This is a fascinating question being asked in The Guardian. Should we be trying to aim for overall system fairness or should we be looking for fairness – perhaps the protection of the rights of – the one individual? Should the system of female sport be fair or should we concentrate upon the rights of and fairness to Caster Semenya?
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Is fair play in running more important than fairness to Caster Semenya as a human?[/perfectpullquote]What makes it such an interesting question is that the left’s answer to most such questions would be obvious. Doesn’t matter about the rights of the individual capitalist or bourgeois, kill or eliminate them as a class so that the system be fair. Who the hell worries about the rights of the baby when Mum decides she’d rather abort? 98% tax rates would strike may who have to pay them as unfair, unrighteous, but we’ve many shrieking they must be paid in order to gain that societal fairness.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Semenya’s case has now seemingly run its legal course, but the debate it started has not. Letting an athlete compete with too much of an inbuilt biological advantage feels unfair to their rivals; stopping someone competing as the woman she naturally is feels monumentally unfair to her. There is no way of resolving the moral dilemma without someone ending up wronged. And while this time it has seemingly been resolved by backing the welfare of a majority over the welfare of one individual, that indisputably leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. Running is so very clearly what Semenya excels at, athletics the one arena in which a body for which she has been so cruelly ridiculed worked gloriously in her favour. If fair play has in any sense been restored to athletics, it’s hard to shake the sense that something important has been lost.[/perfectpullquote]It’s the difference in answers that interests, isn’t it?
So, let me see if I’ve got this right. A man who says I identify as a woman should be allowed to compete against women. A woman who is exceptionally talented at running should not be allowed to compete against other women.
Agreed about ‘trans’ athletes – men should not be competing with women, simple. Isn’t the point about Semanya though that, although she has the appearance of a woman (sort of), she in fact has the hormones of a man? V unfortunate for her, but there we are. I think if – as appears to be the case – we agree that trans ‘women’ should not compete in women’s sport, then there is a good case that Semanya should not. The hypocrisy of sports’ authorities in allowing the former but not the latter, beholden as they are to PC nonsense, is… Read more »
Suppressing a person’s natural inbuilt characteristics to make compteting with them fair? So, naturally, they will then be insisiting on chemically supressing runners’ fast-twitch muscles to make sprints fairer, procrustinating tall basketball players to make the game fairer, larding up cyclists so that I can compete in the Tour de Yorkshire, mentally bludgening kids so they don’t out-compete thickos in school and university exams. See “wah wah, I can’t get a PhD” passim.
Quite correct. You see this all the time in left-wing schools sports days. Ideally for the socialists, everything should be a dead heat.
What is appalling is that this has actually been happening for many years. The whole point of comprehensive schooling is to level out attainment….
Actually, they could handle athletics like horse-racing, with handicaps. Could you beat Bolt if he carried a 60lb pack and you had 20 yds start…?
This is our future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Should The System Of Female Sport Be Fair, Or Fair To Caster Semenya?
Should The System Of Female Sport Be made forcibly equal, Or Fair To Caster Semenya?
There. Fixed that for you…