RSS
Home
The Importance of Discerning Caster Semenya’s Sex
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
The importance of discerning Caster Semenya's sex relates to far more than one athletes eligibility to compete as a woman. The abillity to live life as the gender she was born and raised are potentially at stake, for this person, and perhaps others.
South Africa's athlete Caster Semenya gestures after her arrival at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, Tuesday Aug 25, 2009. Semenya, who is undergoing gender testing after questions arose about her muscular build and deep voice, returns home Tuesday to celebrations after her 800-meter win at the world championships. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
The following article was written by a guest columnist , Carolynne Juarez, providing a woman's perspective on the controversy.
The controversy surrounding Caster Semenya was heightened recently when it was discovered that her coach was Ekkart Arbeit. Mr Arbeit coached East German athletes in the 1970s during a period in which the women athletes, most notably, collected 40 medals at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. What was discovered decades later about the East German athletes was that the girls, selected as young as 12 years of age, participated in a state-sponsored program in which testosterone and steroids were administered without their knowledge.
Semenya’s masculinity is obvious. It is unfortunate that she has found herself in this situation which may or may not be of her own creation. With three times the amount of testosterone normally found in a woman, those who claim that the athlete is being subjected to racial harassment or treated inhumanely are simply detracting from the exposure of a potentially harmful situation. While Semenya could find herself disqualified from the IAAF World Games where she recently won a gold medal for a performance that looked all too easy, she could also be in danger of losing her femininity all together if she is, without her knowledge, the subject of yet another experiment. The effects of testosterone are not reversible.
Several of the East German female athletes spoke in a documentary titled "Doping for Gold" that has aired on PBS. In this documentary, several women tell of the horrors they experienced in the aftermath of their athletic careers including miscarriages, abnormal hair growth and the deepening of their voices. Heidi Kreiger, perhaps the most tragic, tells how she was forced to choose "sex reassignment" surgery because she was assumed male.
The South Africans were well aware of Semenya’s high testosterone levels before the World Games. Now they cry foul because Semenya’s gender is called to the fore. Something is not right and Caster Semenya is caught in the middle. She deserves a fair shot as an athlete, as a woman and as a human. Hopefully, with this issue behind her, she will be able to race as a woman for years to come.
Related Articles:
Comments
