What this case truly opens up, and much more interestingly so than is the “private” case of Caster Semenya, is the question of set gender categories within competitive sports. What are they doing there? If both (or let’s say, for argument’s sake, all) genders would be allowed to compete against each other, is it universally assumed that the men would always win? Hence women need to compete with women, or it wouldn’t be “fair”. Isn’t this in and of itself a pretty misogynistic and outdated view in the 21st century?

Like The Imperalist suggested, the gender dichotomy upheld within the IAAF is far less interesting than the light this whole affair shines on the mere existence of gender separation in sports.

During the last 43 years the IAAF has been conducting GENDER TESTING, as has the IOC, leaving behind a gruesome trail of abused and mistreated athletes, broken careers and broken lives.

In their frightful ignorance they have been playing god, deciding over human beings, not concerning sport, but concerning the very nature of human beings, by what method they, in their hopeless stupidity, have seen fit at any given time, changing their methods all along as soon as one method after the other was deemed wrong and useless.

The leaders and their medical “experts” have acted as the witch doctors of modern time.

And now at last, after all these years, the ivory towers of these self appointed gods and kings have collapsed and their wrongdoings have been disclosed to all the world. With the CASTER SEMENYA case they have finally been forced to admit that they do not know how to decide the gender of a human being !!

That is what I have been telling them ever since 2003, but they refused to listen, and when I persisted, they refused me my democratic right of speaking at the IAAF Congress.

And mind you, it is today the general assumption among experts who are dealing with this issue that 1 out of 2000 is born with some kind of INTERSEX CONDITION, so it is not only about Caster Semenya –
IT IS A GLOBAL ISSUE.

In the ASSOCIATED PRESS release below is stated that:

“The IAAF PLANS to develop a gender definition”

“It would have been better if we had been prepared to, but we were not prepared (*)”, Weiss told The Associated Press on Saturday”.
(* prepared as to how to perform gender testing)

And now they will “start next week to examine how to determine gender”.

WHAT ! – NEXT WEEK ?!
This comes after the IAAF (and the IOC) for 43 years have been stating that they knew how to do it, and have been executing, all through these years, their mumbojumbo on innocent athletes.

How can these people remain in charge of international athletics and international sport ?

Georg Facius
Denmark

See the whole story, and all the background information on this website:
http://www.123hjemmeside.dk/gender_testing

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HERE IS THE SHAMEFUL CONFESSION OF GUILT AND
IGNORANCE ON THE PART OF OF THE IAAF:

Saturday, October 10, 2009

IAAF plans to develop gender definition

By ROB HARRIS (AP)

BIRMINGHAM , England — World track and field’s governing body will start examining next week how to determine gender in an athletics context, an initiative spurred by the case of 800-meter world champion Caster Semenya.

The IAAF’s medical commission, which begins meeting Friday, could take a year to deliver that definition and the judicial commission will also be asked to consider future regulations, general secretary Pierre Weiss said Saturday.

“We are obliged to react. It would have been better if we had been prepared to, but we were not prepared,” Weiss told The Associated Press on Saturday.

“We will get a reply in the next 12 months — I don’t expect anything to come out before.

“We were in Copenhagen (at the International Olympic Committee meetings) and I asked my colleagues from other sports if they had a definition and nobody has one. But nobody (else) has had the problem so far.” Weiss expects the IOC medical commission to also consider the issue in November in Lausanne.

The most common cause of sexual ambiguity is congenital adrenal hyperplasia, an endocrine disorder in which the adrenal glands produce abnormally high levels of hormones.

By the time Semenya won the 800 meters at the Berlin world championships in August, questions about the 18-year-old South African’s gender had been raised because of stunning improvements in her times and her muscular build and deep voice.

Before the final, the IAAF announced it had ordered gender tests.

The IAAF has refused to confirm or deny Australian media reports that Semenya has both male and female characteristics. It says it is reviewing test results and will issue a decision in November on whether she will be allowed to compete in women’s events.

