First things first, Caster Semenya is a wonderful athlete who won the Olympics fair and square. The whinging and bleating from those behind her is disrespectful at best and downright racist at worst. Those athletes who didn't finish on the podium should keep their mouths closed and go back and do some more training.
This doesn't get over the thorny issue of how we should separate groups that compete in sport. We find it easy to separate by weight as the measurement is very objective so no one complains. But what about dividing by sex? If we are going to have categories then its important that way of categorising people is both fair and transparent. It seems to me that there are a couple of options-
Option 1 is to leave things as they currently stand which seems to be to allow anyone self-identifying as female who doesn't have a penis to compete in the female category (although I'm not aware of any official and transparent penis checking). It's fine to go with this option but if you subscribe to it you must consider that at the next Olympics there might be 3 rich white American women with hyperandrogenism who beat 3 poor black African women without hyperandrogenism who got to the final against all the odds through hard work and dedication. If you are prepared for that to happen then stick with option 1.
Option 2 is to divide people by testosterone level and basically have categories of 'testosterone <10 and no penis' and 'everyone else'. This is basically how the rule stood for the London Olympics and you must remember that Caster basically won that race. She was only beaten by a serial drug cheat. If you go for that option where would that leave Caster? She would have the option of taking medication to lower her testosterone (she would probably still win) or competing in the 'everyone else' category where she would undoubtedly lose. Difficult for her and other athletes with hyperandrogenism I'm sure.
Option 3 is to come up with some other (as yet undefined) way of dividing athletes which is fair and transparent. It's hard to know what that could be but there might be some options.
Option 4 is radical and likely to be unpopular. Have a third category. Have a race for 'testosterone <10 and no penis', another for 'has a penis' and a third race for 'everyone else who doesn't fit in the other categories'. Perhaps the third category should run in the Paralympics? Intrinsically people won't like this, they won't enjoy the thought of Caster running in the Paralympics as if she's 'disabled'. Anyway I'm just putting it out there as an option.
Berating the athletes who missed the podium and lashed out at Caster and co is all well and good- in fact I applaud it but you must be aware that you need to pick an option from the list above and accept the consequences. That is unless you can think of a better plan.
