Does this look like a woman or a boy in drag?

[Eddie Teach]

I feel sorry for this girl.  This whole thing has been handled awfully. 

Not sure that there was really a good way to handle it.

Doctors realizing her condition when she was young and making the necessary modifications.

[Sheilbh]

I feel sorry for this girl.  This whole thing has been handled awfully. 

Not sure that there was really a good way to handle it.

Well they could have avoided the public announcement of an investigation and just done it privately until they were sure there was something medical. 

As it turns out she's a hermaphrodite.  But if she came back totally girl imagine how awful it would've been, after an incredible success, to have to endure a pretty discussed investigation into your biological sex.

[Queequeg]

Well they could have avoided the public announcement of an investigation and just done it privately until they were sure there was something medical. 

As it turns out she's a hermaphrodite.  But if she came back totally girl imagine how awful it would've been, after an incredible success, to have to endure a pretty discussed investigation into your biological sex.

I don't really think it is fair to the girls.  They prepared to run against people of the same gender and therefore of a reasonably similar anatomy, not someone with a greater natural predisposition for athletic ability due to intersex status.  It would be like letting a sentient dolphin compete in the Olympics.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't really think it is fair to the girls.  They prepared to run against people of the same gender and therefore of a reasonably similar anatomy, not someone with a greater natural predisposition for athletic ability due to intersex status.  It would be like letting a sentient dolphin compete in the Olympics.

Hi Marty!

[Queequeg]

Disqualifying her from all sports might be a bit extreme, but at least from my (and clearly almost everyone else's) perspective she seems to be more clearly on the "male" side of the male-female anatomical divide.  I don't see any breast development whatsoever, or even other secondary sex characteristics like widened hips, and height wise, muscle wise, and shoulder wise she clearly looks to have developed more like a man.

[Sheilbh]

I don't really think it is fair to the girls.  They prepared to run against people of the same gender and therefore of a reasonably similar anatomy, not someone with a greater natural predisposition for athletic ability due to intersex status.  It would be like letting a sentient dolphin compete in the Olympics.

Okay fine, but investigate before publicly humiliating her and then try and work out some way of dealing with it in private before any announcements are made.

[Queequeg]

Okay fine, but investigate before publicly humiliating her and then try and work out some way of dealing with it in private before any announcements are made.

Totally agree here.  I'm really, really surprised this wasn't checked earlier, actually.  I mean, I get it when slightly effeminate looking intersexed "men" can pull off looking like a woman, or even look like some kind of combination, but this person's musculature and distinctly male secondary sex characteristics should have raised some alarms.   

[HVC]

probably a feeble attempt to keep others from doing the same. Public shame has for a very long time been used as a deterent for unwanted behavior.

[dps]

I feel sorry for this girl.  This whole thing has been handled awfully. 

Not sure that there was really a good way to handle it.

Well they could have avoided the public announcement of an investigation and just done it privately until they were sure there was something medical. 

As it turns out she's a hermaphrodite.  But if she came back totally girl imagine how awful it would've been, after an incredible success, to have to endure a pretty discussed investigation into your biological sex.

Well, yeah, if it had turned out that's she's just a very masculine looking female, obviously it would have been better to not say anything publicly about the matter.  But given the actual outcome of the medical tests, it was going to be a humiliating experience regardless of how it was handled.

And yeah, Peter Wiggin is right--it would have been better if  the medical facts had been discovered and dealt with before the person ever became a competitive runner.  I'm sure that it would have still been an unpleasant and probably traumatic ordeal, but it least it wouldn't have played out in public.

[Valmy]

Okay fine, but investigate before publicly humiliating her and then try and work out some way of dealing with it in private before any announcements are made.

Well the international track and field people have been known to botch things like this up.

[Martinus]

I mean if they disqualify her, then it would mean hermaphrodites cannot compete in any sports - that would be discriminatory, no?

Well it would not necessarily mean that it could just mean they could not compete in women's sports.

Can women compete in men's sports?

[Admiral Yi]

I feel sorry for this girl.  This whole thing has been handled awfully.

Surely he/she could have avoided a great part of the media circus by approaching the authorities before hand and getting some clarification. 

[Malthus]

Yeah that's an interesting question.

I mean if they disqualify her, then it would mean hermaphrodites cannot compete in any sports - that would be discriminatory, no?

The only issue is whether they get to compete with the women.

Men tend to have the advantage in sports - although obviously a female athlete could easily kick our collective male Languisite asses, they can't generally win against the top male athletes, who are on average larger, stronger and faster.

Thus, a person who is not strictly a "woman" may have physical advantages over biological women. There would be no such advantages in competing with men.

[Malthus]

Can women compete in men's sports?

There would be *unfairness* in having a butch woman competing with the men.

There would be great unfairness in having a good male athlete dressing in drag and competing with the "women".

[Sheilbh]

Surely he/she could have avoided a great part of the media circus by approaching the authorities before hand and getting some clarification.

She's been raised and lived her life as a girl (which is why I think it's only polite to refer to her as a girl not as a he-she).  The sort of hermaphroditism she has is a form where she'll have internal testes and, I believe, no ovaries or wombs.  But she'll have entirely female genitalia.  When she was born the doctors would have told her parents that she's a girl and she'll have been raised and treated accordingly.  So someone could have suggested something before but why would she not believe she was a masculine and very strong woman? 

After a life led as a girl she's been turned into a global sideshow.  I think it's really very sad.