CASTER SEMENYA IS INTERSEX, WITH XY CHROMOSOMES:  Why can’t the media state this clearly?

Some are making it sound like Semenya is an ordinary woman from a biological standpoint with a condition that just happens to cause high testosterone levels.  If that were the case, refusing to allow her to compete as a female athlete would seem unfair.  If she happens to be blessed with a characteristic that helps her win, then more power to her.  Michael Jordan and other NBA players are taller than most men I know. That’s not unfair.

But it’s more complicated than that.  It goes to whether she is male or female for the purpose of athletic competitions.  To me at least the issue is more sympathetic to her than in the typical transgender case.  But it’s still difficult.

Semenya is not transgender–at least not in the usual sense.  Her body outwardly appears female.  Nevertheless, according to Robert Johnson at letsrun.com,  she is believed to have internal testes and to lack a womb or ovaries).  She has been viewed as female from birth, identifies as a lesbian female now and probably didn’t have any idea about her XY status until rather late in her life.  But at the chromosomal level she has always been male.

I have no opinion about how to treat such a rare case.  It is interesting that Johnson reports that all three of the medalists in the 2016 women’s 800 are believed to be intersex.  If intersex athletes are extremely rare and yet would dominate women’s world championships, maybe it makes sense to allocate them to the male side of competition.  Or not.  I plan to stay out of this.

What bothers me is that many in the media can’t seem to report it accurately.