Sir, – The Court of Arbitration for Sport has announced that Olympic champion Caster Semenya will be forced to take testosterone-lowering agents in order to be permitted to compete in her events (Sport, May 1st). This decision to oblige certain female athletes to lower artificially their testosterone levels is unjust .
The court ruling targets intersex athletes, people whose biological sexual characteristics do not fit neatly into either extreme of a male-female binary.
Intersex people have suffered injustice from the medical community historically, with many having been the victims of harmful surgical operations, performed without their consent, as children. This new ruling perpetuates the medicalisation of intersex people, forcing a proportion of them to undertake a medically unnecessary treatment, in order to make their bodies fit a societal norm.
Sport is based on natural physiological inequality. Olympic champions often bear anatomical or genetic traits which offer them a significant competitive advantage. The decision to arbitrarily discriminate against female athletes with an intersex trait is logically inconsistent and deeply disappointing. – Yours, etc,
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Dr RALPH HURLEY
O’DWYER,
Executive Board Member,
ShoutOut,
Outhouse,
Capel Street, Dublin 1.
Sir, – I was appalled to learn that Caster Semenya has been give then choice to either drug herself or quit athletics.
Caster has an unusual natural competitive advantage, which is hard luck for all the other women running against her, but I am sure all the swimmers competing against Michael Phelps felt the same when he kept winning, due partially to his highly unusual but naturally competitive edge: size 14 feet, double jointed ankles, extra long arms and short legs. Lucky him, so why not lucky Caster?
Suck it up, girls. That’s life. – Yours, etc,
ROISIN O’CONNELL
HUSSEY,
The Heath, Co Laois.