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Sex, Sports, and Caster Semenya

2009-09-13 · John · watch on YouTube · Sports · news analysis

On Newsday John discusses the gender test of 18-year-old runner Caster Semenya and argues, following Lauren McLaughlin, that the failure lies with sports, which exists to remove the ambiguity that life (and sex) always has.

What is said

00:00:00 — Newsday: no more wall; Caster Semenya's 800 m win in Berlin, the complaints, the gender test and reported androgen insensitivity syndrome

  • ★ John jokingly opens Newsday with the news that there is 'no more wall', then says that is not the real news. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says Caster Semenya, an 18-year-old South African runner, came from nowhere to win the 800-meter race at the World Championships in Berlin. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John reports several competitors said Semenya had the advantage of not being a woman, so she had to undergo a gender test. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says it is widely reported Semenya may have an intersex condition, androgen insensitivity syndrome, which he describes as being chromosomally a woman with small undescended testes. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ In the description John corrects himself: in androgen insensitivity syndrome the person is chromosomally XY but has a female external appearance. — 00:00:00

00:00:44 — Imagine being a teenager whose internal testes the world discusses; Semenya's heroic response; 'sour grapes'

  • ★★ John notes teenagers are often uncomfortable with their bodies and vulnerable to teasing, and asks viewers to imagine millions of people discussing their internal testes. — 00:00:44
  • ★★ John calls Semenya's response heroic: she said she is proud to be the person God made her, proud of her achievements, and that she is a woman. — 00:00:44

00:01:10 — The problem is sports itself: about 1% are intersex; Lauren McLaughlin's argument that sports removes life's ambiguity; administrators should have decided in advance

  • ★★★ John argues the problem is neither Semenya nor her competitors (whose complaints some call sour grapes) but sports itself. — 00:01:10
  • ★★★ John says we treat sex as either male or female, although about 1% of human beings are born with some kind of intersex condition. — 00:01:10
  • ★★★ John relays his friend Lauren McLaughlin's blog argument that sports is an attempt to remove ambiguity from the human condition. — 00:01:10 > «sports is basically an attempt to remove ambiguity from the human condition»
  • ★★ John argues no victory in life is final; victory, love and sex never end up clear (a wedding can end in divorce, a lottery win in a cocaine habit). — 00:01:10
  • ★★★ John says sports supplies the missing lack of ambiguity (trophies, photo finishes, instant replay); we love sports because it is not like life, so it is fun but insufficient. — 00:02:15
  • ★★★ John says those who failed are the sport's administrators, who should have decided in advance whether Semenya was eligible; sports must live with dumb, arbitrary but unambiguous rules. (hedged) — 00:02:15

00:02:44 — Dumb, arbitrary but unambiguous rules; her testosterone reportedly normal for a woman; her performance unambiguously heroic; sign-off

  • ★★ John says it has been widely reported that Semenya's testosterone levels are within the normal range for a woman. — 00:02:44
  • ★★ John concludes that, if so, Semenya should be allowed to compete with women, and that her performance on and off the track was unambiguously heroic. — 00:02:44

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