tiny fraction of society is affected, and may have to do something else in life.
That feeling when someone else posts what you were going to...
Agree wholeheartedly.
The issue for me is they have applied this rule to only middle-distance runners between 400m and the Mile. It's pretty specific and therefore appears to be targeting a specific individual.
It should be extended to all categories of athletics (it's an IAAF rule), and probably adopted by all sports where women do not compete against men.
I hear the "it's not her fault, she was born that way" argument and have sympathy. But she is not fully female which should disqualify her from that class of competition.
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@taniwharugby said in The Semenya Rule:
@jegga I dont think anyone comes out of this looking good.
They were talking on the radio yesterday about possible breach of human rights forcing her to take drugs to compete?
How common is her 'condition/advantage'?
what about other natural anomolies?
If she wants to compete as a women. Conversely, compete in an "open" category.
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@mariner4life said in The Semenya Rule:
@antipodean said in The Semenya Rule:
@Salacious-Crumb said in The Semenya Rule:
Semenya has got some new competition.
Stick a fork in womens Olympics.
Transgender atheletes to be allowed to compete as the other sex in the Olympics WITHOUT having gender reassignment surgery
The International Olympic Committee received proposed guidelines at its 'Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism'
The policy change would allow transgender athletes to compete without having gender reassignment surgery
It would allow transgender athletes to compete after one year of hormone replacement therapy and no surgery is required
This is a good development - there should be one category for Olympics: Citius, Altius, Fortius. So women, trans and disabled people can participate by watching from the stands.
the way the Greeks intended
Um, no.
Women weren't allowed at the Olympics, but that doesn't mean they had no games. Their games were the Herean Games.
Evidence is skimpy, true, but on balance it seems that the Greeks were quite happy to have women only athletic events.
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@Chester-Draws our tour guide told us it was only Married women who were not allowed (cos nudity) but single women were, pretty sure I had read that too
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They kept saying on the radio that she was born a woman but she wasn't was she? She was born with testicles I believe. I get that being a genetic freak is often what makes the difference between the greats and those making up the numbers, but if she is also a dude that does seem a tad unfair for those who are 100%.
Do feel incredibly sorry for her. Imagine being born like that and then having to go through all this.
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@booboo But there's a clear reason why the rule is specific. That's what CAS asked of the IAAF in 2015 after the Chand case. So the IAAF did research which wasn't very convincing and found a advantage in these specific events. The problem is had the IAAF's research not stop at 2011 and 2013 World Champs, but include 2015, 2017 and 2016 Olympics the results might have been far more conclusive. I listened to an interview with an American transgender person, whose in the medical field and was one of the people who drafted the IAAF DSD and Transgender policies. According to her, the 2016 Olympic for final for 800m Women, in all likelihood, 6 out of the 8 women were either DSD or similar.
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This is a really good read https://quillette.com/2019/05/03/a-victory-for-female-athletes-everywhere/
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@jegga said in The Semenya Rule:
This is a really good read https://quillette.com/2019/05/03/a-victory-for-female-athletes-everywhere/
cheers @jegga really good read. Some strong arguments for the restriction
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@jegga said in The Semenya Rule:
This is a really good read https://quillette.com/2019/05/03/a-victory-for-female-athletes-everywhere/
Outstanding article. This part drives home the point:
Without an eligibility rule based in sex-linked traits, we wouldn’t see female bodies on any podium. Equally important, without such an eligibility rule, it’s unlikely that societies could continue legally to sustain separate girls and women’s only sport. The set-aside is premised on inherent biological differences between the sexes. If that basis were eliminated, it’s unclear how the classification would pass muster under standard legal anti-discrimination analysis
Olympics to change policies and allow transgender athletes to compete
