So She is a Half He-She

Off Topic
121

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Peculiarly enough, yes, when something looks like a horse, a rabbit, or a male human, or a female human, it’s reasonable to suspect that that is the case.

So if someone enters what looks like a horse into a dog race, yes, it’s reasonable to test to see if this perhaps is a horse, not a dog, before the race.[/quote]

Two different species? If they allowed what looked like a female horse into an all female race when it wasn’t would be more accurate…but again we are discussing how this is being handled as it relates to a human being and not as it relates to a set of random genes by themselves.

[quote]

As for your belief that “all of reality is based on majority thought processes,” you then are not a person that is grounded in reality.

All it takes for you, if you in practice hold to the philosophy you claim above, is for the number of people thinking something, and reality changes. (Supposedly.)[/quote]

I actually related it first to sanity to make a point. What we all perceive as “truth” is conditional in many senses and based more than anything on what majority belief is. That was the point being made and it was related to society as whole. It would shock you to death if a person you knew your entire life to be female turned out to be male. I doubt you would immediately start treating them like a guy…because your actions to begin with were conditional based on social restraints.

[quote]

It actually is comical that you would say this in this situation in particular.

At this point, there are far more humans concluding that Semenya is male than female.

So by your own standards of what constitutes “reality” (according to your concept of reality) reality now is that Semenya is male.[/quote]

Most people didn’t even know this woman before this…and again, she was raised as a woman. With the media hype gunning for any and all steroid use and hormonal assistance, it doesn’t surprise me that people swallow and repeat what they are told to think. They only believe this because confidential records were made public.

[quote]

End of discussion, so far as I am concerned. Actually even in general there is never a point in discussing factual matters with a person who fundamentally doesn’t believe in objective factual reality, but has fallen into the fantasy of believing that reality is whatever the majority thinks is true. Yeah, you just go on believing that the world was flat until suddenly enough people decided it was, approximately, spherical. Which you’d have to believe, if you were consistent, but you’re probably not. And you go on believing Semenya is female. No fact can convince you because you’ve made plain you care only of the opinions of the people you want to agree with. (Why only those people, rather than what you stated, the majority? Because I doubt you really will change your mind based on what the majority thinks, despite your philosophically-diseased statement " All of reality is based on majority thought processes."

There is no rational discussion on such matters with those thinking as you’ve stated you do on matters such as this.[/quote]

I base my belief on the fact that she is human. She isn’t a ‘thing’ and was raised female. If this were some elaborate hoax I would be right there with you chanting for her complete removal…but to my knowledge this was not some case of a woman knowing she was a man but acting like a woman.

That alone is what I base my opinion, not “majority thought processes”.

122

[quote]Alpinez wrote:
What doesn’t make sense to me is that as a college athlete I get tested every once in a while for basic stuff to make sure my body is more or less within some measure of normalcy. So, how did she make it to the Olympics and no one thought for a moment it was odd (if they even tested her) that she has such high testosterone levels unless all those women already take steroids and have those test levels anyhow?[/quote]

It depends on how “high” those levels were.

123

[quote]Professor X wrote:

It depends on how “high” those levels were.[/quote]

Supposedly somewhere around 3x as much as a ‘normal’ female should have (maybe more?), and comparable to a healthy male of around her age. Though it’s hard to believe that steroids in a otherwise ‘normal’ woman would raise her test levels to 3x as much as she should have. Feel free to prove me wrong though.

124

This is from medline
Normal Results

* Male: 300 -1,000 ng/dL
* Female: 20 - 80 ng/dL

So if she had 240 ng that would seem very low for a male competing in the Olympics and since its highly likely that she has partial androgen insensitivity syndrome those 240 ng of test will not have the same effect(in terms of strength) than that level would have on a normal woman, even then they will remove her internal testes(whatever advantage from them will be gone) for health reasons so i see no reason why she would be barred from running in the olympics.

My friend who is a pediatric endocrinologist has to deal all the time with children who have such sexual abnormalities says sex is not so cut and dry in the world of biology and the social aspect of it is a large part of what makes someone male and female.

125

[quote]Alpinez wrote:

Supposedly somewhere around 3x as much as a ‘normal’ female should have (maybe more?), and comparable to a healthy male of around her age. Though it’s hard to believe that steroids in a otherwise ‘normal’ woman would raise her test levels to 3x as much as she should have. Feel free to prove me wrong though.[/quote]

The above being, I think, in reference to a previously posted theory that blood might have been tested but all the South African women were using testosterone anyway and so therefore Semenya’s levels wouldn’t have stood out to South African authorities: a theory I don’t support. But in direct response to the question:

Injected testosterone most certainly can raise blood levels in a woman to male levels.

