"Unfair Genetic Advantage"

[Grog]

Other than being mad at everybody for leaking the information and all the circus, I am also mad at her national federation and whoever is coaching her. (I know nothing of her background so apologies if my ignorance makes me say stupid things.)

I watched one of the finals she won. It's not like she won by a little bit. She's FAR ahead of the bunch. This is not the Olympics, where there are athletes from every country no matter how good they are. This is the World Championships, where all the best of the best, the fastest of the fastest, are.

Now, if I was a coach with the athlete's best interest in mind, and I knew my athlete was running those kinds of really, really unusual times, I would perhaps have thought about smart ways to address though issues before even sending her to compete at this level. I wouldn't think of her as sort of a "secret weapon" that's just going to go there and win races, wowing the world with amazing times.

I guess I have a bit of a tendency to see things in a medical way sometimes, but I see "running that incredibly fast" as a symptom. I'm not talking about the social aspects of it, just about the health issues associated with many alternative chromosomal arrangements. Considering the underlying medical issues and risks to the person's life (in the long term, not because of the running), I would have considered counseling PRIOR to sending her on the national stage where she would most obviously be made into the object of a circus. I don't think she was in a position to make an informed decision about what she would be exposed to by going to Berlin.

I am not sure how, where, and against whom intersexed people should be racing. The whole idea of men and women categories is indeed antiquated to what we know today about everything in between and beyond. It's rather easy to solve as far as washrooms are concerned, but for sporting events it's a bit more complex. I wonder what the Gay Games do, because obviously they would have had to tackle this issue. (Anyone has info on that?)

I don't usually care for large sporting events, but this could be a good opportunity for gender-bending advocates to come up with some smart proposal to make the world move forward. It won't happen tomorrow but there might be a kernel of revolution in this situation. (I'm such an optimist.)

[colby]

Another Sociological Images post on Caster and her recent makeover in a South African magazine:

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/0...s-performance/

They do include a comment at the end about how complicated it is.

[KnottedYet]

http://medindia.net/news/Gender-Row-...ch-58003-1.htm

Did no one expect her to try to commit suicide?

She should have been getting counselling from the very first second, and whoever leaked test results to the Australian media should be fired.

[Pax]

That poor child.

[Grog]

Hey ladies, anyone has the time to look into finding her fan club's address? Perhaps we could organize to send her some fan mail and encouragement? A hug from the women of TE?

[papaver]

Here you are

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?s...2746898722C236

[Thorn]

Finally....she has been cleared to compete. My wish is that all goes behind her and society learns something; the cynic in me....well....sigh....

http://www.feministing.com/archives/021756.html

[ridebikeme]

lph, thanks for the nice words! Regardless of what our personal beliefs concerning religion are; I simply can't imagine that people think that "God" punishes people by making them look a certain way or appear as something different. Have you ever noticed that some of the more attractive people in the world are ones that are in some sort of trouble? Appearance has nothing to do with God, but our actions are a definite reflection of who and what "we" are as a person. And out lack of compassion is something that I simply don't understand and never will...

[helenajoy]

God plays different games. He makes some very beautiful and some have to face his anger. No matter how much advances medical science makes things still are dubious. It probably could be solved by some surgeon.

[ridebikeme]

I hope that I'm taking your reponse as something different than you intended it. I'm not sure that God "punishes" people or not, and I'm not sure that any of us knows the answer to that question.

Whether surgery is an option is not our decision to make. This woman will/has undergo lots of cristism, jeers and odd looks... why is it that we simply can't show some compassion here?

The fact remains that we are all different, and I would hope that as women we can extend compassion to people regardless of what our own personal beliefs are.

[lph]

You're being very nice, ridebikeme. I'm not unsure at all - if God exists, He does not punish people or show his anger by making them not according to the current norm of beauty.

I can't believe I just wrote that.