Semenya Wins Gold despite Gender Controversy
I’m not in the loop with the world of athletics, so it came as a bit of a surprise this morning to hear of the controvery involving a South African athlete.
Caster Semenya is an eighteen year old 800m athlete representing our country at the IAAF World Championship.
She’s being accussed of not being a woman! Of all things.
One would have thought it would be relatively easy to test for gender- for instance:
- Does she have a penis…or
- an Adams apple
- how about a womb
Apparently its not that easy because the IAAF have brought in the services of an endocrinologist, gynaecologist, internal medical expert and a psychologist to prove whether Caster is a woman.
To illumimate matters even more, e-news showed an image of the athlete and she looks masculine to me.
This whole episode reminds me of a poem we did at primary school called The Twins by Henry S Leigh where the hapless twin laments, “…I put the question fruitlessly to everyone I knew.
What would you do if you were me to prove that you were you?”
Sooner or later we’ll know the result of the test.
Until then Ms Semenya will still have permission to race…and win gold for her country.
Like she did just a few minutes ago.
If nothing else, at least the controversy put the athlete in the
public eye. Otherwise we might have heard her name in passing on sports bulletins tomorrow morning.
2 Responses to “Semenya Wins Gold despite Gender Controversy”
By po on Aug 20, 2009 | Reply
It is pretty awful what is happening to her. Accodring to her mom her parts are female. Whcih means she is likely to have XX chromosomes. But it is possible that she could be a hermaphrodite and the male parts are not visible. Or it is possible that she produces large amounts of male hormones. Sexuality is not nearly as clear cut as people think, but surely, if she has female bits, that is what they have judged people on before so they should leave it at that?