Fairness is a question of perspective...

[davefreer]

South Africa is up in arms because the international athletics association dared to question Caster Semenya's gender. The local politicos are screaming racism - Which is mildly odd, if predictable. Not that South Africans aren't racists often enough but sport is the one area where South Africans do push racism aside if means winning

Comments

[brownkitty]

If her testosterone levels are naturally high, all the effort she's put in should stand and any records should be put down as they would for anyone else.

If her testosterone levels are due to some sort of optional suppliment, that should fall under doping rules.

If her testosterone levels are high due to a necessary medication, I'm not sure where I'd draw the line.

Confirming that someone's current plumbing matches their DNA is a reasonable concern and incredibly intrusive, a very sticky situation. I don't know whether there are rules in place for transsexuals.

I don't see where skin color has jack to do with it.

Just my two cents.

[davefreer]

The racial dimension was the implication that her gender was questioned because she was black and winning races. Considering the dominance of black athletes that borders on insanity, but people here have been known to blame drought on racists ;-/.

My natural inclination is to be sympathetic to transsexuals (things are difficult enough for them IMO), but it is a difficult ethical question as to wether this is fair to others(and very intrusive, agreed.).

[brownkitty]

My natural inclination is to be sypathetic as well, but there are biological differences that take effect though childhood and puberty that would make things unbalanced for competition.

[etumukutenyak]

ovotestis, and there's a whole host of articles on androgens (insensitivity, excess, adrenal hyperplasia, etc.), in addition to other developmental issues that lead to ambiguous genitalia. Oddly enough, the first article, which discusses true hermaphroditism, indicates that the population with the highest percentage is found in Southern Africa. It also indicates that most intersex and hermaphroditic people are not diagnosed early in life; peak diagnostic age is around 20y

[davefreer]

I think everyone agrees that it was appallingly handled, and that an apology is due for that from all who made it public. While I agree that having gender a matter of self-declaration for social purposes, I do think you need defined boundaries for any competitive sport where seperate standards exist for seperate sexes. It IS rough on anyone caught in the middle - but on the other hand not to do so is rough on the 99.5% who would otherwise be competing against someone not in their standard group. Rather like allowing one short 16 year old boy to run against 12 year olds, because the 16 year old is nearly the same height. One (especially if you're me), sympathises with the 16 year old, but it's a bit rough on the twelve year olds.
It's not an easy situation to deal with though, and I am glad I don't have to, because the poor young woman must be very hurt by it all.

[etumukutenyak]

It's true, competition needs to be standardized to be fair -- but competition is also about identifying the outliers and rewarding them (so to speak). In the case of ambiguous genders, which are more common than most people realize, how are we to punish them for not being obviously one gender? We can't.

In running, women are not in need of segregation -- look how many marathons are run with both genders at the same time -- so I would lean towards a more loose interpretation for people like Caster Semenya and Jarmila Kratochvilova. For other sports, the boundaries can be set more strictly -- but here I go again, advocating common sense approaches. When will I learn?

In other news, you might not be surprised to learn that DJ's favorite characters were Throttler and Loki. He finished his book reports on Pyramid Scheme and Pyramid Power, and now has nothing to do in the final week before school starts up. ;-)

Well, not *nothing*.

[davefreer]

Pragmatism and common decency in competitive sport? :-) you should know better. Interesting choice of characters... every boy needs some time to do nothing. Well not nothing :-).