People who are both male and female

[LoisGriffin]

What is the biblical view on people who are born part male and part female. There are many varying degrees of intersex so how does one decide what sex that person is.

Currently a female runner Caster Semenya is being tested to see if she is intersex. The rumoured results are that while externally she is female she has no overies but does have internal testes. Should she still be allowed to be a female or perform against other females?

 

[Archer93]

I can't begin to opine on the Biblical stance, but as for Caster, I'm all for her competing in women's races.
She appears to have very high levels of testosterone for a woman, but if that's what her body naturally produces then she isn't cheating and her achievements stand.
The rules had never stated before that female runners can only have a certain amount of testosterone, it's kinda cheating to add it in now!

 

[LoisGriffin]

She would have only been cheating if she had known she was both male and female. There is no way she would have known that though. Outwardly she is female so she would obviously assume she is a woman.

 

[cantata]

I can't begin to opine on the Biblical stance, but as for Caster, I'm all for her competing in women's races.
She appears to have very high levels of testosterone for a woman, but if that's what her body naturally produces then she isn't cheating and her achievements stand.
The rules had never stated before that female runners can only have a certain amount of testosterone, it's kinda cheating to add it in now!

I agree, and it’s ridiculous to subject her to “gender testing”—as if it were something you could just run a simple test for, anyway. This woman has lived her whole life as a female person, and being subjected to humiliating and degrading speculations about her sex is very offensive.

 

[cantata]

She would have only been cheating if she had known she was both male and female. There is no way she would have known that though. Outwardly she is female so she would obviously assume she is a woman.

Out of interest, do you think that if she had known she was intersexed, should she have given up her career as an athlete?

 

[nagwalk]

I have been wondering the same thing lately. The conservative fundamental Church tends to like things black and white, however there are situations like this where the Bible is silent. People like this are born this way through no choice of their own.

I would be interested in the viewpoints of others...

 

[LoisGriffin]

Personally no. She is not even running at the world record speed she is just so much better than all the current 800 meter runners. I watched her race and just felt sick listening to the build up. People were tearing her apart they seemed to forget she is 18 years old and being humiliated.

Maybe there is a way around this for the future. Maybe she could have the testes removed? I don't know enough about the condition though.

 

[cantata]

Maybe there is a way around this for the future. Maybe she could have the testes removed? I don't know enough about the condition though.

Hmm. Personally I think that asking her to change her body would be extremely unfair.

 

[HaloHope]

As a person who knows what it is to be intersexed I must say that I'm deeply saddened by the plight of Caster Semenya, that she is being victimised in the way she is, is such a shame. She has lived her life as a woman, identifies as a woman and regardless of whether she has internal testis or not should therefore be accepted for who she evidently sees herself as.

I think the issue of intersexuality or even transexuality is something that dosen't last long on these forums. Those opposed to it don't tend to know much about it, and seem to feel threatened by something that can't really go into the black and white world that fundamentalism tends to be.

 

[Beanieboy]

What is the biblical view on people who are born part male and part female. There are many varying degrees of intersex so how does one decide what sex that person is.

Currently a female runner Caster Semenya is being tested to see if she is intersex. The rumoured results are that while externally she is female she has no overies but does have internal testes. Should she still be allowed to be a female or perform against other females?

Technically, that she/he doesn't exist, because the bible says, "Male and Female have I made them."

However, they exist, so either God doesn't know about intersexed people, someone else made them, the person chose to be born with some organs of both sexes, or the bible shouldn't be used as a science book of all that exists, especially seeing when it was written.

As for the question of being allowed to compete, I don't see why not. She has done nothing to help her performance, such as, take hormones or steroids. She is, genitally speaking, female. Males contain testosterone and estrogen, but have more testosterone. Females have both as well, but have more estrogen. However, they have less as they age, which is why it is common to see older women growing facial hair, for example.

I think punishing her for having testicles, which are not external and decended, so not fully developed anyway, is like punishing a basketball player for being tall because it is unfair to people who are short, or people born of short parents.

She has more testosterone than the women, and that is all.

 

[cantata]

And I’d like to point out that some women who are not intersexed have unusually levels of testosterone and other androgens (male hormones), such as women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), which is a condition that some girls are born with that affects hormone production in the adrenal glands.

