Time magazine publishes 3,000+ word Q&A with Caster Semenya that any honest journalist should be embarrased by

If the US Supreme Court can't define what a woman is, why should world athletics have to? Are they biologists?

Edit: also, the Erik Schinegger result is what should have happened retroactively to women who lost to DSD athletes. The female 2nd placer was retroactively awarded gold.

I would only like to add that when talking to normal people (or journalists) about this issue, or about trans athletes, the most common thing I notice is that people don't seem to understand that biological women even need to be a protected class in sport anymore.

There have been so many gains in women's sports (and feel-good stories), that non-athletes just don't understand that the men's and women's bell-curve of performances don't even overlap in any given "playing field." The slowest male 1500m runner is still faster than the fastest women's 1500m runner at NCAAs (for example).

But because a non-athlete (or journalist) is personally slower than an elite female runner, they falsely see men and women as being on a spectrum of ability, thus not really separate, when in reality, male performances and female performances don't even overlap (for comparable sets of athletes).

If you think the gender issue in sports begins and ends with Semenya then you haven't been following it. It is far from resolved. Why do you think she is still having articles written about her in the wider media?

Rojo, the issue goes beyond sports. It has become political. That is why sports bodies - which try to deal with it as a sports issue relating to protecting the women's category in sports - come up against a wider view driven by an ideology that holds discrimination of any kind is a social evil. In most areas of life, such as employment and treatment of the individual relating to social rights, that is true - race and gender shouldn't matter. So Semenya is not seen as a biological male competing in women's sports but as a Rosa Parks, heroically standing up for her civil rights not to be discriminated against for being different. The irony in that situation is that her rights, as they are perceived, come at the expense of the rights of women - a contradiction the liberal world does not - will not - see, because it refuses to accept what the sport knows, that a DSD-46XY male is not a biological woman. It may even hold that there is no fundamental difference in sporting capacity between men and women that can't be eradicated by giving women greater opportunity.

This has become a debate at cross-purposes, and chiefly because her advocates do not understand the crucial differences between male and female in sports, or they do not care because they consider "inclusivity" trumps fairness - which they conflate with "sameness" or being "equal" in ability, and we hear sport is never "fair" anyway since some must be better or have more advantages than others. So, so what about a few chromosomes.

The dishonesty in the debate however is the reluctance of the wider media to state facts as facts and particularly to challenge Semenya on the core question of her identity as she understands it: however Semenya or anyone like her chooses to see themselves they are not biologically female, they are male - and it is that maleness that makes all the difference. In her sport at least, women athletes - biological women - will never overcome that inherent disadvantage. But if politics wins out over sports then women will undoubtedly be the losers - in every sense. But it also requires saying to Semenya she is wrong about how she sees herself and what she believes herself to be, in respect of her being an athlete. Many feel we have no right to do that - to anyone.

I made the mistake of [not very thoroughly] reading the book. Her account of the 2019 showdown with the IAAF somehow manages to be surprising in its disingenuity.

It answers one of your questions - she says she's infertile/that her testes don't produce viable sperm.

As you suggest the book throughout dances around the core questions at the heart of this debate, namely:

(a) is self-assessment acceptable for determining eligibility to the female athletics class?; and

(b) assuming that the answer to (a) is 'no' [which it surely has to be, by any sensible reckoning], what criteria should determine eligibility?

All you can really say from the book is that CS appears to implicitly argue that the visual appearance of an athlete's external genitalia should be determinative.

I think she's saying it's another factor that supports the athlete's right to determine who they are. She simply asserts she's a "woman". It isn't that simple.

Yeah, I suppose she's just trying to generally muddy the waters/elicit sympathy without spelling out precisely what the rules should be.

What CS says in her book about Sarinova being stripped of her 2011-12 golds for doping, thereby giving them to CS, is probably relevant - CS says that the retrospective award "...didn't matter to me..."; that "a win is a win"; "..she whipped my ass..."; and "...I respected her for that win...".

I suppose what CS is, rather clumsily and incoherently, trying to do, is put out a general message along the lines of 'all is fair in love and war'. Maybe she prefers dopers being allowed in because [she thinks] it weakens the case for the exclusion of DSD-46XY males.

With Mr. Johnson, this is why I have a difficult time considering letsrun actual journalism. Time is a very reputable publication and to suggest that an interview with Caster Semenya is a waste of time and print is not doing justice for the dialogue about sport.

Because of the IAAF and CAS rulings, Caster Semenya was allowed to compete under her designated sex despite the 46 XY -DSD condition which was genetic. Between the time the allowance was made and rescinded, Semenya did nothing wrong by competing.

I'm not expecting people to agree, but letsrun is supposed to be about issues governing running in general and whether or not one agrees with CAS, IAAF, Semenya, South Africa, Sebastian Coe, etc. may play in opining about the subject, it should not relegate a story like this to a waste of time.

Otherwise, Mr. Johnson, you're suggesting that journalism and chiefly, sports journalism should only cover the issues you like and the athletes you regard. This is not what sports writing is about.

If anything, a real dialogue about Semenya will help to quell nasty and brash comments like "she's a dude!" and other awful vitriol that Semenya has received here.

