That sucks. I wonder how she feels about it.

Probably like crap.

I am aware of that overlap. A normal woman would still be a "normal" woman if she were in the overlap field. I assume Semenya is far enough outside that field of overlap to be disqualified.

To make olympics possible for women, there has been drawn a line of what is considered to be female and what is intersex. Semenya has a 3 times higher testosterone level than a woman of her age. If she was allowed, would an intersex with a 6 times higher testosterone level be allowed? Or 8 times higher? Or a testosterone level as high as a man?

I think the "fairest" way possible to determine whether she should compete as male or female is to look at her biological sex based on her chromosomes. XX--> female. Anything with a Y --> male. (Y translocations onto X --> female.) So even with 6 times higher testosterone, if she's got double X's then she should compete as a woman. I know that this solution would not satisfy people who want Semenya to be able to compete based on her gender identity, but I think it's the least discriminatory way to decide the issue. (And for the record, she should keep the medal she already won.)


As for the arbitrary lines of what qualifies as the appropriate testosterone level for competing as a women, I don't think there should be any. Doddibot brought up a good point in mentioning that a man with an abnormally low testosterone level would not be allowed to take hormones in order to put him on the same playing field as the other Olympians (who probably already have testosterone levels far above the norm). I think there is a clear double standard at work here.

Where the whole world is commenting about something so personal about you that you didn't know anything about? I think not!

For her parents to believe she was a girl all this time she must have a vagina, and why would they suspect that she would have testicles where her ovaries should be?

What a cold world we live in!

Tentacles!!!!

That's what happen when you hit the wrong spelling correction, but come to think of it, the way everything is going down you would think she had tentacles!!!

Maybe the fact that she is 18, and never had a period, due to the lack of ovaries? I think parents would notice something was wrong if by age 18, she had not started those...While that wouldn't tell them she had testicles, it should have been a huge clue that something just wasn't normal with her, which should have led to them at least investigating it a little further.

Normal may mean something different to parents that do not have the same access to “things” and “ideas” as another country. While those things may cause some concern to a nation that eat well enough that the body can show some regularity, it is not the same for underdeveloped countries. Also culture and other factors surly may have played a part with parents to not invade her person. Accepting people for who they are may not be a problem to some.

Even accounting for cultural differences, 18 is very, very late to not have started puberty.

Puberty - Puberty usually occurs in males between the ages of 13 and 16, and in females between the ages of 11 and 14. Among the pathological conditions related to puberty are amenorrhea and pubertas praecox. The former is characterized by an absence or cessation of menstrual flow not caused by pregnancy. The latter is the premature appearance in the male or female of the typical physiological characteristics of puberty and is caused by disturbances of secretion in the anterior pituitary, in the adrenals, or in the gonads.

Amenorrhea, the absence of menstrual periods (see Menstruation). It is called primary amenorrhea if it occurs at puberty, when a girl normally begins menstruating. Secondary amenorrhea refers to the lack of menstrual periods in women who have previously menstruated. Amenorrhea is normal in pre-pubescent girls and in women who have ceased menstruation due to pregnancy, breastfeeding, or menopause.
Any healthy girl who has not had a period by the time she is 16 years old has primary amenorrhea. Primary amenorrhea may be caused by the delayed onset of puberty. It also may be linked to infertility caused by Turner's Syndrome, a genetic disorder that prevents sexual maturing in girls. Some cases of amenorrhea are associated with birth defects that cause the vagina or uterus to develop improperly.

So, what would that have told her parents? Surly you are trying to judge the situation by American's standards and I don't think it is going to work here, but you are entitled to your opinion.

This is her truth, and while most people come into their realization in private she was called to bare it in public. She is a bigger person than most and will always have the balls to show it!

Speaking from experience... Periods will stop if a woman is in heavy physical training. In my younger years (i.e. in my 20s, making this 20 years ago), I was heavily into bodybuilding for about 5 years or so. I didn't have a period for about 3 of those years. It was wonderful! So, if this woman started training early, her lack of periods might not have been excessively noticeable or of general concern.

Also, some girls are just naturally very late bloomers when it comes to getting their first period. My roommate didn't have her first one until just before her 17th birthday, although she had all of the other secondary sex characteristics well before that. So...people vary. So do hormone levels and general physiology. One size doesn't fit all. And parents don't always pay attention to whether or not their daughter has her period.

