Talk:Caster Semenya

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SASOC vs. ASA

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-11-06-voa40.cfm

Caster Speaks; Will the Berlin Tests be released next week?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/13/caster-semenya-interview-preview

Injured Semenya will not run in Commonwealth Games

http://www.thehindu.com/sport/athletics/article802398.ece

Confusion with this article

Reading through this article for the first time, it seems to me that it has intentionally avoided bringing up transgender issues, instead skirting around them in a manner that I believe can cause confusion. It remarks in the introduction that "questions were raised about whether Semenya had a physical condition that might give her an unfair advantage over other female racers", but does not highlight that these questions were primarily regarding the nature of her biological sex. For those unfamiliar with transgender and related issues (I think this would probably include the majority of the world's populace), such a statement would no doubt be confusing. I do understand the sensitive nature of this topic, but feel like this issue needs to be adressed for the good of the article.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:12, 22 February 2011 (UTC))

This is a biography of a living person and there are, quite rightly, strict rules on what we say here about people (see WP:BLP). In particular, we should not speculate or report speculation about Caster's sexuality, biology, or other highly personal matters. It is a well verified fact that objections were raised about Caster competing in certain events, thus we can include that here. The media furore which followed those complaints included only speculation and opinion about Caster which we must not include here. If you feel that there are important issues on this subject that need to be included in Wikipedia, they would be more appropriate for gender verification in sports where they can be discussed without reference to an individual person. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:02, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, because wiki in this case uses "her, she" throughout, and without verification, as the results of the tests have not been released. I hope webster will be able to evolve a more fluid definition of gender, but it's current definition doesn't seem to necessarily fit here. Anyway, I know there's a certain grain we need to follow and it isn't wiki's place to stand against it, I just think that technically wiki is wrong here. P.S. It's possible that this article will be receiving much more attention because of Chaz Bono's coming role in Dancing With The Stars, just a heads up.Claycrete (talk) 19:11, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I cannot see the connection with Chaz Bono. What we know about Caster is that she regards herself as female and she has been cleared to enter women's races. Everything else is speculation. Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:21, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Transgender issues have no place in this article. Caster was identified as female as an infant and has continued to live as that gender, so any biological inconsistencies would be classified as an intersex condition NOT transgender. GamerSRC (talk) 16:34, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Unexplained information

The lead says :"In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman included Semenya in its list "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010", but doesn't say why. Looking throught the body, there is no elaboration as to why she was thusly recognized by them. This statement should either be explained or removed. Please add information from the citation where it is explained why the New Statesman so listed her, or remove the statement from the lead, as the lead is not supposed to add information not contained in the article. Chrisrus (talk) 16:55, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Added to 2010 section.TMCk (talk) 20:28, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

explicitation needed

The tone of the article and some of the sources cited lead me to believe that Caster is really male. Is this correct or am I seeing things? Serthent (talk) 16:00, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

You're "seeing things". Are you also hearing things that are not there?TMCk (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I have to say that I see no evidence of that either. Can you give some specific examples of what you mean. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, but I'll try.

First, the opening paragraph. The opening says, "questions were raised about whether Semenya had a physical condition that might give her an unfair advantage over other female racers." Um, no. The question as it was reported in the media and discussed by general public was if Semenya was really female. People didn't write and talk about a vaguely alluded-to and strangely nameless "physical condition", they wrote and talked about gonads. A sentence doesn't get this laboriously obfuscating by accident. A conscious decision not to be straightforward must have been made here.

Second, well, the tone. Lots of small things. Note how the article does eventually mention, rather coily, that the questions were "about her gender", but then it immediately tries to distract people by bashing the IAAF and the ASA. Also note the passive-aggressive way the opening talks about "other female athletes" instead of just "female athletes." Note how the gimmicky New Statesman thing is mentioned not once but twice. Note how everybody carefully quote mines the New Statesmen to avoid including the words "intersex symbol," the very words the New Statesman article happens to center on.

The vibe I get is that the article takes political sides with the anti-gender-essentialism, anti-cis-normativitiy, anti-whatever faction. Why else but for a commitment to presented-gender-is-the-only-gender would the article insist the questions discussed in the media are too illegitimate to even be mentioned?

Third, having gotten this vibe, I browse the talk pages and I see all the places where people angrily insist that the biology does not matter and must not be discussed. I can't help but suspect the biology must be at odds with the position that Semenya is female. If Semenya were biologically female, the article would surely be happy to point that out, no? Serthent (talk) 23:36, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

As I understand this, we are following Wikipedia policy regarding living people. We cannot publish anything libelous or defaming toward a living person without specific confirmation from reliable sources. The allusions you keep bringing up, that others keep bringing up are all, specifically, unsubstantiated by the authorities involved. The organizations that have been investigating this are closed mouth. They tell us publicly Everything is settled, without telling us how they arrived at this conclusion. There are lots of rumors and innuendo that spreads when the authorities are so incomplete in their communication. Blame those authorities. But wikipedia must follow what is real, rather than rumored, suggested or theorized by people who don't know what is actually happening. Even suggestions or rumors published on this talk page will be cleaned up. These are all public, visible documents. Trackinfo (talk) 00:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Hello Serthent, and thank you for your interest in improving this article. You are not seeing things, it's truly a question of wordings settled on as compromise.

