Caster Semenya is blurring sexual identity definitions
Is she male, is she female?
That's what the IAAF running officials are wondering about the fantastic South African runner Caster Semenya.
(The Endurance Sports Examiner, Roman Mica, did a top-notch job of capturing the controversy, and you may want to follow more about this issue and the world of racing through the column. And, New York Celebrity Fitness and Health Examiner Samantha Chang is following what is going on with the issue, too!)
The issue is befuddling the sports world (and it's about time!) Man? Woman?
Well guess what? What if she is neither—or all of the above?
Finally, people may start realizing that the definition of sex is perhaps as fluid as the definition of one's sexuality. Yeah, just like people aren't homosexual or heterosexual, they aren't just simply male or female either. It's really not confusing at all. It's about learning a few more definitions, and realizing that world isn't made up of just black or white, but many shades of gray.
I have known a handful of beautiful people who are considered "intersex." (Sometimes, they are lumped into the "trans" category, which includes transsexual, trans-gendered and transvestite people, but that's whole different column!)
The intersex people have (or had) genitals resembling both a male and a female. Sometimes, tragically, their parents have made a decision for them when they were babies to have one side forced upon them over the other side. Inevitably, the parents get the choice wrong. The child is pumped up with drugs or mentally pushed to live all the stereotypes of the chosen gender, but inside they may feel very different.
Alas, one of my intersex friends committed suicide because the overwhelming pressure of being different was too much. He/she (how he/she preferred to be called) couldn't cope with the feeling that he/she was part of a freak show. Someday, I'll go into more details about it, but it's still a raw subject. But yes, these people do exist.
Also, they almost universally consider themselves bisexual. They have attractions, or recognize their attractions, to both males and females (and the wonderful, but forgotten, range of sexual identities in between.
See a wonderful explanation of an intersexed person by 37-year-old Misha Kailana below. Maybe it will open up your mind about the dual definitions of sex and how mainstream society defines it.
As far as the runner's association, they've got a lot of mind-expanding issues to deal with themselves!
Comments
Great video, you are incredibly couragous to share your story. It certainly made me see that a person is a person....I think you are wonderful as you are.
You are beautiful, you are a child of god/dess.
thanks for doing this.
I teach LGBT studies and it's so important to have these stories for students to hear!!
Takoma Park, MD
Thank you for sharing. I can't begin to imagine how you have
suffered. I'm sorry nobody asked you or let you determine who
you are. I hope and pray people will be kind and compassionate
on this issue. God Bless.
Actually, Intersexed people vary as much as the general population. Most see themselves as males with anomalies, or females with anomalies. As is their right. Some see themselves as Intersexed, third-sex, androgenous, both sexes, or neither sex, and that's their right too.
Please don't try to fit them into boxes they don't identify with.
As regards sexual orientation, some are gay, some straight, some bi, some poly, and a lot are asexual. It's safer that way, trying to tell someone who's attracted to you that you're genitally unusual can land you in the ER, or the morgue. It's true though that we find the fuss over same-sex marriage difficult to take seriously.
If you have one of the rare conditions such as 5ARD or 17BHDD, so you get a "natural sex change" over time, you face the same dangers that trans people do from homophobes. Not forgetting the hatred, venom and spite from many religious groups, since your mere existence contradicts some of their basic tenets.
Thanks for this insightful and enlightening article. Caster, you're fine just as you are, girl...
I have the privilege of living with a wonderful PERSON: the greatest male, who likes wearing and make-up like a woman: a wondeful man with feminine sensibility.You'd love it!
Thanks for sharing. You really do have a good heart and I have learnt so much from you. Good luck with everything. You look beautiful inside and out.
But isn't the underlying issue here about leveling the playing field? Women typically don't compete against men in races because they don't run quite as fast. Caster has been beating them. Shouldn't she compete in the men's races now? If she's good enough, why not.
If Semenya has testicles and no ovaries, then he's a man and he should not be allowed to compete as a woman regardless of his other characteristics. Why ? Because testicles pump out lots of testosterone, and it creates an unfair advantage to the women because they're levels of testosterone are necessarily going to be much less. It was already established that Semenya had 3 times the amount of testosterone as a normal woman. Judging by his body it was probably even more than that. In women's running, are we looking for the fastest man-freak or the fastest woman ? I say the latter.
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