As to the general topic at hand. She won her medal using her natural body that God gave her. I'm actually agreeing with something that Doddibot said *gasp! * in that athletes at the Olympian level are pretty much all freaks of nature anyway. An advantage given to a person by nature or by training is a fair advantage as far as I'm concerned.

Actually, without realizing it, you helped prove my point. She is 18, so the fact that she hasn't had a period would have indicated something was wrong. She is obviously healthy, at least healthy enough to compete in world class competitions...I didn't say lack of periods meant she was a boy, I said it should have indicated to her parents that something was clearly wrong...and your post only helped to prove it. Clearly, something was wrong, since she is 18, two years past the 16 year old level in your definitions...

Obviously, none of the conditions related to premature puberty relate to this, so focusing only on the delayed ones, there are all kinds of red flags. If her puberty hadn't happened at all, the lack of pubic hair would have a red flag. That she was 18 and never had a period is also a red flag. All I said is that there would have been enough for her parents to wonder, and thus, investigate a little.

You're assuming, though, that her parents cared about whether or not she was having periods. Plus, there is no age limit involved here. My cousin didn't get hers until she was almost 18, for instance. I wouldn't be surprised if there are women in the world who have never had a period, yet they are still female. When you get down to it, if Semenya is genetically a women, meaning possessing at least two "X" chromosomes, then she is female regardless of her hormone levels or her internal plumbing. Plus, I'd bet you dollars to donuts that all female Olympic-level sprinters have much higher-than-normal levels of testosterone. It is simply a by-product of intense physical training, especially if one is doing weighted workouts, and is the reason why many, if not most, high-level female athletes and bodybuilders generally do not have periods.

So, Semenya's hormone levels might give her an "unfair" advantage...but then so do Michael Phelps's gigantic feet. Shall we take away his medals because he happened to be born practically with flippers?

Why? Unless the girl was complaining about her feeling that something was wrong, why would her parents investigate? Every individual is different and until the girl feels it is a problem, it is not a problem.

Even if the whole world see it as a problem, unless the girl see it as a problem, there is no problem.

Because even were it under perfectly normal circumstances (and her circumstances are anything but normal) waiting that long would still be cause for concern. If your child wasn't speaking by say, age 4, would that cause you to be concerned? Technically they may fall in the range, but, it would be on the far edge of that range. And, your post says the normal range for females is 11-14, she is outside of it. Then, your post says amenorrhea exists if a girl is 16 and hasn't had it yet...she is 18. She is healthy enough to train, she has the strength to continually run, so she isn't malnourished, and as part of her national team, she would have access to better health care than normal South Africans. National governments typically take care of their prized athletes. In fact, that begs the question...how in the hell did she get on a national racing team without ever getting a full physical done? The South African government is claiming complete ignorance, that they knew nothing about it, and I find that incredibly hard to believe. If you are going to represent your country in international athletic competitions, you damn well have been given multiple physicals. It simply doesn't add up that nobody knew about her.

I agree. They might not have even known it could be abnormal, there might be more people not having periods. The parents might not have cared. They might have asked the local medicine man who said it was okay. Doctors in her country may have examined her, but they might have said it was okay. (doctors there may not be as advanced as here, and even here they make mistakes)

Davious you are juddging without taking into consideration circumstances. Unless you happens to know the exact cicrumstances there, which we then off course would like to hear.


Thats not a fair way to judge either.

Men with XX chromosomes happen too. Normal testosterone. Drop them in the female olympics?
http://priory.com/med/xx.htm

So do women happen with XY. Women born with AIS have XY chromosomes, but in all other ways, have female physical characteristics, and are reared as women. They are insensitive to testosterone, so their body acts like if the have zero testosterone.
Drop them in the male Olympics?
http://christielee.net/press3.htm

Off course I have a new weird thing from the USA
This time its Texas wher weird shit happened:
Strange as it may seem, the Texas 4th Court of Appeals ruled in late 1999 that only marriages where one partner has XX and the other XY chromosomes may get (or stay) married. In other words, it's not genital configuration that matters, it's chromosomes, and chromosomes only.
Somewhat bizarre in that now in Texas, an XX woman with a vagina can marry an AIS XY woman who also has a vagina. And XY male can marry and XX male. But a woman with XX cannot marry a man with XX and a women with XY cannot marry and XY.
The state of Kentucky issued a marriage license to Christie Lee, a vaginaed female, and her husband, a penised male. Texas and the federal government first accepted their marriage as valid when the couple moved back to Texas. Only years later did the state of Texas suddenly decide to invalidate the marriage through a nonsensical court ruling.
http://christielee.net/press3.htm