But you're not fully correct. For example, when you said what you did about the "physical condition" wording as simple egg walking, you have to understand that the questions were raised by the international atheletic association who is not allowed to ask whether a person is male or female anymore. It turns out, whereas once there were rules that they had to determine a person's gender was female to be in such races, it turned out that that was more trouble than it's worth and much more complicated than one might think at first. Sometimes it can actually be impossible to determine a person's gender. Then they had to re-write their job description to just say that all they can ask is NOT whether the person is truely female in any kind of general sense but only in the very narrow confines of the immediate context of the race: only if they have one of these intersex conditions that make it better for them to run with the males than with the females even though they might be "female" in any other context. It's a good change, it's not their job to tell people if someone is a man or a woman, it's their job to make sure that an intersex person's condition rises to the level that it would be better to have them races with the men. I think the best way to fix the wording in question is to change it to say "...an intersex condition..." instead of just "...a physical condition...", which as you correctly point out, is so vague as to be easily understood, perhaps as questioning whether she "were really female" as you put it. No one denies and everyone knows that there were questions as to whether she has an intersex condition that would give her an unfair advantage in the race, that's just established fact.

Next your recollection of people talking about her physical organs and such probably refers to an incident in which two Australian newspapers, one broadsheet and one tabloid, simultaniously printed details which were, it was never denied, leaked from the atheletic association's medical test results. I tried to get these into the article but it was denied on the grounds that the broadsheet was WP:RS, but I withdrew my objections when it was pointed out that the broadsheet had quoted not the leaked document but the other newspaper, the tabloid. And we're not going to set any precedent that Wikipedia can treat a tabloid as a reliable source, so nothing from "the Australian Leak" will be allowed, it seems. That's how we left it, anyway. I never thought they were being reasonable as the cat is way out of the bag on this, and it's crucial for the reader to understand what happend next. Nothing else makes sense.

The egregious bashing of the IAAF came originally from reports about what turned out to be a pre-planned propaganda campaign orchestrated by the ASA, all of which, when it later came out in a major scandal in S.Africa, led to the addition of not-undue-at-all "bashing" of the ASA's role in the matter. It turned out it was all their fault because in cases like this what is normally done (and it aparently happens more often than one might think) the runner is quietly withdrawn before s/he is publically embarassed. Then when the Australian leak happened, there was lots of attacks on them for clearly being wrong to leak the info. They did not get bashed for faking the leak info, but for actually leaking. Many Wikipedians thought it unfair to repeat the info in the leak or even make the fact that there was a leak clear to the reader, but felt perfect justified in adding the subsequent bashing, not seeming to care that the reader can't understand this "bashing" of the IAAF without knowing what they did wrong, which was not the original "gender test" but rather the later leaking of the results, that sources agreed was not right. Under the circumstances, I think it's best for this article not to try to explain what happened at all, as it's just impossible if we're not going to be allowed to explain what it's all about even.

Everyone was happy with adding that she was so recognized by the New Statesman. When I pointed out some time later that it didn't make sence either without explaining the reasons they gave for doing so, someone was allowed to add fact that heretofore were banned, so the whole reason for the article being so incoherent in the first place has aleady been made moot anyway, so the whole thing is absurd. I say this article has to either do a good job of explaining the intersex thing or avoid the question entirely and have this just be an article about a somewhat notable runner, which would mean the New Statesman stuff should go as well.

If you really want to know the truth about Caster Semenya, just hit one of the links to the article in the foreign language Wikipedias. Almost all of them do a better job than this one. Chrisrus (talk) 01:40, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the problem with changing the words from " ... a physical condition ..." to "...an intersex condition..." is that you're making a medical diagnosis of a clinical condition. I don't think there's any public reliable source that we can refer to that states that and, in absence of same, anything we suggest re. intersex conditions is really just conjecture and comes under WP:BLP. There are plenty of tabloids willing to suggest this, but there's a lack of concrete evidence - Alison ^❤ 01:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

It is in no way contravercial to say that there were questions raised about her physical condition. Nor is there any doubt what the question was: the IAAF did investigate whether she had an intersex condition to the extent that she should not be allowed to run in the woman's 800K we know this from the finest of sources. Everyone says this, the NYT, the BBC, any WP:RS you can name: the New Yorker article was probably the best, IMHO. The only thing that came out through tabloid sources are the leaked details of the results of the test, and it is agreed by me that these should not be included. So speak no more of "tabloids" unless you want to re-open the question of whether the details in the Australian leak be re-published here, but we all long ago agreed that those shall not be repeated in detail here. The fact that there were indeed such tests done, has nothing to do with the Australian leak, that was the details of the results of the tests. to determine exactly that is agreed by all WP:RSs that this article is based on or that Wikipedia is thusfar aware of. You are not correct in saying that to say that questions were raised as to whether she had an intersex condition that would make it unfair for her to run with the women. Every source you can name says that, not "tabloids". They did investigate this and study the results of the investigation for a year before they concluded that she be allowed to race with the women. Neither is it a "diagnosis" of any kind. Your use of the word "diagnosis" should be withdrawn. How is the raising of such questions and the fact that there were tests done and studied for one year as to how to rule in this issue a "diagnosis"? Your argument is totally off-base, Allison. Chrisrus (talk) 03:49, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a continuous spectrum of human sex from the most feminine woman to the most masculine man and even that depends on how you choose to measure it, thus it is not possible to say that any given person is simply male, female, or even intersex. This is not because of any cover-up, compromise here, or because of any failing of the athletics authorities, it is just how things are.