“They are being analyzed worldwide by experts,” Weiss said. “We will promote the outcome of this case as soon as it is known.”

*******************************************************************

Here’s an alternative reading: Semenya can choose to run as a woman because she is a woman. She can also choose not to compete. I presume this is what Minister Stofile meant. If he was making the more radical statement that Semenya can choose also to compete as a man (and assuming that not any woman can compete ‘as a man’ because of the perceived competitive disadvantage) this is not equivalent to implying that gender definitions are infinitely unstable. He would, in that case, be recognising the distinctiveness of Semenya’s case, which implies fairly concrete, is elusive, definitions. Hence, ‘it is unclear what the exact threshold is, in the eyes of the IAAF, for a female athlete’s being ineligible to compete as a woman.’

So how can it be that “the question of whether she should be allowed to keep her medal or to participate in women’s athletics is different from the question of what sex she really is”?

If she is to compete as a woman then she has to satisfy the relevant criteria of ‘being a woman’.

If these criteria are not as clear cut as many thought they were, that does nothing to dissolve the connection between the rules and reality. Rather, reality ought to force us to reconsider the rules.

Surely the lesson we should take from the exploitation of Caster Semenya (who, let us remember, ‘is’ still a teenager) is that ‘women’s athletics’ might not be a sound or equitable category.

“The whole debate also elides the condition of intersex. We might say
as well that the institution of world sports rests upon a certain
denial of intersex as a persistent dimension of human morphology,
genetics and endocrinology. What would happen if the IAFF or any other
world sports organisation decided that it needed to come up with a
policy on how those with an intersex condition might participate in
competitive sports? If they refuse to come up with such a policy, then
we could say that they have preemptively excluded intersexed peoples
from competition, making discrete sex determination into a
prerequisite for entering competitions.”

For years, we have been trying to get the message out that the oppression of intersex people rests, in part, upon the sex binary, wherein it is seen as necessary that an intersex child be assigned a sex as an infant, an assignment that is done on a non-consensual basis. (But are not all sex assignments non-consensual when done in infancy?) For intersex children, this sex assignment often involves non-consensual normalizing surgery. I believe that she is saying that just as organized sports rests upon the assignment of sex, which has been all too problematic in the case of Caster Semenya, the treatment of intersex children rests upon the assignment of sex. I believe that Judith Butler knows that if the IAFF tried to come up with a consistent policy towards intersex athletes, they would be caught up in a web of contradictions. I have heard that, in the future, Caster Semenya will only be allowed to compete if she undergoes medical treatments for being intersex. She can only compete if she is not herself as an intersex person. I am horrified by these requirements. Judith Butler is definitely on the right track.

Peter Trinkl
Bodies Like Ours

A little academic arrogance “on gender’ (why wasn’t I called!?)”. Maybe Ms Butler was not called because the issue was sex embodiment and not gender. There has never been any doubt Ms Semenya’s gender was “woman”.

The use of ‘Intersex condition” is also problematic in that it tends to conflate difference with disorder. Intersex is a difference in sex physiology not a sickness.
That Ms Semenya’s won the 800 metres should be demonstration enough that she is not ill; indeed she is fitter than you or I.

The question of what sex Ms Semenya’s really is has in no way been separated from her qualification for further competition indeed it remains fundamental to it. The IAAF as simply decided to keep Ms Semenya’s medical records private. Sports officials may yet attempt to bar Ms Semenya from further competition based on the outcomes of medical tests or even, in a bizarre twist, insist on certain surgery to make her compliant to sex expectations for female competition.

The officials have separated out Ms Semenya’s honest achievement from societies need for sex binary compliance. They have not ceased their pursuit of and discrimination against athletes who are sex diverse.

Michael Phelps, who may have Marfan’s Syndrome that can give swimmers a competitive advantage, is hailed as a hero. There was never any suggestion he should be disqualified because of this difference. Likewise with basket ball players who are unusually tall.

The hand wringing is about physical differences of sex. Other differences have never been a cause for such outrage, exposure and threats of disqualification.

Gina Wilson
Organisation Intersex international