However, if it is the case that Semenya got this far without ever being tested for blood levels until now, to me the most reasonable explanation is what was said before: that the South African sports authorities were enablers. They weren’t going to let the opportunity for gold slip through their hands by getting some facts they didn’t want to know. And even now they are still threatening “world war” over the matter.

Some people just don’t want the truth to be recognized and acted upon by people as the truth, but want their convenient falsehood to be accepted. Such people surely aren’t going to order blood tests themselves.

But it seems to me the only people the sports authorities really helped – if indeed they deliberately turned a blind eye to the obvious – were themselves, not Semenya.

While I don’t believe there’s a sports rulebook that says that a person having XY chromosomes, testes, and male levels of testosterone can compete as a woman “if socialized as a woman,” certainly there are sports organizations that have accepted XY individuals with testes removed and female hormone levels as being eligible to compete with women.

Particularly as it seems Semenya is at health risk in retaining the testes, no favor was done by turning a blind eye all this time. Not only would a health issue have been realized sooner, but competition could have been legitimate – by the rules of at least some sports organizations, and perhaps the Olympics – by this time had the health issue been taken care of.

But noise about how if the family says so, and the person says its so, and all of South Africa says it’s so therefore it is so and we will have world war if anyone says different and so forth, is just pure crap and created a mess.

The reason for any hurt and harm is the enablers… not the hardly-surprising truth being discovered and acted on as the truth and according to the rules of competition.

126

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
This is from medline
Normal Results

* Male: 300 -1,000 ng/dL
* Female: 20 - 80 ng/dL

So if she had 240 ng that would seem very low for a male competing in the Olympics and since its highly likely that she has partial androgen insensitivity syndrome those 240 ng of test will not have the same effect(in terms of strength) than that level would have on a normal woman, even then they will remove her internal testes(whatever advantage from them will be gone) for health reasons so i see no reason why she would be barred from running in the olympics.

My friend who is a pediatric endocrinologist has to deal all the time with children who have such sexual abnormalities says sex is not so cut and dry in the world of biology and the social aspect of it is a large part of what makes someone male and female.[/quote]

If it were correct that the androgen had no effect, then why is it that any ordinary human being not in a state of denial can with a glance – and human beings are I would say more than 99% accurate in visually judging gender – determine that something seems screwy here? That Semenya does not appear to be a woman, but rather a man? Albeit one without a beard, but we have seen young men, normal in every way, have little to no beard.

For example the pelvic structure. Which has a lot to do with male advantage in running over females. Find me a pic of ONE woman who has a structure – for that matter, entire structure, not just pelvis – similar to Semenya’s as posted on the previous page. Agreed, if it were just pelvis, that could be variation in one trait. The pelvis is simply a relevant example. Here we are talking about the entire build.

Even facial structure.

Oh, it is just coincidence, androgen from having testes throughout life had nothing to do with it? Riiiiiight.

And on your theory that the effect of strength wouldn’t be there with (hypothesized) partial androgen insensitivy: strength, for the same individual and training, is related to muscle size and not much affected by androgen level other than in how androgen affects muscle size. I don’t know where you are not seeing muscle size similar to many male runners. So the theory that the male testosterone levels aren’t doing anything at all, compared to normal female levels in an actual woman – on this speculation of insensitivity – is not supported.

Why reach like this?

127

For convenience, reposted on this page

128

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Alpinez wrote:

Supposedly somewhere around 3x as much as a ‘normal’ female should have (maybe more?), and comparable to a healthy male of around her age. Though it’s hard to believe that steroids in a otherwise ‘normal’ woman would raise her test levels to 3x as much as she should have. Feel free to prove me wrong though.

The above being, I think, in reference to a previously posted theory that blood might have been tested but all the South African women were using testosterone anyway and so therefore Semenya’s levels wouldn’t have stood out to South African authorities: a theory I don’t support. But in direct response to the question:

Injected testosterone most certainly can raise blood levels in a woman to male levels.

However, if it is the case that Semenya got this far without ever being tested for blood levels until now, to me the most reasonable explanation is what was said before: that the South African sports authorities were enablers. They weren’t going to let the opportunity for gold slip through their hands by getting some facts they didn’t want to know. And even now they are still threatening “world war” over the matter.