In the case of Caster many allegations were made, generally based on no actual knowledge of the facts at all. We must therefore stick to the rules of BLP which require us only to state facts which are supported by reliable sources and not to propagate speculation. There are no reliable sources which state that Caster has any intersex condition thus it would be quite wrong of us to use that term here. What is known is that objections were raised concerning Caster's eligibility to compete in women's races and that, after a long fiasco, she was cleared to do so. Everything else is speculation, no matter how many times it is repeated in the media.

Some allegations in the media were indeed made in the form of questions. This does not in any way make them more reliable and does not mean that we should report them verbatim here. To do so is still to propagate unfounded speculation. Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Martin puts it very succinctly above. There is no publicly available evidence which indicates that the subject here has an intersex condition. Keyword: evidence. Plenty of speculation - sure - but no evidence. WP is not in the business of propagating speculation on what is a private and personal medical condition. It's not a state of being, as you suggest; it's a medical diagnosis. There are various causes - things like CAIS or 5-alpha-reductase deficiency or whatev. But in the absence of such evidence, it would be wrong to use that term. Tagging a person with such a term could be quite damaging, hence the BLP issue here - Alison ^❤ 11:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Please pay attention to what I'm actually saying and respond to that instead of the above irrelevancies. We have to say that questions were raised by the other racers/IAAF that she MIGHT have SOME SORT of such condition, that TESTS WERE DONE because of this and everything else followed from that fact. This is what all the sourses say happened and this is what we must say happened in order for the article to be COHERENT. This is because NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE without saying that questions were raised as to whether she might have an intersex condition of some sort that might make it inappropriate for her to race with the other women. Please read the article and see that that reader above was right that it MAKES NO SENSE without this information. The only other option is to just ignore the matter entirely and not attempt to expain the fallout from an incident that the reader doesn't know about. No one is saying that we have the article say whether ACTUALLY HAS such a condition or anything specific about it, so please don't repeat over and over that we will not speculate as to whether she actually has one or not. Chrisrus (talk) 13:50, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

As I said above, effective allegations were made in the media in the form of questions. To ask 'Does Caster have an intersex condition?' is to imply that there is some evidence that she might. As we have no such evidence we should not repeat those allegations even though such questions were actually posed. Martin Hogbin (talk) 14:57, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

They weren't "made in the media", they were reported there. The media, they are just doing their job, as we should. And we already say that questions were made "about her physical condition", so obviously you are wrong and we can repeat that questions were made, you are just saying we can't tell the reader what the questions were. The problem is that without saying what those questions were, the reader can't understand anything else in the article, and so the aricle is bad. So either tell the reader what the WP:RSs say about what the questions were or don't bother to try because otherwise the reader can't understand and the article will continue to be bad. Chrisrus (talk) 16:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

It does not matter where the questions come from, all that matters is that they were based only on speculation. To repeat something is to give it credence, so to repeat that someone asked whether Caster had an intersex condition even though it is quite correct that someone did ask this question tends to add weight to the speculation that she has such a condition. I do not think that there is a cast iron rule about speculation, if someone speculated that she had once worn a red hat I guess it would not do much harm to quote that but with a much more personal matter I think we are right to apply the BLP rules strictly. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:27, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record, I didn't "quote mine" the New Statesman piece; the quote was already there when I made my edit and I didn't touch it. I merely corrected the description of the article the quote was from. My edit was immaculately factual. Noym (talk) 18:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

True. I'm sorry. I should have paid more attention.

I don't understand the position Martin and Alison are taking. Saying

"questions were raised about whether Semenya had an intersex condition"

is more or less the same, semantically, as saying

"questions were raised about whether Semenya had a physical condition that might give her an unfair advantage over other female racers".

Why, what kind of "physical condition" would give her an advantage that would be considered "unfair" in this context? Diabetes? Athlete's foot? Ovarian cysts? The "physical condition" being referred to here can only be "an intersex condition", there just isn't any plausible alternative. The two descriptions are equivalent as regards to substance, the only difference is that the former looks forthright and the latter looks disingenuous. If the introduction is not allowed to mention the possible intersex condition, why can it mention a possible unfair advantage?