 

[Mystman]

And the logical E&M question: who can an intersex person marry? If (s)he is 50/50 male/female, does that mean (s)he can marry to males, females, both, or neither?

Anyway, the running thing:

Fact: males are better in most sports.
Probably a fact: to allow women to have some prospect at becoming 'the best', the sexes are seperated for many sports.

If you allow this man-like woman to perform in women's sports (and be highly succesful, partly because of her manliness), where do you draw the line?

I could imagine the Chinese experimenting on their foetuses in order to create extremely manly women, in order to win all the olympic gold medals for women's sports..

(ok so maybe it's time to go to bed, but still...)

 

[LoisGriffin]

And the logical E&M question: who can an intersex person marry? If (s)he is 50/50 male/female, does that mean (s)he can marry to males, females, both, or neither?

That was one of my questions too but I thought I had asked enough.

No idea what the legal standpoint is in countries that don't allow same sex marriage. I guess that it goes on the birth certificate so she could marry a man.

Intersex is fairly common so it would be interesting to know what the rules are.

 

[cantata]

Fact: males are better in most sports.
Probably a fact: to allow women to have some prospect at becoming 'the best', the sexes are seperated for many sports.

If you allow this man-like woman to perform in women's sports (and be highly succesful, partly because of her manliness), where do you draw the line?

So this talented young woman shouldn’t be allowed to compete at all, ever, with the body she was born with? Ridiculous.

Competitors have to pee under supervision when they give their urine samples for drugs testing. Apart from that cursory visual test, gender testing for the Olympics was supposedly scrapped in 1999 because it’s inaccurate and expensive, not to mention discriminatory and humiliating. What’s more, the tests don’t even necessarily tell you anything about performance. Some women have XY chromosomes, but that’s because they have a condition which causes an immunity to testosterone. Women without this immunity benefit from the effects of testosterone, so they may actually have an advantage over women with XY chromosomes. Just ascertaining that a woman has some unusual genetic condition is not sufficient to show that she has an advantage, “unfair” or otherwise. This article has more on the subject.

Caster Semenya has been lucky enough to have been afforded a biological advantage. So has Michael Jordan. So, indeed, has any world-class sports competitor: there is some element of lucky biology in every athlete’s success. Just because Caster Semenya’s particular advantage makes people uncomfortable, just because it messes with people’s binary conception of gender and of what a woman athlete should look like, someone feels the need to kick up a fuss. It’s pathetic.

I could imagine the Chinese experimenting on their foetuses in order to create extremely manly women, in order to win all the olympic gold medals for women's sports..

Oh noes! The world will end!!

Women with CAH aren’t excluded from competing, so I dare say the Chinese could already be genetically engineering female foetuses to have higher levels of androgens in the hopes of creating excellent athletes. The sky hasn’t fallen yet.

 

[Mystman]

So this talented young woman shouldn’t be allowed to compete at all, ever, with the body she was born with? Ridiculous.

Of course she should be allowed to compete. In the men's competition.

Women with sufficient skill should be (and I think: are) allowed to compete in the men's competitions.

The comparison with Michael Jordan isn't valid. The men's competitions are concerned with "who is the best". Having a genetic advantage doesn't interfere with that in any way.

Most[sup]1[/sup] women's tournaments (or under 21-tournaments, or the Special Olympics, etc) are concerned with "who is the best amongst the people who are kinda sucky[sup]2[/sup] because of some defining characteristic". Having a genetic advantage that directly influences said defining characteristic should exclude you from these "best of the sucky" tournaments.

Say you have an under-12 football tournament. Because of some freak condition, 1 of the players (11 years old) has the body of a 24 year old football-god. He's an adult in every way except the date on his birth certificate. Should he be allowed to compete in the under-12 tournament? Would it be fair to the other children?

My answer is no. And of course there might be some grey areas (both in the intersex case and the physical-age case), but when a 'woman' actually has male reproductive organs, it's really time to say "sorry, you don't fit really belong to our sucky-league, go join the 'serious' competitors".

1: Exceptions might be some of the jury-based 'graceful' sports like gymnastics and synchronised swimming, but eh..

