Thread by @Potatopolitics

The case against Caster Semenya is a dangerous precedent. The only way she is allowed to keep competing in sport, due to her naturally high testosterone, would be negative doping.

This is absurd and has strangely also led to transphobic harassment towards Caster

This is despite Caster not even being trans in the first place. She's a cis woman, by all accounts. But now, due to scaremongering about testosterone levels, a cis woman now has to undergo medications to artifically *lower* her *naturally* occuring testosterone levels to compete.

The ruling is so specifically targeted at her it might as well mention her by name in the new rules about testosterone levels.

It's *wild* to be that natural biological variations within a sex is so scary to some people that they will gladly exclude anyone who doesn't fit.

The dangerous precedent part then. If naturally high testosterone values are "too" high for women. What about abnormally tall cis women? Should they try to be shorter? How about cis women with a wide frame? Should they be excluded too?

This has basically codified, *within the group of cis women* what cis womanhood should be like in sports. And that's probably one of the biggest structural losses to women's rights in athletics I have ever experienced in my adult life.

This is not even to mention the blatant racism at play here, with some people saying that she "isn't really a female" because "african" healthcare "misdiagnosed her as female" which is possibly the strangest thing I have ever heard in my entire adult human female life

fucking what

I remember when the Swedish doctors assigned my sex at birth, using the MRI machine to look at my internal organs *just in case* I was intersex. Oh wait that didn't happen because WHAT

Oh yes, the "Third world country" of South Africa, misdiagnosed as xx. We all do chromosomal tests at birth in the first world, don't we? The arrogance at play here, good lord.

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1123498279113830401

And here's the veil lifted. Any cis woman that doesn't *biologically comform* to their ideas of what women should be can now be deemed a man, XY, or "bloke".

This is dangerously narrowing the idea of what cis women should be, even biologically.

If cis women don't inherently comfort, they are classed as being "really" men. How on earth is this fighting for the rights of women? This is setting the most narrow definition of woman, maybe in world history.

"Are the hormones a bit strong? Well, then you're not a woman."

I have to think about if there has been another time in human history when the term "women" was this limited outside of people trying to defend genocide by extreme dehumanization.

This is a violation of her human rights, and it seems that even the UN human rights council agree.

Good job GC people now defending the ruling. You are arguing against the UN Human Rights Council. I don't like the term "right side of history" but come on.

Come on...

Also worth noting that it's only female athletes who have to take medication to make their testosterone levels conform. Male athletes don't.

This ruling is sexist, racist and anyone defending the ruling is a sexist racist.

Hey white athletes who are so, so very upset at Semenya.

Sometimes other people are better at sports than you are, and athletics aren't just a machine for white people to get medals anymore. Sometimes you will win! And sometimes you will lose.

That's sports.