Running from the Facts: "Nope, Caster's testes are still there" edition
Running from the Facts: "Nope, Caster's testes are still there" edition
Addressing a flurry of horrible takes on an inconsequential "correction"
Members of the running media are wanking themselves weary over a trivial correction to a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017—an item World Athletics cited, but did not fundamentally rely on, in its 2019 decision to exclude intersex athletes from certain women’s athletics events. As you may or may not know, intersex athletes of the 46,XY disorders of sexual development (DSD) subtype possess all the athletically salient biological features of males but identify as female, usually from birth and owing to understandable confusion.
So far, Runner’s World, The New York Times, and Canadian Running have put together predictably and impressively deceptive pieces about the correction, with many of the usual suspects yet to discharge any electronic slop on the matter.
It probably confounds writers and editors at these entities that the BJSM even has a policy of considering, much less issuing, corrections. You see, corrections are not merely pesky but outright inimical to c. 2021 corporate journalism. As “silent edits” don’t count as corrections, The New York Times sure the fuck doesn’t bother with them; if nothing else, this is consistent with its corporate mission of churning out misinformation (that is, bullshit of all kinds) and disinformation (that is, intentional bullshit, also called “lies”) as fast as today’s bitched-up pseudo-liberal eyeballs can suck it in.
As always, the number of errors in these pieces and their magnitude should make it difficult to believe that thinking adults put them together and submitted them for public consumption. But that standard stopped applying a few years ago, after a generation of hypersensitive kids decided to trundle their chapped assholes from the overrated universities they attended into media careers, with the idea that journalism means “Write whatever the fuck your PMS or most recent bout of erectile dysfunction commands you to write.”
First, understand that the authors did not say that there were problems with any of the study’s data or its analysis, issues that would typically lead to a retraction if severe enough. Instead, all they did—under pressure from Caster Semenya’s tirelessly disingenuous, and therefore eminently capable, lawyers—was “admit” that they hadn’t done any formal, controlled studies on intersex people identifying as world-class female athletes (and with millions of potential subjects to choose from, why in the hell hav….ah, forget it) and had instead relied on inferences about the effects of testosterone that were completely uncontroversial until several years ago.
The other four paragraphs in the text of the correction, which is paywalled but available to individuals like me, speak to this basic point: Yes, testosterone matters, and everyone knows it; no, we didn’t look at an experimental group and a control group, which everyone knows is both unnecessary to our conclusions and a logistically impossible study to conduct. The concluding paragraph includes this: “Even though exploratory findings between enhanced testosterone levels in females and high athletic performance levels are on a lower level of evidence, they are important for Athletics in the absence of more robust evidence and when considering eligibility criteria to compete in the women’s category.” None of the three articles linked above mention this part, because why present the complete picture when you can lie instead?
No one who follows this situation and can read for comprehension could possibly extract “That proves it, they either lied about or fucked up the science” from this epistle, which is transparently nothing more than an attempt to appease the anti-science faction with lawyerly language games. That means that the authors of the articles I linked—Jenny Bozon, Jer (oops….Jeré) Longman, and Marley Dickinson—either cannot read for comprehension, which is unlikely, or have purposefully produced shitty, misleading pieces that should make it impossible for any of them to look in a mirror sober, which is now routine yet oh-so-fucking-irritating.
Writing for RW, Bozon, who may have an extra letter in her name, floats the theme that had this “misleading” stuff gotten out before the 2021 Olympics, Caster Semenya would have been allowed a third shot at a women’s 800-meter gold medal. She typed or spoke this sentence into her story, and I assume she was awake when she did:
This was based on evidence that found females with high testosterone levels had a competitive advantage over those with low levels.
Ask yourself this: Was there any evidence of this before the 2017 BJSM study? Hasn’t this been scientifically established fact for just about, well, forever—and presumably stood as the reason these same Wokish dullards don’t complain that banning women from athletics for using anabolic steroids is unjust? If you cannot answer “yes” to these questions, then you’re probably also capable of denying that the consensus among astrophysicists is that Mars is a planet. That is to say: World Athletics did not rely exclusively on the BJSM study in reaching its conclusions, and there’s no need to dive more deeply into that here or anywhere.
Even more than with most RW pieces, Bozon’s article exists solely for its clickbait headline (“Caster Semenya's lawyers want answers for 'misleading' study”). Caster’s lawyers are always yelling for more answers, even when they know they’re fucking lying. That’s their job. Caster will keep yammering about the “injustice” too. What’s the downside for them? And part of the subhead—“World Athletics has admitted flaws in research”—is flat-out inaccurate. The study authors didn’t say the research itself was misleading, only that they could not definitively link cause and effect and had therefore made statements about the research worth amending, if only for mollification purposes. Again, if you read what’s in the correction, the authors’ concession is not a meaningful one.
The New York Times article is perhaps the worst of the three, maybe because Longman has been a reporter for 28 years and, however bad she might have been at her job the entire time, certainly knows better than to write shit like “These athletes have testosterone levels in the male range, which, doctors say, suggest the presence of testicular tissue or internal testes.” Seriously? “Doctors say,” as if there’s no way to see what’s inside people? How, I must inquire, the fuck does anyone survive cardiovascular or brain surgery, with no way to visualize the relevant anatomy in advance?
