Caster Semenya - still waiting.

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The fate of the South African runner is still undecided as the IAAF fudge and faff about deciding what to do with this young woman.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/mar/31/caster-semenya-g...

Comments

Easy solution

Do away with the binary model and simplify everything by just having 'sport'. The fastest/strongest person wins then there wouldn't be a problem. The division between male and female sport is by its nature binary and hence totally artificial and its abolition would suit everyone wouldn't it?

An advantage of that would be a 50% reduction in the number of events and it would encourage more women to take up sport because they would be competing as athletes rather than gender stereotypes.

Robi

The IAAF is utterly stupid

and just what ignorant fools the members are shown to be. If they told me that Monday followed Sunday, I'd want a second opinion.

Susie

It's sad for Castor that this wasn't resolved long ago

It's sad for Castor that this wasn't resolved long ago, and that she still has this question hanging over her return to the sport.

It would have been simplest to accept her as the woman she is, just as her family and community have. Of course some female athletes who would have to compete against her would be unhappy with that decision. (Putting myself in their running flats or spikes, I can understand.) But no matter how the issue is settled, someone is going to be hurt and unhappy.

This is, I think, one of those examples of "life's not fair".
When we look at the results in sports which have measurable performance, such as:
Who can run fastest over a set distance?
Who can jump highest or longest?
Who can throw an object the greatest distance?
Who can lift the heaviest weight?
The typical male body type has a decided advantage over the typical female body type.
Thus it was female athletes who wanted separate competitions, or at least separate scoring and awards in a competition. It was a way of getting their achievements recognized, while they might otherwise go unnoticed among the mass of male competitors.
As a result, I don't think that gender distinction in sports is going to go away.

Kris

Kris

{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}

>>Of course some female athletes

Puddintane's picture

Every one of those women are "freaks" in comparison to "normal" women, just not quite as weird as Caster. They should all of them grow up.

If you look at their times, they're just a skosh slower, and not all the time, so why not just have your average class of high school girls run a race, declare them the normal woman athletes, and kick out everyone who can run faster than the normal girls?

That would at least be fair, but slicing and dicing to include one set of abnormal women and exclude another is completely stupid. According to the rules, an undoubted man can grow up as man, develop a knobby male skeleton offering superior anchor points for the muscles, have a sex change, be on hormones for a bit, and promptly run legally. This is all profoundly silly.

Cheers,

Puddin'

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Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

It's all about the testosterone

Since she is intersexed, she apparently has higher levels of testosterone then your typical female.

Unfair? Probably, if I had to compete against her.

Even though she is not technically on steroids, in a sense she is albeit on a 'natural' one.

Somebody's gonna get hurt over this. Probably Castor I think, unfortunately.

Kim