2: Disclaimer: while using language that might be considered insulting towards some types of competitors, I should mention that I myself would be absolutely slaughtered in any sport by any of these people. No disrespect etc.

 

[cantata]

Of course she should be allowed to compete. In the men's competition.

But—newsflash—she isn’t a man. She’s a woman. (By the way, later you described her as a ‘woman’, as if you intended to imply that she is not a real woman. She is a real woman. Your use of scare quotes is offensive.)

Yes, she has testes that have not descended, but the only relevance of that to her performance is that she high levels of androgens. However, the fact is that many women with CAH also have high levels of androgens, yet women with CAH (most of whom are not intersexed, i.e. they do not have male gonads) are not excluded from taking part in the women’s competition. So we can only conclude that this is not about hormones (which might just about be reasonable although it’s a sliding scale anyway so exactly where you should draw the line is anybody’s guess); it’s about the fact that some people find intersexuality disturbing.

Had they done a test and found she had CAH and was not intersexed, what would you say then? Should she still not be allowed to compete against other women?

 

[Mystman]

But—newsflash—she isn’t a man. She’s a woman. (By the way, later you described her as a ‘woman’, as if you intended to imply that she is not a real woman. She is a real woman. Your use of scare quotes is offensive.)

Men's competition is just a name. We could call it "the actual competition" or just "the competition" (which is how it's often done: there is football, and there is women's football), but both of these might also be considered offensive.

As for the scare quotes; I might have a tendency to overuse them when I'm not exactly sure that something fits the generally accepted definition of sometihing. I'm not sure that this person meets the generally accepted definition of woman. Both because I don't know what that definition is, and because I don't know the specifics of her case. No offense intended

Had they done a test and found she had CAH and was not intersexed, what would you say then? Should she still not be allowed to compete against other women?

I can't really make a judgement about that. I don't know how many of the top women athletes have such a condition, how many women in the general population have that condition, etc..

To reiterate the problem: you have the real (men's) competition, and the "best of the sucky"-competition(s). Deciding who gets to compete in which competition is necesarry. People can earn serious money being the best of the sucky, when they would just have been sucky if they joined the real competition.

In an ideal world, there would be some binary property that decides who get's to compete where. The world is not ideal, and so there needs to be some arbitrary cut-off.

My personal preverence would be to set the cut-off really low; the number of unusual cases is pretty small, but you only need 3 good male-like female runners on the entire planet to ruin the olympic chances of the other 3 billion females.

Your preference seems to be to set the cut-off pretty high, leading to "women's sports" being dominated by the intersexed, with 'normal' (eek, scare quotes) women again having no chance of ever getting that gold olympic medal, just as they had no chance when there was only a single (men's) competition.

Exactly what a "high" and "low" cut-off means is always going to arbitrary, the territory of doctors who actually know what they're talking about (i.e., not me), and useless to discuss. But still.

 

[cantata]

As for the scare quotes; I might have a tendency to overuse them when I'm not exactly sure that something fits the generally accepted definition of sometihing. I'm not sure that this person meets the generally accepted definition of woman. Both because I don't know what that definition is, and because I don't know the specifics of her case. No offense intended

She identifies as a woman. She has lived her entire life as a woman. That should be enough for you to call her a woman, no scare quotes required.

To reiterate the problem: you have the real (men's) competition, and the "best of the sucky"-competition(s). Deciding who gets to compete in which competition is necesarry. People can earn serious money being the best of the sucky, when they would just have been sucky if they joined the real competition.

If I can just quote this excellent article:

For years, women athletes had to parade naked in front of Olympic officials. This has now given way to more "sophisticated" "gender testing" to determine if athletes like Semenya have what officials still perceive as the ultimate advantage--being a man. Let's leave aside that being male is not the be-all, end-all of athletic success. A country's wealth, coaching facilities, nutrition and opportunity determine the creation of a world-class athlete far more than a Y chromosome or a penis ever could.

I wonder—should we have a special Olympics for poor people, too?

My personal preverence would be to set the cut-off really low; the number of unusual cases is pretty small, but you only need 3 good male-like female runners on the entire planet to ruin the olympic chances of the other 3 billion females.

Your preference seems to be to set the cut-off pretty high, leading to "women's sports" being dominated by the intersexed, with 'normal' (eek, scare quotes) women again having no chance of ever getting that gold olympic medal, just as they had no chance when there was only a single (men's) competition.

