Take Ms. Semenya. If we continue to divide male from female athletes predicated on the assumption that men, due entirely to predictable gender-based physiological differences, will consistently outperform women and that gender-blind physical competition is therefore inherently unequal… in other words, if we suck up the politics and let biology be what it is… then biology, in all its messiness and infinite variability, counts. Hormones count. Muscle mass counts. Size counts. And anomalies may not ever have been as anomalous as we think, given the medical testing now used which didn’t exist twenty, thirty, fifty years ago.

So is it fair to ask athletes (and let’s face it, we’re talking about women athletes here) who fall neatly into a gender category to compete with those who don’t, and who happen to have a set of now-detectable anomalies which makes them in this particular area more rather than less? Intersexed people have a whole universe of agonizing problems to deal with, but let’s face it, Semenya can run like a motherfucker. Or like, or more like, or in some ways like a… a… MAN. In a way that makes her win. Should her competitors now be allowed hormonal treatments, if they choose? Steroids? Genetic grafting (I made that one up)?

The social stigma, the potential medical difficulties, the limitations of Ms. Semenya’s condition: unfair. But if gender-based biological differences matter in athletic competition, as they obviously do, her advantages as a runner may very well be unfair to those around her. Does she get a pass because hey, it kind of sucks to be her? Does Pistorius? Until women race men and men race, I don’t know, bicycles, I think their competitors’ concerns are legitimate. Probably insoluble. But legitimate.

As I read this, I thought, “Gee. Put a few lead weights on his Cheetahs.” Aren’t weights used to supplement a lighter jockey’s weight in horse racing?

Nice piece, Russ.