Reply to Harrison Bergeron: The Ruling in the Caster Semenya Case Shows Us Where We are Going

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There's a very simple question with a very complicated answer: [b]For the purposes of athletic competition, you have to determine where the line is between men and women.[/b] (This is a very different question than in most areas, where I believe anyone should be able to decided whether they are a man or woman.) I don't know the answer. From what I've read, the science is very unsure about what exact biological characteristics contributes to the male advantage (which is very consistently about 10 percent faster for all running and endurance sports), and the recent decision very well may be premature.

However, this article gets into more detail:

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/05/what-no-one-is-telling-you-about-caster-semenya-she-has-xy-chromosomes/

One interesting fact: " the rate of intersex births is just .018% — less than two out of every 10,000 people. ... [but] it’s believed that all three of the medallists in the 2016 Olympic women’s 800 – Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and Margaret Wambui — are intersex."[/quote]

No, that's not what they determined. What they determined is that she's a woman whose testosterone levels are higher than they will allow for women competing at distances between 400 m and 1 mile.[/quote]

You can't ignore the fact she's intersex.  It matters. [/quote]

You can't ignore the fact that Michael Phelps has [whatever medical condition that gives him long arms, big floppy feet, and a weird metabolism]. It matters.[/quote]

Right, so let's say in the future we can test and it's determined that Michael Phelps has alien DNA, and we have overwhelming evidence that aliens athletically outperform human men, and that requiring human men to compete against aliens in athletic competitions unfairly limits human men and will generally mean human men have no opportunities for participation in competitive athletics. Then we have these conversations about how to both protect aliens access to athletic competition, and human men's access to athletic competition.[/quote]

This would be applicable if the IAAF were making decisions based on people's genes. But they're not.

And then, of course, there's the implication that Caster Semenya isn't *really* a woman.[/quote]

Being intersex really does make a huge difference. Most women do not have internal testes producing testosterone, which makes a huge difference in how a person’s body develops during puberty. Semenya doesn’t have testosterone levels that are on the high end of the range for females but instead has levels that are in the male range. That makes a big difference in physical development and strength. 
[/quote]

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