Let’s get things in perspective, shall we?

Apparently Caster Semenya’s samples display about three times as much testosterone as is found in the average woman’s body.

The average man has forty to sixty times the amount of testosterone found in the average woman’s body.

Consequently—how would it be fair to say that Caster Semenya must compete in the men’s competition, when, looking at the raw figures, her testosterone levels are much closer to those of the average female than the average male?

And by the way—Semenya’s time wasn’t record-breaking. “Normal” women have run faster than her in the past. So no, you don’t just need three “man-like” female runners to beat all the other women, because having unusual medical conditions doesn’t magically make you brilliant. Thousands of women are intersexed or have conditions like CAH; they are not all brilliant athletes. Being a brilliant athlete takes a lot of hard work, and to put all of Semenya’s success down to her status as an intersexed woman is dishonest and unkind.

I’d also like to add that there’s an undeniable undercurrent of racism blended with the obvious sexism. If a blonde, blue-eyed woman with a slim build and a high-pitched voice had produced Semenya’s time, would anyone have demanded that she take a gender test?

There is a pretty ancient form of racism against black women, the notion that their blackness somehow makes them less feminine. From the very beginnings of black slavery in the West, black women participated in strenuous manual labour alongside their male counterparts, and were consequently robbed of the feminine identity afforded to white women in the West, whose sphere of activity was largely confined to the home. Consider the bizarre attention to Michelle Obama’s “toned” (read “unusually muscular!!&#8221 arms. Consider the prevalent trope of the “sassy” or “bolshy” or “strong” black woman. Consider the pressure on black women to appear more “Western” by straightening their hair and modifying their bodies and appearances in other ways. Consider the common practice of lightening black women’s skin in post-work on fashion and glamour photography.

This article on Womanist Musings also points out that this isn’t the first time a black female athlete has had her gender questioned because she has reached the top of her game. There’s a long and sordid history of calling the femininity of black women into question—especially black women athletes.

As a black, muscularly-built, short-haired woman with a low-pitched voice, Semenya doesn’t fit most people’s model of what a female athlete should look like, and this mistrust of a successful, insufficiently “feminine” black woman has led people to demand gender testing. Yet for all we know, women athletes who are intersexed or have other hormone-related conditions, but who sit comfortably within the range of popular expectations for their gender and who have the skin colour that the majority of Western eyes find most appealing, may have been slipping under the radar for years.

 

[Mystman]

Yet for all we know, women athletes who are intersexed or have other hormone-related conditions, but who sit comfortably within the range of popular expectations for their gender and who have the skin colour that the majority of Western eyes find most appealing, may have been slipping under the radar for years.

No idea if the skin-colour thing has anything to do with it, but sure, persons with 'female' (in the eyes of the beholder) faces will be less likely to be suspected of being a man than people with 'male' faces.

But anway. You seem to object (and certainly the NYT article objects) to mandatory testing for everyone. You also seem to object to gender-testing on 'suspicious' individuals. Then what do you suggest? Never testing anyone's gender? Just allowing everyone into women's competitions? Even if they have clear male primary and secondary sexual characteristics?

 

[cantata]

You seem to object (and certainly the NYT article objects) to mandatory testing for everyone. You also seem to object to gender-testing on 'suspicious' individuals. Then what do you suggest? Never testing anyone's gender? Just allowing everyone into women's competitions? Even if they have clear male primary and secondary sexual characteristics?

Gender testing in general is inappropriate because it is both expensive and inconclusive. It may also cause unnecessary trauma to competitors who have some previously unknown (and totally irrelevant in terms of the competition) genetic condition, such as a testosterone immunity which has caused them to display female primary and secondary characteristics despite having XY chromosomes. Gender testing of “suspicious” individuals has additional inherent problems to do with perception of what constitutes “suspicious” and is clearly open to abuse and discriminatory practices. Note that gender testing has never turned up any cheaters; only occasionally women with various unusual medical conditions.

Since 1999 the practice has been that women have to pass urine for drugs testing under supervision, at which time distinctly male genitals would be apparent to the supervisor; and transgendered women must have been receiving hormone treatment for two years. I believe this is sufficient.