Longman links to the PDF of the correction, knowing it’s behind a paywall and that few readers would bother with it even if they had easy access to it. The NYT is fond of this tactic, too—linking to hard-to-access content (“Just trust us!”) and things like study abstracts that in many instances have nothing to do with the article containing the link, but include enough of the right words to satisfy the small percentage of drones who even click on such links. Knowing better, Longman also pushes the notion that this correction will cause the entire intersex-athlete landscape to shift against women and in favor of “women” again; no such rethinking of the rules will occur (not in the direction Longman hopes, at least).
I hope Longman has at least come to hate the fact that her job now requires lying, but she seems like this kind of harpy who embraces it anyway.
Dickinson’s similarly flaccid story contains this passage:
The original study found that naturally elevated testosterone occurs in approximately 7.1 out of every 1,000 female athletes, which is 140 times higher than in the general female (i.e. non-athlete) population.
It’s unclear whether Dickinson understands this, but the reason for the vast discrepancy is the fact that world-class women’s sports, in practice, naturally select for DSD 46,XY people, and will continue to do so until these folks are formally excluded as a class. Anyone who identifies as female, but possesses the athletic talent of, say, a typical incoming University of Colorado male freshman, has the ability to compete with, and usually soundly beat, the best women in the world. (Despite my rancor toward the media, and my unwillingness to be remotely polite when my shitbird targets are only feigning politeness anyway, I emphasize that no one starts out with the intention to screw anyone out of a medal, for what that’s worth; these people often have every reason to be considered girls before puberty hits and their occult testes make their presence known.)
Underscoring his own absence of journalistic acumen and lack of interest in correcting his own ignorance, Dickinson embeds an Instagram story from the muddle-minded Semenya, as if constant bellowing about injustice amounts to anything more than just that: Constant fucking bellowing. Semenya should be happy to already own two Olympic gold medals that should be in someone else’s trophy case (or bank vault, perhaps).
Dickinson also explains:
Further, it found that high testosterone in female athletes conferred a benefit of 1.8 per cent over 800m and 2.7 per cent over 400m. The study did not show any direct evidence of benefit over the 1,500m and one-mile distances.
Rather than delve into the supposed lack of evidence for high testosterone being of benefit in the 1,500 meters and mile, just ask yourself what it would take for you admit that a benefit exists in the 400m and 800m yet insist that the benefit stops there. You’d have to be some combination of really lazy, a garden-variety dunce, or a liar.
Here’s where World Athletics fucked this whole situation up: From the start, DSD athletes should have been banned from all female athletics events after being identified as such (and if people don’t want to submit to DNA swabs, ultrasonography or even a basic physical exam, then they shouldn’t get to compete internationally). This is the stance it should adopt now. By applying the testosterone limits only to certain events, World Athletics knowingly—and if you ask me, somewhat sadistically—pushed intersex athletes into as-yet “unregulated” women’s events. Now, one of them has a brand-new Olympic silver1 medal in the women’s 200 meters. Nice job, everyone!
As far as the media pushing this nonsense, they know it will catch fire on “liberal” Twitter and serve to push traffic to their sites as well as foment the ongoing myth that people like Caster Semenya deserve to be running in women’s events. They’re bad people and apparently loving it.
But let’s* pretend for a minute we inhabit a world where the media actually gives shit about the facts. Referring again to the part of the Canadian Running story in which Dickinson basically pretends the effects of high testosterone evaporate after two laps: Shouldn’t the real concern be the fact that high testosterone in women does, indisputably, make at least some difference in any sport or distance? If Wokesters like Dickinson—and to be fair, he may just be a moron—are supposedly motivated by the idea of fairness, how does this square with admitting that intersex “women” possess even a smidgen of an advantage?
Imagine wanting to see your kid accepted by a good college, to the extent these still exist. The SAT—though recently shitcanned by the University of California system to allow a higher fraction of dumb kids of color to get into its schools—remains a vital part of this process. Would you tolerate your child having even a 2 to 3 percent disadvantage against the rest of the test-taking field? That could be 40 or 50 total points, which means a great deal on the SAT and not just at the margins.
If you’re one of the cross-eyed Wokish lurkers who has masochistically picked your way through this shit with clenched jaws, congratulations—I have one question for you (and for everyone reading, in fact). It is this:
If you were convinced that intersex or transgender females have a competitive advantage, would you be in favor of removing them from women's sports?
The answer from the Wokish is clearly “no” (and those of you trying to shield your thoughts from me shouldn’t bother). This is why they write one bad-faith story after another about this topic. They are committed to a false narrative that emotional baggage and triggers dragged them into and that no amount of rational pleading will dislodge them from. This is why they are cowards, and this is why I refer to the ones in the media in the unkindest terms possible. It’s one thing if a bunch of random, clueless 23-year-old joggers whose main concern is skipping out on their student loans want to root for whatever sounds right for fat people and PoC on Twitter, or even to knowingly want an unjust outcome for personal or other spurious reasons. But if you lie about this or anything as a member of the media, you’re a foul fucking human being. But you already knew that, because foulness is your whole cunt-fucked platform.
The original version of this post identified Christine Mboma’s medal as gold. I caught this before anyone noticed or pointed it out, but not noting the change would seem especially sleazy given the shit I complain about here and elsewhere.