Semenya: When Someone is Raised Female and the Genes Say XY

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Caster Semenya is obviously not insensitive to testosterone. He has the built of a man from head to toes. That's testosterone that makes the difference in strength between males and females; Some athletes take synthetic testosterone in order to increase their strength and they get kicked out because it is cheating. Allowing Semenya to keep running in the women category opens the door to all men with crytorchydism to compete as females; This is very unfair to females and has the potential to eliminate them from competitions.

Lauren of MD 2:20PM August 30, 2011

Y chromosome equals male? If your a taxonomist, and want to make up arbitrary rules, sure, you can say "Y chromosome equals duck-billed-platypus," but it won't mean anything useful.
"Male" and "female" are categories of sets of traits that usually line up one way or the other. But there is no one trait that cinches it. This leaves people with a mixed set of traits in a difficult position (because too many people can't get it through their heads that "man" and "woman" are black and white categories, but "male" and "female" are not).
Is someone with XY chromosomes, a vagina, testosterone between the usual male & female ranges, estrogen in the female range, doesn't create sperm or eggs, a man or a woman? Is the number three equal to 2 or 4?
Is someone with XY chromosomes, who menstruates, gives birth, and breast feeds, a "man"? If you want to say so, becvause of a Y chromosome, I guess you can. But giving birth seems awfully female, IMO.
Here's the journal citation:
Kan, A.K.S., et. al. (1997) Two successful pregnancies in a 46, XY patient. Hum. Reprod.,12(7):1434-1435.

Rob of CA 3:15PM November 24, 2009

You're obviously totally ignorant about human biology. A person with androgen insensitivity CANNOT respond to testosterone, and therefore fails to develop male characteristics. An XY individual with complete androgen insensitivity looks EXACTLY like a female at birth, even though she has undescended testes and no ovaries or uterus. Many don't even realize it until they fail to get a period or try (and fail) to get pregnant. To my knowledge, most identify as 100% female. But you'd call this person a male because of her chromosomal makeup? I have no idea if this woman has a form of androgen insensitivity, but if she does it's something she has no control over. Besides, it isn't even true that XY = male in all species. In most birds it's the females who are XY (but they're called ZW by convention). In many reptiles it's temperature that determines sex. In fruit flies it's the ratio of X chromosomes to autosomes (the Y chromosome is required for a male to be fertile, but does not cause outward male characteristics). Sex and gender are much more fluid than people think.

Robin of MA 10:47PM September 16, 2009

What you are stating about the Y chromosome is your opinion. The experts quoted in the article however are stating facts. Please go to these websites to view the facts about Disorders of Sexual Development:
www.aissg.org
www.isna.org

Joan Mercer of DC 8:39PM September 16, 2009

Are these experts addle brained or what? If one has a Y chromosome one is male. It is that simple. It doesn't matter how long one has been living as a woman, it doesn't matter which or how many other secondary physical or hormonal abnormalities there are that are present in an individual, it is the presence of a Y chromosome that counts. To say that Y chromosome "females" can compete with women so long as they have been doing it all of their lives and have some sort of hormonal problem, not only is grossly unfair to true females, but opens up the problem not only of testing for Y chromosomes, but also additional testing over precisely whether or not there are other hormonal advantages or disadvantages in an individual that should be used to classify the athlete as male or female. This last part is precisely the kind of expensive, complicated and controversial-ness of gender classification that society has been trying to avoid all along. To start using hormone levels to decide athletic competition classifications leaves us at the point where all athletes should be tested for, not Y chromosomes, but hormones, with low hormone men competing with women, and high hormone women possibly competing with men. Is that what we want?
Semenya has the body, body fat (and features) of a male and clearly the competitive advantages of a male ("she" completely out-classed her entire field of elite world class competitors, by a wide margin). If she has a Y chromosome, "she" is a man. It is that simple.
It is highly unfortunate to find out as an adult that one is not truly a female, but that isn't really material.

Sanford Slabaugh of IL 12:22PM September 16, 2009