The campaign of hatred against trans women ... wins another casualty in Casters Semenya.
Caster Semenya is not a "trans woman"
No, she isn't. But the campaign, which started with Navratilova and was then picked up by Davies, Radcliffe, etc, was all about trans women, and the word repeatedly used is "cheat". The narrative has been very, very clear in its focus, and it goes "Lots of third-rate male athletes will self-define as female and fo through years of hormone therapy to become world champions..."
McKinnon won one race, in this particular narrative, against a cis woman, who then complained. They had raced against each other around a dozen times previously, and the cis woman had won every single time. The one race Rachel won, there was an immediate cry of "CHEAT!".
The IOC set out a whole range of criteria for trans women fifteen years ago. By the logic involved in the complaints going on*, the record books and medal tables should have been dominated by men pretending to be trans women who go through HRT just long enough to win everything, and then transition back to male. That hasn't happened, has it?
What HAS happened is a sustained and really vicious campaign of personal abuse and hatred against all trans women, which has intensified over the last few years. This particular "CHEAT!" narrative is just part of it. Semenya fell foul of it precisely because people like Navratilova have been shouting "Not Fair!" that some people have genetic advantages over others. Unfortunately, that is what elite sport is all about.
I could look at a swimming or running champion like Sharron Davies or Paula Radcliffe, and shout "CHEAT!" back. They are both taller by far than the average woman, so have inborn genetic advantages. How does that differ from Semenya? Should we start excluding e.g. Kenyan distance runners because their genetics makes them "CHEATS!" due to their cardiovascular system?
Citoyen, one of the side-effects of privilege is that one doesn't pick up on what happens in the lives of those without that privilege. Those with white privilege, for example, will often miss the signs of systematic racism at all levels. Cisgender people will not have picked up on the relentless campaign of transphobic hatred pouring out from everywhere in the MSM (e.g.Times: 323 hate articles against trans women in 2018. So far this year, they have peaked at five on one day). Those articles have stirred up a pile of crap that has now fallen on "Caster Semenya is not a trans woman".
The remedy offered by the TERFs is illogical. It involves treating her with drugs that they claim explicitly are evil and harmful. They take ONE natural advantage enjoyed by a tiny number of women, and blow it up as cheating (their explicit word. once more) while ignoring the other advantages some other women enjoy (height, reach, proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibres). Underneath Semenya's treatment, as I have linked, there is a real stench of racism.
Citoyen et al: privilege. Without being in my shoes, it is very unlikely you will have picked up on the continual flow of hatred towards us. It is everywhere, from Twitter through the press (including the Graun) to stickers being put up in women's toilets. Casters Semenya is indeed "not a ;trans woman' " (BTW, why the quotation marks?) but she is a casualty of organised and systematic anti-trans bigotry. Put yourself in my shoes for a few moments; start by looking at the 'women's rights' chat board on Mumsnet for a feel of where the narrative comes from.
Then those of you who may or may not support her ban can explain to me why one, and only one, natural variation in perfectly normal female human genetics should have been singled out in this way. No, Citoyen, she is not a trans woman**. She is just an extraordinary female athlete being penalised for no valid reason because of bigots who hate other women from a different group.
No trans athletes at all in the Olympics in fifteen years, much less dominating medal tables and records. Fact.
*The same people pushing the "CHEAT!" narrative are exactly the same ones who claim that 'men' have genital surgery so as to be able to enter women's spaces in order to rape little girls with the penis they no longer have. Yes, that is really what they say.
** Trans women are women. Fact. Law in this country and in others.