Champion runner to undergo gender testing?

Surlent said:

Couldn't doping have caused the changes? That's usually joked about athletes.

Click to expand...

In Caster Semenya's case (if the latest information is true), I very much doubt any kind of doping could have vaporized her ovaries and caused her to grow internal testes instead.

Surlent said:

In principle, yeah. With insignificant mutations (no change to DNA's functionality), I see in practise individuals fall still a lot closer to one pole than the other or straight between the poles though.
Couldn't doping have caused the changes? That's usually joked about athletes.

Click to expand...

Taking testosterone and similar hormones (androgenes), may make a woman more male looking, but so can training of muscular strength. But no androgen can transform an ovary into a testicle.

EDIT: Bah! PJ beat me to it!!!!

Yes, but there are actually a few cases of female and male athletes who had been "doped" in the "German Democratic Republic" (short: East Germany) through heavy use of hormones and whatnot, and they have actually sued their former trainers I think (I don't quite remember) because they nowadays look so much like the opposite gender that they even had to take a different name !

I have seen a few photos of them, and they indeed look not much like a person of their own gener would "normally" look anymore.

By all means, doping with androgenes can do that.

But in this case, according to the news, she has testosterone producing testicles, and that cannot be the result of doping. In addition, the testosterone produced (assuming a normal male blood level) can explain her male-looking deatures.

BTW and FYI: Her testicles won't produce viable sperm cells, since they are located within the abdomen. Sperm production requires lower temperature than 37C, so unless they descend into a scrotum before puberty, they will become sterile. They should probably also be surgically removed, as there is a higher risk for testicle cancer in un-descended testicles.

Hmm. Seems like I kill threads. I should probably stop posting. Pretend I didn't write this.

There *is* a "delete" function you know.

lghartveit said:

Hmm. Seems like I kill threads. I should probably stop posting. Pretend I didn't write this.

Click to expand...

That comes with the territory. You're so wise that after you've weighed in, nothing more remains to be said. Keep it up.

:bows before the master:

Prime Junta said:

That comes with the territory. You're so wise that after you've weighed in, nothing more remains to be said. Keep it up.

:bows before the master:

Click to expand...

Oh, that must be why I tend to kill threads as well, then

This has stirred up huge controversy here in South Africa. Sadly the politicians have used her to promote their own agenda - as usual - and to foster further racial division. I mean, *obviously* she was only tested because she was black (erm no: check your facts people). So first it was about racism, now it has become about the trampling of her human rights - and a I agree there she has been treated like shit. BUT it turns out the the SA Athletics fed has not been forthcoming and they may have suspected all was not well after their own tests. The moron in charge of our Athletics Fed. has threatened to take this to 'the highest courts in the world' if she is not allowed to compete again etc etc. As a south African I cringe every time I hear this man spouting crap.

Prime Junta said:

That comes with the territory. You're so wise that after you've weighed in, nothing more remains to be said. Keep it up.

:bows before the master:

Click to expand...

Rise, Sir Prime Junta. From now on you shall be known as the Duke of Kilpisjärvi.

Ouch!

Don't you ever step on my long white beard again!!!!

DArtagnan said:

Oh, that must be why I tend to kill threads as well, then

Click to expand...

*ponders, then bows before the dane-with-the-french-sounding-name*

xSamhainx said:

I've got better things to do w/ my time right now, like kill a legion of Skaven or something. Is that right or wrong? I'll leave that for you guys to mull over…

Click to expand...

Off topic:

Hey! Sammy. That is most definatly wrong. Leave those little guys alone. They just want to live like everyone else. Oh and spread disease, conquer the world. You know harmless stuff.

Sorry guys, just popping in here to try to save a few thousand Skaven from being mercilessly slaughtered by a big ol' pussycat.

Ok back to the 'if it is a third gender or not' discussion.

Since this thread is more or less alive, I'd still like to add an opinion in favor of gender definitions in general.

We concluded earlier each individual is a bit different from the norm. Let's consider individual people as data points and collect them together. I would guess we would see majority of them to be closer either to "so called expected" XX or XY than in between them. Now there's variance and a few data points vary extremely from that assumption and fall a bit further away. No harm done.

That is expected from real data. There are always exceptions and in the case of genders there are explained reasons for the variance in the chromosomes (like disease or mutation during infancy time), which lghartveit talked of.

Based on my assumptions on previous posts, majority would still follow a rough pattern which we might call genders. And again it is expected from real data, that data points don't exactly follow a pattern like under an precise formula. Still the points would fall close enough for us to see a pattern rather than an even spread on the continuum. This is just my assumption and opionion though.

Edit: small clarifications.

So the runner's details *WERE* known, long before the race.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...-head-athletics-fired-lying-gender-tests.html

Yes, I read about it today.
It's a shame that they threw that athlete into so much trouble with it !

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Yes, I read about it today.
It's a shame that they threw that athlete into so much trouble with it !

Click to expand...

Agreed. That's the worst part of it, what they did to her.

It's sad really. I can't imagine the humiliation she has had to endure because of this.

I read today in the press that in her home village she's still considered someone good, because of the winning of the medal.