When I was a kid, the television told me that if I wore Keds, I would run faster, jump higher. Did they work? I wouldn’t know, as my mother bought my sneakers from the big bin at the supermarket. But a little more than a decade later, Adidas was selling sneakers with three stripes for a lot more than PF Flyers and people were buying.
They stopped calling them sneakers and started calling them athletic shoes. Soon, there were different types for specific sports, and everybody knew that you should run in running shoes and play hoops in basketball shoes. Did the kids wearing the expensive sneakers athletic shoes play better? Maybe, but if so, it wasn’t because of the shoes. They just played better.
Castor Semenya runs faster. No doubt she’s got some sweet shoes, but even if she wore Keds, she would run faster. Isn’t that the point of being a middle distance runner, to run faster?
On Wednesday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport took a startling step backward in the fight for equality in women’s athletics. At issue was the case that Olympic gold medal runner Caster Semenya and Athletics South Africa had brought against regulations of the International Association of Athletics Federations set to take effect this year, which would force Semenya to take hormones to lower her testosterone levels to compete as a woman.
Had the issue been about a transgender woman, or a person introducing chemicals into their body that gave rise to an ability that the person would not otherwise possess, that would be one thing. Performance enhancing drugs are cheating. But culture war aside, Semenya is a woman. Semenya runs as a woman. Semenya wins as a woman. What’s the problem?
The association asserts that it’s not Semenya’s womanhood that is in question: She and all the women who would be affected by this regulation were assigned female at birth and raised and live as women. The organization says the issue is that she’s different enough from other women that she has a scientifically demonstrable, unfair advantage.
Testosterone. It’s the Keds of the moment, and Semenya’s got it.
The evidence suggests this is untrue. And the association’s new rules are just the latest effort to force intersex people into procedures intended to make other people comfortable.
But for the issues presented by reinventing gender without regard to XX chromosomes, the question of testosterone might not be on the table. There is a dearth of scientific research into the correlation and causation of testosterone and exceptional athletic ability. They didn’t do a lot of research into Keds either, but then, the grown ups knew better than to get their medical thesis from Kedso the Clown.
A couple of people with “docs” in front of their names call testosterone a “myth.”
For a century, talk about testosterone as the “male hormone” has woven folklore into science, so that supposedly objective claims seemingly validate cultural beliefs about the structure of masculinity and the “natural” relationship between women and men.
Labeling testosterone the male sex hormone suggests that it is restricted to men and is alien to women’s bodies, and obfuscates the fact that women also produce and require testosterone as part of healthy functioning.
Their point is that women also produce the hormone testosterone, which probably won’t come as a shock to people who took sophomore biology, but similarly answers no questions about it. Women have it, but not like men. Men have it, yet I still can’t jump like Michael Jordan. Not even if I wear the latest version of his shoes. So it’s not testosterone, per se, but testosterone is a contributing factor to the distinction between Semenya and other female runners?
So what?
We have become societally obsessed with redefining sex, not to mention gender, so as to ignore the obvious, erase our biology by calling it a social construct, and find some fantastical means to produce the results that a minuscule percentage of people need, and a somewhat larger percentage of people feel compelled to support to prove they’re not fearful,
We aren’t eliminating problems. We’re just shifting problems from one group to another. Not every issue is a zero-sum game, but many are, and this is a problem for Semenya because her chromosomes aren’t good enough to establish that she’s a woman, as that would mean someone who wants to be a woman, but whose chromosomes didn’t cooperate, wouldn’t be. So someone gets left out of the definition.
It’s not that she’s intersex, the go-to medical anomaly that proves the opposite of what its dependents would prefer. There are exceptions to rules, because our bodies don’t always work the way they’re supposed to. For some, it’s debilitating disease or disfigurement. For others, it’s amorphous genitalia. And for others still, it’s more than the usual testosterone. The question is whether we use the definitions that apply to the vast majority of human beings, or ignore them in favor of contrived definitions that favor a very small group at the expense of the majority.
Semenya’s a woman. Her chromosomes say so. Her body says so. She’s just a woman who runs a lot faster than most women. Had she chosen to play violin rather than run, no one would care, but she managed to figure out that her ability to run distinguished her from slower women. Michael Jordan’s ability to play basketball distinguished him from other men. Even in flip flops, he could beat me in one-on-one. Is that wrong?