I don't know how else to explain it...call it a hunch. I just get the feeling that there is no way she could have made it to an international race like that without her condition being known. IE, I smell a rat, something fishy, perhaps intentional cheating by her government. It is just a feeling. If she were an American, You non-Americans would be crying foul, that America was cheating, etc under the exact same circumstances. I just find it extremely unlikely that nobody knew about this, given her status as a world class runner on a national team, competing internationally. This isn't a high school track meet we are talking about, and she isn't some nobody without access to complete medical facilities. This is just highly suspicious.

Frankly, I'd have to know what exams are given to such athletes. I don't know that. But I do have a feeling that thorough gynecological exams aren't involved for the female athletes. And believe it or not, many women don't like going to gynecologists. Many women don't go at all until something is dreadfully wrong, that they're in so much pain, for instance, that they can't not go.

So, maybe I'm just not suspicious enough, but something tells me that unless there was something funky on blood tests in terms of stuff they actually check (like for unnatural hormones) or there was some reason why she'd have to have a more internal invasive exam at some point in her life, I can't see why her internal configuration would have to be noticed, necessarily.

Its not unreasonable to suspect that the ones sending her to the olympics suspected it and ignored it: they are professionals. Countries do a lot to let their sporters win.
But blaming the girl or her parents? Come on. They are not from a modern country, keep that in mind. Even if the professionals suspected or knew they would probably not have told her. Another female athlete already was murdered for not conforming to gender sterotypes, would she have taken the risk? If you wanna blame someone go for the most likely victim, not for the girl.
As for winning, I couldn't care less. I'm not a sports fanatic.

You're not telling me anything new here. I mentioned chromosome translocations in my last post.

However, I would be willing to refine my definition to presence or absence of the SRY gene. That also seems like a more "fair" way to decide.





That's essentially what I said in my previous post, so yes. I believe it's the least discriminatory way of sexually segregating the olympics.

I don't believe there's any "fairness" to the whole concept of the olympics. Some people are born more fortunate than others, PERIOD. That is what competition is all about. I simply object to the discriminatory treatment of some types of inborn advantages over others.


The bit about Texas in interesting, btw.

Drop the androgen insensitive XY women in the MALE olympics? I think I am misunderstanding you here. Thats not the LEAST discriminatory way. Full androgen insensitivy means a woman who has that has a completely female body, female voice yet has useless testicles inside instead of a womb. A person with complete androgen insensivity is a phenotypic female. Unlike in Semenya the testosterone has NO effect at all. The testosterone does not work in them.
It does not make sense to let people with XY chromosomes and a very female body join the male olympics and a woman who is partly masculinsed like Semenya join the women. Techically a woman with testicles inside may be testosterone insensitive: however, the way Semenya is physcially: her more masculine body, voice and male appearance suggest she is not or only partially insensitive to testosterone. Her phenotype is more male than an XY complete androgen insensitive woman.

Judging solely on XY or XX makes as little sense as judging solely on testicles or womb, solely on pussy or penis or solely on any feature. Gender in intersexed individuals is more complex than that. There will never be a 100% fair solution.

Whatever the Olympics will decide, because testosteron is so important to build mucle mass women who will succeed in the olympics will tend to be those who will just barely be under the acceptable limit. Whatever that is defined at.

Complete androgen insensitive women look like normal women, but develop no or hardly any pubes acne etc. Testosterone is needed for that and they bodies testosterone is useless. The result: noone will notice they have a male genotype on the outside. Their bodies and musles are of the female phenotype.
Picture of XY testosterone insensitive women: Warning NUDE but not sexual.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3327...c4a1fe096_o.jpg

We're getting stuck on ideas of discrimination vs. fairness. The FAIR thing to do in the Olympics it to make sure every single athlete has the exact same hormone and muscle composition and then allow them to compete.

I am NOT advocating fairness in the Olympics. The Olympics is all about some people getting the better end of the deal and some people getting the worse end of the deal, and seeing those differences shake out in the competitive arena.



(Also, not trying to draw attention from your main point here, but be careful with the way you refer to gender and sex in your writing. Sex strictly refers to phenotype whereas gender refers to behaviors and culture.)