Jess, it’s perfectly possible that Caster Semenya never knew about her condition. Early reports say she is a hermaphrodite, which means she has no ovaries or uterus, but she does have testes, although if they are undescended she would never know. Women with her condition often don’t discover it until their teen years. The first clue might be that they don’t get their periods. But female athletes often don’t get theirs, so Semenya could have slipped by longer.

The South African authorities watching over her case are clearly confused about what’s going on, or else willfully deluded. “It is clear that she is a woman but maybe not 100 percent,” said Pierre Weiss, the general secretary of the IAFF. Another official called it “gossip” and “rumor.”

But, of course, it’s a condition well-covered in the medical literature. From the major clue we have—high testosterone—the culprit is likely CAIS (Complete Androgyn Insensitivity Syndrome), says Eric Vilain, a geneticist at UCLA who specializes in unusual sexual development. A woman like this would be genetically XY, not XX. If this is true of Semenya, the South African sports authorities would know that by now, since results of basic genetic testing take only a week, says Vilain. But nobody would know what to do with that information—XY, and a girl? That would cause outrage.

The tragedy of Semenya’s case is that it’s being played out in public. (Her new femmed-up look that Dayo pointed out—glossy lipstick, disco top, gold bracelets—is the most egregious example.) When teenage girls discover they have the condition, a good doctor would prescribe a long period of introspection, so they can figure out, without the influence of peers, parents, or glossy magazines, who they really are.

Vilain is an especially honest researcher in a highly politicized field. When I first asked him, he said that Semenya should probably not be allowed to compete against other women. The testosterone, he surmised, would give her an unfair advantage.

We were talking on cell phones and got disconnected, and in the span of time it took to call back he reconsidered. Testosterone levels in men are highly variable, he said. A man with naturally high testosterone would never be disqualified from competing. We don’t disqualify basketball players for being unusually tall, or tennis layers for having bigger biceps. “The problem is,” he said, “sports is inherently unfair.” What he mainly wanted to emphasize was that it’s the sports categories—men vs. women—that are artificially rigid, and reflect nothing about the reality of gender itself.

In all her public quotes, Semenya has been chipper and girlish. "I'd like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance," she told YOU, which published the glossy photos. Poor girl. In their eagerness to turn her into the “golden girl” the South Africans have had to rob her of any personality. Susan Boyle was put through the predictable, ruthless TV glamour machine. Semenya’s story is weirder and sadder, as she’s obviously being shoehorned into dreams she never had.

Semenya might very well be, chemically, and genetically, a boy. The intersex heroine of Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides' excellent novel, has a similar discovery. She deals with it by running away from home and going through a dramatic, reckless process of self-discovery, and ultimately decides to live as a man. You can imagine many different reactions a teenage girl might have to receiving the news that she is XY and has testes. Chirping about new dresses is not a likely one.

Tags: Caster Semanya, hermpahrodite

Emily, I cringed last night when I saw the clip of Joe Wilson screaming “You lie!” during Obama’s speech. I’m on the record as thinking it was silly for people to pull their kids out of class rather than listen to Obama’s back-to-school speech. But do you really think the vitriol that Obama faces is worse than what President Bush faced? Insulting the president reached national-pastime status not long after Dec. 12, 2000, when President Bush was finally declared the winner of the 2000 election. (Not that it wasn’t a growth industry during the Clinton administration.)

Bush also faced protests at commencement speeches, and he was booed during the 2005 State of the Union address. Maybe those particular incidents weren’t as heated as what Obama has faced. But look at some other examples of Bush hatred: An artist collected pubic hair from volunteers for a “Not my Bush” exhibit. Newsbusters has this photo gallery of “Kill Bush” protest signs. Is “Death to Extremist Christian Terrorist Pig-Bush” not an insult? What about when Natalie Maine of Dixie Chicks called Bush a “dumb fuck”?

I do think it’s true that conservatives are more organized protesters than before, judging from the town halls and from the high attendance at the tea parties. But I think it’s a big leap, and perhaps unfair, to link it to Obama’s race. The rise of blogs and social networking sites makes it easy to seek out like-minded individuals (and sometimes ONLY like-minded individuals), and it makes it easier to organize. And perhaps people are miffed that they just spent eight years watching “their guy” get bashed and they’re going to give as good as they got. Yes, I’m guessing that among the thousands and thousands of people who’ve attended a tea party or asked a question at a town hall, there have been some racists. But it’s not fair to suggest that people wouldn’t be speaking out if Obama were white.

Photograph of George W. Bush by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images.

Tags: Barack Obama, joe wilson, obama's health care reform speech

It has been reported that Caster Semenya is a "hermaphrodite." The South African runner thoroughly dominated her opponents in recent races, and because of her masculine appearance, she was forced to submit to a battery of gender tests. According to the Times of London, "the 18-year-old had internal testes and no womb or ovaries." They also note that the situation is delicate for the athletic association brass because of Semenya's high profile.

But they fail to mention how delicate the situation must be for Semenya herself. Did she know she was intersex before she was forced to submit to these tests? Pap smears are rare in South Africa, and Semenya is only 18, so it's unclear how thorough her doctor's appointments would have been in her youth. If she really did find out because of this investigation, how awful to experience the revelation in front of an international audience.