Caster Semenya didn’t cheat. She didn’t shoot up testosterone to get ahead of the pack. She just ran, and as it turned out, ran faster than others. She’s not the poster girl for or against intersex or transgender complaints, or against them either. However her body produced its hormones, and assuming her testosterone level has anything to do with it, she came to it naturally. That we’ve overlaid the culture war on her doesn’t make her less of a woman or any less of a winner.
I bet Michael Jordan has something I don’t, which makes our one-on-one game unfair to me. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe it’s hormonal. Maybe it’s just some vagary called “athletic ability.” It’s not his fault for having it, but my burden for not. Maybe if I wore Keds?
Update: But is Semenya a woman? As pointed out to me after posting this, every major news outlet may be misreporting a salient detail.
Athletes with 46 XY DSD have testosterone levels well into the male range (7.7 to 29.4 nmol/L; normal female range being below 2 nmol/L). The DSD Regulations require athletes with 46 XY DSD with a natural testosterone level over 5 nmol/L, and who experience a “material androgenizing effect” from that enhanced testosterone level, to reduce their natural testosterone level to below 5 nmol/L, and to maintain that reduced level for a continuous period of at least six months in order to be eligible to compete in a Restricted Event. Such reduction can be achieved, according to the IAAF evidence, by the use of normal oral contraceptives.
Semenya challenged the Athletes with Differences of Sex Development (DSD regulations), but there is no affirmative statement about her having XY chomosomes. The implication was that she did, or she wouldn’t have challenged them, but the press release doesn’t say so.
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Harrison Bergeron, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut.
“In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General’s agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear “handicaps”: masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.“
I knew someone would Harrison Bergeron this post. At least it’s out of the way early.
Hey, there might be one or two educated people who haven’t read Harrison Bergeron. Somewhere 🙂
Count me as uneducated. I was thinking of My Fair Lady.
If you want shoes with lots of pep
Get Keds, kids, Keds
With bounce and zoom in every step
Get Keds, kids, Keds
You’ll be a champion with style
Hit that ball a half a mile
They’re tough
They last a long, long while
Keds, kids, Keds
We couldn’t afford Keds either. But their commercial worked like hell on me.
Of course, marketing changed over time.
SHG,
In the update, you ask whether Ms. Semenya is a woman?
The answer to your question may be far beyond the keen of readers of SJ like me. See Swyer syndrome published by the NIH on April 30, 2019 . https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/swyer-syndrome.
All the best.
RGK
You know how you can tell if a chromosome is a boy or a girl?
Pull down its genes.
I think most people understood the intersex aspect, even without the orthogonal link that violates the rules and would get deleted when anyone else posts one, so we realized that Semenya could, possibly, fall into that hole in between. That it exists, however, does little to tell us whether it applies here.
Deep down, everyone has a secret Jim Tyre lurking in their darkest heart.
Harsh.
SHG,
Harsh, but fair.
But, then again, your question–is she a woman–might be construed as really stupid. There is no way for one to answer the question without more data. And because of her privacy rights, we may never know.
Still further, given the Swyer syndrome your updated question maybe terminally stupid since it may not be answerable and you have by asking the question, essentially, invited a circle jerk.
By the way, I truly thought you were relaxing the rules on links, orthogonal or not. My bad. Truly sorry.
All the best.
RGK
PS I have never requested or expected special treatment from you. I am glad that you lightly punched me in my large nose to prove it. Thanks, and I mean it.
When I added the update, I saw no way to avoid acknowledging the issue, even though (as you correctly note) I was inviting a circle jerk. But it was there, so what other choice did I have but to recognize that the question was raised.
And while you have never sought special treatment, and if anything have let me know that you want none, I am occasionally inconsistent when it comes to certain people. The problem, as is evident to me by the comment immediately after yours, was how the next person throws in a random link rather than contribute in the discussion. If I do for one, can I refuse for another? So this was really my fault, not yours, and I took it out on you. Given your contributions to SJ, it was petty and wrong of me, and I am now ashamed of myself. And you are nowhere near as orthogonal as Tyre.
SHG,
For reasons that are unknown to your readers as well as those that are apparent, it is I who owes you. Additionally, this is the one place where you and others tell me the truth. And, that is a pearl of great price.
All the best.
RGK
PS My damn internet is down yet Spectrum “is not seeing an outage in your area.” So, I hope you get this as I am hunting and pecking on the IPhone.
This is all very much a two-way street, for all of us. For which I (we) thank you.
This article was persuasive to me:
[Ed. Note: Deleted per rules.]
Written by a woman athlete who testified at the CAS hearing
“
If there was a point that was illuminating, you could explain the point. But that it was persuasive to you, and post a link despite rules prohibiting posting links, is not the most effective way to contribute to the discussion here.
