Gender and fairness at the Rio Olympics
August 19, 2016 7:52 AM   Subscribe

Beyond the questionable preparations and phony robberies, the Rio Olympics will be remembered for raising hard questions of fairness. In particular, questions about athletes with chemical and hormonal advantages. All but one member of Russia's track & field squad was barred from competition due to a systemic doping program (autoplay warning), while athletes at the games trade thinly-veiled allegations in the pool and on the track. Under this cloud of suspicion, the challenging questions of South Africa's Caster Semenya - an intersex woman who is a commanding favorite in tomorrow's 800-meter final - have a different tenor. Is this a simply straightforward issue of biological fairness, or is it a broader challenge to women's sports?

When Mefi last discussed Semenya in 2012, she has been ordered to reduce her natural testosterone level to compete in the London Olympics.

But in 2015, a court ordered that policy reversed:
But last year, the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended that IAAF rule, writing that it "was unable to conclude that hyperandrogenic female athletes may benefit from such a significant performance advantage that it is necessary to exclude them from competing in the female category." The court gave the IAAF two years to provide more scientific evidence connecting high testosterone levels and improved athletic performance. What that means is that for these Olympic Games, at least, there are no upper limits on testosterone for intersex athletes.
The question in Rio, as a consequence, isn't about whether Semenya is following the rules - she clearly is - but what it means to have a separate category for women's sports.

On Deadspin, Diana Moskovitz pushes back against the notion that this is about fairness in the first place:
All elite athletes are genetic anomalies, but this is the only one being singled out as the signifier of womanhood. No one trait defines a person’s gender. While the world is taking steps to understand gender fluidity, gender expression, and sexual identity, the Olympics cannot stop its quest to define one gender, definitively, in the name of protecting that gender.
As part of an ongoing discussion at The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell starts with the same premise as Moskovitz, but reaches a different conclusion:
All world-class athletes are, to some extent, genetic freaks. Usain Bolt is not normal. So why are we fussing over this particular kind of abnormality? What Tucker argues is that Semenya’s “difference” is qualitatively different from Bolt’s “difference.” What sets Bolt apart is the length of his legs and his extraordinary percentage of fast-twitch fibers and his competitive nature—and those are all differences that define the competition in the hundred. That is, the hundred metres is a contest between people of varying levels of fast-twitch muscles, competitive drive, and physiology. The performers who compete for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar represent an astonishing variety of talents, roles, and films. But you shouldn’t compete for that prize if you are outside of the category of supporting actor. Tucker’s point is that Semenya’s difference puts her outside the protected athletic category of “woman”—and that makes it unfair to the other runners if she is allowed to compete. This is an argument that makes me—and most people—profoundly uncomfortable, because in all other walks of life we do not draw these kinds of hard lines. But the Olympics is not life!
posted by brozek (15 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Seems like the flat categorization of Semenya as intersex is kind of murky and not a matter of self-identification, which makes it a fairly problematic hook to build the post around, much as I appreciate the effort to put something substantial together here. -- cortex



 
Is this a simply straightforward issue of biological fairness, or is it a broader challenge to women's sports?

This is a gross question.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:04 AM on August 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


My understanding (I could easily be wrong here and welcome correction) is that the belief that Caster Semenya is intersex is an assumption not based on her identification or anything she's said. Position her as "an intersex woman" from the get-go seems like a bad way to start this conversation.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:10 AM on August 19, 2016 [5 favorites]


Outside of gymnastics, women's sports means nothing if it does not mean excluding people who have the systemic performance advantage conferred by typically male levels of testosterone and physical development. Elite under 15 boys are regularly better than the best women athletes in the world in any sport where you could allow them to compete -- in sports with a lot of contact it would be unsafe even to permit the competition.

If this parses unfairly with people's political preferences around gender, then just change sports from "men" and "women" to "open" and "typically female physiognomy and hormones."
posted by MattD at 8:19 AM on August 19, 2016 [4 favorites]


If this parses unfairly with people's political preferences around gender

What, exactly, does this mean?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:26 AM on August 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Elite under 15 boys are regularly better than the best women athletes in the world in any sport where you could allow them to compete

this is breathtaking nonsense. go say this to Serena Williams's face and let me know how that goes for you.
posted by zinful at 8:31 AM on August 19, 2016


My understanding (I could easily be wrong here and welcome correction) is that the belief that Caster Semenya is intersex is an assumption not based on her identification or anything she's said.