I'm not trying to be a pain in the neck or anything, but could someone please answer my question, assuming there is an answer? I really would like to know what the ultimate result was. The leak in the tabloid, was that true? Is this something that is simply not known? Serthent (talk) 22:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

That is the whole point Serthent, nobody apart from those involved in the tests, does know. Quite rightly, the results of a persons medical tests were not made public. This means that we cannot answer the question of what physical condition Caster might or might not have. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Specifically the details of the results of the "gender tests" are not allowed because The Australian quoted a tabloid that released it on the same day. You, Serthent, and other readers are going to have to look elsewhere for those details. But to answer your question, however, the ultimate result, however, was that after one year of studying the matter, the IAAF said she could race with the women. The astute reader will easily read between the lines that it took a year for them to come to that conclusion. The reader only needs to be told about the tabloid leak if we are going to talk about the fallout from it. That explains why you couldn't understand the "bashing" of the IAAF. The article would need to metion that there was a leak if the reader is to understand what that part of the "bashing" was about. The astute reader will read between the lines that if the leak were not real, the IAAF would have just denied it and the anger would have been directed at the Australian papers for printing false stories instead of at the leaking body for leaking it to the papers. So to acheive coherence and not communicate such private information, the article should just not mention the IAAF bashing because it can't be understood without mentioning that there was a leak. This is why I say that the IAAF bashing should just be deleted if we can't make it understood. Chrisrus (talk) 18:56, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

oct

Looks like Wikipedia rules for reporting and a review of what information is available on this individual has already been covered. Now for the wording of your comment which, as a transgender person, I found offensive enough to warrant setting up an account for my response...

It is EXTREMELY rude to presume that someone's genetic makeup or genitalia defines their 'real' sex. In the case of intersex persons, we could argue forever about which minute aspect of biology determines sex and never get anywhere because there are so many possible variations and combinations. Even in the case of transgender persons, there are biological variations that suggest an intersex condition may be present. It's possible to objectively give somebody's APPARENT sex, GENETIC sex, or IDENTIFIED sex... but there is no such thing as an objective 'real' sex. GamerSRC (talk) 17:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Not sure the rules have been covered. I found this discussion, however, which convers the facts:

1. Semenya has a male karyotype (46XY) and male gonads. The testicles are undescended and the external genitalia are deformed enough to have been mistaken for female when Semenya was born. The reason the testicles are undescended and the external genitalia are deformed is a form of androgen insensitivity.
2. All of this is widely documented in the medical, sociological, and legal literature.
3. It's also exactly what newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media in many countries and in many languages had already told us all along, except of course in greater detail and more technical language.

Nobody has made any convincing argument so far why the article shouldn't be able to talk about this. The "privacy" argument seems weak. How much privacy can there possibly be left if the BBC, the LA Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, the Asahi Shimbun, the Times of India, and the Welt have already disclosed the facts? Incidentally, the dispute around this answers my original question. My intuition was true. The article is not honest. People are actively hiding the truth. (Noym, why didn't you post all that information here, huh?)

As for the "rude" thing: to be rude is to violate received rules of decorum. I don't think there is any widely agreed-upon rule against assigning more weight to objective reality than to imperious decrees informed by nothing but ideology. Serthent (talk) 01:13, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Serthent: First of all, thank you for your interest in doing something about the state of this article. Now, the facts about her physical body that you have found elsewhere cannot be included here because they were leaked to a tabloid and a broadsheet and published on the same day in Australia, but the broadsheet said that they'd gotten the information from the tabloid. So they have thier origin in the tabloid. I'm on record in several places on Wikipedia standing up quite forcefully for the "no tabloid" rule, and I hope you'll also agree.

The fact of the leak, (not it's details) however, must be mentioned in the article if the parts of the article which discuss the fallout from the Australian leak are to make any sense. This is why you couldn't understand the article as written the first time around; it isn't understandable because one needs to know what the sources were angry at that point at the IAAF about if we are s/he is going to understand what the IAAF is being accused of. Actually, there are two phases of the "bashing" that happened. At first they were being "bashed" for "questioning her gender" and subjecting her to "humilating" gynocological exams, but later it all came out that the entire campaign of public outrage was orchestrated by the ASA, especially Chuene (its director, who lost his job over it) using the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa. But while those attacks on the ASA campaign ware still ongoing, the IAAF defensively leaked the detailed results of the test to the two Austrailian papers, and that was against their own rules. Up to that point they were just doing there jobs, but that was wrong to leak that. So we here don't want to re-publish those personal details about her private anatomy, as they never should have been released to the public, and she's just a teenager (is she still?) being used by unscrupulous SA politios who blatantly were using her for their own career advancement. As a result, if the article is going to be coherent, it has to not "bash" either the ASA or the IAAF without telling the reader what they are being bashed for. All that section just has to go.

UNLESS, of course, we report to the readers about the leak without the details of the leak. If we do that it would make it possible to report the fallout from the leak in a way that the reader could understand. If not; not.

Now, the fact that her "gender was questioned" (or actually, whether she has an intersex condition that might give her an unfair advantage is a Womans 800M was questioned), and so tests were done, the ASA orchistrated a preplanned public indignation campaign, which came crashing down when Dr. Adams blew the whistle and all the rest of the fallout, none of that is traced to any tabloid. Tabloids don't have anything to do with that stuff. Some here keep conflating all that with the Australian leak. Objections to reporting this other stuff to the readers must be based on some other grounds or ignored as simply wrong. The other grounds are those of WP:BLP, which are about publishing anything that has even the slightest chance of being liablous or slanderous or just no one's business but that of the referent of the article. I would agree with those objections if, for example, oh, I donno, it turned out that some popstar or some such has an intersex condition and that were released to the public. It's not important that the public know that, and if the information were released against her will, say by an unscrupulous doctor, and she wanted to keep it private, there's no important reason for wikipedia to repeat that stuff, as the reader doesn't need to know and it wouldn't be proper for us to repeat that stuff. This case is very different, because unless we delete everything but her notable race-running achievements, there's nothing we can say about the Caster Semenya story that is going to make any sense without us letting on that she must have some kind of intersex condition.