Why did they leave out that minor detail about the XY chromosome, from every mainstream article? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Will this omission cost them credibility? It will not. They already have none with anyone who is paying attention.
Did they? They say quite clearly that Semenya is XX with abnormally high testosterone. Is she? Is she XY? The PR doesn’t say she’s XY either, even if it’s the obvious implication.
I’m funny about facts. Just tell me, tell me clearly, tell me the truth. Don’t make me infer. Just tell me.
I checked the 6 mainstream articles that Robert links in his article; none contain “XX” nor “XY.” They didn’t lie, they just left out the part that doesn’t match the narrative.
I Googled for “Semenya XX” and still didn’t find any outright lies, just misleading statements such as (from the Washington Compost) “Others may appear typically female but have unusually high levels of testosterone, or appear typically male but have XX chromosomes.”
I don’t see any grounds for disputing that Semenya has the XY chromosome. As Robert’s article says, ” If she wasn’t XY, the IAAF’s regulations wouldn’t apply to her and she’d have no reason to challenge them.”
According to Doriane Coleman, a Professor of Law at Duke Law School (FWIW), who testified at the CAS hearing discussed here:
“She is an “affected athlete” under IAAF regulations, which list the specific differences of sex development (DSDs) that are of concern to sport. These cases all involve “46, XY” disorders, whereby individuals with one X chromosome and one Y chromosome in each cell (a pattern normally typical of males) may have external genitalia that are not distinctively male or female; nevertheless, they have testes which produce bioavailable T in the normal male range. ” T stands for testosterone.
Further, from the same source, “Ms. Semenya and Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi—have publicly acknowledged that they are affected by the regulations and thus that they are 46, XY males with DSD.”
There is a 6000+ word article in Quillette from this morning by Coleman on this subject.
Thank you.
What to do about the tails of the distribution. When it comes to design, you have to accept some risk associated with low probability events. You wouldn’t build a house that way, nor a car as a daily driver without doing that. I would also note that one shouldn’t try to order society or the law according to the far ends of the distribution.
When it comes to human performance in sports, that’s a different matter. As long as there is no external alteration involved you have to accept all the variabilities in humans. Roll of the genetic dice.
So you’re saying Keds won’t really help?
Not unless they have soles made of Flubber. I think they only come with a Golden Ticket from Willy Wonka.
It is not really about the tails of the distribution. It is the human propensity to put things in boxes. Instead of having two separate choices of “male” and “female”, there are a few unfortunate individuals who fit in neither. Then the choice becomes an arbitrary one which has no scientific answer (as mentioned in preceding comments). It is similar to, but not quite as continuous a distribution as, whether something is “alive” or “inanimate”, or “child” or “adult”.
[If i understood your comment, which i am not sure i did.]
It is all about the tails of the distributions. People who win Olympic medals and world championships are in the tail of the distribution.
“As long as there is no external alteration involved you have to accept all the variabilities in humans.”
Sure, and if we just had “events” instead of having “men’s events” and “women’s events”, then it would be trivial to accept all the variabilities in humans. But, as long as we have women’s events whose goal is to select the best woman in the world at some sport, we will have to wrestle with what it means to be a woman.
Maybe what we have to wrestle with is the fact that we can’t achieve definitions that will accommodate the vast majority of people as well as the occasional outlier, for whom redefinition comes at the expense of the vast majority of people. In other words, someone will be left out because there is no solution that doesn’t come at someone’s expense, so the problem is whether it comes at the expense of the outlier or the vast majority of people.
“…is whether it comes at the expense of the outlier or the vast majority of people.”
All the restrictive rules come at the expense of the outlier. There will be no eligibility question for the vast majority of women; they will have XX chromosomes, female genitalia, and testosterone in the normal range for women. At different times in history, sports governing bodies have used each of the above three as the inclusion criterion for women’s sports. Each results in a different subset of a tiny minority of women being excluded. The governing bodies could decide that all three are a requirement for eligibility, which would result in a bigger tiny minority of women being excluded. As best I can tell, the answer is not traceable back to any principle of human rights. The decision is essentially arbitrary, and swings on small differences in what one values most. That is why I have no opinion on what the rule should be.
You were so focused on the test that you missed the flip side of the testing problem: if an XX/female genitalia/low T woman has constrained to compete with a transgender woman, they can’t and lose, so it’s not merely a problem of exclusion but inclusion as well, so the vast majority of women are secondary to the one outlier on one side or the other.