Take a look at the times they posted. It wouldn’t be close. The mistake being made is assuming that women would be competitive at an international level against men.

“Phelps has never swam against women. For all we know they could beat him.”

Rules evolve as science and knowledge evolve. It’s not about excluding her it’s about reconciling gender (non-binary) with sports which are divided into men’s and women’s categories and as long as you have those two categories in sports to figure out how and where to draw that line and how intersex athletes like…

Yes, she’s a woman. Biologically though it’s a little more complex because she’s intersex and has XY chromosomes.

And if you think Semenya is the first woman ever to have naturally elevated testosterone and compete in pro sports, I have a bridge in the Hudson river I would like to sell you.

Then that begs the question, “What defines a woman, biologically?”, and here we are.

I’ve read all of Diana’s writing on the issue. She makes many good points. This entire saga has been clearly targeted at Semenya, because of her androgynous appearance, and perhaps also because of her skin color. The data the IAAF came up with to try to justify the rule is flawed and inaccurate. The entire history of…

“Cis females are powerful enough to get a niche carved for themselves in sport, intersex and trans females aren’t.”

It seems like Deadspin is analyzing the situation from a social rights perspective. But that’s not the job of these governing bodies, which I guess is to make decisions based on their interpretation of the rules or the spirit of competition. I don’t think Deadspin considers what is intended by the division of men’s…

Thats the thought experiment. And then you say, well thats not fair, we want women to be able to compete in sports, and then we say, OK, well WHY are women not as good at sports as men? Oh, its because mens bodies tell them to produce more testosterone and build more muscle mass.

“Slight” advantage? She produces 3x as much testosteron as the average woman. I’d say that’s a bit more then a slight advantage.

Testosterone levels.  I don’t feel I need to address your confusion with sticky as I feel it is not honest.

I honestly don’t know, and I frankly don’t care. I do know that the ruling is specific and that while it’s a shitty situation, I’d rather not care at all what her genetic makeup or sex organs are and require her to hit a T-level threshold than wade into the very sticky situation of what constitutes a female.

Oh I agree the color schemes are very nice, but accidents in the kitchen do happen and stuff gets everywhere whether we want it to or not. I’m just saying paintings in the kitchen feel impractical. I can’t count how many times I’ll see a stain in some random place and think “How the hell did that get there!?”

What these warriors should really be arguing for is no male/female divisions in athletics. Everything just open.

This continues to be one of the worst, most naive takes on Deadspin. Sometimes, you can’t operate on what you wish was true and you have to operate on what *is* true.

This stupid thing is said *every* time here and it’s still wrong. Phelps is competing against literally everyone. Semenya is competing against a subset limited to women, while possessing a significant advantage of having male testosterone.

In regards to your Phelps example, let’s say swimming had two divisions; one for people with short arms and one for people with long arms. Phelps and his freakishly long arms qualify for the long arm division. Do you think it would be fair for him to compete in the short arm division?

AMEN. Very few places can pull this off. I live in a home old enough to be “most assuredly no longer living” if it was a person, complete with trees planted at the same time, and there is simply not enough natural light to grow a shade garden, let alone get away with painting any room that color of green. I’ll also…

These are gorgeous, but I gotta say you have to be absolutely lousy with natural light for colors that rich and dark. If I ever reno my very dark, very shitty kitchen I doubt I will have anything darker than dove grey :(