Finally, please don't respond to anything anyone says to you about anything but article improvement, because this is WP:NOTAFORUM for discussion of anything but article improvement. The IAAF has stated very clearly that the tests were to check if she should be running in the Woman's 800, not to determine whether she is a woman or a man in any broad context, except that extremely narrow and specific meaning of "woman", and this article doesn't and shouldn't either. But some innocent reader who comes to this page asking "Uhhh...I'd heard she was really a man, so I came here to find out about that, but the article is incomprehenible, so what's up with that?" without being jumped on and shouted down in a way that's quite rude itself. If people read the article and don't understand what about her physical condition caused all the fuss, it's the article's fault, not the reader's. Chrisrus (talk) 06:41, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't post on Martin's talk page because I wanted to "hide" things. My issue was with Martin, not with the article as such, and I didn't want to derail this discussion, especially not through adding additional contentiousness to a topic already contentious enough.

FWIW, I now understand that Martin didn't mean to fib, he was simply unaware of the publications I was talking about. Something about his style said "science guy" to me, so I sort-of subconsciously assumed he would have checked Pubmed. Well, he hadn't, so I'm actually sorry I posted my remarks anywhere at all. Noym (talk) 11:01, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Noym, thanks for those kind words, you are indeed correct, I was not aware of the publications you mention. I am in fact a physicist but do have a vague and distant memory of medical publications. Maybe things have changed but usually personal data was anonymised, with terms like 'subject B' and 'patient A' being used for reasons of both privacy and good experimental practice. That is why I was so surprised to hear that papers have been published that name an individual and also include personal medical data. Perhaps you could email me with excerpts showing papers that include Caster being named. I do not intend to post any personal information here but I would be interested to learn the facts about what has actually been published.

If this really has happened it would explain some of the more extreme comments about the serious invasion of Caster's privacy that were made here earlier and which I and others considered rather overblown at the time. Martin Hogbin (talk) 12:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

If anyone has any WP:RS citations about this referent, let them present them here, on this discussion page. Please don't hold good stuff back. It smacks of disingenuousness . Chrisrus (talk) 18:34, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Chrisrus, just to clarify, I am not interested in finding out exactly what conditions Caster may or may not have I am just asking for evidence that she has been identified by name in publicly available documents which also give her medical details. This would seem to be a serious breach of medical ethics to me, regardless of whether information had leaked earlier. Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:59, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

That's fine, but I assume that your primary interest here, however, is article improvement, as this is the only thing we should talk about here and any relevant WP:RS that might help should be presented.

So, what way forward for this dismal mess of an article do you see, Martin? Chrisrus (talk) 23:36, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

That is my objective too, which why I am asking Noym to email me with the papers he says disclose Caster's medical details but which I was not aware of. Noym is understandably reluctant to post such details in on this public forum. I agree that if details have indeed been published in reliable sources we must at least consider changing the article to reflect that. I am interested to see exactly what has been made public so that we can discuss what might be reasonable to add to this BLP. Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:25, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

My primary interest is not article improvement; it's WP:BLP. I won't sacrifice someone's right to privacy and right to not be defamed, over article 'accuracy' or 'completeness'. As an oversighter on the project, I have to deal with disclosures of non-public, personal information on a daily basis on Wikipedia and if this information has either been leaked or otherwise disclosed illegally, I'm not going to allow it to stand here. Public figures have a right to privacy of their personal medical records and disclosure of these, especially in a place as public and as visible as Wikipedia can be extremely damaging. It's happened before. A medical condition, as is being insinuated here, is a horrific burden for any person to carry, and having Wikipedia compound that - especially by propagating rumor or 'leaked' documentation - is not okay - Alison ^❤ 22:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that you two should worry too much about these things. All we want to say is that questions were raised about whether she might have such a condition, which is a far cry from saying that she does in fact have one. That'll fix the problems with the first part. Next, we have to say, if we are to explain the initial outcry from the ASA outrage campaign, what they were angry about; that her gender was being questioned, and that she had to subject herself to "intrusive" tests or some such. Then the reader will be able to understand what the article is talking about. OR we can leave that part out entirely. Next, if we are going to talk about the fallout to the leak and all the "bashing" of the IAAF for leaking, we just have to say that there was a leak and describe it in the most general of terms. We don't have to actually tell the reader what was in the leak, we can write a comprehensible article with out all this stuff in these medical journals, that stuff is just not necessary. OR we could just leave all that stuff out as well. All I'm asking is that we either tell the reader just enough to make the section in question comprehensible. Astute readers will of course read between the lines and understand that she must be intersex to some degree, but we don't have to go into it all that much. That is, if we want to tell the reader anything at all about these things. But it has to be one or the other, we can't leave mess like this out there. Have a look at pretty much any of the foriegn-language articles along the side there; you can use Google Tranlate or some such and then see at least basically how it's done properly. We don't have to get into all this detail about her personal condition, it's not necessary to make the article at least as good as the Spanish one, the Dutch one, the German one, and so on. We don't have to say any more than they are saying. Ours is about the worst, next to the Afrikans one, that says pretty much nothing. Stop worrying about these medical journals and their detail, it's way more than we need to/should tell the readrs. Chrisrus (talk) 21:36, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Alison, I agree with you over individuals' rights to privacy but Noym is claiming that medical full details of Caster are already disclosed to the public at large in reliable sources. I am somewhat sceptical of this since Noym has failed to provide any evidence (which I have asked him to email to me rather than post here) but if it turns out that medical details are available publicly then we must at least consider changing what we write here although I agree that we still do not have to reveal anything.