Photograph of Caster Semenya by Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: Caster Semenya, Caster Semenya South African runner, gender testing, hermaphrodites, South Africa

I had been avoiding this paper on collusion and price-fixing in the fertility industry because I feared it would send me into a Joe-Wilsonesque fit of rage. But Robin Marantz Henig’s solid DoubleX piece on state laws banning compensation for ova got me thinking about the issue, so I sallied forth and read the thing. At least it woke me up this morning.

Henig’s piece spoke of blanket bans on cash for ova used in scientific research. By contrast, compensation for ova used by prospective mothers is generally seen as a carnivalesque open market free-for-all. As University of North Carolina Professor of Law Kimberly D. Krawiec  explains, the market for eggs has never been particularly free. Industry artificially lowers the amount of compensation women receive for ova, and anticompetitive practices are tolerated under the assumption that ova donors, unlike sperm donors, should be motivated by nurturing, womanly, fuzzy fellow-feeling. As Krawiec notes, no one expects a man to give up his sperm out of some heartwarming love of humanity; men are permitted to seek financial gain. Women who treat their genetic material the same way are met, in Krawiec’s words, with “disgust and revulsion."

So it would presumably be revolting if you and I objected to the fact that New York clinics have an “understanding” about how much area women should be compensated for their ova. Or the fact that the industry-funded American Society for Reproductive Medicine attempts to enforce what it calls a “reasonable” cap on payment, bullying fertility clinics that offer market prices. The clinics then justify the cap as being in the interest of the very women who would receive reduced compensation for her ova. She is being “protected” from the “exploitation” of receiving the actual price of her genetic material. Who profits from underpriced ova? The fertility clinic, which, as Krawiec notes, does not pass the savings on to the prospective mothers. (This excludes donors who contract privately with prospective parents, which, after reading this paper, I strongly suggest doing.)

Krawiec contends that such collusion is quite illegal under the Sherman Act. No one would tolerate this kind of price-fixing in the market for, say, laptops. But fertility clinics are rarely challenged, and very often applauded, by left-wing consumer advocates and right-wing social conservatives trying to shield women from the true price of their ova. “Some egg-market critics,” she says, “exhibit a near-obsessive concern that young women, but not young men, will later regret their decisions to genetically parent children.” In other words: Men are rational. Women are overemotional puddles of impending regret. Surely the last thing we can be expected to think clearly about is our ability to make small humans. So thank you, American Society for Reproductive Medicine, for so assiduously protecting us from our reckless, muddle-headed, baby-loving instincts. We’ll try not to notice that you’re getting rich doing it.

Tags: egg donors, fertility clinics, IVF

Emily, Justice Scalia made a lot of hay in yesterday’s campaign finance case out of the fact that when it came to regulating campaign contributions by corporations, “Congress has a self-interest," and would have necessarily crafted rules to favor incumbents. I was trying to figure out why that felt so very déjà-vu-ish to me until a reader wrote in to remind me that Scalia made precisely the same point last spring in the Voting Rights Act case. At that oral argument, he urged that the judgment of Congress was not to be trusted with respect to its overwhelming vote to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, because, as he said, "They get elected under this system. Why should they take it away?" It’s starting to be something of a theme for Justice Scalia—at least with respect to elections—Congress cannot be trusted to do anything because it’s too crippled by self-interest. But it does sort of leave one wondering what Justice Scalia would trust the Congress to do. And whether that whole Article I thing doesn’t seem to move him as much as it might.

Tags: campaign finance reform; Justice Scalia

Hanna, here's why I'm not cheering on Joe Wilson, the Heckler of the Moment, with you. It's the sharpness of the insult he leveled at Obama, and the pattern that fits into. Suddenly, it is OK to insult the president by screaming about him giving a speech to school kids. It's OK to invite him to speak at commencement but deny him an honorary degree. And now it's OK for a member of Congress to yell "Lie!" at him in the middle of a speech to the joint sessions of Congress. These are all historical firsts, aren't they? Why now? I'm not sure if the answer is mostly about the ranting of talk-radio culture, or this real moment of intensified partisan divide, or a lurking discomfort, in some kitchens out there, with having an African-American president. But the timing is suspicious.

Tags: joe wilson, obama's health care reform speech

Everyone seems to agree that it was bad for South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson to yell "You lie!" at the president last night during the health care speech. Gail Collins calls it "not a good plan," New York Democrat Joseph Crowley called it "outrageous," and Rahm Emanuel said: "No president has ever been treated like that. Ever." That's when I started to get suspicious. Rahm Emanuael? The man known to fit three "fucks" in a sentence, outraged by "lie"? The president himself said his opponents "lie" not seconds before, and it's much more unusual for a president to use that word than for some back-bench congressman. Outside of that chamber the health care debate has been anything but civil, so why pretend otherwise?

Wilson has of course already apologized, saying, "my emotions got the better of me." The president wasn't available to take the call so he had to apologize to Emanuel instead, which must have hurt. My only disappointment is that this was a spontaneous outburst instead of a genuine, deliberate heckle. One of the great pleasures of seeing Obama give an official speech is that you can imagine you're in London, watching the British parliament, where spirited and sometimes nasty debate might takes place instead of the tedious "civility" that governs these phony American sessions. When I heard that outburst last night I thought, finally, we've arrived.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Tags: Barack Obama, health care, joe wilson, obama speech about health care