Your usage of the umbrella of journalism to highlight bigotry is starting to show here and letsrun is starting to look far more like a tabloid compared to Time.

to give a rough indication of how far into trolling mode CS is at times in this book she includes a photo of herself in swimwear at the beach aged 15. she looks exactly as you'd expect in it and then some.

From my own reading of Semenya’s book, I’d phrase the point you made in the sentence I bolded a bit differently.

I’d say that Semenya’s argument is that eligibility for the female category of athletics competition should be determined solely by declarations athletes make about their sex based on conclusions they reached from impressions of their own external genitalia that they and some family members got when the athletes were small children.

In the book, Semenya’s describes in detail the two separate intimate medical exams conducted by gynecologists that Semenya had prior to winning the women’s 800m IAAF World Championship for the first time 14+ years ago when Semenya was 18 - the first exam in Pretoria at the behest of Athletics South Africa on August 7, 2009, the second in Berlin at the behest of the IAAF on August 18, 2009.

From Semenya’s description of what happened during those two medical exams, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that neither the South African doctor nor the European doctors who performed the exams thought the visual appearance of Semenya’s external genitalia supported Semenya’s own self-assessment, conclusions and assertions.

At any rate, Semenya’s position then and today more than 14 years later is that no matter what the medical and scientific evidence has shown, it makes no difference. In Semenya’s view, Semenya is a woman because Semenya says so.

Yeah, without being too crude, my reading between the lines of CS's description of the second medical is that she knew an ultrasound probe designed for use on women wouldn't be usable in her case. She uses the word "vagina" many [many] times in the book in relation to herself [though strangely never the word 'testes' or equivalent] but I think she really means something a lot more like 'pseudo vulva'.

You're probably right though about CS's arguments. They probably do boil down to CS and others around her having believed hat she was a girl for the first dozen or so years of her life. CS argues that this should suffice [unspoken - especially if the athlete comes from a poor background and so on].

"In Semenya’s view, Semenya is a woman because Semenya says so."

Gotta love the last line from the NY Times piece:

"This book is coming out in a time when anyone who steps out of the corrals of traditional gender risks being discriminated against and dehumanized, as Semenya has been."

That last line is exactly the gist of why this book would be important. We are in a time where people are using religious books and religious education to exact a battle against anything not traditional.

Intersex exists.

People can't just wish differences away.

If we make this partisan, we're losing a lot more than we're gaining.

To me, one of the most telling parts of the book is Semenya's account of what the first gynecologist who examined Semenya, Oscar Shimange - whom Semenya describes as an avuncular, kindly older black South African man - did and didn't do during the exam he performed in early August, 2009, before Semenya went to Berlin to compete and win in Semenya's first women's World Championship.

I think it's extremely revealing and signifcant that Semenya says Dr. Shimange never touched CS's genitals at all during his examination of the athlete.

As someone who has had gynecological exams more times in my life than I can count, I can attest that a standard gyn exam begins with the doctor or nurse carefully examining the external genitals both visually and manually. A routine gynecological exam or "pelvic" - especially when done to diagnose health problems or abnormalities - includes plenty of hands-on touching of the genitals. The gynecologist will separate the labia to check the folds of skin and inspect the constituent parts of the vulva for lumps, growths, irritation, rashes, abrasians, tenderness, proper healing of childbirth injuries, and normal and abnormal secretions; use the fingers to locate the vaginal entry and check that it's normal; use the fingers again to open the vaginal entry in order to insert a speculum or ultrasound wand; insert several fingers deep inside the vagina to palpate the cervix, uterus and ovaries...

But according to Semenya's own account, Shimange didn't do any of this when examining Semenya. Apparently based on just looking at CS's external genitals alone, the South African doctor knew enough not to proceed with any of the genital palpating and invasive internal probing that are normally part and parcel of a standard gynecological exam.

Instead, Dr. Shimange skipped all the customarily invasive palpating and probing of the external genitals and internal reproductive tract and went straight to getting an image of Semenya's internal organs by doing an non-invasive sonogram from the outside of Semenya's abdomen.

In Semenya's own words from the book (all the ellipses are Semenya's own; I haven't cut any part myself):

Dr. Shimange looked at my privates, he never touched me or asked me any questions during the exam. I couldn't tell from the expression on his face what he was thinking. At some point I felt the need to say something.

"And don't try anything funny with me, doc. I may be a girl, but I will beat you down like a man."

Dr. Shimange chuckled. He brought out a sonogram wand and placed it on my lower belly. He drew blood and then the exam was over. Once he was finished, I got dressed and we spoke as two humans, not as doctor and patient. I could tell that he was a good man.

"Caster... I am going to tell you the truth here. You are not built like most other women. I know you already know that. But these people are looking for a specific issue... a hormone in your blood called testosterone. Both men and women have this hormone, but you may have a higher level than the sports people allow for your gender. I am sorry... I think the results will show this is the situation with you, Caster. As a fellow African, I have to tell you... I think the chances of you running in the world's championships are very low."

Agreed. But intersex athletes shouldn't be allowed to compete as women.

I think the second examination is more telling - by CS's account the doctor wants to use an ultrasound wand vaginally; CS doesn't consent, insisting instead on a, ahem, backdoor approach despite this being almost certainly useless. CS characterises this as a kind of 'dirty protest' but for me the far more plausible interpretation is there was simply nowhere else for the wand to go.