Chrisrus, unless and until someone provides evidence to the contrary, there are no reliable sources saying that Caster has an intersex condition so we cannot say that here.

Regarding a better explanation of the whole fiasco why do you not propose something here which explains what it is all about but does still not invade Caster's privacy. I would be happy to work with you on this. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:31, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok, first of all, based on, oh, I donno, take your pick, just for example, the New Yorker article, we can say that the IAAF decided to run medical test to determine if she might have an Intersex condition that would give her an unfair advantage over the other racers". The article states that IAAF officials said:

"...with this blatant allegation, and bearing in mind the almost supernatural improvement, the I.A.A.F. believed that it was sensible to make sure, with help of A.S.A., that the athlete was negative in terms of doping test results, and also that there was no gender ambiguity which may have allowed her to have the benefits of male hormone levels, whilst competing against other women. " Read more [1], P.4.

So with this citation I'd like to change the article back to "...to find out whether she might have an intersex condition that might give her an unfair advantage over the other racers...". That way, we aren't saying that she has such a condition, but the reader will be able to understand what the outrage was about. Then the article will be starting to be a little more coherent without stating that she is interex. I'll go ahead and do this now. If you revert, have a reason other than "we cannot say she's intersex" because saying that "Martin's doctor ran a test to see whether Martin had Rabies" doesn't mean "Martin has Rabies". Chrisrus (talk) 04:06, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not okay. It's just hearsay and has no basis in fact. Furthermore, one isn't intersex, rather one has an intersex condition; it's a medical condition not a state of being. Seriously, guys - Alison ^❤ 04:17, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

And I've undid that edit. It's still under discussion here. Cites I've seen that discuss the nature of the tests have all been conjecture, and cites to conjecture are still conjecture. And I don't buy that "what else could it be?" rationale above. We need more than that - Alison ^❤ 04:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Have you read the New Yorker article? It's a direct quotation from a named IAAF official explicitly stating why the tests were done. I'm beginning to think that you and Martin aren't reading the sources nor my posts. The "what else could it be" is what's going to happen in the mind of the reader of this article. It's not what's in my posts or the sources. We know a large amount of information by now about why the Berlin tests were done. They did the tests because the other athletes had been complaining not only leading up to Berlin, but also all the way back to her early days in South Africa. In the New Yorker, the IAAF official is emphasizing, wants the reporter, the public, to know that the IAAF was aware of questioning from other athletes about her gender going back a long time, mostly from South Africa, and he quotes them. This was in responce to the whole "Who are these white people to question the gender of an African?" attacks on the IAAF. Alison, do you really know much about this case? Have you been following it very closely? If not, that could explain why you would say that you haven't seen anything that explained why the tests were done that wasn't speculation. That would be better than the other explanation for why you would say such a thing. Chrisrus (talk) 14:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

"one isn't intersex, rather one has an intersex condition"

The literature seems to disagree here; some examples from my CS folder:

"The [binary] classification system is considered so naturally and essentially authoritative that to consider the plight of intersex athletes (such as Caster Semenya) [] is disruptive." – Thomas F. Corrigan et al. Discourses of the "Too Abled": Contested Body Hierarchies and the Oscar Pistorius Case. International Journal of Sports Communication, 2010, 3, 288-307.

"We also advocate Foucault's notion of biopower in looking at the ways hierarchical categories of gender may be disrupted by the emergence of intersex athletes, such as Caster Semenya, and the ways popular discourse adjusts to such emergences." – Ibid.

"Still unresolved, however, is how and where to place intersex bodies within this male-female binary - and, more narrowly, in sports. Like other social institutions, sports are constructed on a dimorphic understanding of sex. But athletes like Caster Semenya force us to acknowledge that physical bodies can – and do – defy such neat classification. Indeed, approximately 1.7% of the world population is born intersex, neither fully male nor female. [] Should an intersex student athlete be allowed to compete as a male or a female? What criteria should be used to decide where an intersex athlete falls in the binary scheme?" – Laura A. Zaccone, Policing the Policing of Intersex Bodies: Softening the Lines in Title IX Athletic Programs. Brooklyn Law Review , Vol. 76, No. 1, 2010.

"[T]he LPGA’s policy revision also helps preclude a future conflict in connection with an intersex athlete who may pursue a career in women’s professional golf [] Highlighted by the recent cases of Caster Semenya – a South African 800 metre runner – and German tennis player Sarah Gronnert, the LPGA’s former ‘female at birth’ rule would have been completely incompatible with intersex athletes who have both male and female characteristics. Although yet to be formally memorialised, the LPGA’s revised rule will almost certainly accommodate both transgender and intersex athletes, significantly lessening the chances of any future gender-related legal challenges." – Ryan M. Rodenberg, Gender policies and impact of litigation: Lawless v. LPGA. World Sports Law Report December 2010.

