Wolf's argument is touching in its naivite, absurd in its reasoning, and vile in its implications. The burqua is just the Islamic iteration of the solution to a very serious problem. Other iterations include female genital mutilation and chastity belts. The serious problem? Cuckolding, of course.

Men want to be absolutely certain that the children borne to their wives are their children, and they will go to extraordinary lengths to do so. Hence the emphasis in all cultures on virginity for women and absolute sexual fidelity among married women with no analogue for men in either case. The punishment for deviation is fierce, ranging from shunning, to stoning, to death.

Cultural constraints are not nearly enough, and men have taken steps physical steps to ensure female sexual continence. These physical steps include chastity belts and female genital mutilation, making intercourse painful and destroying the possibility of female orgasm. Physical efforts to ensure female sexual continence extend to hiding women so that they cannot be the objects of male desire. They may be literally hidden, as in harems, or figuratively hidden behind garments meant to rob them of any sexual allure.

In the most fundamental sense, the burqa is an instrument for controlling female sexuality. In this, it is no different from a chastity belt or a clitoridectomy. It exists for one and only purpose: to ensure that men are not cuckolded.

Orenstein's piece reflects a lack of knowledge about the genetic basis of gender.

Almost all women are genetically female (they have XX chromosomes) and phenotypically female (they have female external organs).

Semenaya is genenetically MALE (XY chromosomes) and phenotypically female (female external organs). That's because she has androgen insensitivity (also known as testicular feminization). Semenaya is a male whose cells do not respond appropriately to testosterone. The internal organs are male, as befits someone with XY chromosomes, but the external organs were unable to respond appropriately to testosterone.

Semenaya may consider herself female and for most purposes, she is female. However, she is genetically male, and therefore, may have a competitive advantage over genetic females.

What Orenstein and others fail to appreciate is that ovaries do not determine gender. Chromosomes determine gender. That is why is both sad for her and irrelevant to this case to believe that internal organs determine whether anyone is a woman.