Caster Semenya :thoughts?

comptonelizabeth wrote: »

I think one of the issues is that chromosonally, she is XY and therefore male, even though she was raised as, and identifies as, female. Which opens a whole new can of worms. I can understand that other women competing may feel she has an unfair advantage but as you point out, so do others - eg if you're lucky enough to have long legs, that gives you an advantage in long jump.

I don't think she is XY - she's intersex, not trans, though there are forms of intersex that involve XY. Given the way trans people are treated for the Olympics, I think if she was XY, she'd have had to be on hormones already to compete. I believe the recommendations in place for trans women in most sports are a testosterone that is actually lower than the average cis woman's, and thus usually much lower than the average cis female athlete.


My general opinion is there might ultimately be no fair way to set requirements for sports. Ultimately, athletes have some level of genetics that are unusual that let them perform at a the professional level. On the other end, there's no ability to have a fair competition if at some level sex (which is partially genetic) is not taken into account - I think few people are going to say fair will to have cis men competing against cis women. Somewhere in between those, the idea of having a category for trans and/or intersex people is just going to encourage othering of them and reducing their opportunities.

Best proposal I've heard so far is to come up with some kind of performance factor that gets assigned to some people based on various criteria.