"Many of these intersex individuals, estimated at one birth in every 1,666 in the United States alone, are legally operated on by surgeons who force traditional norms of genitalia on newborn infants. [] The physical reality of intersex people calls into question the fixed notions we are taught to accept about men and women in general, and men and women athletes in sex-segregated sports like track and field in particular. The heretical bodies of intersex people challenge the traditional understanding of gender as a strict male/female phenomenon" – Dave Zirin and Sherry Wolf, Caster Semenya and the Idiocy of Sex Testing. The Nation August 22 2009.

"So far, though, the debate as not so much been about transgendered athletes as it has been over hermaphrodite and intersex athletes. The most famous case involves South African track and field athlete Caster Semenya." – Cecile Houry, American Women and the Modern Summer Olympic Games: A Story of Obstacles and Struggles for Participation and Equality. Dissertation, University of Miami, 2011.

No quotation, but a title: Jessica L. Adair, In a League of Their Own: The Case for Intersex Athletes. 18 Sports Law. J. 121.

Emphases mine, obviously.

Too tired right now to offer any actual thought; just thought you should now. Noym (talk) 07:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I have to say that I think it is utterly reprehensible for organisations to discuss the personal medical details of named individuals in public especially as the officially unconfirmed information was improperly leaked. I can see why there was such an outcry now. I would hope that we will be able to maintain somewhat higher standards here but in the light of these revelations (to me at least) we must consider if any changes to the article are appropriate. Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:49, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it was. But please Martin, you should remember the context under which it was released, specifically the pressure that they were under. After all, it's the IAAF's job to look into such things, and the blasting they were taking was, please remember this kind of thing: | http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/sep/11/caster-semenya-hermaphrodite-claim-south-africa, which is just an example of attacks on them which were, I'm sure you'll agree, WAY over the top threatening. In fact, this article was among the many places where it was being claimed that they were doing something tantamount almost to rape just to require that she undergo the so-called "gender testing", even though, we later found out, the very accusers had subjected her to the same medical tests. At the time, it was Chuene's talking point that there was no legitimate reason for the IAAF to have done the Berlin tests because Semenya was female and there were no such things as intersex people, so someone at the IAAF apparantly thought that, by leaking the test results, they would stop any kind of attack saying that they had no legitimate reason to require the Berlin tests; no one would be able to say that they were wrong to suspect such a condition might exist and endevor to find out. One might point out that the leak itself would only bring more attacks for leaking, and that those would be legitimate, unlike the crazy Chuene stuff they were trying to get out from under at the time, but remember that they issued a statement after the leak saying that they would not comment on the leak in any way but that they had urged that they be treated "with caution", which the Austrailians did not use, so the IAAF left it open that they may have been fooled or something into leaking too much, they had just wanted to prove they had good reason to order the Berlin tests, and had only shared the documents to prove that point.

The IAAF's decision to leak the information is, in my opinion, indefensible, regardless of the position that they were in. Chuene's machinations were even worse but none of this justifies the open discussion of identifiable, personal medical details by what appears, in some cases, to be reputable journals.

The problem is that certain information appears to be in the public domain and supported by reliable sources. That could justify inclusion of more information in this BLP. I think might consider how we could show more of the political fiasco and the wrongdoings of various parties but still continue to treat the subject of the article with sensitivity and respect. There is a significant ethical dilemma here. Information has been released that should not have been released; should we use it here? Ther certainly needs to be a discussion of some kind. Again, we must take care that the discussion itself does not become offensive. Martin Hogbin (talk) 07:43, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

(EC) I've read every message here at least twice but I still have no idea where people get the idea any of the various leaks were procedurally "improper" or "illegal". The IAAF has a right to discuss medical peculiarities of athletes that may be construed to affect their eligibility to compete. If you refuse to sign the relevant waivers they simply don't let you start. They can discuss abnormal levels of testosterone in an athlete's blood just like they can discuss abnormal levels of any other anabolic steroid. It's not like they don't do this all the time. They also did try to be discreet when they realized Semenya was not a cheater so much as a thoroughly clueless kid from the sticks used as cannon fodder by politicians. Noym (talk) 08:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. The IAAF has the perfect right to decide upon the rules deciding who is eligible to participate in specific events. As we have women-only events there obviously have to be some rules that decide who is to be considered a woman for the purposes of eligibility for these events. The IAAF clearly have a right, and indeed a duty, to agree a set of eligibility rules that are clear and verifiable. I guess we agree so far.

When a contestant is challenged,the IAAF clearly have the duty to investigate and to make a decision on whether the athlete complies with the rules or not. Depending on what the rules are, this investigation may include medical and other tests. Athletes must be prepared to undergo these tests if their eligibility is challenged or be refused entry to the event. I guess we agree again.

