This is a comment I saw below the Facebook link to this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/sports/caster-semenya-800-meters.html. I have decided to briefly write something about it because, as can be gleaned from the number of likes on this comment, the opinion above is a very popular one, and an opinion which I think is very flawed.
The comment begins with some 100% correct statements (an accurate generalisation and an accurate example in support) -- but the reasoning from there is quite poor. I don't know if the commentator is one of those extreme PoMo social constructionists who subscribes to the following bipartite doctrine: that there's no difference between men and women in terms of average strength or speed (height differences are, of course, a bit too hard to ignore), and that (as a result) we should try to "abolish all discrimination" in sport by merging men's and women's competitions. She may very well not subscribe to such a doctrine. However, her failure to realise that there is indeed a very important, non-misogyny-based distinction between Phelps' "quirks" and Semenya's "quirks" is suggestive of tendencies in that direction.
Before I explain why I think the commentator uses poor reasoning in attributing to "misogyny" the different response to Semenya's "quirks", I want to make a few things clear about my own attitude towards biology and sport (to pre-empt charges of reactionary ignorance). First up, I realise that intersex people exist, and I realise that hormone levels vary between people. I realise that some biological females (with the standard set of XX chromosomes) are very masculine in many ways (possessing, for example, angular faces with strong jaws and large features, or significant body hair, or narrow hips or wide shoulders or low body fat (or all of the above)), and I realise that some biological males (with the standard set of XY chromosomes) are very feminine in many ways (possessing, for example, softer, more gracile faces, or inconsiderable body hair, or wide-ish hips or narrow shoulders or high body fat (or all of the above)). As a consequence of my acceptance of these trivial facts, I also accept that it is extremely difficult to draw a line in the sand and say, "Everyone on this side is an unambiguous biological male and everyone on this side is an unambiguous biological female". And, most importantly, I actually do believe that what Semenya's ordeal with the athletic authorities demonstrates above all else is that there's an irreducible arbitrariness to the way the sporting world deals with sex. (I mean, let's face it, most female athletes in athletics and high-intensity sports have unusually masculine physical traits.)
On the other hand, I also think that it would be a mistake for the world athletic bodies to abandon any kind of biological definition of male and female, and go completely in the direction of the trans-community conception of male and female in terms of (mental) "gender identity". The July 2015 decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to force the IAAF to suspend its hormone test for two years and allow athletes like Semenya and Duttee Chand to compete without any kind of hormonal treatments may very well signal a move along exactly this trajectory. I think this is a cause for slight concern. I believe that what the IAAF was doing was not completely unjustified: there needs to be some arbitrary distinction drawn, based on hormones or some such other correlate of biological sex, because a total abandonment of a biological distinction could very well open the floodgates for a whole wave of merely transfemale athletes (typical biological males who identify as females). As I made clear, I think the merging of men's and women's sports would be a disaster, and also deeply unfeminist. The conclusion of this change would be theft of millions of women's livelihoods, global exposure, and the destruction of the dreams of millions of female children.
Yes, it is true that the gap between men and women in athletics (and sports like soccer, rugby, cricket and hockey) has gradually closed over the last few decades, and will continue to gradually close as long as more girls are encouraged to get into sport and develop their athletic potential. Nevertheless, there are very good biological reasons to think that women will never reach quite the same heights as men in the really physically intense sports, and so would risk being outcompeted if transwomen were allowed to compete, and certainly if male and female sports were merged.
Perhaps we can draw the line between males and females for the purposes of athletic competition in such a way that allows people like Semenya and Duttee Chand to compete as they are (without any hormonal intervention), but my point is simply that we must draw it somewhere. Pretending that Semenya's unusual physical features are exactly analogous to those of Phelps is therefore a mistake.
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