Some people just don’t want the truth to be recognized and acted upon by people as the truth, but want their convenient falsehood to be accepted. Such people surely aren’t going to order blood tests themselves.

But it seems to me the only people the sports authorities really helped – if indeed they deliberately turned a blind eye to the obvious – were themselves, not Semenya.

While I don’t believe there’s a sports rulebook that says that a person having XY chromosomes, testes, and male levels of testosterone can compete as a woman “if socialized as a woman,” certainly there are sports organizations that have accepted XY individuals with testes removed and female hormone levels as being eligible to compete with women.

Particularly as it seems Semenya is at health risk in retaining the testes, no favor was done by turning a blind eye all this time. Not only would a health issue have been realized sooner, but competition could have been legitimate – by the rules of at least some sports organizations, and perhaps the Olympics – by this time had the health issue been taken care of.

But noise about how if the family says so, and the person says its so, and all of South Africa says it’s so therefore it is so and we will have world war if anyone says different and so forth, is just pure crap and created a mess.

The reason for any hurt and harm is the enablers… not the hardly-unsurprising truth being discovered and acted on as the truth and according to the rules of competition.[/quote]

i have to agree with this.

129

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
This is from medline
Normal Results

* Male: 300 -1,000 ng/dL
* Female: 20 - 80 ng/dL

So if she had 240 ng that would seem very low for a male competing in the Olympics and since its highly likely that she has partial androgen insensitivity syndrome those 240 ng of test will not have the same effect(in terms of strength) than that level would have on a normal woman, even then they will remove her internal testes(whatever advantage from them will be gone) for health reasons so i see no reason why she would be barred from running in the olympics.

My friend who is a pediatric endocrinologist has to deal all the time with children who have such sexual abnormalities says sex is not so cut and dry in the world of biology and the social aspect of it is a large part of what makes someone male and female.

If it were correct that the androgen had no effect, then why is it that any ordinary human being not in a state of denial can with a glance – and human beings are I would say more than 99% accurate in visually judging gender – determine that something seems screwy here? That Semenya does not appear to be a woman, but rather a man? Albeit one without a beard, but we have seen young men, normal in every way, have little to no beard.

For example the pelvic structure. Which has a lot to do with male advantage in running over females. Find me a pic of ONE woman who has a structure – for that matter, entire structure, not just pelvis – similar to Semenya’s as posted on the previous page. Agreed, if it were just pelvis, that could be variation in one trait. The pelvis is simply a relevant example. Here we are talking about the entire build.

Even facial structure.

Oh, it is just coincidence, androgen from having testes throughout life had nothing to do with it? Riiiiiight.

And on your theory that the effect of strength wouldn’t be there with (hypothesized) partial androgen insensitivy: strength, for the same individual and training, is related to muscle size and not much affected by androgen level other than in how androgen affects muscle size. I don’t know where you are not seeing muscle size similar to many male runners. So the theory that the male testosterone levels aren’t doing anything at all, compared to normal female levels in an actual woman – on this speculation of insensitivity – is not supported.

Why reach like this?[/quote]

well obviously the androgen is having some effect hence the term partial; The bone structure comes from the XY; and i will agree that having higher androgen through her lifespan has had a masculine effect, but internal testes are not healthy testes, do not produce normal t levels and will have to be removed anyways before they turn cancerous. While she had an advantage over other normal female runners that advangtage will be removed(except for bone structure) once they remove her testes after a certain period of time.

130

This thread is like an X-Men movie.

Professor X is Charles Xavier and Bill Roberts is Magneto.

Prof. X:

  • “She is primarily human”

Bill Roberts:

  • “Is that what they saaay”
    (insert awesomeness of high testosterone mature male voice)
131

I agree with Bill Roberts too though for her own health she should get the testes removed before they become cancerous and given the record of Stella Walsh (whose achievements never got erased) they really should just put this issue down. If nothing else Semenya been through enough.

132

We cannot ignore the role of culture in this, despite what the pure biology folks may wish. Recent research in human brain development has found that males and female brains at birth are the same. However, adult male and female brains are different. Why? Because the brain adapts to the cultural norms of society, boys are aggressive and less social, girls more community minded and less physically gifted, etc. So how culture raises a child does have biological implications on the child as an adult.

Does this change the chromosomes of the person? no. Might cultural norms affect how the genes are expressed/repressed? perhaps.

133

I have to agree with Bill Roberts completely on this issue. He’s made some very well thought out arguments here.