Last month, South Africa’s Caster Semenya, who won the World Championship in Berlin, became the center of controversy when her gender came into question. The IAAF required her to undergo gender testing, after winning the race by a huge margin. I’m sure her deep voice and strong features didn’t help either. When I heard about the controversy I was very taken aback, because i never knew that athletic organizations did gender testing. How embarrassing. A number of specialists were called in and following testing, she returned to her native South Africa where she was well received as “our girl”.
Today reports show that Semenya is biologically a hermaphrodite. She has no womb or ovaries and has internal testes. So now the question becomes, does her win still stand? The IAAF is forwarding the results to experts for further testing, but I wonder if that is even necessary. Being a hermaphrodite is a medical condition that automatically sets you apart from the rest of society and I’m sure it comes with loads of psychological and emotional baggage and a lifelong feeling to fit in. When you find something you enjoy, such as track and field and you excel at that, who are we, as a society and the IAAF as an organization to take away from her happiness? She should be considered what she identifies as. If she does not identify as a man, surely you cannot expect her to run against men, and to disqualify her because of a medical condition that she cannot change seems illogical. So in a world that caters to a sort of normalcy, where does Ms. Semenya fit in?
Check this link for the full article. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/sep/10/caster-semenya-hermaphrodite-iaaf-test
Interesting issue & argument. You see it from the her and the humanistic point of view, which is totally valid. But I think there is another facet of this issue, being fairness to her competitors. There is a difference in physical performance between males and females in track and field. So while it would be nice to preserve Ms Semenya’s emotional wellbeing, the emotional wellbeing of her competitors, as well as the integrity of the gender divide in sport is also at stake.
I dont think what gender she identifies with is really a valid argument. By this same line of reasoning, we should allow gay men to compete against women in sport, and break every record because of their actual physical, rather than actual gender.
But I wont even pretend to have an answer for your question of “where does she fit in?”. Im sure whichever way the decision goes, there will be a lot of heartache.
Gay men don’t identify as women. They identify as gay men. A man who identifies as a women is a transsexual and while transsexuals aren’t allowed to compete against the sex they identify with, transgenders (people who have changed sex) can. The IOC adopted rules governing transgenders in sports in 2005.
http://www.olympic.org/uk/includes/common/article_print_uk.asp?id=841
As far as Ms. Semanya, seeing as how the IAAF has no rules governing hermaphrodites as far as I can find she should be able to keep her medal as she did not break any rules.
This has got to be one of the most difficult things anyone has to deal with. You’re going along leading your life, a relatively simple rural person. Then somebody gets you into international athletic competition, competing at the highest level, next thing you know half the planet is speculating as to whether you’re a man or woman. And the science of biology has no clear-cut answer.
I haven’t got a clue how somebody deals with this kind of identity trauma, an experience which could certainly shake those core foundations which most of us take for granted. I just hope the strength of her family can pull Ms. Semenya through such a devastating and confusing nightmare that no teenager should have to go through. On a smaller scale she’s had to deal with this issue as a youth, but Now Caster is facing the toughest race of her young life, a race to see whether she can retake the reins of control over her own persona and self-image. It’s the kind of thing that can reduce even a strong person to a kind of wavering simulacrum state of being.
Never let anybody else tell YOU who the hell who YOU are. We create ourselves, forge the mental image of ourselves within our own minds. The moment you start letting others define you, is the moment you lose control over your existence.
I support Caster Semenya’s right to compete against anybody she chooses. In my view, much like the the social concepts of sexual orientation, race, religion, and ethnicity, gender identity is an illusion, a mythological creature, an affectation of the social mind designed to put you in a box and keep you there. A means of control and repression. Those who step out of that box, willingly or no, risk being crushed by the dread of the small minded among us.
For those who are comfortable segregating men and women in sporting competition, what happens when a woman defeats a man at the highest level of such contentions. We don’t stop girls from competing with boys because they are the weaker sex, we stop girls from competing with boys because when that day comes, the day a female vanquishes the male in a direct rivalry of strength or speed, there’s going to be a revolution, and the pillars of male-dom will quake in fear, for we will no longer have anything to feel superior about.
It’s all in your head ladies, these chains of bondage that still hold women all around the world, they only exist in your mind. The moment you stop believing them, that is the same moment they cease to exist.
I’d like to see Serena and Venus Williams playing against men. I have no doubt they could break into the top 100. The shape Serena is in at the U.S. Open this week, I’m sure she would be ranked in the top 50 were better among the men. And in the doubles competition, there aren’t any women that can touch the Williams sisters, they need to be competing against men because honestly those are the only competitors that really offer them fair competition, they would most certainly embarrass and emasculate a lot of big tough racket jocks. But even here in the 21st century, the male mind just isn’t prepared for that yet, our egos couldn’t handle it, we’re not ready.
But mark my words, the day is coming, things like women in combat all too easily reveal the truth of these myths, sadly that’s the only way you get respect among the brutish beast that is Man. Let a woman kill a few men and suddenly they don’t seem so big anymore, suddenly they’re wondering what they were ever afraid of in the first place. When a woman realizes that she has the exact same power as a man, there at once surprised by how miniscule the differences between men and women actually are.
Unfortunately that’s always what it takes in the primate world, we don’t learn any of the big lessons without getting bloody or destroying one another. That’s why I fear for Caster and her future, because now she is a threat, and people who’ve never met her, people who don’t know anything about her, what kind of person she is, and they don’t care, all they see is a freak. some want to see her go down while others just want her to go away never to be heard from again, because she makes them uncomfortable and fearful. Her mere existence causes some to doubt and question their own identities, it gets them rethinking their place in the world, and for far too large a segment of the population this is a truly terrifying prospect.
The physical differences between men and women shrink to insignificance when matched against the force of the human will and the power of an unshakable belief in oneself. There is no question of equity between men and women in this department, either you’re a person who believe in yourself or you don’t, and ultimately this is where the final battle for equality will be fought, within the will, its the only thing that really matters.