Alaskan boy participates in the girls state championship

[GMDino]

(08-17-2016, 07:12 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Thought I would put this here; as it is a similar situation and news at the Olympics:


I have a a harder time determining what's "fair" in this case

http://deadspin.com/the-debate-about-caster-semenya-isnt-about-fairness-1785355953

Quote:Separate from the media machine, the IAAF responded to the Semenya stories with new guidelines, delivering the term hyperandrogenism into the sports realm. Essentially, if there were “reasonable grounds” for question (and that is in and of itself is suspect because who defines “reasonable grounds?” Competitors upset over being beaten?), that athlete would be flagged and her testosterone level would be tested. Too high and she would be deemed to have an unfair advantage. As Slate’sDaniel Engber observes: “They tried to make the testing of an athlete’s femininity something more akin to testing her for doping.” This isn’t about measuring your womanhood, they said, it’s about fairness.


But it’s harder to buy that argument—this is about fairness—when you read about what happens to a woman “flagged” and tested. Here is how Engber summarized what would happen in such a case:

Quote:If an athlete like Semenya failed the initial hormone screen, she’d be examined in more detail to see if her testosterone was “functional” enough to give her an advantage. How would the doctors figure out if her testosterone was functional? They’d check how much of it was bound to her receptors, screen her for known mutations in those same receptors, weigh the hoarseness of her voice, rate the development of her pubic hair and breasts, evaluate her muscles, size her labia, palpate her vagina, and measure her anogenital distance. In other words, they’d try to calculate the degree to which she’d been virilized—or one might say, made “manly”—by her intersex condition.

Imagine that, having a doctor measure your pubic hair and test your vagina to make sure it is vagina-like enough to be considered a woman’s. For all the scientific coldness of that paragraph, I still found myself shuddering at the thought of such a procedure, followed by a nagging feeling that the testing didn’t sound that different from the old systems, a process created by a group dominated by men defining for women what men thought was womanly enough.

To compete, a woman had to essentially womanize herself—as dictated by an “expert medical panel,” which decides if the results are satisfactory enough.

Quote:In such a case, the Expert Medical Panel may specify conditions under which it would be acceptable for the athlete to compete. These conditions may necessitate the athlete undergoing treatment by her personal physician to normalise her androgen levels and, in such a case, it would be the athlete’s responsibility, in close consultation with her medical team, to decide on the advisability of proceeding with such treatment. If an athlete does decide to undergo treatment as a means to continue participating in women’s competition, before returning to such competition, her case would be referred back to the Expert Medical Panel to satisfy itself that the conditions previously imposed had been met. The IAAF would then be responsible for monitoring the athlete’s compliance with the conditions on an ongoing basis by conducting regular testing of the athlete, including on an unannounced basis.

Semenya hasn’t said what she’s been put through, but her times dropped and reporters have assumed that’s because she was undergoing some sort of chemical treatment. Then the testosterone regulations were suspended after Indian runner Dutee Chand challenged them and won in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Now Semenya’s running faster and she’s the favorite to win the 800 meters. This has added media attention to her race, although many reporters will insist this is all just about fairness, testosterone, and rules.