An IAAF test in 2009 allegedly revealed her to be physically intersex, but references to that have been so thoroughly scrubbed from the Internet that I would lend it no credence.

Semenya identifies as female.
posted by Etrigan at 8:32 AM on August 19, 2016


this is breathtaking nonsense. go say this to Serena Williams's face and let me know how that goes for you.

During the 1998 Australian Open, the Williams sisters said they could beat any man ranked below 200. Karsten Braasch, a German player ranked No 203 at the time, took them up on it. He played them both, one set each. To be a dick, before the matches, he drank a couple of beers and smoked cigarettes. He then defeated Serena, 6-1, and Venus, 6-2.

The Williams sisters are deeply fucking amazing, and it's not fun to hear, but they got smoked by a not-particularly-great male player.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 8:40 AM on August 19, 2016 [6 favorites]


I don't feel qualified to have an opinion on this, but the casual transphobic watercooler conversation it provokes around me sure does make me think less of a lot of people.
posted by selfnoise at 8:42 AM on August 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


My understanding (I could easily be wrong here and welcome correction) is that the belief that Caster Semenya is intersex is an assumption not based on her identification or anything she's said. Position her as "an intersex woman" from the get-go seems like a bad way to start this conversation.

Sex is not gender, and the UN defines "intersex" as:
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics (including genitals, gonads and chromosome patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.
So, I don't think that "intersex woman" is any more wrong than "trans woman" as an identifier.

That being said, I was actually under the impression that test results had been released to show that Semenya was intersex (in the sense of having gonads and chromosome patterns that do not fit typical binary notions of a female-sexed body). A review of Semenya's wikipedia page reveals that this is not true, and so any speculation that Semenya is, in fact, "intersex" seems to be a continuation of the gross racism/sexism that saw her getting forced into testing in the first place.

Why any of this is anyone's business is wrapped up with the fucky nature of sports, that are separated by "gender" (but it's not really gender) because the top performing male-presenting athletes have historically dominated the top performing female-presenting athletes, even though some of those male-presenting athletes were actually women (see, e.g. Caitlyn Jenner) and likely vice versa (but I don't follow sports closely enough to know of any trans men who experienced success in Women's sports prior to transition).

I have a hard time thinking through a solution to this that doesn't get FAR too wrapped up in the athlete's genitals. Like, what's been done to Semenya is bad enough. And I can only imagine that it must be worse for trans women, who are basically accused of cheating unless they voluntarily undergo and disclose the results of treatments that they might not otherwise have chosen for themselves (and sometimes even then).
posted by sparklemotion at 8:43 AM on August 19, 2016


During the 1998 Australian Open, the Williams sisters said they could beat any man ranked below 200.

They were 17 and 16 at the time. And there are currently no male players under 15 in the top 200.
posted by Etrigan at 8:43 AM on August 19, 2016 [5 favorites]


At that level of sports, everyone is an outlier. I'm not sure I entirely see why being an outlier in terms of how much testosterone your body naturally produces is different from all the other ways in which extremely elite athletes are physical outliers.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:46 AM on August 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


Do you want any female champions?

If yes then the reason for the separate women's category exists. If not then just have an open category.
posted by rr at 8:48 AM on August 19, 2016


There's a line to be crossed when you go from "I want to be given a chance to play fairly" to "I'm an asshole who just wants to win at any cost." (I'm thinking of Oscar Pistorius, who IMO should not have been allowed to compete against people who had injurable ankles.) Lots of elite athletes, by definition, are willing to go to amazing lengths to win; it's up to the sports bodies and federations to make sure that we all play fair and square. They are right to keep an eye on these things.
posted by Melismata at 8:50 AM on August 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Melismata: How does that apply here? It seems the Pistorius case is the exact opposite situation.
posted by Cosine at 8:52 AM on August 19, 2016


A review of Semenya's wikipedia page reveals that this is not true, and so any speculation that Semenya is, in fact, "intersex" seems to be a continuation of the gross racism/sexism that saw her getting forced into testing in the first place.

Right, that was my objection. I have no problem with the phrase intersex woman if that's how someone identifies (and if it's how they identify, my objections would be worthless anyway). It was in quotes because the FPP uses the phrase, not as scare quotes.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:52 AM on August 19, 2016


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