Transnegation Roundup/2020/09/09/2

Argument ab Testiculo

• 15:04 @sugabelly “Caster Semenya is a man and should compete with men. / The fact that they thought he was a girl at birth, and socialized him as a girl, doesn’t change the fact that he’s actually a man. / He has testes for goodness sake. / He also has no uterus, no ovaries. / No woman has testes.”

This is rather at odds with what other Gender Criticals have said on the matter -- i.e. basically if you're born with a penis, you're a man, and if there's any ambiguity then it's up to a doctor to "observe" what you are. Maybe you can be male without a penis, but you can't be female without a uterus? And doctors can issue false femininity but not false masculinity?

This is someone who was assigned female at birth, and whose sex is only being called into question because of scientific tests (testosterone levels and presumably some kind of internal scan), at least one of which was performed without consent.

So the rule is "if there's any doubt, then you're a man"? Apparently some people will listen to the science only where it goes along with this principle.

further reading

• Wikipedia: Caster Semenya
• 2019-05-09 Ten ethical flaws in the Caster Semenya decision on intersex in sport
  • 2020-09-08 15:48 @chasestrangio “This awful decision was affirmed today. Caster won’t be able to run.” (discussion ensues, some of it reasonable)
• 2019-05-02 Caster Semenya ruling uses an unscientific definition of who is female, critics say
• 2019-05-01 Caster Semenya is being forced to alter her body to make slower runners feel secure in their womanhood
• 2009-09-11 Caster Semenya 'is a hermaphrodite', tests show