The IAAF must make public their decision so that everybody knows whether a particular athlete is eligible to enter in a given event but I see no reason at all why the IAAF should give anything other than a yes/no decision on eligibility. The rules should be made public and if an athlete is declared ineligible it must be assumed the the athlete does not comply with at least one of the rules. Publication of personal and medical details of individuals is unnecessary and unethical.

If athletes wish to reveal personal information about themselves they are, of course, free to do so. Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I hate to say this, Martin, but on this one thing you are simply wrong. The IAAF has the right to discuss athlete's medical eligibility issues because ATHLETES EXPLICITLY GIVE THEM THAT RIGHT in a FORMAL WRITTEN LEGAL RELEASE. End of story. There is really zero wiggle room here. Have a look at the list of doping cases in athletics. The IAAF doesn't say, "we're revoking this guy's medal because we've decided he's ineligible after tests we won't identify for reasons we won't disclose." They say, "we're revoking this guy's medal because we did blood work and it found implausible quantities of Nandrolone in his system." I understand this can be hard to swallow but it's the way the industry works. Noym (talk) 11:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I can understand what you say with respect to drug testing but are you saying that athletes who are subject to gender verification have to sign a release giving the IAAF the right to publish full medical details of the results? Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

No. You sign the waiver before they will even consider adding you to the roster. The waiver applies to anything test they might at some point ask you to undergo. The waiver applies to gender verification by default; ie. the waiver applies to gender verification because it is a comprehensive blanket permission and gender verification is not specifically exempted.

It's important to note that you only promise not to complain if they publish test results, you do NOT promise to actually undergo any specific tests. It's impossible under European and international human rights standards to force people into medical procedures they don't want. You can ALWAYS refuse the blood test, or the ultrasonogram, or whatever else it is they ask you to consent to. If you don't want them to talk about the steroids in your blood then you simply don't let them take the blood sample that would allow them to detect the steroids. You would obviously lose the medal but you would NOT be in violation of any contractual obligation or anything. Noym (talk) 13:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Be that as it may, let's not publish the details of her condition here. We don't need to. They originally came out in a tabloid and that's why I don't want to publish them. I supported it when I thought that The Australian was first, but actually, I don't feel comfortable talking about her testicles. Maybe when she's 21 or when she speaks of it publically, or is no longer a living person. But please, let's tell the reader those things s/he has to be told in order to understand the article. We have to improve the article. Chrisrus (talk) 13:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

@Noym, thanks for that information, it is something of a revelation to me. As I understand it the IAAF did not actually publish the results of Caster' tests but they were leaked is some way. That seems rather improper to me. Martin Hogbin (talk) 14:19, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

@Chrisrus, I am not suggesting that we publish details here but in the light of what Noym has said we do need to at least consider some changes to the article. Martin Hogbin (talk) 14:19, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

This article is kind of ludicrous if you do not have the available info about this medical condition. Close to 99% of Semanya's notoriety is based on the fact that Semanya has testosterone-spewing testes and no ovaries, competing in athletic events against women without these athletic advantages. That this info was first published in a tabloid is a non-sequitur. --Fizbin (talk) 17:24, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

And unsubstantiated garbage like this ^^^^ is exactly why I'm concerned here. Please remember that WP:BLP applies to other project pages, and not just mainspace - Alison ^❤ 17:51, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Unsubstantiated garbage? Noym (talk) 18:06, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

"Stuff that doesn't fit my agenda" would be the best translation of that. This article is terrible mostly because it reads like a hitpiece on the IAAF while not actually discussing what they were concerned about, which is not a secret, and has, as noted, been discussed in the medical literature. What Fizbin wrote is far from "unsubstantiated garbage". It's very well substantiated and is the substance of the issue with Semenya. There's nothing in WP:RS that suggests that sources become more or less reputable depending on how much you like what they printed. Grace Note (talk) 03:25, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems that there are reliable sources which give information about Caster's intersex status and that that information is already in the public domain. We should consider putting some more information about her condition in the article here but in a sensitive and encyclopedic manner. Words like, 'testosterone-spewing testes, are certainly not appropriate here. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:34, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Do we need to make some changes?

The section heading is really just for editing convenience.

Alison, I do not understand your reference to unsubstantiated garbage. It would seem from what Noym has told us that Caster's medical status is well documented in publicly available reliable sources. Quite how the sources got their information is still not quite clear to me as the IAAF has never admitted to publishing information although it is accused of leaking it. Nevertheless, publicly available sources that would normally be considered as reliable are giving information about Caster's medical condition. I have in the past, along with you, resisted putting any reference to medical conditions in the article on the grounds that the sources presented before were unreliable and the information provided was indeed unsubstantiated. Now this has changed, so we must at least consider changing what we say here. Martin Hogbin (talk) 20:23, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Name

Isn't Caster a male name - i.e. Castor and Pollox?203.184.41.226 (talk) 18:27, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if you were aware, but whether a name is "male" or "female" has nothing to do with the actual sex of the person with that name. For example, my cigender male husband's name is Shannon (typically a female name). In other cases, names may change over time from being "male" to "female" (or vice versa), as was the case for the names Ashley, Courtney, and Ariel. Just because a person has a name that's typically associated with one gender doesn't mean that the person with that name is that gender or sex. 50.76.104.57 (talk) 20:21, 25 July 2013 (UTC)