Printer-friendly version
Author:
Taxonomy upgrade extras:
To me this whole issue is so hurtful. How can one make a good decision on this? For me, one telling argument is that her own villiage in SA totally accepts her as female, and they are talking of taking this issue to the UN.
It clearly is not her fault, and my heart goes out to her.
OTOH, there are many genetically XX females who will have their hopes dashed by this woman.
How can one solve this? I have no idea and all I can do is sit and pray; hoping that minds greater than mine can make the best decision.
Khadija
Comments
Removed your link
The link you provided was to a completely unrelated story about the death of a Tennessee football player, so I removed it.
But from your wording above, you seem to think it has been proven that Caster is not genetically XX. I've seen nothing that would indicate that this has been decided.
Three times average Testosterone for a female, the one test done on Semanya that has come back, is still less than half of average for a male.
The coach of her team is a former East German sports doctor implicated in the steroid abuses there and Semanya's recent dramatic improvement in times may just as likely be linked to that fact rather than something genetic.
The real story here is the failure of responsibility of the athletic officials in letting this story leak before it had been decided. That's what should be investigated by the journalists and higher level officials.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Absolutely
The way it's been handled is so crass it's unbelievable, and unless they can prove a deliberate fraud has been committed, the athletics authority should hang their heads in shame.
Angharad
Angharad
not unlike the recent swimming debacle
it had to come to complete nonsense, with suits that helped lift swimmers higher in the water, before the governing body for swimming finally woke up.
the problem with most sports is that their governing bodies are composed of people who were - at one time - good at sport. they weren't chosen because they were smart, or skilled at clear thinking, Most peak sports bodies are the logical extension of having the doofuses you knew on the college football team run things. or his best bud.
it's just sad that a young woman's life is being trashed while we wait for corporate governance in sport to catch up.
not as think as i smart i am
Caster
Although doping is always possible. the biography already disclosed of this woman certainly suggests that the majority of her "difference" is innate, since she has been mistaken for male and exhibited "gender-inappropriate" behaviour long before she was discovered as an athlete.
There's been much talk about her "record-breaking" time, but the world record for women's 800 metres is 1:53.28 set by Jarmila KratochvÃlová in München on the 26 July 1983. Caster's winning time was 1:55.45, more than two seconds off the record, Is Jarmila KratochvÃlová a man as well? Are they all men? They were all pretty darned fast.
All Caster did was run faster than the other women in a particular race, not faster than any women have ever run in similar races.
This is a link with two purposes:
1. A statement from the presidents of both the IAAF and the ASA deploring the breach of her privacy.
2. There's a Facebook group: In Support of Caster Semenya and African Women, currently at 36,498 members. It's interesting to see how many have rallied to her support.
http://www.insidethegames.com/show-news.php?id=6508
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
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
Confusion
Because she is black, this is getting confused with the rascism issue. One of the officials in a governing body has quit because "Who are white people to question the make-up of an African girl?" Sorry, but that attitude is rascist--proclaiming that any investigation into a black person cannot be done by white people. This person should be upset at the breach of privacy and the ethics of whether one person should be singled out for testing in an event. Bringing in the view that white people are not qualified to judge black people is bigotry or political opportunism.
Yes, the history in South Africa is relevant but it is not central to this question. Would someone be investigating a white girl in this same situation? It has happened, so, I would say yes. Would there have been a leak if a white girl was involved? Who knows? But that has happened, too.
The whole situation is deplorable.
As for as the record Caster set, I think it was an event record in a regional junior championship. She has not set a world record, but the reporters are being incredibly sloppy, or their editors are.
The news media personnel and the athletic officials involved should all resign and go work on pig farms shoveling shit, it would suit their talents better.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
The whole thing
has got out of all proportion and even journalists who should know better are making jokes about it. Maybe, readers here are hypersensitive, but the total cock-up that has been made, is disgraceful.
It's not the only case recently, a German tennis player was investigated earlier this year and found to be female--now there's a novelty!
Angharad
Angharad
That would be Sarah Gronert
Sarah Gronert in Action
She was born with some sort of intersex condition, the exact parameters of which are private, but it is known that the condition was surgically-corrected and that she is legally female, despite the hateful gossip and innuendo directed against her in some quarters.
It seems difficult to say whether her detractors are more incensed by the knowledge that she's a better tennis player, or by the fact that she's a lot cuter than many of them.
An article about Sarah Gronert.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
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
>> Because she is black
Well, yes, and because she is from South Africa, which had a consciously racist white government in power until 1994, the remnants of which still linger, and because the Olympic Games, as recently as fifty years ago or less, had voluble members, including South Africa, who insisted that Black women should not compete in the Olympics and other international games because they were too A: "masculine," B: "animalistic" to compete fairly with white women. South Africa was banned from the Games from 1964 until 1992, as I recall, because of this stance, and even this was just before the racist regime fell through negotiation and free elections.
The entire history of human testing for "intelligence" and "gender" is fraught with both racial and gender bias as a legacy of the Eugenics movement in Western (white) pseudo-science.
Resurrecting this wacko theory after so long a lapse, and choosing a Black woman to be their test case, then trumpeting the invasive and humiliating news to all and sundry was undoubtedly sexist, at very least, since doping accusations against men are almost always hushed up until proven, and the "gentlemen" involved evidently given the option of quietly withdrawing or retiring to avoid scandal.
I agree that this was ham-handed, but the old leaks involving white women almost all involved the USA making nasty slurs against female Soviet citizens or other "Commie" athletes. The most notable exception was Indian woman, Santhi Soundarajan, a lower caste Dalit who was stripped of her Asian Games medal by the Asian sport authority, which is still sexist and racist. Do we suspect that she would have been treated so cavalierly, and subjected to such vicious public humiliation, if she had been a Brahmin?
If the IAAF had announced loudly that they had suspicions that *any* man, however frail and whispy, was really a woman, and would be conducting physical and psychological examinations posthaste, wouldn't anyone other than me wonder whether they were dreaming? Or perhaps fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland?
In California, and in many other jurisdictions round the world, it's still an actionable offense to cast aspersions on some aspects of a man's essential masculinity, unless he has the misfortune to be a "public figure." Similar accusations against women, any women, are routinely ignored as inconsequential, despite being theoretically just as much a slur.
The IAAF has not tested *any* woman since 1992, except Caster Semanya just now. When you look at Caster's competitors, none are especially "feminine," and several look almost as butch as Caster herself, yet were not tested.
Any way this goes, it's worse than a crime, it's a blunder.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-----------
C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute.
--- Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe
-
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