Sorry, Caster, saying you're a girl doesn't make it true
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/sorry-caster-saying-youre--a-girl-doesnt-make-it-true-1885557.html (http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/sorry-caster-saying-youre--a-girl-doesnt-make-it-true-1885557.html)
MARY KENNY
9/14/09
Is Caster Semenya, the amazing 18-year-old South African athlete, a man or a woman? According to a source close to the International Association of Athletics Federations, Caster is biologically a hermaphrodite. That is to say, she has both male and female reproductive organs, but, at birth, would have been considered to be female because the outward genital organs seemed female.
If Caster is a biological hermaphrodite, as reported, it would mean that she carries the XY male chromosome, and instead of ovaries and a womb, her internal organs would be testes. Being a hermaphrodite is a rare condition which occurs in the embryonic stage of pregnancy when the hormone "messages" somehow get mixed up.
Jeez will these people leave her alone? Like talk about something thats actually important
Sooooo... It's a trap?
Is basically the response I've been seeing all over the internet. I think it's funny and sad how the public thinks she's a girl one moment, and a guy the next.
But I'm kind of enjoying it in a sick way, you know? Someone who is a GG (More or less) is going through the same disbelief I do. Ha! Take that genetic girls!
And so the backlash begins.
from the article:
"because being masculine, in any competitive sport, confers a strong advantage over being feminine."
Gymnastics much? (I know men do gymnastics, but no one can tell me they have a strong advantage :P).
The author also makes blatant assumptions, such as MTFs significantly outnumbering FTMs, as well as the whole hermaphrodite nonsense.
The internet doesn't make people stupid, it just reveals how stupid people have always been.
A. we're not talking gymnastics, where - if you know it - the events are different - we're talking track, where strength and endurance are key to winning.
B. Like talk about something thats actually important You obviously don't know how much money is at stake (not to mention other things) in this level of international sport. You act like this is the first case, but its been going on since the 1950s, often as a way of cheating - you ought to study some history here.
Quote from: tekla on September 15, 2009, 01:07:26 AM
A. we're not talking gymnastics, where - if you know it - the events are different - we're talking track, where strength and endurance are key to winning.
The article made a blanket statement about any competitive sport, and my comment was in reference to that only (since thats the only part I quoted).
She took a flat second off the world record in an event where the difference between winning and losing is often in the tenths, if not hundredths of a second. If next year at Indy (where they turn trial laps at about 222, 223, perhaps 224 MPH) someone turned a lap at 140, you bet they would take that care apart bolt by bolt, nut by nut.
She knew - and so did the South African Sports Authority who certified her - what would happen.
Quote from: tekla on September 15, 2009, 01:18:21 AM
She took a flat second off the world record in an event where the difference between winning and losing is often in the tenths, if not hundredths of a second. If next year at Indy (where they turn trial laps at about 222, 223, perhaps 224 MPH) someone turned a lap at 140, you bet they would take that care apart bolt by bolt, nut by nut.
She knew - and so did the South African Sports Authority who certified her - what would happen.
I think you meant 240, at 140, everyone would wonder who brought the Mini Cooper. :)
Yeah, but if that car turned a 140 they would tear it apart also - just to find out how not to ever make another one.
I want to comment from a potential political perspective that may be developing in this case. Watching this debate about Caster it seems, is beginning to bring out the TG detractors.
QuoteIn recent times, the transgender debate has veered towards the notion that individuals should be free to "choose" their biological sex.
If a male "feels" that he is really a woman, then he should be free to alter his sex accordingly, via a surgical operation and a dose of hormones. (And vice-versa: though it is harder for a woman to "become" a man, surgically: there is also much less demand for female-to-male transgendering, than for male-to-female.)
There are also individuals whose sex is wrongly identified at birth, and who are brought up in the "wrong" gender: it seems that a newborn infant's genitals can sometimes look surprisingly ambiguous.
But there are also those who believe that sexual identity is purely a social matter, and that, because it involves social conditioning, people should be free to choose their sexual identities in adult life.
The Caster Semenya controversy contradicts this liberal notion that we are "free to choose" our sex identity. The entire inquiry focuses on a hard-science examination of whether Caster's organs and chromosomes are biologically male or female.
This is beginning to show more than just the "money" involved in sports and the competition feeling an unfair advantage being held by Caster. This author is now entering the political realm of the lunatic fringe right. In fact, the author actually is arguing against her own point, I think.
Aside from the argument as to whether she's qualified to run this race or not, Caster obviously has lived as and only known herself to be female. So, exactly when did she make this "choice" to have a female identity? Even if she found out prior to this event that she is actually intersex, it still doesn't remove the fact that she has had a lifelong existence defining and living her life as female. "Liberal notion" I think not. Is the author trying to say to Caster that "she can consider herself female and though she has only known herself to be such and lived that life now for eighteen years, but, we're not going to recognize you as female? And, it's all in your poor head!" What a load of crap! Yes the "hard science" only proves that she has undesended testicles and, her testosterone levels are abnormally high. But, it does not prove what gender her brain says she is! I would defer here to the article in the science forum about the mutating Y chromosome!
Somehow, we collectively, have to find a way to bash these idiots over their stubborn ass hard heads with the "science" that they so willingly wish to put in front of us in which the conclusions all to often really only tell part of the story. By combining all of these studies together I think it's pretty easy to see that we are not just making up in our heads the thoughts about who we really identify as, but, rather we may in fact be a product of the ongoing evolutionary process. After all, where has it been written that evolution of the human being has ended?
OK, now all those out here that are religious, please note, I am not trying to begin a evolution vs. creation argument. As a matter of fact I support both concepts equally. So, I have no side on that front. My point in this post is that I can already hear the radical anti-trans element out there trying to make hay out of this story of Caster Semenya being deceitful about her gender (sound familiar) over her right as a human being to be considered for who she is.............a woman.
Dawn