I feel terrible for caster semenya

[La Lioness Priyanka]

She's lived her whole life as a woman and now people dont think twice about referring to her as a man. Even people on du. I am sure she doesnt see herself as man. Whether or not she has male chromosomes isnt confirmed. Regardless, clearly its not the gender she identifies herself as.

ugh. sometimes i hate people

[La Lioness Priyanka]

1. posted in glbt because i expect people to be more understanding about gender issues

[soleiri]

2. It's shocking

To see how freaking cruel people are.
I can't even call it ignorance, it's just hateful and mean.
People here are supposed to be a little more enlightened than that, or so I thought.
We can have arguments about certain things, like what our priorities should be about different policies and things like that. But to argue about showing basic human kindness and respect?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. yes. people are cruel.

[Warpy]

4. While it's unfair to allow her to compete against women in sports

She needs to be allowed to be who she feels she is in private life.

In other words, if she says she's a woman, she's a woman and should be treated as such.

Competition is out, though, but I'll bet she would make a wonderful coach and I hope someone realizes that and hires her.

[tabatha]

5. It is the same attitude

that makes people follow beauty pageants, beauty queens, sarah palin,
mindless judgment of the packaging instead of the person.

I think there are remedies for her, that will allow her to compete in the future.
Her talent is too good to waste. I would love to see her running again.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6922193.ece

I hope that some good comes of this, and possibly the minds of people who think sex is black and white are opened to the facts that everything is not cut and dried.

I do think, though, that Caster is a strong person and has a lot of support.

[theHandpuppet]

6. Respectfully, I must disagree

I believe you are referring to the LBN thread regarding this issue. Although there were some posts there that could be considered offensive, by and large I think the debate was legitimate. And the debate was not whether Caster considers herself female or should be respected as the woman she will continue to be. The question is one of competitive sports and how to deal with this particular situation.

The fact is the Caster, who was born sans womb or ovaries, was born with undescended testes which since birth have pumped thrice the testosterone into her system normally found within the range for women. Biologically speaking, this affects fat distribution, muscle mass, bone density et all that give her an unfair advantage over other female competitors. Unless you want to even begin to level the playing field by allowing other women athletes to use hormone supplements, steroids and what-have-you, this is just an untenable situation. To be "fair" to Caster, is it okay to one unfair to the thousands of other women athletes who have trained their whole lives for sport but cannot possibly compete with Caster's biology?

This is a really difficult topic which will continue to be debated and at some point there must be guidelines established to address the issue of gender identity and sport. It is also sad that Caster has been put through the wringer of public scrutiny and I hope from here on out folks will leave her alone. But I honestly do not believe that allowing her to compete in women's events is fair to other women athletes. I don't know what the solution may be, but right now there is no way to be fair to all parties involved.

[HipChick]

7. The problem is there's no testing standard across different races

some affilations do not even bother to test...

If one gets tested, test everybody..

[La Lioness Priyanka]

8. the debate as to addressing her as male even though she identifies as female?

yeah. really legitimate.

[theHandpuppet]

10. No, the debate about whether she should compete in women's sports

There were a couple of posters who tried to make this into an issue about whether Caster should be addressed as "he" but the OP, as well as many of the responses, were on-topic and sympathetic to Caster's plight. Outside this one issue (competitive sport) Caster's gender identity shouldn't even be an issue but our whole society seems obsessed with gender identity. Male/female differences are encouraged and exploited from birth. Hell, I was thumbing through a Toys R Us catalog the other day and I couldn't believe how assigning rigid gender identification is peddled to kids and parents.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

12. but i was not complaining about that. i suppose there is a gray area in that debate

however in the debate as to how to address her, there is NO debate

[theHandpuppet]

15. Oh, I agree about that.

It's unfortunate that we can't seem to sustain any discussions about gender identity on DU without a couple of jerks who want to get in everyone's face with their ignorance. It's also unfortunate that they're the reason I tend to stay out of some discussions because I reach my limit of assholishness very quickly. I've never had an ignore list but there are times when I've considered starting one so I can participate in more GLBT threads without losing my freaking mind when the usual suspects show up. And I do have the greatest respect for you for never shying away from taking on the resident assholes! :-)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

16. ...

:)

[mitchtv]

17. just try an elective gender change

and try and get them to call you by your desired gender.

[soleiri]

9. respectfully

The issue is not whether or not she should be able to compete against other women.
It's horrible and sad that she has to go through this, but I agree that she shouldn't be allowed to compete.

The issue is that she identifies as a woman, and yet some people here don't care and have taken it upon themselves to decide her gender for her. And by doing so, they are also disrespecting other intersex people as well as transgendered people.

[theHandpuppet]

11. Well those folks are just insecure assholes

But having gone back to re-read the thread in LBN, I do not believe it was the intent of the original poster to debate whether Caster should identify herself as a man. There were a couple of posters there who, for reasons that leave me puzzled, seem to take personal issue with the fact that Caster is female-identified. But considering the kinds of posts that inevitably crop up in any GLBT thread, it's not surprising. Unfortunately such posters tend to derail any constructive debate raised by the issues in the original threads -- which, I do believe, is often done intentionally.

[soleiri]

13. I don't think there was a debate

about whether or not she should compete.

Yes, the focused turned to another aspect of gender identity/gender issues other than whether or not she has the right to compete, but that's because that kind of attitude towards others should be addressed. It needs to be.

This OP was not about her right to compete, it was specifically about people calling her a he.
So do you really disagree with this OP?

[theHandpuppet]

14. I guess you and I disagree I our interpretation of the OP on LBN

Is that the OP to which you're referring? And unfortunately that particular poster did not contribute anything more to the discussion other than the OP. I guess I gave them more a benefit of the doubt -- i.e., I don't think they realized just how awkwardly they expressed their sympathy for Caster. I would have liked to have heard more from this poster because I can definitely see how the comment left things rather open-ended.

If you're referring to the OP on this forum (GLBT) , I certainly don't disagree with La Lioness that there are those here on DU who are unenlightened jerkwads when it comes to any gender identity issues. But in the context of the LBN thread there were also a number of good DUers who posted and just a couple of very vocal jerks who were doing their best to yank chains. Unfortunately it seems we have a long way to go in this battle and it's frustrating (but not surprising) to find such resistance even here on DU.